“In fact, she is the one who helped us.” Ship’s Proud Combat Legacy “We did not help Mitoko by paying for her scholarship,” Thompson recalled then. She became a nurse and worked for the Red Cross, and as a wife and mother, Mitoko Yamachi reunited in the 1990s with Thompson and other members of the Walke crew in San Diego. Steel plates were welded over the gaping hole in the Walke’s port side, and in July 1951, the Walke set course for Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California for more permanent repairs, but before leaving, Thompson and the crew set up a bank account with a scholarship fund for Mitoko. She was what the Japanese called an “atomic bomb orphan.” Mitoko’s mother was killed, and her father later died of radiation poisoning. 9, 1945, when an atomic bomb named “Fat Man” exploded over Nagasaki. A girl from the school they came to know only as Mitoko was a constant presence, cheering up the sailors with her boundless curiosity and enthusiasm. In Sasebo, the repair dock was next to a field used by the crew to play baseball, and the field adjoined a junior high school. The damage inflicted on the USS Walke was the deadliest day for the U.S.
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