{"id":127,"date":"2015-06-04T03:00:14","date_gmt":"2015-06-04T03:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=127"},"modified":"2015-06-11T21:07:54","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T02:07:54","slug":"robert-havemeyer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/the-stories\/robert-havemeyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Havemeyer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\"page_banner_i3w8\"\"MacArthur-2\"<\/u><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Life in Post-War Japan<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Memories of Robert Havemeyer<\/em><\/p>\n

Although not a member of the Honor Guard, Robert G. Havemeyer served in Japan while many of the Honor Guards were there.\u00a0 This account of his service and observations provide excellent reading.<\/p>\n

Bob\u2019s letter to me begins with a mention of my book [Maurice\u2019s Letters Home].\u00a0 Bob\u2019s engaging writing style and his comments about \u201canother side of Japan and the Japanese\u201d offer an insight that Honor Guards had little chance to know & appreciate.\u00a0 We thank him for allowing us to include his article on the Honor Guard website. [Maurice Howe<\/strong>]<\/p>\n

\n

Hello Maurice,<\/p><\/div>\n

\nI finished your book and really enjoyed it.\u00a0 It brought back a rush of memories from many years ago.\u00a0 I can truly say that my life was changed by my army experience.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m going with this letter, but I have to avoid writing \u201ca book\u201d, which would be an easy thing to do if I get into details too much.<\/p>\n

I graduated from high school at age 16 and went to Columbia Univ. in 1944.\u00a0 The Navy had a program at the school, so I was in class with young men, a few years older, who had recently been inducted or volunteered.\u00a0 There were also a few early dischargees from World War II who attended under the \u201cGI bill.\u201d\u00a0 Although I was far from failing, I did not do well academically.\u00a0 As I look back, I think I was too young.\u00a0 Because of the Navy program, all engineering students attended three semesters a year, so by 1946, I already had about 2 to 2\u00bd years of university.\u00a0 I suddenly decided to volunteer in the army, which we could do for an 18 month enlistment.\u00a0 I had an Regular Army (RA) military number, which I can still remember after all these years.\u00a0 For a long time, I also remembered my rifle number, but that\u2019s now become forgotten history.<\/p>\n

After basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and home for a leave, I shipped out to Japan from Camp Stoneman, California.\u00a0 The trip was about like yours.\u00a0 I arrived in Japan in late 1946 and with many other GI\u2019s, went to a replacement depot, which we called the \u201cRepple Depple.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 We filled out some personal history.\u00a0 I think that I made my college experience look like almost four years with an engineering background.\u00a0 So, although my MOS was a basic rifleman, I was sent to I Corps headquarters, engineering section, in Kyoto, while most of my basic training and shipboard buddies went to an infantry unit and lived in a tent city at Otsu, near Lake Biwa.\u00a0 From then on, aside from morning assembly and an occasional weekend CQ at the headquarters building in downtown Kyoto, I had a paid vacation.\u00a0 The \u201cgooks\u201d did all of the menial and manual work around the barracks complex.<\/p>\n

I was assigned to I Corps headquarters company, billeted in a steel and concrete ex-museum within easy walking distance of the beautiful Heian Shrine; was bussed to and from work (an 8-floor office building); and pulled very little extra duty during the 14-15 months I was there.\u00a0 My job was interesting, and mainly concerned with reviewing engineering drawings and supporting documents for radar installations, barracks, dependent housing, related services and structures (e.g., steam power plants and laundries), etc.\u00a0 A lot of Japanese engineering contractors were used, paid for out of the country\u2019s reparation payments.\u00a0 At that time, their engineering design work left something to be desired, which is why I had a fairly serious position.\u00a0 I worked directly with several captains, a major, and occasionally with the colonel who was the Corps engineering chief.\u00a0 I came in as a PFC and left as T4 (buck sergeant).\u00a0 Had I re-upped, I would have been a T3 (one rocker) soon, and a candidate for OCS.\u00a0 When I was about to be shipped back to stateside, the Army tried to induce me to re-up by offering OCS, but by then I realized how lucky I had been, and how unlucky I could be if I made the Army my career.\u00a0 Over the years, I wondered if I had made the right choice.\u00a0 I would have been an officer, probably in the signal corps; I probably would have been in Korea (one of my Kyoto buddies was killed there) but behind the front lines.\u00a0 I think the signal corps would have been my destination because I got high marks on some kind of Morse Code test soon after induction.\u00a0 I was, and am, musically inclined, which probably helped in that test.\u00a0 Signal corps did not seem to be a fast route to advancement.\u00a0 Anyway, at that time, I did not have a favorable impression of the military as a career.\u00a0 Some of the captains with whom I worked were worried about being re-assigned someplace, but at their \u201cpermanent rank\u201d (I never really understood what that meant), which seemed to be about full sergeant rank.\u00a0 The career sergeants I met in the HQ company were not a \u201cthinking man\u2019s\u201d kind of person.\u00a0 I declined the OCS invitation, but often looked back at the missed opportunity of retirement at full pay.\u00a0 My professional civilian career was, in a way, the opposite.\u00a0 I continued working until age 75 and do not have a pension, but my job of management consultant was, in my opinion, the most interesting career I could have possibly had.\u00a0 I consulted in about 130 different product industries and in almost all functions of for-profit organizations, plus for trade association and for some government agencies.<\/p>\n

So, there I was in the former capital city, center of much cultural heritage and the arts, never bombed during the war, and completely free from duty after about 4 PM on weekdays and every weekend.\u00a0 It seemed that nearly every GI in the HQ company got into a 3 or 4 day repetitive cycle in the evenings \u2013 the beer hall, cards, roller skating, and movies.\u00a0 The principal Red Cross club was across the street from our barracks, so I went there, and quickly befriended an interpreter at the desk.\u00a0 He could see that I was interested in the country and the people, so after I had been on all of the day tours that Red Cross had set up, he introduced me by telephone to the Sen family who lived in the outskirts.\u00a0 I was sufficiently far away that I usually needed a rented bicycle to visit.\u00a0 I was treated as the prodigal son from the moment I arrived.<\/p>\n

Sositsu Sen was the 14th direct descendant of Sotan who started the green tea ceremony in Japan.\u00a0 Mr. Sen was very wealthy and highly respected because of his cultural position.\u00a0 Knowing him opened the doors for me to become acquainted with almost anyone, especially those interested in the tea ceremony, because every cultured Japanese had to know (understand) its philosophical basis.\u00a0 All I had to say during my subsequent time in Japan was that I had studied the ceremony with him, and I would be asked to conduct it the next time.\u00a0 I did attend many tea ceremonies at the Sen home, but my \u201cstudy\u201d time was about 30 minutes, vs the several year requirement for people seriously interested in it.<\/p>\n

He had three sons, one slightly younger than me (Mickey), one roughly the same age (George), and one older (Mike).\u00a0 They were lively and somewhat spoiled, and lived a pretty active social life.\u00a0 The oldest one would, in time, inherit the tea master position, so he was more circumspect than the other two.\u00a0 Every weekend was a lively time at their home because someone of importance usually visited and I was accepted as a pseudo-member of the family.\u00a0 I also have to say that being a Columbia student was very helpful to my circulation among the intelligentsia because Columbia was, at that time, probably the most highly respected American university for the Japanese.\u00a0 When Mr. Sen died, Mike took over as the tea master and married Miss Japan.\u00a0 Mike, himself, was\/is movie star handsome.\u00a0 He has since retired and his first son is now the tea master.\u00a0 Mike built up the Ura Senke School of tea ceremony into a bustling and lucrative endeavor, but some of my friends resent its commercialism.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, the boys would disguise me in a student\u2019s uniform and we\u2019d go somewhere, such as a dance hall.\u00a0 These were Off-Limits places in the Gion District (nightlife, geishas, etc.), which were so designated, I think, to (a) keep us away from the temptations of such places, and (b) MacArthur also wanted to preserve a sense of normalcy for the local populace.\u00a0 During one of those sojourns a Japanese family in the hall introduced themselves to me and invited me to visit their home.\u00a0 I visited for the remainder of my tour, and one of their daughters became my girl friend.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, like you, I had tremendous respect for Gen. MacArthur.\u00a0 If there ever was the \u201cright person for the right job at the right time\u201d, he was it.\u00a0 He had the regal, and somewhat aloof, bearing of their emperor.\u00a0 People had expected the worst, but were greatly surprised at his effort to introduce democratic ideas and to treat them much more gently than had been expected.\u00a0 I had an equally distasteful feeling for Pres. Truman when Mac was fired, but after becoming more adult, I realized that the latter really had to take that step. After all, our country is based on certain principles, one of which is that the military is secondary to civilian rule.\u00a0 Nevertheless, MacArthur has always been a \u201chero\u201d person to me.\u00a0 For years, I had his \u201cold soldiers never die\u201d speech under glass on my desk<\/p>\n

I vividly remember my first visit to Tokyo, staying at the Finance Building.\u00a0 I especially remember looking a mile or so to the Diet and seeing nothing but flat desolation between the two buildings.\u00a0 I also remember how the populace would gather just to see Mac leave the Dai-Ichi building for lunch.\u00a0 You guys were certainly a spit-and-polish outfit.<\/p>\n

I met a fascinating woman at the Sen family\u2019s home about 5 months before I left.\u00a0 After returning home, I read a book by someone who knew Japan very well and who said that Mrs. Takaori epitomized the highest form of Japanese beauty.\u00a0 She was a beautiful lady, highly talented culturally, and spoke conversational English very well.\u00a0 Her father had been a famous artist whose home across the street from hers was considered a national treasure, and which was guarded by police.\u00a0 Her husband was a physician who had his own hospital of about a dozen beds. That practice of individually owned small hospitals seemed to have been a long-time practice in Japan.\u00a0 He was rarely home because he worked such long hours, but I visited their home often, which was within a five minute walk of the Silver Pavilion.\u00a0 In those days, very few people visited the place, but during one of my return trips the Silver Pavilion was mobbed on a weekend day.<\/p>\n

The Takaori\u2019s had two daughters of about 11 and 14 years old.\u00a0 The younger one was a prodigy at the piano, but during the war had been forbidden to play classical music composed by the European and American masters. As a result, she never was able to exploit her musical talent to its potential.\u00a0 As adults, the two girls became estranged over their father\u2019s will and, I think, do not contact each other at all.\u00a0 The older daughter had a nice coffee shop along the picturesque \u201cPhilosopher\u2019s Walk,\u201d which I visited a few times during my return trips, but never mentioned those visits to the Takaori\u2019s.\u00a0 She has since moved to Hakone to be near her own daughter, and I have lost touch with her.<\/p>\n

The Takaori\u2019s have remained close friends during these 60+ years, although Mrs. Takaori died about 15 years ago.\u00a0 Her younger daughter married an entrepreneur.\u00a0 He imports and exports medical equipment and\/or pharmaceuticals and is well-to-do.\u00a0 When I visit and stay in Kyoto, I have use of a room in an up-scale retirement home that he owns on the outskirts of the city, at the base of Mt. Hiei.\u00a0 Fortunately, it\u2019s only a ten minute walk from that home to a Toonerville Trolley (remember that cartoon of long ago?) type of small railroad that makes a 30 minute trip back and forth between downtown Kyoto and this outskirt location.\u00a0 How lucky I am to know them and to have use of that retirement home.\u00a0 They are wonderful people.<\/p>\n

One son is a doctor in Nara.\u00a0 Their daughter is married to a cancer research doctor at Kyoto University.\u00a0 He comes to the U.S. at least once a year to a major cancer conference on Long Island.\u00a0 One of his visits coincided with my second wedding, so he came to Stamford to celebrate with us.\u00a0 I also know their children.\u00a0 So I have known four generations of the Takaori family \u2013 i.e., the elder Mrs. Takaori, her daughter and spouse, their son and daughter and spouses, and now the latter\u2019s children.<\/p>\n

My sister was a research pharmacologist for a second-tier pharmaceutical company in this country, and eventually was the technical liaison with its technical research partners in Europe and Japan.\u00a0 I introduced her to the Takaori clan, who welcomed her with open arms.\u00a0 She has seen the second and third generations of the four I know, much more than I have, because of her semi-annual trips there. They did the same for my folks when they traveled to the Orient after my father retired.<\/p>\n

The elder Mrs. Takaori invited me to a Christmas party of high society about 4 months before I left.\u00a0 I was welcomed there also, largely because the highly respected and very proper Mrs. Takaori would never have invited an American GI who wasn\u2019t \u201csafe.\u201d\u00a0 I met a beautiful girl there and was invited to her home.\u00a0 Her father, Mr. Hayashi, was a highly respected and wealthy art dealer who would sell only to those Americans who really appreciated Japanese art.\u00a0 Toni (Toshiko) was very comfortable around Americans because so many high-ranking officers had visited her home to buy art.\u00a0 In the early \u201850\u2019s, in her young twenties, she was sent to the U.S. by the Japanese government to reconnoiter major American museums\u2019 oriental collections, prior to lending oriental art to them in the 1950\u2019s.\u00a0 You may remember that most Japanese teenager girls were shy and giggly, but Toni was very poised, comfortable with Americans, and fluent in conversational English.\u00a0 She became another girl friend, and subsequently, a friend of my wife and sister.\u00a0 We remained friends through these 60+ years, but she died last year.\u00a0 She had been to the U.S. often.<\/p>\n

I visited the Hayashi home many times, which was located close to Maruyama Park, a popular place in Kyoto.\u00a0 Toni and her father supported classical Japanese dancing, and she put on exhibitions.\u00a0 I can remember visiting one Sat. afternoon, eating strawberries, watching she and others practice in the large dance salon in their home.\u00a0 She married and moved to Tokyo where I would visit during my return trips.\u00a0 Her husband was from Taiwan and was an ardent supporter of a free Taiwan when China was threatening to take it over.\u00a0 She came here a couple of times to represent her husband at a similar movement in the U.S., because he was afraid of being murdered here.<\/p>\n

My billet building in Kyoto was about a 15-20 minute walk to a section of homes of what we would call millionaires.\u00a0 One of them was the Nomura family (you know, Nomura Securities).\u00a0 During the school year, Mrs. Nomura and her three children lived between Tokyo and Yokohama so that they could attend a very good school there.\u00a0 (Incidentally, during my return trip to stateside I went through the Repple Depple again, and took a train to her house for a delicious meal instead of the army chow).\u00a0 I had the run of the Kyoto home and estate during the school year, and then visited the family when they returned for the summer. The estate had a large pond with white swans.\u00a0 A tea boat would be taken out on the pond, a section of the boat\u2019s roof would be taken away, and we would watch the summer or autumn moon while enjoying tea.\u00a0 What a life.\u00a0 Again, this was arranged by introduction by the Red Cross interpreter, Ted Fukuda, who also became a good friend.\u00a0 He and his wife were killed during the Kobe earthquake of a decade ago. I taught the Nomura children some English conversation and was rather proud when the youngest (about 6 or 7 years) finally learned the rudiments of English (subject, verb and object).\u00a0 That house was sold to the Coca-Cola king of Japan, and the family moved to Tokyo.\u00a0 I visited them a few times up there.\u00a0 They are so far out of my social bracket I feel like an intruder, but they are gracious.\u00a0 Old Mrs. Nomura is now dead, but I keep in contact with the oldest son.<\/p>\n

About 8 years ago, through Toni Hayashi, I met her hairdresser in Tokyo. The shop is located about two blocks from the Ginza.\u00a0 It caters to the wives of Japanese actors, some of whom perform at the Kabuki Theater.\u00a0 She and her mother arranged for me to have 4th row center seats at an afternoon Kabuki performance.\u00a0 For some reason, they arranged for a young, pretty and very pregnant female cousin to accompany me.\u00a0 You can imagine how heads turned when the cousin and this 70+ geezer walked down the center aisle to our seats.\u00a0 Prior to the show, I was allowed backstage to watch the principal female impersonator (a man) get dressed for his role.\u00a0 Other Japanese friends of mine were amazed that I was given this privilege.\u00a0 The young hair dresser (probably about 30) would love to move to NY City, but our government is very wary about providing business visas for Japanese hairdressers who often get \u201clost\u201d here in order to avoid going home to Japan.\u00a0 However, she has been here 4 or 5 times, so I act as her tour guide in NY City.<\/p>\n

I did not have access to auto transportation to go out of Kyoto, although I saw a lot of countryside on Red Cross tours. However, I got to know the city like \u201cthe back of my hand\u201d – the alleyways, the principal temples, artisans\u2019 sections, etc.\u00a0 One night, a buddy and I were looking into the window of a coffee shop when a local man tapped us on the back and asked if we would visit.\u00a0 Having no fear of being attacked in this dark street, we accepted.\u00a0 He owned a small sewing shop in his house where he employed a few women to make clothing.\u00a0\u00a0 I could not converse in Japanese and he had the poorest English of any Japanese friend, but through liberal use of bi-lingual dictionaries, hand gestures, and the like, I learned more about how the Japanese common man thought than from anybody else.\u00a0 I saw him briefly during my first return visit.\u00a0 He and his grown children were doing well.<\/p>\n

I met a number of other people who were good friends during my Kyoto days, but the above are those I really remember well and who influenced my life.\u00a0 Upon graduating from Columbia, I thought of returning to Japan to sell heat pumps.\u00a0 The country had a tremendous need for housing, and with fuel being in short supply and expensive, also a need for low-cost heating and cooling.\u00a0 However, I thought that I had an inadequate knowledge of mechanical engineering, which I later learned was a foolish assumption.\u00a0 Also my parents asked me not to go because they had just bought a house, their life long dream, and I was living with them.\u00a0 So, like a good son of German descent, I never went.\u00a0\u00a0 I often wonder what my fate would have been had I taken up that dream. I had friends who could have made proper introductions for me.\u00a0 However, I also realized that I had an extremely favorable position, located in a great city while in Japan, and that I would just be another competitive salesman during a non-military career.\u00a0 Anyway, that one-time dream always remained just that.<\/p>\n

After discharge and returning to Columbia, my job goal after earning an M.S. was to be a management consultant because I was so impressed with one professor, who himself, was in that occupation.\u00a0 In a combination of luck and taking advantage of a situation, I quit my job in Bethel, CT (just before I was going to get married) and joined a management consulting firm.\u00a0 I liked the work so much that it became my career for more than 50 years.\u00a0 I can\u2019t think of more interesting work.\u00a0 Since gradually phasing into retirement, I have continued to do volunteer management consulting for non-profit organizations.\u00a0 I headed up a regional office for the Natl. Executive Service Corps, but about 9 months ago decided to be just a project consultant because being a regional manager took too much of my time.<\/p>\n

During my consulting days, I developed an expertise in recycling, long before it became a popular \u201cgreen\u201d fad here.\u00a0 I was contacted to deliver a speech to an international recycling conference in Osaka.\u00a0 And so, my first trip back to Japan, 25 years after leaving, was at this conference.\u00a0 I took a few days to visit old friends and renew acquaintances.\u00a0 You can imagine my considerable surprise, when I found that the old Kyoto of rickshaws, honey buckets, and the sound of people clip-clopping down the street at night to the communal bath house, had a subway system.\u00a0 To me, this was as strange as finding a subway on the moon.\u00a0 During my visit to Kyoto, on that trip, someone arranged for a gathering of my good friends at the ex-Nomura estate. It was very touching.\u00a0 I think that my eyes were watery most of the time during that party.<\/p>\n

A consulting client was the NY office of a second-tier Japanese trading company.\u00a0 One of its younger staff became a personal friend, whom I have visited in Osaka a couple of times.\u00a0 One of that office\u2019s food manufacturing clients became one of mine when he wanted to sell certain food products through supermarkets in the U.S.\u00a0 I had lunch with that client in Tokyo on one trip, at a very up-scale restaurant.\u00a0 He knew my background with the tea ceremony family and invited me to have some at that restaurant.\u00a0 At the first sip, I realized that the tea at the Sen home was far superior.\u00a0 I still have a small canister of the powdered tea from my Kyoto days.\u00a0 Mr. Sen told me that what I drank in his home was about 75 years old (back in 1947) and that it came from Korea.\u00a0 He also took me to his potter who made a bowl for me with the Sen insignia. I imagine that it\u2019s valuable to aficionados of that ceremony.<\/p>\n

The Japanese manager of the NY office eventually became president of the entire trading company.\u00a0 The company nearly went bankrupt about 15 years ago, and in keeping with Japanese tradition he accepted personal responsibility and resigned, although the bankrupting event was not associated with his presidency.\u00a0 He has since invested in, and became general manager of, a company that raises roses in China and sells them in Japan. Anyway, he also became a personal friend and came here to attend my second wedding.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, my first wife died of cancer after 50 years and one month of marriage.\u00a0 Later, I married one of our best friends who is originally from Taiwan.\u00a0 She teaches Chinese to the high school level at a very expensive private girl\u2019s school in Greenwich, CT.<\/p>\n

When consulting projects took me to the Orient, I arranged my itinerary to get back to Japan.\u00a0 Those situations, plus some vacationing on my own, have resulted in 7-8 return trips.\u00a0 I may go to Thailand this summer, so will get to Japan again, probably for the last time.<\/p>\n

I did only a little consulting for U.S. federal government agencies, but one client was the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, for its Navy and Marines\u2019 morale and recreation program.\u00a0 My travel orders were just a telegram from the Secretary asking the commander of each base I was to visit to treat me with courtesy and to accommodate my professional and personal needs.\u00a0 You can imagine the confusion at each base gate when the officer of the guard saw that telegram.\u00a0 He did not know what to do, except to call the base commander\u2019s office.\u00a0 I got royal treatment wherever I went.\u00a0 If I was escorted by anyone less than a bird colonel or a navy captain, I almost felt insulted.\u00a0 I sent other project team members to bases in Europe, while I went to Hawaii, Guam, Philippines and Japan.\u00a0 Again, another chance to see old friends.<\/p>\n

A very interesting coincidence occurred during my Japan part of the Navy\/Marines project, which took place in the late 1970\u2019s.\u00a0 About that time, the two countries were negotiating for the return of property to Japan.\u00a0 We had a number of army, navy and air force bases throughout the country.\u00a0 Initially, I imagine they allowed the U.S. to maintain an armed presence during the post-war years to make certain that armistice and final treaty conditions were carried out. Then, they were important during the Korean \u201cconflict\u201d (never a \u201cwar,\u201d).\u00a0 Finally, it was time to return some property to a peaceful Japan.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember why, but the negotiations dragged on.\u00a0 It happened that my project contact in Japan was the admiral in command of the Navy base at Yokohama.\u00a0 He was also the principal negotiator for the U.S.\u00a0 The next week, I visited friends in Kyoto.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mrs. Takaori took me to the finest sushi restaurant in Kyoto \u2013 she would never take me to anything of lower caliber.\u00a0 You may remember that patrons usually sit at a counter, facing the proprietor and principal chef, to have a lively exchange of conversation.\u00a0 The gentlemen sitting next to me at the sushi counter turned out to be Japan\u2019s principal negotiator for the return of property.\u00a0 Remember the adage during WW II that \u201cloose lips sink ships.\u201d\u00a0 Well, they were loose that evening.\u00a0 Once I learned of his position, I refrained from further drinking and kept ordering more for him.\u00a0 Of course, I did not tell him why I was in Japan, other than re-visiting an old friend.\u00a0 He knew of Mrs. Takaori from general reputation and must have thought I was a safe visitor.\u00a0\u00a0 Apparently, I have an innate ability to get people to open up.\u00a0 He told me useful information on Japan\u2019s negotiating strategy.\u00a0 As soon as that night, I telephoned this information to the admiral who, I\u2019m sure, made good use of it.<\/p>\n

This is the first time that I have committed this history to paper.\u00a0 The many letters that I sent home were not kept, although I have found a few among other papers.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to make a copy of this one for myself and for my descendants to read.<\/p>\n

So, here I am in my \u201880\u2019s, supposedly retired, but too busy.\u00a0 The brief army career changed me from a boy to a man.\u00a0 I buckled down after discharge and did well at Columbia and later also earned a master\u2019s degree.\u00a0 In June I\u2019ll return there for my class\u2019 60th reunion.<\/p>\n

As you probably know from Donna, when my oldest daughter, Shelley, was a high school sophomore or junior, we got into the American Field Service program.\u00a0 We had four girls from Europe, each of whom stayed with us for a year, and several shorter-term students from South America under the Open Door program. We also hosted an American Indian girl from southern Arizona, which turned out to be the most interesting stay for me.\u00a0 Other than English being her principal language, her culture was as different from ours as that of any of the foreign girls\u2019, and language was no barrier to talk about it.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure that having foreign students live with us whetted my children\u2019s appetites to see other countries.\u00a0 Three of my four daughters have traveled abroad.\u00a0 My third daughter, who died a few years ago from cancer, traveled around Europe, the Middle East and Asia for more than two years, living out of an oversized backpack and duffel bag. Donna has been to Europe and Central America a number of times.\u00a0 Now, she is retired from an army career.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so glad to have read your book, both because it was interesting and a reminder of my personal events.\u00a0 It also has led to this history on paper. Frankly, I found it so interesting to dredge up these memories, that I\u2019ve re-read this letter several times.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll ever meet, but I feel that we would know each other well.\u00a0 Best of luck in your travels and the rest of your life.<\/p>\n

Bob Havemeyer<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life in Post-War Japan Memories of Robert Havemeyer Although not a member of the Honor Guard, Robert G. Havemeyer served in Japan while many of the Honor Guards were there.\u00a0 This account of his service and observations provide excellent reading. Bob\u2019s letter to me begins with a mention of my book [Maurice\u2019s Letters Home].\u00a0 Bob\u2019s … Continue reading Robert Havemeyer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":76,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-127","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/127\/revisions\/1922"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generalmacarthurshonorguard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}