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O Tomodachi: (Friend)
O Tomodachi: (Friend)
O Tomodachi: (Friend)
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O Tomodachi: (Friend)

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In 1954, as a twenty-nine-year-old grad student, Dick Jorgensen was selected to be one of four "ambassador" teachers in a first-ever exchange program with Japan. Jorgensen would represent the University of Michigan, where he was studying history, and would spend the next two years teaching at the University of Hiroshima, founded in the wake of the dropping of the atomic bomb on that city in 1945.

Thus began an incredible journey for, as he describes himself, a Kid from the Midwest. Those two years in Japan were the start of a lifelong love affair with travel and with Japanese culture, architecture and history.

While there, Jorgensen visited many parts of Japan – including Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, Sapporo, Nagasaki and many other communities. Jorgensen treats readers to luscious descriptions of all those cities, while at the same time providing histories that deepen understanding and perspective.

As a work of history, O Tomodachi (Friend) provides a perspective on postwar Japan that is both historical and accessible. As memoir, O Tomodachi gives readers a wonderful sense of what it was like for a young American to go off to a foreign land, a place that had only recently been the enemy of the United States, and to open himself to new experiences and people. Jorgensen fell in love with Japan, and that love has lasted a lifetime.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateAug 7, 2015
ISBN9780996563918
O Tomodachi: (Friend)

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    O Tomodachi - Dick Jorgensen

    2015

    INTRODUCTION

    This is the story of how a kid from the Midwest grew up to become a citizen of the world. The primary vehicle for this transformation was the opportunity to teach for two years in Hiroshima, Japan, during the postwar years of 1955 and 1956. But in order to understand how truly extraordinary this experience was, you have to know a little about where I came from.

    The place of one’s birth seems always to have a special hold on one, and thus it is with me and certainly was with my family in 1925, the year of my birth. The place was the American Midwest: the state of Wisconsin and the town of Kenosha along the shore of Lake Michigan, almost midway between the more populous and recognizable cities of Chicago and Milwaukee. It was, of course, the midway point of the Roaring Twenties, and the headline news on the day of my birth—July 13—throughout the nation was the ongoing war of words being mouthed (in ever more highly pitched voices) by Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan—respectively defending the forces of evolution and those of the religious fundamentalists during the dramatic trial of John Thomas Scopes, a teacher who had violated the Tennessee state law against the teaching of evolution.

    But up north in southeastern Wisconsin if any members of my family had had the time or inclination to scan the front pages of the local papers of the area (the Kenosha Evening News, Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal), they might also have caught snippets of economic, political, even international news at the termination of this first quarter of the twentieth century.

    At the time of my birth, my father was thirty years old, while my mother was months away from being that age. Their only other child was my dear sister, Jane Ellen, at the age of two in 1925. All of my parents’ siblings, as well as my living grandparents and their offspring resided in the Midwest as well. We were a close-knit, extended family of first-, second- and third-generation Americans, proud and increasingly happy to be bona fide Midwesterners.

    My parents met in Racine, Wisconsin, and married in 1920. They moved to Kenosha shortly after and lived there the rest of their lives. At first, they found a two-bedroom bungalow on Fifth Avenue--their home when both my sister and I were born just around the corner from Nana and Pa’s beautiful home on the shores of Lake Michigan. This would be our happy home for the first ten years of my life.

    My father took an assignment with the U.S. Postal Service in Kenosha, which turned into a career of thirty-some years. Mother was a sturdy at-home mom until the early WWII years, when she took an assignment at Nash/American Motors. (No Rosie-the-Riveter, she, but a loyal office worker for close to ten years, who in her retirement years received a whopping $28 per- month pension—also known as her mad-money—for life).

    We enjoyed our rental house at 6565 Fifth! A nice tree-lined street, with many quite large older homes on both east and west sides of the street, friendly neighbors, mom-and-pop stores (like the Kuretskis’) five-minute walks away; and good bus transportation available just minutes away. For Jane and me, it was an easy ten-minute walk to Durkee School; for father, a ten- or fifteen-minute bus ride to the Sixth Avenue shopping strip, Civic Center, Central Post Office.

    What historians have called the Depression Decade (1930-1940) was at its midway point when my family celebrated my tenth birthday. It was an especially notable occasion because during that month of July 1935 my father’s application for a building permit—to build our own home on a lovely elm tree-lined block about a mile from Nana and Pa’s place, and just a few minutes’ walk from Lake Michigan—was formally approved. It was, my father always proudly claimed, the only building permit issued in the city of Kenosha that year! Not much building of any kind was going on that year in this essentially blue-collar town of about 50,000. It may well have been the depth of the Depression. Snippets of conversations at family gatherings caught the tenor of the times: layoffs at Nash (motors, cars); Simmons (mattresses); Coopers (underwear, soft goods); American Brass; Snap-on (tools); Pirsch (fire engines); and jokes about WPA (Works Projects Administration, one of FDR’s New Deal efforts) workers leaning on shovels. This was all lost on me and my sister, as well as our contemporaries around town; but not on my parents and their friends, whom I can still see seated around Nana’s and neighbors’ living rooms listening intently to President FDR’s fireside chats over the radio.

    I had recently turned eleven when, in mid-to-late August 1936, our family made the momentous move to our new house on Sixth Avenue. The address was 7734, which put our family sort of on the southern outskirts of our town, roughly twenty blocks from Kenosha’s Civic Center and the main street (56th) of downtown. Ours was a house which Pa and my father had designed and built for a large part of, by, and for themselves but of course also with the help of old friends and acquaintances (bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, et al.) and day laborers eager to find work. Pa—the experienced builder in town—got much of the lumber, hardware and building materials needed for the construction at reduced prices. And when the Allen Tannery was torn down in 1935, a supply of enough bricks to build a mansion was fortuitously made available to my father. The house might have been described by a Realtor as a two story with full basement, three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath, Cape Cod-style brick residence, with a back porch and a two-car garage, situated on a spacious lot on a quiet tree-lined street just two blocks from Southport park and beach. My father never said, but I think the house cost less than $10,000 to build; it remained in the family until well into the late 2000s.

    One of the anecdotes of the Jorgensen family over the years was the play on the address of the house on Sixth Avenue: 7734, which upside down spells h-e-l-l. I remember when we moved into the not-yet-quitefinished house the end of August 1936, mother had to cope with an unplumbed kitchen sink—among other glitches—that made our first few weeks in the new house a kind of h-e-l-l right side up. That in turn made for more than a few contretemps within the otherwise happy-to-be-inour-new-home family. I can still hear mother’s response to the inconveniences at the time, reciting the popular ’taint funny, McGee line of the then famous Fibber McGee and Molly radio show. During this time, I may have learned do-it-yourself-skills (like painting, sowing grass seed, moving furniture, hanging pictures, nail pounding, handling a Phillips screw driver) that held me in good stead over the years of the twentieth century. And so, moving into that house proved to be another one of the more meaningful experiences, and certainly a milestone, of my growing up years.

    Just about all of my father’s resources had gone into the family’s roof over its head during that Depression decade. There would be no family automobile until 1939 or 1940. But I do remember when Aunt Helen and Uncle Ed bought an impressive Packard automobile that had room for us all to ride around town in. We’d also make day-long trips to Oak Park, River Forest and Maywood (western suburbs of Chicago) for fun visits with Jorgensen relatives (who happened to live near the architectural gems of a Prairie School architect named Frank Lloyd Wright—whose house-designs were to be found up and down the North Shore and even in Wisconsin).

    Born, raised and educated in Wisconsin, and with the refinement of his professional talents generally in the capital of the Midwest—Chicago—Wright had, by the beginning of the twentieth century and along with several other architects from the region, come to be known as the father of the Prairie School. It was during that first decade of the new century when Wright developed a philosophical foundation for his work; it was his vision of man’s place in nature that (as per Jonathan Lipman in his volume on FLW and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 1986) shaped his highly influential Prairie style…and which, in turn, established him as a world famous architect. As the FLW creations were abuilding there in Racine in 1937-38, Time magazine’s cover story for its January 17, 1938, issue lauded FLW, referring to Taliesin in Wisconsin as the home of…the greatest architect of the 20th century. Certainly it was knowledge of the twin reputations of the architect and client that motivated my father to be on hand for a public tour (with his son tagging along) of the completed building in the spring of 1939. I remember how excited my father was at the opportunity to see this magnificent building—even I could tell it was very special—situated as it was almost within view of our hometown, and significantly a stone’s throw away from my uncle’s farm. To think: I had been so close to history, not to mention profound works of art, in the making! And so, the sight of these architectural wonders constituted for me one of the eye-opening experiences of the decade. I am convinced my life-long interest in architecture, art and design stems from these visions of the 1930s. These were the impressionable adolescent years and, I can only recall how well and serendipitously placed this happy camper found himself.

    I think the proximity of my grandparents’ home to the Episcopal Girls School of Kemper Hall (in the heart of the Third Avenue District) had something to do with my having grown up Episcopalian. Our family was not what anyone in Kenosha—especially Fr. Martin—would have called devout. But we did attend those extraordinarily formal-cum-elaborate Sunday services on a fairly regular basis. At the age of twelve I received my confirmation; and of course as an infant I had been baptized in the beautiful sanctuary of the church. My cousins and I were mischievous members of the Sunday School, and we participated actively in the programs and functions organized in behalf of the Youth Group at Guild Hall. On reflection, I can’t really say that I would have been known as a passionate participant in the programs and activities of this otherwise magnificent Episcopal church situated in the heart of the city.

    It was really the activities, programs and services of the Kenosha Youth Foundation that turned me on in those years. It was there that I learned how to swim and dive; to become pretty good at ping pong and even pool. And it was there that I learned to dance.

    As a sixteen/seventeen-year-old-going-on-twenty-one, I remember with great joy (if not gusto), the KYF Friday evening dances. Once in awhile there’d be live band music at these affairs; but most of the time we danced to the great big-band music of Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman—good ol’ 78 rpm recordings amplified to our hearts’ content.

    The 1939-40 school year was a time of transition for me. I was completing ninth grade at Lincoln Junior High School and looking forward to attending Kenosha Senior High School (then the one public high school serving all of Kenosha County). This was the school from which my father graduated in 1914. It would become the Mary D. Bradford High School in 1943, the year of my graduation. Ms. Bradford had been a teacher in Kenosha’s public schools and superintendent of schools from 1910 to 1921, at a time when the movers and shakers of the Progressive Era had come to be particularly associated with the reform of elementary and secondary education in America. Even in the earlier years of the progressive movement, Wisconsin stood out for nurturing the pedagogical pioneers of the era. (In his Transformation of the School, historian Lawrence Cremin stated: Particularly in those Midwestern states which had modeled their school systems along Jeffersonian lines, public higher education quickened during the Progressive era to many of the very same influences that were transforming the lower schools. The leading example…was Wisconsin during the LaFollette period…and there…the university quickly became the pivotal element in that larger program of reform commonly referred to as ‘the Wisconsin idea.’

    The basic concept of the fathers of the Wisconsin idea was, put simply, service to the state. At just the time that Mary D. Bradford assumed the decade-long superintendency of the Kenosha schools, Wisconsin was being lauded as America’s leading state university by the president of Harvard, while Theodore Roosevelt was proclaiming that in no other state in the Union, has any university done the same work for the community that has been done in Wisconsin by the University of Wisconsin. Cremin stated further: TR spoke for an enthusiastic public that saw in the Wisconsin idea the true union of politics and education that was the crux of the larger Progressive movement.

    In retrospect, I believe that as a product of the Kenosha public schools, I received an excellent pre-collegiate education. Certainly the members of the class of 1943 were the beneficiaries of the Wisconsin idea/Bradford legacy in education. At the time, of course, I had no knowledge of this legacy; nor had anyone brought to our attention the historic fact that the development of the high school program in Kenosha represented the state’s first public high school program.

    Entering KHS in September 1940 was another one of those eye-opening experiences of my teen years. The main building of the school was impressive—three times the size of Lincoln JHS—and conveniently located on the edge of the downtown commercial strip. Classrooms were spacious, well equipped, efficiently maintained. The administration of the school was in firm capable hands—Principal Tremper had been a highly respected educator in Kenosha for years; Assistant Principal Pop Ward had been known to generations of high school students (with over thirty years of service upon his retirement in 1941). They were both vigorous personalities who gave freely of their strength and of their talents for the welfare of the young people of Kenosha. The curriculum was, I suppose you could say, traditional and basic with very few frills. Good emphasis upon English—communication skills—and math, sciences and social studies. My own favorite classes were in English and history. I remember especially Ms. Bangsberg.

    At KHS, which served folks living in the entire county, the new kids on the block were from the industrial, and farther western, less populated rural areas of the city, as well as the folks served by Lincoln and other junior high schools in the rest of the city. The February and June classes of 1943 numbered 645 graduating seniors at KHS. Many of the men pictured in the school yearbook had already gone off to war (most in the Army, a few in the Marines, the rest in the Navy; I would wait until my eighteenth birthday on July 13 to enlist in the Navy). The classes at KHS then were what you might call ethnically diverse; racially homogeneous. An industrial town like Kenosha at the time was heavily blue collar; there were sizable Italian, East European, Irish, German, and Scandinavian community enclaves of second- and third-generation Americans in the city. This demographic makeup of Kenosha’s population was certainly reflected at Kenosha High. Only a few of the wealthier families in town sent their children to private school. If there were any Hispanic, Asian or African-American families residing in Kenosha at that time, most if not all of us at KHS were unaware of their presence. To the best of my knowledge, there were no persons of color in the June 1943 class; there was one black woman in the February 1943 class. I had never met her. It was another world then.

    The only concern of graduating seniors in 1943 was the war. If anyone then had not been eager to serve the war effort, I did not know him or her. We were, after all, in the middle of America’s last Good War, thus in this spirit, members of the class of ’43 dispersed virtually to the four corners of the globe; the effect on them could well have been startling and ultimately profound. I don’t think any of us, at that moment in time, had any idea that the new American revolution had begun. While most of us were seventeen- and eighteen-year-old babes in the woods, I doubt that there was a slow learner in the bunch. We’d survive…even prosper.

    I can’t really say that I had a passion for learning in those days. I really wasn’t much of a student (as one math teacher said about me once: Oh, yes! Jorgensen. He’s a pupil in my class. But he’s not a student…).

    But the environment of the school did appeal; the extracurricular activities (Kenews; swim team), socializing, and formation of friendships lasting close to a lifetime, seem to have ended up being the more important aspects of my high school career. It was wartime…and there was lots of preoccupation with meeting the requirements for graduation.

    In good weather (about half the school year) I’d ride my bike to school; other times it was a twelve- to fifteen-minute bus ride (3 cents) to get me there in time (0800) for my first class or homeroom session. Once in a while I’d walk the two miles. Then, in spring 1942, I had saved enough of my earnings to buy a Model A Ford – which served me very well until I went into the Navy. Sometime around then I started a regular job as the delivery boy for Allendale Market—a specialty grocery/meat market—the corner store whose clientele were among the wealthiest families in town. Just at this time too, three of my best buddies got into motorcycling; between their machines and my Model A—with a rumble seat yet—we considered ourselves pretty hot stuff as seniors at Kenosha High. We weren’t what you’d call big wheels on campus, but we did have quite a lot of fun.

    But—seriously—if Kenosha lacked the cultural institutions of a Chicago or Milwaukee or intellectual-cum-academic resources of a college town (indeed two institutions of higher ed: Carthage College and UW Parkside would be established soon after the war) in those years before and during the war, on reflection, the quality of life was pretty good in those days. Low crime; modest cost of living; good health service and education systems; ample recreational facilities/programs; beautiful (unlittered, well-maintained) parks and residential areas; increasingly low unemployment; efficient fire and police protection departments; excellent library services, etc.

    Current and choice works of fiction were not generally part of our lives then, but occasionally we’d hear about a writer whose works interested me. There must have been class discussions of literature at KHS or at sessions at the library—I just don’t remember where (except that they would not have been around our family’s kitchen table)—but I do have a vague recollection of several of the books of my high school years that made some kind of an impression on me. I don’t know if it was the characters, or the settings of the stories, or the plots, or the message of these works that impressed me. Or maybe it was the film versions of these literary works? I remember particularly Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

    The Yearling; How Green Was My Valley; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Forever Amber; et al., The New York Times Book Review would be light years away from me! And the wonders of the American stage would be equally distant—I may not have seen my first musical, Oklahoma! or drama, Death of a Salesman, until the late 1940s. But if the musical theater had been so far away from me, popular songs were not. How we loved the hearty voice of Kate Smith—her God Bless America will live forever. I knew all the words by heart. Frank Sinatra was becoming the new affectionate voice on the block!

    For me and the rest of the family (not to mention—ultimately—millions of Americans) the publishing event of the decade was the advent of Life magazine. I remember as well as anything in those years weekly treks to Pat’s Drug Store (on the corner, right next to Allendale Market) to pick up the current issue of Life. I’d learned the delivery schedule, and often found myself first in line to purchase a copy. At 10 cents, it was an incredible bargain! As I recall, Life hit the newsstands on Fridays (e.g. the December 8, 1941, issue would reach us in time for a startlingly leisurely weekend read, December 5-6-7). The combination of having Life to read, along with radio’s Your Hit Parade kept me off the streets for months on end. Founder Henry R. Luce pressed the right button for me with the prospectus for Life in that first year:

    "To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things – machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work – his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed."

    This Kenosha kid couldn’t have been more impressed. What a vision! Thereafter, a weekly exposure to the best pictures taken the world over unerringly struck a responsive chord among Americans. Life spoke to the magic of seeing (as one editor put it many years later)— and this magic seemed all the more magnified, all the more wonderful, to those of us based in apparent pockets of isolation—the Kenoshas of a world sans television.

    It was Life’s coverage of what was going on in the world overseas that began probably in 1939 to interest me the most. And yet what was actually happening in Europe and (especially) in the Far East at that time seemed remote and inconsequential—particularly for one intent upon building his record collection, or bowling strike balls on his high school team, or impressing peers on ice (skating virtually every night of the long winter), or cavorting at the beach (almost every day of the endless summer).

    But then came Pearl Harbor in fall 1941. I had gotten a weekend job of setting pins at Guttormsen’s Bowling Emporium. (It was grim, dirty work—long before automatic pin-setting devices/machines. I’ve often wondered how—or why—I even did that!) On Sunday, the seventh of December, I found myself working the noon-to-five shift, and late in the afternoon, there in the dark, dingy unheated back alley of the building, I learned the devastating news that the Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I rushed home to find my parents seated in the kitchen, ears glued to the radio. It means war, Dick, said my dad—a World War I veteran who, at forty-six, must have doubted that he’d have to serve but wondered, along with my mother, whether if this meant war, what effect it would have on their sixteen-year-old son. My mother seemed to have had more of a worried look on her face than usual and kept muttering something like, It’s terrible, terrible. The next day the Jorgensen family drove to Milwaukee on a scheduled Christmas shopping expedition. I remember we found ourselves on the floor of the Boston Store, which displayed the latest and finest radios and phonographs, just at the time of the president’s address to the nation. So we joined a crowd that gathered to

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