52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – Week 28: Travel – Lorene’s First Leg of Trip from Tokyo

I am working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow. I will write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or at My Trails Into the Past. I’m looking forward to writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.

Last week I wrote about my aunt, Lorene E. Hork Waldron, who spent a year in Japan working as a civil servant for the U.S. Army in Tokyo. She wrote many letters home to her mother, and two sisters, Virginia, and June. The family saved the letters and they were given to me in two old cloth-bound binders. One about her time in Japan, and the other about her travels west to Europe on her way home with three girlfriends, Anne Ankers, Mitzi Seale, and Donna Oehm.

The first letter was a postcard saying 

“Leaving Tokyo Aug 31. Arrive Bangkok approximately 25 Sept. Write there c/o American Express. Letter following. SIG: Lorene.”

She sailed on a freighter that loaded freight at Osaka, Kobe, Moji before leaving for Formosa, Manila, and Hong Kong, and finally arriving in Bangkok.

She wrote of the nineteen passengers on the Hermod. Besides she and her girlfriends, the only other Americans were two Presbyterian missionaries on their way to Formosa. The crew was Chinese.

One thing she wrote to her mother, 

“We all realize we’ve never had it so good and I wish so much that you [her mother] could enjoy this wonderful trip. The sea is so calm, the water such a beautiful color of blue, the sunsets are gorgeous…”

An Army news correspondent came on board just before they departed Japan to interview the four girls, who he heard were making a trip around the world. Another reporter, Robert J. Dunphy, caught up with them in Europe and an article was published in Stars and Stripes about their adventure. The start of the article began,

“Four lovely California Belles who took the wrong way home after quitting their Army jobs in Japan have bogged down here—happy but broke—on a trip that has taken them three-fourths of the way around the world. 

“Their adventures included a party with Red Chinese crewmen aboard a ship on the China Sea, a visit to an opium den in Bangkok, robbery by a monkey in India and pursuit by a cobra in Bombay. Also in hot pursuit throughout the journey was a seemingly endless army of suitors. 

“Traveling on a shoestring, the girls hitch hiked rides on desert airlines and went by slow freighter, sampan and camel to cut their costs for the three-month tour to about $700 each.”

It will be intriguing going through the letters telling of their adventures from the viewpoint of my aunt.

To be continued . . .

Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Suzanne Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.