“We’ve all survived! We survived a few years of the pandemic!”
The theater audience on the cruise ship Norwegian Jewel in late April excitedly cheered and applauded dynamic entertainer Stephanie Pope. Yes, it was definitely good to be cruising again. In fact, this was my husband Carl’s and my sixth cruise since October 2021. We have taken some 30 cruises over the past 25 years and had joined five other couples—longtime friends—on this eight-night cruise from San Diego to Vancouver, with port calls in , Oregon; Seattle; and Ketchikan, Alaska.
Karen and Kenzo Takizawa from Tokyo were on their first cruise. Karen (a friend since fourth grade who has lived in Japan since 1973) and her husband Kenzo had originally booked an Alaskan cruise in May 2020. And you know what happened with those plans. So, when Karen emailed me in February that they would be visiting California in April, I told her about the Norwegian Jewel cruise we had just booked.
“Come with us!” I said. And they did.
When the other couples had booked this cruise, they did not realize that coincidentally Carl and I would be aboard among 2,000 passengers. What a nice surprise to connect. It was fun catching up aboard ship with everyone over lunch at O'Sheehan’s Irish Pub, drinks in Bliss Ultra Lounge, and dinner in one of the 10 restaurants.
The crew were excited to be back to work after months idled by the pandemic shutdown. We marveled how the staff from so many different countries got along so well. Wouldn’t it be great if world leaders could do the same?
Carl and I usually sign up for several shore excursions, but since this cruise was basically a repeat of others we have done, we opted to stroll the piers on our own or enjoy spa treatments, including a couple of massages. Carl even had a haircut, one of his favorite things to do on a ship, relaxing and gazing at the great ocean view.
“I can’t have this experience at my neighborhood barber’s,” he said with a smile.
Karen and Kenzo, on the other hand, dove into their inaugural cruise experience, not wanting to miss a thing, so they took some of the shore excursions.
“We have an avid interest in the history of World War II in the Pacific, so we signed up for the tour of Fort Stevens in Astoria,” Karen said. “That was the scene of a bombardment—about 17 shells—by a Japanese submarine on June 21, 1942. Very little physical damage was done in the attack, but the psychological damage for people on the West Coast of the United States and Canada was immense, leading to the problematic internment of Japanese Americans (and Japanese Canadians) in camps for the duration of the war.”
Karen and Kenzo were also moved by a “nature tour and crab feast” excursion in Ketchikan where their bus driver related a story about four generations of a Japanese American family who ran a grocery store in the small town from 1916 to 2020.
“They spent World War II in internment camps in other states but, most unusually, after the war was over they returned to Ketchikan and got their property back from the people who took care of it for them,” Karen said.
Reportedly the townspeople overwhelmed the family on their return by presenting them with proceeds from the grocery sales saved up during the years they were gone.
“They went to work and stayed in the grocery business until a big landslide accomplished what the war could not,” Karen continued. “We were impressed by the warm hearts of the people of Ketchikan who truly loved their neighbors at a difficult and dangerous time.”
We were surprised to see a line of passengers most evenings outside Chin Chin, one of the Jewel’s restaurants. We finally got a chance to dine there early one evening and enjoyed the Asian food and service.
“The specialty restaurants were excellent,” observed my high school friend Sonia Fox-Ohlbaum, who has taken about a dozen cruises with her husband, Kenny. “Not only was the food great, but the ambience and staff were excellent, too.”
The specialty restaurants included Italian, Brazilian, and Japanese cuisine, as well as French in Le Bistro, which Carl and I loved and where we dined twice. I felt as if I were in Paris.
As Kenzo summed up, “I discovered that a cruise ship is a special, joyful world where good people gather and behave well. On the ship we were supported by crew members from many different countries who cooperated to run the ship smoothly and beautifully. As a traveler from Japan, it reminded me of the necessity of cooperation among various nations on the ship called Earth.”
