From The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy's First Carrier into Tokyo Bay, by Nathan Canestaro (Grand Central, 2024), Kindle pp. 308-310:
Recovery of Allied POWs swung into action soon after the occupation forces anchored in Tokyo Bay. Commodore Rodger Simpson was in overall command but heading up the Navy side of the effort was Cmdr. Harold Stassen, a former governor of Minnesota and later a prominent figure in the Republican Party. Stassen’s political star was bright at the time, and many Americans thought he would be Truman’s challenger in the next presidential election. On the morning of the twenty-eighth, two of the Moo’s Avengers transported Commander Stassen and his staff ashore to Atsugi airfield, thirty miles southwest of the capital. They were the first naval squadron to touch down on Japan; they did not receive a warm welcome, but this time the hostility was from the US Army, not the Japanese. The Eleventh Airborne Division had arrived on the airfield two days earlier, taking up residence in barracks that only days before had been occupied by kamikaze pilots. As far as the Army was concerned the Navy was not welcome.
Commander Melhorn’s Avenger—with Stassen in the back—blew out a tire when he landed, and he limped his plane down the runway, looking for a place to deliver his passenger. As the damaged plane came crawling in, Melhorn described how an Army colonel “[came] charging out on the taxiway, waving this .45 [pistol] and motioning for me to take off, to get out. Obviously I had no business there that this was an Army show.” Melhorn was disappointed and annoyed that the war was barely over and interservice rivalries had reemerged, a turn of events he described as like the bad old days of 1940 all over again. But the arrogant colonel got his comeuppance when Commander Stassen stepped out of the back of the plane. Melhorn described him as doing the “double take of all double takes” and suddenly becoming very deferential to Stassen’s direction.
The Japanese were waiting to meet the arriving US officials in a little striped tent just off the runway. They made some attempt at pleasantries, offering lemonade and snacks for the arriving Americans....
Even though only a fraction of the air group had gone, all of them were immensely proud of having been the first squadron to touch down on occupied Japan. To recognize their accomplishment, Air Group Cmdr. Raleigh Kirkpatrick printed up brag cards to distribute to his men. Decades after the war, some of these veterans still proudly kept the cards in their wallet:
In the interest of public safety and the future well-being of all bars, clubs, beer-joints, pubs, juke-joints, cocktail lounges, night spots, dives, shower rooms, bowling alleys, football stadiums, and other places of amusement where liquor and argument lead to bloodshed and mayhem; this is to certify that [name] is of the stalwart company of Air Group Fifty, which led Naval Aviation into Japan by making the first group landing on Japanese home soil, at Atsugi Airfield on the Tokyo plain, at 0951 on the morning of August 28th, 1945, AD. Any claims to the contrary are damn lies. [signed] R.C. Kirkpatrick, Commander US Navy, Commanding Air Group 50.15
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