Word: caronia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Photographers' flashbulbs and shopkeepers' eyes popped in happy unison as the sleek green Cunard luxury liner Caronia tied up at a Kobe pier side. "A particularly wonderful group," clucked an official of the Japan Travel Bureau as a long line of Helen Hokinson ladies and balding gentlemen picked their way down the gangplank. "I should estimate that they came 95% to buy souvenirs and only 5% for sightseeing-a tedious business anyway...
Remembering the carefree days when tourism earned them more money from overseas than even the silk textile business, the Japanese had looked forward eagerly to the well-advertised arrival of the Caronia, for its staterooms were filled with the most expensive collection of dollar-heavy souvenir hunters ever to hit the Ginza. In accommodations that cost from $2,750 (for a B-deck cabin with two bunks) to $29,000 (for a main deck suite), they had come from the U.S. (500 of them in all) to see the Pacific in style over a leisurely 99 days, picking up memories...
...Last week, by the time the Caronia left Japan for Honolulu and home, she had left behind some $300,000 in good convertible currency. "They were so nice, so charming," cooed a Japanese official over the departed tourists, "and so very, very rich...
Early in the week there were two near-disasters that gave pier officials the jitters, threatened to close the port altogether. The 6,535-ton American Export freighter Extavia smashed into its Brooklyn pier, leaving a 100-foot section of jagged wreckage. Then the Cunard Lines' green-hulled Caronia knifed through 30 feet of ten-inch concrete and rammed right up to Pier 90's shed before it could be stopped and worked into its slip (estimated damage to the two piers...