12/14/21
While I was working on the Baked Beans books, one day I got an email from Dirk Oster. he explained that his dad, Bernie Oster, was the ship’s photographer. He had a bunch of old snapshots of the ship that his dad took. They weren’t marked or dated. He wanted to know if I was interested . . .
In the revised books (USS Boston in World War II), I used many of the pictures he sent. There was a batch of them that at the time didn’t make any sense. Pictures of Christmas decorations in the ship. Pictures of Santa. As I absorbed info about the ship during the war, I finally got it. Here were pictures of the last Christmas in Japan – December 1945 – Occupation Duty.
I’m going to share some of these in two chunks: “Outside” shots of a Happy Hour, and “Inside” shots of decorations. (These are scans of seventy-year-old B&W snapshots, so . . . . )
I will follow up with more snaps of the decorated ship.
Peace. Steve