We Did Not Know A Soul On Board,
But That Did Not Halt Us.
As refugees, as fleeing political
prisoners, as American slaves escaping from their Japanese jailers,
we climbed over the side and demanded protection and dinner.
We got
both. Perhaps it was not good to rest on that bit of drift-wood,
that atom of our country that had floated far from the mainland and
now formed an island of American territory in the harbor of Chefoo.
Perhaps we were not content to sit at the mahogany table in the
glistening white and brass bound wardroom surrounded by those eager,
sunburned faces, to hear sea slang and home slang in the accents of
Maine, Virginia, and New York City. We forgot our dark-skinned
keepers with the slanting, suspicious, unfriendly eyes, with tongues
that spoke the one thing and meant the other. All the memories of
those six months of deceit, of broken pledges, of unnecessary
humiliations, of petty unpoliteness from a half-educated, half-bred,
conceited, and arrogant people fell from us like a heavy knapsack.
We were again at home. Again with our own people. Out of the happy
confusion of that great occasion I recall two toasts. One was
offered by John Fox. "Japan for the Japanese, and the Japanese for
Japan." Even the Japanese wardroom boy did not catch its
significance. The other was a paraphrase of a couplet in reference
to our brown brothers of the Philippines first spoken in Manila. "To
the Japanese:
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