Aboard Asama Maru

Saturday, October 12, 1929

Chilly, cloudy, a young gale of wind blowing off port bow, spraying the water over the deck and keeping those few venturesome souls who have left their bunks indoors. Sea is a little choppy and boat is rolled a little. We get the engine vibration up here in front. This ship rolls differently than does one smaller. It seems to make you very light all of a sudden and the deck is not where you expect it to be. You go floating off in various directions till the rising deck returns your weight and shoots you against a wall.

The rolling became much better by night and most everybody took to their bunks. Our cabin was more like a morgue. Neither of the boys would eat and kept well to their bunks. At mealtimes a score of stragglers would wander in, take a little, and leave. I had an idea I would get sick sooner on an empty stomach than a full, so ate three full meals and escaped the cruel fate of seasickness.

Have gone over 312 miles from Yokohama—3,088 to go to Honolulu.

The departure from Yokohama was well worth seeing.  The ship had been open to inspection during her 3-day stay there. On the morning of the last day the crowds flocked to the wharf to inspect the ship and see it off. By afternoon it was really a job to get through the crowds. At two, several hundred passengers arrived from Kobe and a half hour later the tin-pan brigade announced the first warning for friends to leave the ship. Soon after the second warning came.

Three thousand people lined the dock waving, cheering, and yelling. The air was filed with colored paper streamers. At last the gangway was pulled away and the whistle blew. The ship edged away from the dock, the thousands of streamers stretching, finally breaking. Somewhere the ship’s band was playing. It was a great sight—and a sad one in a way. The last of the Orient was slipping away.

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