ICE CREAM AND EMPIRE

JUNE 20, 1944 — USS ENTERPRISE

PHILIPPINE SEA

Lieutenant Junior Grade Saburō Kitamura of the Imperial Japanese Navy stood trembling in the enlisted mess hall of the most famous American carrier afloat.

Four hours earlier he had been drifting alone in the Philippine Sea, clutching a shredded life vest, waiting for the ocean to finish what American fighters had started.

Now—
he was staring at a tray piled with more food than his entire squadron had shared in three days.

Fried chicken.
Mashed potatoes drowning in melted butter.
Green beans.
White bread still warm.
Apple pie.
A tall glass of cold milk, beads of condensation sliding down the side like jewels.

Behind the serving line, an American sailor snapped:

“You want chocolate or vanilla?”

Kitamura blinked in confusion.

It was the most nonsensical question he had ever heard.

Ice cream?
On a warship?
While the battle still raged over the horizon?

Ice cream required cold storage, energy, spare machinery—luxuries no Japanese carrier had ever possessed. Even admirals on the Yamato-class battleships rarely saw ice, let alone dessert.

Yet here, on a vessel forged in 30 months of nonstop combat, enemy prisoners were being offered flavors.

Kitamura felt something crack—not a bone, not an injury, but a belief system.

This was the moment that would haunt him for the next sixty years.

The moment he realized that everything his empire had taught him about America was wrong.

THE PROPAGANDA AND THE REALITY

Japanese naval indoctrination was absolute.

Americans were barbarians.
Devils.
Cowards without discipline or spirit.
Men who would torture prisoners and consume them alive.

Yet when the destroyer USS Tyrrell hauled Kitamura from the water like a stunned fish, medical corpsmen had treated his wounds, wrapped a blanket around him, and injected him with morphine.

Not questions.
Not fists.
Not boots.
Pain relief.

Now, aboard the USS Enterprise, they were feeding him like a guest.

War had not prepared him for kindness.

THE OTHER SIDE OF HELL

He wasn’t alone in this realization.

Throughout the Pacific War, more than 35,000 Japanese sailors, pilots, and soldiers would be captured or rescued and brought aboard American ships.

Every one of them carried the same astonished stories home after the surrender:

Refrigerators bigger than Japanese submarines

Enlisted men eating like admirals

Ice cream machines running day and night

Showers with endless hot water

Clean uniforms twice a week

Sailors complaining about meals that Japanese families would consider feasts

Medical wards operating like floating hospitals

And repair shops that could rebuild a destroyer while the ship stayed at sea

To a Japanese sailor accustomed to rice balls, pickled radish, and vitamin deficiency, the American Navy was not a military force.

It was an industrial civilization that floated.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL GULF

By mid-1944, the Imperial Navy’s enlisted men received 1,400 calories a day—when supplies arrived at all.

Protein came from small fish if a ship could spare fuel to trawl.
Scurvy, beriberi, and night blindness rotted entire crews.

The U.S. Navy fed its men 4,100 calories daily:

Eggs and bacon for breakfast

Fresh bread

Roast beef

Fried chicken

Coffee urns that never ran dry

And yes—ice cream, made from scratch at sea

USS Lexington’s ice cream plant alone produced 500 gallons a day.

And when the Japanese sank the first Lexington, crewmen trying to abandon ship carried tubs of ice cream with them onto rescue vessels.

Because American sailors considered ice cream a necessity of morale.

Japanese prisoners thought it was sorcery.

THE MOMENT THE MYTH COLLAPSED

Chief Petty Officer Yoshio Yamada survived the sinking of his destroyer at Leyte Gulf. Three days later, aboard the battleship USS Iowa, he saw something that made him question everything he had ever believed.

A mechanical potato peeler the size of an oil drum spat out 200 peeled potatoes in under a minute.

It wasn’t the machine itself that broke him.

It was the trash can beside it—
filled with potatoes Americans had thrown away for being slightly bruised.

Yamada had watched crewmates on Japanese destroyers boil leather belts for soup.

Here, Americans threw away calories like cargo ballast.

He wrote in his clandestine diary:

“They discard more food in one meal
than my entire ship receives in one week.”

LIFE BELOWDECKS — THE SHOCK DEEPENS

Captured Japanese officers touring American carrier decks wrote breathless, frightened notes:

Air conditioning in the tropics

Clean sheets

Ice dispensers

Soda fountains

Movie theaters

Wooden basketball courts

Library shelves full of magazines

Drinking water flowing freely from every sink

Enlisted men receiving new uniforms twice weekly

On Japanese carriers, men bathed in seawater, slept in hammocks, and shared one bucket of fresh water per shift.

On USS Enterprise, sailors took hot showers twice a day.

Hot showers at sea.

This was abundance so excessive it was almost cruel to witness.

MEDICAL CARE BEYOND UNDERSTANDING

It wasn’t just comfort.

It was life.

The American sickbays treated enemy wounded with the same skill as their own.

Antibiotics, blood banks, X-rays, anesthesia.

A Japanese pilot whose leg wound had festered for nine days aboard his own carrier was stunned when a US corpsman injected him with penicillin.

His fever broke that night.

He wept when he realized:

The enemy cared more for his life
than his own navy ever had.

DAMAGE CONTROL — THE OTHER AMERICAN SECRET

In 1945, Japanese pilots who survived failed kamikaze runs witnessed the final revelation.

They had believed kamikazes were unstoppable.

They were not.

American carriers had damage control teams that operated like mechanical organisms—39 men moving in a single synchronized motion:

Fire suppression foam

Portable pumps

Steel shoring beams

Welding teams connecting patch plates while bombs still cooked in magazines

Ensign Ryuji Nagatsuka, fished from the sea by USS Randolph, watched in awe:

“They fixed in hours
what would sink one of our carriers.”

THE FINAL BLOW — CHRISTMAS

The most devastating cultural shock came on Christmas Day, 1944.

The Japanese raid force attacking Ulithi Atoll expected to die.

Yet on the ships they failed to destroy, Japanese prisoners witnessed something unimaginable:

An American Christmas dinner.

USS Enterprise served:

Roast turkey

Glazed ham

Mashed potatoes

Sweet potatoes

Cranberry sauce

Fresh rolls

Three kinds of pie

And ice cream with toppings

Packages from home were distributed.
Carols played over the ship’s loudspeakers.
Sailors laughed and exchanged gifts.

A Japanese petty officer later wrote:

“We attacked them while starving.
They fought us, repaired their ship,
then celebrated with more food in one day
than our families saw in a month.”

THE WAR ENDS — AND A NEW JAPAN BEGINS

When Japanese prisoners were repatriated after 1945, they carried these stories home like radioactive truths.

They told of:

Ice cream machines

Fresh vegetables at sea

Mail delivered weekly

Hospitals aboard ships

Libraries

Hot water

Abundance beyond imagination

They told their starving families:

“We lost because the enemy was strong.
Not from cruelty.
But from abundance.”

The Yamato spirit—belief that spiritual strength could overcome material weakness—was dead.

And no American bomb had killed it.

Ice cream had.

THE LEGACY OF A SCOOP OF VANILLA

The United States rebuilt Japan not with revenge…
but with the same abundance Japanese sailors had witnessed aboard American carriers.

Former enemies became allies.
Former warriors became teachers, politicians, fathers, businessmen.

Some even became ministers.

Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, converted to Christianity in America because a US Navy doctor gave him coffee and medical care when he expected execution.

He wrote:

“In the moment they offered me mercy,
I realized they had won not just the war.
They had won the future.”