[Stories of People] Episode 6: "The Master Carpenter and the Foreman" - That ship, your father helped build it!
It was shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century—
It was the season when one starts to crave hot-pot dishes.
I had finished dinner and was watching TV, thinking I would go to bed after the upcoming news, when it happened.
Suddenly, my cell phone rang.
It was from the master carpenter I had entrusted with the site. It was past ten o'clock. "Master—what's wrong?" I asked, but there was no reply. The line was still connected. Eventually— "I'm... I'm taking everyone and heading back to Kobe." The master was drunk. He was so intoxicated that his words were barely coherent.
He was a ship carpenter master I had known for over twenty years. He was the person I always relied on for interior and furniture repairs on merchant ships entering Kobe Port.
He must have been well into his seventies, but he was the most reliable person on any job site. Yet, here he was, calling me while dead drunk. When I asked what happened, he told me that all the carpet they had installed had been ripped up by local contractors. I had never heard of such a thing. This job was an urgent request from a shipyard building a large European passenger ship for the first time since the war.
The purchasing department had asked me to "arrange as many carpet installers as possible," and knowing it was a tall order, I had begged the master to take it on.
The master reached out across the Kansai region, gathered thirty people, and sent them to the Nagasaki site within a few days.
And that site had been sabotaged.
They said that the floor they had worked overtime to finish had been completely ripped up by people who had rushed in that morning.
Having worked at that site for a long time, I could vaguely guess the reason. But that was beside the point. "Foreman, I'll be on the flight tomorrow—" I said, managing to calm him down for the night.
I took the morning flight to Nagasaki and arrived at the site just after noon. The master was waiting at the site office. "Sorry about last night, for that pathetic phone call," he said, bowing his head. He had managed to keep the volatile situation under control. His heart must have been boiling with rage, but they did not abandon the site. The foreman in his forties who managed the site under the master was also a reliable man, and he didn't say much.
The next day, I was called by the purchasing department. I thought I was going to be asked to account for the trouble. But the manager in charge said this first thing: "I have nothing but gratitude for that foreman—" Hearing his story, I was speechless.
Even in the state he was in that night, the master had moved the next morning when he heard I was coming. He visited the purchasing department first thing in the morning, and despite being at an age where he wasn't allowed on the site by regulation, he pleaded, "I won't work, I just want to see it."
And then, while battling the cancer that had taken root in his right leg, he climbed up to the site on the tenth floor or higher to negotiate with the site foreman.
The manager, who had witnessed the whole thing, said, "There's nothing we can do internally, but I really want you to thank him as well."
There is a postscript to this story. Years later, I reunited with the foreman who had managed the site at a different location. After we apologized for our long silence, he said this.
"Thanks to you, we were able to do a good job." At that point, I thought it was just a polite social nicety.
But he continued, looking a bit embarrassed: "Actually... I watched the news about that passenger ship's maiden voyage with my sons."
And then, he said with a smile: "I told them, 'That ship—your father helped build it.'"
That beaming smile is still my treasure today.
(End)
Text by Masanori Kobayashi
.....
[note | Author Page]
https://note.com/right_canna2847
[AMCO Knowledge Lab | Official Site]
https://qs07n.hp.peraichi.com/
.....