Hamfist Over the Trail (16 page)

It was a late night departure, and I slept the entire flight, probably five or six hours. I arrived at Yokota Air Base at 0700 hours. I wasn't sure if I should call Tom so early, but he said to call him any time. I found a pay phone in the terminal, and dialed the number on his
meishi
. A female with an accent answered.

“All American Import Export. Mr. Marcos's office.”

“Hi, this is Hamfi...uh, Hamilton Hancock calling for Mr. Marcos.” I’d almost called myself Hamfist.

After a short pause, Tom was on the phone. “Ham! Great to hear from you. When are you coming to Tokyo?”

“Hi Tom. Actually, I'm already here. I'm at Yokota Air Base.”

“Yokota Air Base...” he repeated, “Okay...” He paused, “It will take my driver about an hour to get there. He'll meet you at the main gate in an hour. Is that okay?”

“Sure, great. How will I know your driver?”

“He'll have a sign with your name. Damn, I'm really glad you're here! And your timing is perfect. If you had come two days earlier, you would have missed us. We just came back from Boston. I'll see you soon.”

I was actually glad to have an hour to decompress. Yokota Air Base was like being back in the States. They had a great BX right in the terminal, there was a snack bar that actually had
lemons
in the ice tea, and, most important, nobody was lobbing rockets at us. I checked at the Information booth to find out how to get to the main gate, and they pointed me to a line of taxis right outside the door. Now
this
was civilization!

I showed up at the main gate, and there was a blacked-out limo parked at the curb. A young Japanese man was holding a sign with my name. “welcome to Japan,” he intoned, with a rather thick accent. “First, we measure.”

From seemingly out of nowhere an older Japanese gentleman, in a suit, appeared, and started taking my measurements. He must have measured me fifty different ways, my neck my chest, my arms, my wrists, my inseam, you name it. He was rapidly speaking to a cute young Japanese girl, who was furiously writing down everything he said. It probably took about five minutes. Then the driver opened the door for me, and we were on our way.

The limo was decidedly different from Tom's limo in San Francisco. The car was obviously Japanese, with the driver sitting on the right. The seats were velour, and the headrests had white cloth doilies covering them. The air conditioning was on.

“Temperature okay? Too hot? Too cold?” the driver inquired.

“It good,” I responded, not realizing that I was again using pidgin English.

“You want drink?” he offered.

When I said, “Yes, thank you,” he handed me an ice-cold beverage bottle. I looked at it. The label said “Calpis”. It kind of looked like cow piss, but I sure wasn't going to insult the driver, so I took a sip. Then another. It tasted great.

Tokyo was a study in contrasts. The city was totally modern – it could have been New York or Chicago. But then I'd see women wearing kimonos, carrying brightly colored paper umbrellas, walking with men wearing business suits. It was hard to believe that this place had been bombed to the ground just twenty-five years earlier. I wondered if Vietnam would recover as quickly once the war was over.

38

Tom was waiting at the curb when we arrived outside his office. I got out of the car and went to shake his hand, but he'd have none of that. He went for the big hug.

“I'm afraid I still smell like Vietnam,” I ventured.

“No problem, we'll take you to my place and you can freshen up. The tailor should be ready for your first fitting after you clean up.”

I really wasn't sure how to respond. We both got back into the limo, and we drove to Tom's apartment.

Tom had a nice townhouse within view of Tokyo Tower. “The American Embassy is not very far,” he offered, pointing toward the tower. “The one thing I'll ask you to do,” he said, as we entered, “is remove your shoes.” Then he paused, “You look like you can use some new shoes. What size are you?”

I looked down at my shoes and was immediately chagrinned. I still had the muck of Vietnam on my soles. Why hadn't I used my hour at Yokota to make myself presentable? “I think I'm a size 10.”

“No sweat,” he replied, “Same as me. We'll find you something.”

It was a really nice apartment. There was a modern living room with a couch and two easy chairs, a kitchen, and three bedrooms. The bedrooms had straw mats covering the entire floor, and the mattresses were directly on the floor.

“These are tatami mats,” he explained. “You'll love sleeping on a mattress on the floor. You'll see.”

“I'm looking forward to it,” I responded. I'd slept in a thicket in the jungle, in a room underneath an artillery range, and in a hooch with the air conditioner being knocked out of the wall. I figured I could sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Tom pointed to a separate room with a translucent sliding door. “You can take a shower here”.

“Good,” I responded, “I need to use the bathroom.”

“Not in there, I hope!” Tom replied. “I think you mean you need to use the toilet. In Japan, the bathroom is where you take a bath or shower, and the toilet is in a different part of the house.” Tom showed me to the toilet, and then I went to the bathroom to take a shower. Now
that
would take some getting used to!

The shower was different from anything I had seen in the States. As soon as I selected hot water, a gas burner ignited, and the water was instantly hot. When I finished the shower, the burner turned off. There was a white terry cloth robe waiting for me when I finished, and I really felt refreshed. I had been living in the most civilized hooch in Vietnam, but the showers there were nothing compared to this.

When I emerged from the bathroom, the older gentleman who had measured me at the main gate of Yokota was waiting in the living room, holding a dark blue suit. It wasn't really a suit, yet. It was what looked like pieces of a suit, held together with thin white thread.

“We do first fitting now,” he said in a thick accent.

I changed into my underwear, and carefully put on the suit jacket, and he started making miniscule adjustments, moving the material a few millimeters here, a few there, and pinning the material in place. Then I put on the pants and went through the same process. Then I returned the pants to the tailor.

He spoke a few words to Tom in Japanese.

“Do you want single vent or double vent?” Tom asked.

“Single vent”.

“Pleats or no pleats?” Tom continued.

“I really hadn't given it any thought. What do you think?” I responded.

Tom spoke in Japanese again, and the tailor left with the suit. “We're going for no pleats, single vent, single breast, notch lapels. Functional buttons on the sleeves. That's the way you can tell a really good suit,” he said.

“Tom,” I objected, “you really don't need to do this for me. I feel like I'm really putting you out.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he countered. “I've been waiting for more than six months to show you a good time in Tokyo.” He paused, “And you can't do that unless you're really well dressed. Now let's find you a shirt and tie.”

I put on some civvies, and we got back into Tom's limo. This time, we were going to go to a store in the shopping arcade of the Imperial Hotel.

The hotel was directly across the street from the Imperial Palace. “The Emperor lives there,” Tom motioned in the direction of the palace. “Frank Lloyd Wright designed this hotel,” he said, with an expansive wave of his hand.

We went into the shopping arcade on the lower mezzanine and entered a store that had bolts of cloth in every color imaginable. And every material. Tom looked through several, held one up alongside my face, and announced, “This is the one. Off-white Summer French Batiste.” He spoke to the proprietor, again in Japanese, and again I was measured. Then he picked out several ties that, I figured, would go well with the suit and shirt.

Just as we got in back in the limo, Tom apparently remembered something. He rattled off some more Japanese to Yuji, the driver, and Yuji went running back into the hotel. A few minutes later, he emerged with a small box.

39

July 23, 1969

We were back at Tom's apartment.

“Tom,” I said, “I really feel awful taking you away from your job on such short notice.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he countered. I'm the boss. I can take off whenever I want.”

Tom looked at his watch, then called to Yuji, who had been waiting by the front door. “
Yuji-san. Onaka-ga sukimashita. Ikimasho
.

Yuji made a motion halfway between a head nod and a bow. “
Hai, dozo
.”

And with that, we went back into the limo.

“Have you ever had sushi?” Tom asked.

“I don't think so,” I responded, “I had chop suey once.”

Tom ignored my
faux pas
and said, “I think you'll like it. It's a pretty standard casual Japanese meal.”

We pulled up outside a plain shop with a cloth curtain hanging in the doorway.

“This way,” Tom said.

Inside was a “U” shaped counter, ringed with bar stools. Raised about a foot above the counter was a conveyor belt, a dead-ringer miniature of the conveyor belts used for luggage at airports. On the conveyor were small dishes with various small snacks, usually rice wrapped in seaweed. There were at least a dozen different variations. As the conveyer moved, the dishes made their way down the counter.

Tom motioned to a bar stool and said, “Have a seat,” then he pulled up a stool next to me and sat down.

“Here's the deal,” he explained, “When you see something you like, you just take it off the conveyor and put it in front of you. When you finish eating, you stack up your dishes.”

Tom reached into a box on the counter and removed two sets of chopsticks, wrapped in paper. He also grabbed two tea bags and two cups. He put the tea bags in the cups and turned a small faucet that discharged hot water.

“Now,” he said, “I'm going to teach you how to act Japanese.”

For the next hour he guided me on how to use chopsticks, how to determine which sushi dish had
sashimi
– raw fish – and which had more mundane fare, and how to slurp tea. We had a great time.

After lunch, we went back to Tom's apartment. “Look,” he said, “I have just a few loose ends to clean up at the office, and you look like you could use a nap. I'll be back about six, and Miyako should be back from Haneda by then, and we'll all go out. Your suit and shirt will be ready before that.”

I didn't object. To be honest, I was dead tired. I went to the bedroom, closed the room-darkening shades, and was asleep within minutes.

In what seemed like no time, it was time to get up.

“Ham,” Tom was softly calling to me, trying not to wake me too suddenly, “you ready to go to town?”

“I sure am,” I said. I felt totally refreshed. And for the first time in over six months, I felt really clean. The mattress on the
tatami
mats had been incredibly comfortable, and my concerns about it perhaps hurting my back had been totally unfounded.

When I entered the living room, the tailor was once again waiting, holding a now-completed suit. But he wasn't going to leave until he was satisfied it fit perfectly. It did.

The suit was absolutely gorgeous. It was a midnight blue, glimmering “sharkskin” appearance, and fit better than anything I've ever worn, including the custom uniforms we had at the Academy. The shirt was waiting on the coffee table, and I unwrapped it and tried it on. Again, perfect.

Tom walked up to me, held up the ties he'd bought earlier in the day next to my suit, and pronounced, “This is the one.”

Then he handed me the small box the driver had retrieved earlier. I opened it and saw two cufflinks with absolutely perfect, matched, pearls.

“Tom,” I objected, “I just can't let you do all this for me.”

“Ham,” he answered, “you only come to Tokyo for the first time in your life once. I want it to be special.”

Just then, the apartment door opened.

I heard a soft-spoken female voice, “
Tadaima
!”

“Miyako is here, and she brought our lawyer from the airport,” Tom remarked.

A very attractive Japanese lady entered the room, walked right up to me, held out her hand, and bowed slightly. I had expected her to be wearing a kimono, but she was wearing a conservative, grey dress.

She had a slight accent, “I'm Miyako. Thank you for saving my husband's life!” She gripped my hand with both of hers.

“It's a real pleasure to meet you, Miyako. I'm not so sure I saved his life, but I'm glad I was there to help.”

Tom interjected, “Here comes my lawyer.”

A gorgeous Eurasian woman, about my age, entered the room, rushed over to Tom, and hugged him. “Daddy!”

Tom hugged her back, then introduced me, “Samantha, this is the Hamilton I've been telling you about.”

She held out her hand. “Call me Sam.”