"ATIS
is a big office employing about 1,000 folks including GIs, civilians, and
Japanese nationals. The equipment is not
as good as Washington's in that we don't have swivel chairs, fluorescent
lights, or the fine reference material that made life so comparatively good....
"The
physical surroundings in which we live here in Tokyo are really quite
wonderful. I am in the Continental Hotel
which is the old Aji no Moto building remodeled into a hotel for occupation
forces of the CAF 1-6. It is eight
stories high, has a fine restaurant in the basement, good lounge and bar on the
first, and rooms on the other floors with a room garden and little shrine to
fertility on top. (From the number of kids seen running around the streets, the
latter is unnecessary)....
"There
is no end of stateside amusement here; there are at least six theatres, the
Nippon Philharmonic Orchestra which presents concerts every Sunday afternoon,
sight-seeing tours, the college courses mentioned before, and trips to other
parts of Japan. In fact, there is so
large a community here of Americans that they have called off limits everything
which is truly Japanese and force you into this American entertainment which
can be better had in Wichita."
--Letter
from John Howes, Tokyo, to my father, Winfield, Kans., January 14, 1947. John
was a Navy language officer in Japan and a former Navy school classmate of my
father. He was encouraging my father to apply for
jobs in Japan. ATIS was the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section.
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