dave_snaps

Monochrome series of my trip to former Camp Drake in Asaka, Saitama. This used to be a US Army base from 1945 to the '70's, I believe. I can't find anything about the closure of this base so if anyone knows, please send me an e-mail or comment on it. I picked the worse time to go there in 2005. Dead smack in the middle of the summer...hot and humid as hell and too much greenery to block the remaining structures. It seems as if the land that the base actually sat on was chopped into pieces. Some of the land is used as a park, school, streets and housing. What remains seems to be the main community area of the base with a few buildings left standing and a housing section accross the street. Other things that I noticed left were: outline of parking lots and roads leading to housing courts, telephone and electricity poles, junction boxes, fire hydrants (these seemed to still be at every corner of the roads), steam pipes (upside down "J" looking things still with the silver paint), steam pipes (seen in one of these pics. this area is now being used as a fire-fighting area), manholes and road signs were still left in many places. I'm sure there is a lot more but this is all I could see through all the thick greenery. Seeing what I could see brings back a lot of memories of when I was growing up on other military bases here in Japan. Most of these kinds of things don't exist anymore and is sad. Look for more Camp Drake pics in the future because I plan to go back and shoot more when there is less green and more visibility.....like dead smack in the middle of the freezing winter.