Japan - Dave's Midwestern Ohio Memories

Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s

Japan

Watching the Tokyo Olympics has brought back many memories from my first trip to Japan in 1976. At the time I was working for Ford and boss Henry Ford II, after discovering the company was buying air conditioning compressors from General Motors, directed the engineering department to find another source, as he didn’t want to give a single cent to his top competitor.

As a member of the team to investigate alternative designs, we flew to Japan to check out a design by Nippondenso (now known as Denso). The flight included stopovers in Alaska on the way to Japan and Hawaii on the way back as described in this previous blogpost.

Once landing in Japan at Narita Airport north of Tokyo, we traveled to the Okura Hotel across the street from the Imperial Palace, very close to the site of the current Olympic stadium shown in this aerial photo. I recall waking up early due to the 13 hour time change and walking in the park surrounding the palace at daybreak. Later that morning, we visited the Ford offices and then traveled by bullet train to Nagoya where Nippondenso was located. Even back then, the bullet train traveled over 100 mph and always ran right on time. The site of Mount Fuji that day was perfect, just like this photo.

Our hotel was right across the street from the Nagoya castle pictured here. We had an opportunity to tour the castle that also served as a museum. Back in those days, few foreigners visited the interior of Japan where Nagoya was located, so none of the displays were understandable.

Unfortunately, the bed in the tiny hotel room was only 6” long, way too short for my 6’4” frame! And the toilets were literally holes in the floor.

Literally everything was miniature size compared to US standards. For example, this backhoe along the street in Nagoya was smaller than me! You see a lot of them now in the US, but not back in the 1970’s.

At a department store near the hotel, I bought my wife a pearl that was supposedly still in the shell! Indeed it was, a beautiful black pearl that was mounted on a necklace that she still wears occasionally. At the same store, I also bought a ball glove that was always my favorite for softball. Still have it somewhere.

At Nippondenso, we met with company officials, who took us on a plant tour where their air conditioning compressor was produced.

We were very impressed with what we saw and ask them to provide a quote for the Ford business. But at that time, they did not have any manufacturing plants in the US and indicated the shipping costs would be prohibitive if shipped from Japan. However, they expressed a willingness to license the design so Ford could produce the product themselves. This concept interested us since GM was making their own compressors, plus Ford had an available Philco plant in Indiana that had manufactured refrigerator compressors.

So that's exactly what we did, and I had the opportunity to lead the launch of the air conditioning compressor at the plant. We lived in Richmond, IN about 30 minutes north and only about 45 minutes from the Loramie/Russia area, which brought us much closer to home than Michigan. Plus my wife was pregnant at the time of the move, so once our son was born, the grandparents and other relatives could readily come to visit.

Over the course of my career, I made 13 trips to Japan, with the most memorable being the first stop on a round-the-world trip which included a memorable stop in Hiroshima that I’ll have to write about in some future blog. In the meantime, enjoy the Tokyo Olympics.

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