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Show 215 The site of Amanohashidate, the Bridge of Heaven, Miyazu was one of Japan's major tourist attractions, but it was going through a bad period. Before the war it had been a fashionable resort, but now the foreigners found Atami or Karuizawa more accessible, and few Japanese could afford to travel. Sato-san, tha owner, had met some of the nisei enlisted men and offered low rates; now it was thought that the Detachments' illegal custom was the chief factor in keeping the place open. Bad morals, Mandeville has written, make good economics. For the Yuraku-en was off-limits. An Army-run hotel, the Wada-ya, perched on an aerie just across the way, but the Detachments preferred Sato's hospitality. The Wada-ya had been redecorated in American style, resembling the dormitories at Ohio State. Guests did, however, find it necessary to be careful, for though a profusion of pines and the adroit arrangement of Sato-san's courtyard obscured the larger part of the Wada-ya,it did not hide all. Both hotels wandered up hill and down dale, and one was never certain but that turning a corner he might find himself subject to military scrutiny from across the way. Consequently the Detachment personnel donned kimonos as soon as they arrived, and the Caucasians, whose ochre brows and odd eyeball a kimono did not camouflate tended to reserve rooms in the distant recesses. |