[rlmorel]

On a related note, about ten years ago, my wife's family had these pictures and gave them to me. Her mother worked at a drug store that had photo developing back in the late Forties/early Fifties, and people always brought in things to be developed and never came back for them.

They either threw them out, or if they saw something they liked, they could take them. These images were from a sailor off of a carrier that came into the Boston Navy Yard (possibly the USS Leyte?) who had dropped negatives off to be developed and never picked them up:

They knew I was interested in these kinds of things, and they showed them to me. I wondered if these were pictures that had ever been published or seen anywhere, or just copies taken from negatives that had been on the ship.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

A fleet of big green Army buses picked up and dropped off passengers in front of the PX/Commissary complex in Yokohama. My pals and I liked to take one bus from Yokohama to Yokosuka to go roller skating on the Navy base.
The skating rink was on the second floor of one of the long building you mentioned. A Navy hand would skate backwards to keep us kids under control.

[Chainmail]

A very short session of investigation shows the Jeep Carrier to be the USS Nehenta Bay and the destroyer at the other end of the breeches bouy is the DD 551, USS Capps Both ships were in the battle of Okinawa together.

It’s a Grumman Hellcat completely enveloped in flames and a TBF that is over the edge of the flight deck.

Awesome, historically significant photos!

[Chainmail]

Correction, DD 550, USS Capps. Saw one hell of a lot of action.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

One more recollection:

The Yokohama PX complex was also home to a three bay fire station, manned by Japanese firemen. The staff liked to keep front and rear roller doors open to provide fresh air and light for working on their Isuzu fire trucks.
I liked to whizz through the open doors on my bike, which usually brought out swearing firemen, shaking their fist at the strafing gaijin...

I never noticed but the floor held a large sheet of plywood that I biked over when traveling through.

One day, when the notion took over, I wheeled through and over the plywood and came around again for another pass.

The firemen were waiting.

I didn’t see the grease pit until my front wheel dropped in and I went over the handle bars and cracked my skull.

The firemen had alerted the Japanese police to my harassment and before I could stand up straight, officer Sase-san, our neighborhood policeman, had jumped into the pit and carried me and my badly bent bike up and out.

It was a hard lesson learned...

[Tijeras_Slim]

I’ve never seen those before, and I’ve read hundreds of WWII books.

[21twelve]

Isn’t that one photo from the signing of their surrendor on the Missouri!!??

Love the stories.