It is the year 1946! It is Monday, January 14! It is exactly 7 a.m. I pressed the door bell and a fellow opened the door. I said, “I’m George Shimizu,” and he replied, “Great. Welcome back. I’ll get Mary.” I sat down in the living room of the All Peoples Church hostel (as I found out later). I closed my eyes and thought to myself how lucky I am to be home again. I silently counted my blessings. Then my Mary came down the stairs and quickened her stride. We clung together and all she was saying was “Honey. Honey. Honey!” And I remember saying, “My sweetheart. Sweetheart. Sweetie!” Mary was crying and I could not see her because something kept getting into my eyes. We were finally together again! It had been a two-year separation—730 days and nights. We would never be separated by war again. I look back—it was exactly 24 months (January 1944) ago that we had boarded the MS Matsonia, 14,000 soldiers and equipment careening and zigzagging solo all the way from San Francisco to Brisbane, Australia. We were all grim-faced and solemn. The U.S. and Allied forces were losing on most fronts in the Pacific war zone at that time. Then, like a miracle, America’s superior heavy industry changed the climate in the war against Japan. Bulldozers, huge earth-movers, long-range submarines, escort “flat-tops”, tanks, P-51 Mustangs, B-29 Superfortresses, all combined in the strategy on the road to victory leading to the dropping of two atomic bombs, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945. If peace had not occurred, experts estimated that more than 1 million (military and civilian) lives would have been lost in the following 12 months.

Then Mary left to go upstairs, and I reflected on the past week. After a night at Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg, California, we went by bus to Camp Beale, just north of Sacramento. Three days later we were out of the U.S. Army. Three of us took the Greyhound bus overnight to Los Angeles. The lady at the counter told me to go down San Pedro Street to Mary’s address. Then an elderly gentleman said, “I go down San Pedro on my way home. I will drop you off at that address. That will be my good deed for the day!”

Our class sends heartfelt condolences to the family of our one and only incomparable Waldo “Doc” Fielding, who died on January 1 in Hingham, Massachusetts, at the age of 100 years.

—George Shimizu, 2140 Sepulveda Ave., Milpitas, CA 95035; (408) 930-2488; marymariko@comcast.net