York man reconnects with Japanese town

The saga really begins in 1954 when Billet was drafted into the Army at age 19. In 1955, he was sent to Itazuke Air Base near Fukouka, where he was attached to an engineering company that was building parking lots at the air base. The base, established to provide a jumping off point for fighter jets during the Korean War, was still active. Fighter pilots still flew sorties over Korea.

The Army had assigned him to drive five-ton dump trucks, but Billet pretended he couldn't drive the beasts and instead was given a cushy job, driving the company commander's Jeep.

He had plenty of free time. And in the spring of 1955, he found a way to fill it.

His parents sent him his Argus C-3 camera. He'd always been interested in photography, and now, armed with his camera and his commander's Jeep, he was free to document Fukouka.

And he did.

From the spring of 1955 until January 1956, when he left Japan, he took more than 400 color slides. He took pictures of everything - the countryside, women working in rice fields, kids hanging around the fence of the air base to watch the aircraft. Everything.

"I was nosy," he said.

Fukouka was an interesting place. A city of about 175,000, it was still emerging from the destruction and devastation of World War II. Most of the buildings were two-story, wood-framed structures. The countryside was agrarian, with farmers tending and harvesting rice as they had for centuries. The city was still relatively poor and depended a lot on the GIs at the air base to stimulate the economy.

Billet documented it all - from the rice fields to the beer halls to the air base, which was the main industry in town.

When he returned home, he hoped to show the slides to his friends. They weren't very interested. He tried to show them to his kids later, but they showed a similar lack of interest. "They'd sit still for a couple of them, but they'd lose interest pretty fast," Billet said.

He boxed up the slides and put them away.

More than 30 years later, Billet was sipping a martini, sitting at his computer in his East Market Street home at 1 a.m., when he thought about the photos and wondered whether anybody in Japan would be interested. He was planning a trip back to Japan and thought somebody there might want to see his slides. He searched for civic organizations in Fukouka and sent e-mails to a bunch of them, describing his photos and asking whether they'd be interested.

One person responded - Motoyuki Murahashi, secretary-general of the Japan-America Society of Fukouka.

Billet sent him some samples, and Murahashi was very interested.

That was four years ago. During that visit, Billet gave a few slide shows. He was interviewed by the newspapers and TV stations. He had a reunion with his old landlord - he lived off-base.

It was a success.

Back in the mid-'50s, hardly anybody in Japan had cameras, and that period of history wasn't well documented, photographically, anyway.

People loved looking at the old photos.

Mostly because the city had changed so drastically.

Back in the '50s, it was a sleepy little town, with about 175,000 people crammed into a city the size of Red Lion. Today, it's a modern city of 1.2 million. The old air base is now site of Fukouka International Airport.

Last spring, Murahashi contacted Billet and asked whether he'd like to return. The Japan-America Society would fly him over to host a nine-day exhibition of his photos. Billet jumped at the offer.

"It was wonderful," he said.

Murahashi helped select the photos. Billet was puzzled that he chose a lot of photos of aircraft. But those proved to be very popular. "A lot of people remember the aircraft," Billet said. "They have clubs, and they build models of the old jet fighters and all."

He also met some people who remembered those days.

One of his photos depicted four boys and a dog outside the base's fence, watching the aircraft. A man told Billet that one of those boys was his brother and the other three were cousins. "He said he didn't know where he was that day; he was usually with them when they went to the air base to watch the airplanes," Billet said.

Another man, an artist, gave Billet a painting and a note describing how he used to watch the airplanes when he was a kid.

"It made me very happy," the man wrote. "It made me start my quest for the American way of life."

Billet said he wept when the man gave him the painting. "It was very moving," he said.

When he was sent to Japan in the '50s, Billet wasn't sure what to expect. His uncle had fought the Japanese during World War II, and he had a great deal of respect for them as fighting men. But his uncle did tell him one thing: They're just people, no different than us.

And when it comes to looking at old photos, they certainly are.

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On Monday, I reported on the removal of Korean War veteran Donald Smith Sr.'s marker from his grave in Suburban Memorial Gardens in Dover Township because his family had fallen behind on payments to the cemetery. On Monday, Barre Shepp, director of the York County Veterans Affairs office, reported the county picked up the tab, to the order of $663.36, to have the marker put back on Smith's grave. The marker was back on the grave Monday.

Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike or at http://www.yorkblog.com - Argento's Front Stoop.