A beautiful place, was still friendly to Americans back then.
You could pay $2.50 for a bottle of Jack and $4 for a carton of cigarettes on base, take them out to a bar and drink free all week.
Good food and friendly people.
I was out of Yoko for 4 years, but managed to get to Sasebo and Okinawa once each.
Would someone tell us how to pronounce Sasebo?
“My best port calls were in Sasebo.”
When I was aboard the USS Enterprise we made a port call there before going on to the South China Sea off Viet Nam. Well, we no sooner left port and then had to head up to the coast off North Korea to be involved in the “Pueblo Incident”. It was very cold up there in Winter.
“My best port calls were in Sasebo.”
what a fine story that is...
Back in ‘93, I was assigned onboard the USS BLUE RIDGE in Yokosuka, but I got married after bootcamp, and got the USS PELELIU.
Considering what I married back then, I shoulda kept my original orders.
My father made port call at Sasebo in the fall of 1945. Pretty cool photos of early occupation days are in the scrapbook.
However, one problem with Fleet Activities Sasebo is the fact it wasn’t exactly close to any major city—Nagasaki was a fairly long train ride away and Fukuoka even more so. (It’s the same problem with Misawa AB.) At least Yokosuka, Atsugi and Yokota are within the Tokyo metro area and Iwakuni is only a short train ride from Hiroshima.