Anna Louise Tittman Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Anna Tittman 1 99
%e was a ~ssionauy to Japan, and I thought it would be nice if I could
see her and bring her a mssage and have a day with her. She wrote pie a
letter--I was kind of critical of the Nippon h, the seevice, the cbmacter
of the food and all--she defended every bit of it, you how. So that
was good of her to do.
Q
Md they serve you typically Japanese food on the Nippon Man?
A. No, no. They tdedto serve American, you see, and tmtls where the
trouble cam in. We had so^ Japanese food, yes, but the boat was old and
small. It was not up to date either in its equiprent.
Q. While we 're talking about the boat, can you remmber :
You told me a little bit about your fellow passengers. C;
anything else about them? ?"ne civilians?
A. You mean the nurses?
Q. No, the other passengers.
vthing else?
n you remmber
Q. You've mntioned that there was a Russian father and Ws daughter.
A. Oh, oh. Outside of our whale unit. Why, I ~ mber this little Bessie
and her father and mother. Thw had lcrt European Russia,, cane around
through the Panama Canal and on up. Well, then they were trying to get back
to their origj.mil hore in western Russia. I can't mmmb what our teacher
looked ilke or anything about him except we thought Rmsiq was an awful
hard language to learn, so gutteral . You have to khd of lear your throat
while youvre talking, try to do that.
P
Q. How did your Russian lessons go? Did you learn ~ussi$n?
A. I learned some, but I dldnlt have to because Russians @re very apt with
their music and they're apt with languages. We always hadl interpret rs. I
took Russian after I got to Russia, but I was very busy .xgl couldn't do a
lot, but I could get along all right. Any place you went theretd be some
EYlglish, the sam In China.
Q. At this time, what exactly was your mission over there
F 1
A. This captain of the American ship qhat made the
with American ships every so often, thgre was a
conditions of poverty were terr"jfic beaause people were m
with their beds on their backs. They were great
They had to leave their horns because the war
they lived. Of come, there were the big
I can tell you about the children when we
all the time
There was one character on our boat, Nippon Pku, who was ssed l&e a
Russian officer, military officer. He clairred to be a repper. He was