Thanks, Dirk Oster

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