HONMOKU HOUSES (Photographs by Mr.Keith Knowles)

I worked for Mobil Sekiyu (MSKK) from 1975 till 1983, and then for Mobil Sales & Trading International Limited (MSTIL) from 1987 till 1990. For both of these periods, my family and I lived in Yokohama in the Honmoku compound of houses built by Standard-Vacuum, 2 of which were then owned by MSKK, 2 by Esso. Between our 2 assignments in Japan, Esso sold it's 2 houses and an apartment block was built in their place, but MSKK's 2 houses continued to be occupied by "Gaijin" employees. We occupied the No.1 house during my MSKK assignment, the No.2 house during my MSTIL assignment.

Before assignment to MSKK, we knew very little about Japan, but had heard many stereotypes, one of which was that Japanese houses are much smaller than houses in the West. While this is generally true, you can imagine our surprise when we saw these palatial houses available for us to live in.

We had a wonderful time while living in the Honmoku houses. We look back on that as the best period of our lives.We had 2 sons aged 4 (Luke) and 2 (Paul) when we arrived in Japan in July, 1975. Our 3rd son (Ben) was born in Bluff Hospital, Yokohama, while we were living in Honmoku.

The following are some photographs of the Honmoku compound. They all relate to No.1 house and were taken in the second half of 1975.

This is the plaque outside the compound. It's hard to read, but begins "Building honored for the year of 1953"