Though at war, the U.S. and Japan negotiated a plan for the repatriation of their diplomatic corps. In July 1942, Grew and 1,450 other Americans and foreign nationals sailed from Tokyo to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa (now Maputo, Mozambique) aboard the Japanese liner Asama Maru and its backup, the Comte di Verdi. Japan's ambassador to the United States, Kichisaburo Nomura, along with 1,096 other Japanese dignitaries, sailed from New York to Lourenço Marques on the Gripsholm, a liner registered to neutral Sweden. On July 22, the exchange took place, and the Gripsholm sailed to Rio de Janeiro and then to New Jersey. [10].
His last book was about a sub-set of little known Japanese immigrants ~ the railroad guys. His father was a railroad worker.
The two big Asian groups to work the railroads were the Chinese who built the Union-Pacific, and the Japanese ~ who mostly didn't build anything, but who were decidedly more important than anyone would have imagined.
Their experience is tied in pretty much with the Chinese railway workers. If you've seen old time pictures there are these INCREDIBLE trestle bridges crossing seemingly infinitely deep chasms and holes. Those bridges followed ancient Chinese designs ~ but as a locomotive crossed over they MOVED SIDE TO SIDE and UP AND DOWN. This was unnerving to most riders. You can imagine the way the engineers took the experience.
Anyway, the way things worked out in the railroads in the 1800s you had, in general, white engineers and ticket takers, white, black and Chinese jack turners, black firemen, black brakemen, Chinese bridge builders and an assortment of others with special "skills". Some of those jobs were incredibly risky so even specialists, like brakemen, didn't last long. They either got killed, got hurt, or got another job.
In walked the Japanese (of that time) who had more than their fair share of devout Pure Earth Buddhists ~ and they not only believed in REINCARNATION they actually thought that if they died they would immediately be REINCARNATED as adults in The Western Paradise.
Men like that made great candidates for the job of engineer or engine driver ~ the guy who'd take that train across the most rickety Chinese trestle bridge or other improvised concoction ~ and he'd do it alone.
The rest of the crew and the passengers would dismount before the bridge crossing, then, if the train made it to the other side they'd walk across the bridge.
All of that didn't last terribly long and iron bridges were built through the Western mountains as fast as possible. But the Japanese stayed on ~ many brought over wives and they had children who still live in every Rocky Mountain rail town. We have several in this area whose grandfathers moved on to raising onions, a specialty of Rocky Mountain living ~ gigantic things ~ size of duck pins balls.
Another subgroup from Japan were the sons of noble families where the mother had passed on and the father had remarried. We can cover those stories later, but their experience was TOTALLY MEDIEVAL ~ American gave them plenty of distance from those out to kill them.