Workin' At Travelers Aid-ISS Revisited (6)

The fourth Travelers Aid-International Social Services [ISS] social workers whose dictaphone tapes I helped transcribe was a friendly and sweet Japanese woman, named Sato, who seemed to be in her 40s, and who lived alone in a small high-rise Midtown Manhattan apartment building, within walking distance from the Travelers Aid-ISS office in which she worked. And of the four social workers at Travelers Aid-ISS for whom I transcribed dictated tapes, Sato was the one who, by far, produced the most dictaphone tapes to be transcribed each week.

Unlike the two U.S.-born social workers and the Scandinavian-born social worker, Sato apparently spent nearly every minute of her 8-hours in her office dictating her case histories into the dictaphone as rapidly as possible.

So, although the two U.S.-born and the Scandinavian-born social workers at Travelers Aid-ISS provided the dictaphone-typist pool's basked with an adequate amount of work to be typed for what the social workers were being paid to do and completed all the work that Travelers Aid-ISS required and expected them to do, if one ever compared the amount of work they did during a workweek with the amount of work Sato produced, one might mistakenly have concuded that the U.S.-born and Scandinavian-born social workers were "slackers."

Having grown up in Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and worked in Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, before apparently arriving to work in Manhattan during the late 1960s or early 1970s, the work ethic and attitude to doing work that Sato had seemed to differ from the more leisure-oriented, more laid-back work ethic that had developed in both the social democratic societies of Scandinavia and in the then-affluent U.S. society during the first few decades of the post-World War II era.

But despite being a work-freak at Travelers Aid-ISS, Sato was the only Travelers Aid-ISS social worker who apparently felt some personal obligation to express her thanks for me being one of the dictaphone-typists who spent much of their worktime transcribing and typing up what she produced each week.

And for that reason, apparently, she surprised me in the office one workday and invited me to attend with her a classical music concert at Lincoln Center after work later in the week, for which she had purchased two tickets.

Given the age gap between the culturally-straight-looking dressed Sato and me in the 1970s, and the fact that I had never previously felt that Sato was particularly interested in getting to know me outside of work, I did not regard Sato's invitation to attend a Lincoln Center music concert with her as any kind of attempt to try to form some kind of out-of-work friendship or relationship with me.

And prior to Sato's invitation, I, myself, had not thought of her as someone I might be interested in getting to know better outside of the workplace office.

But, not wanting to risk making Sato feel embarrassed that she had gone out of her way to invite me to attend a Lincoln Center classical music concert with her, I agreed, with a thankful smile on my face, to join her at the concert.

So many years later, I no longer can recall which classical music composer was being played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lincoln Center concert that I attended with Sato.

But what I do recall more is that when Sato treated me to some dinner in her Midtown Manhattan high-rise apartment, prior to the concert, we conversed about U.S. foreign policy in Asia and U.S.-Japanese foreign relations. And Sato was surprised that I was so critical of U.S. foreign policy, historically, in Asia and had some understanding of why, both before and after World War II, the Japanese people had had some legitimate grievances about U.S. government foreign policy in relation to Japan, that the U.S. government had unwisely ignored.

 And Sato also seemed surprised to hear me mention that I thought the Truman administration should not have ordered atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, especially because, prior to August 1945, the Japanese government has already indicated to some Soviet Union diplomats that it was interested in negotiating an end to its WWII military conflict with the U.S. government.

In addition to then being interested in befriending me because I now also seemed more sympathetic to and understanding of Japanese people than the other people who had grown-up in the USA after World War II whom she had meet while living and working in the USA, my impression was that, being lonely in New York City in the mid-1970s, Sato also felt that, possibly, I could be a younger person with whom she could develop a friendship, similar to one that she might have had in Japan with a nephew who might have been in his 20s, like I then was.

But, despite recalling that I exchanged some public library books which examined World War II history in the Pacific ocean area, from a viewpoint that was critical of some U.S. government foreign policy and military decisions (like the decisions to firebomb Tokyo and drop the A-bombs on people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), while in Sato's apartment,, I  no longer recall the content of any of the conversations inside Sato's apartment, that occurred before I eventually left my job at Travelers Aid-ISS and never saw Sato agaon.

In retrospect, I probably should have attempted to keep up my acquaintance with Sato, even after I no longer was transcribing her dictaphone tapes at Travelers Aid-ISS, because her kind and sensitive personality did cause me to feel some emotional fondness for her and Sato seemed to like me.

But, given the age gap between us, and the fact that she lived in a high-rise apartment in Midtown Manhattan and I lived in a slum apartment in Brooklyn's Red Hook section, my conclusion in the mid-1970s was that our generational difference and different economic class situation meant that it wasn't logical for me to try to keep in contact with Sato, once I was no longer working at the Travelers Aid-ISS workplace.