James Clare Lamph, Bountiful, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, March 4 & 9, 2004: Saving the Legacy tape no. 646

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JAM CLARE L MPH R 9,2004 we were lined up to go because when we got off the ship we got on board a train. By th way, the Japanese have the best trains in the world. They're on time. They run to the second. You can set your watch when they start, and set your watch to when they stop. They're that accurate. So we went traveling down the country; went from Tokyo clear down to almost the southern end of Kyushu, which is the middle island. I thought, oh, I marked that lighthouse down. When we stopped there was a beacon light, and I remember marking it down on the maps. I said, "Oh, so that's where we're at." I knew exactly where we was at when I saw that beacon flash the first time, I knew. I had marked that one on the map. The place we stopped was a place called Iwakumi, just south of Hiroshima. It was just a stones throw, so one of the trips that I had to take was to get up to see where the atomic bomb landed. I even sat in the shadow where a civilian had been sitting on a concrete step when the bomb went off. Of course, it killed him, but his shadow, even today, is still there. Because the steps were saved as a war memorial, and his shadow, the steps that was hit by the atomic blast had turned to glass it was so hot it melted concrete, and now it's a glass stairway, and the shadow is still in the concrete. So I was there in Iwakuni, and we toured the place down there. We supported, the reason we went there, is we was supporting the war in Vietnam. It was quite an interesting place. I enjoyed it. Of course, at a later time, I was able to bring my wife over. I was in Okinawa for thirteen months, and I stayed in Japan for I think it was almost four years. It was a long tour of duty. I got to learn some Japanese. I finally became in charge of the parachute shop over there. The Japanese that worked for us could speak English, a little English, but I did learn enough Japanese to 112