Lovely Lady sails to Japan 1956

Judging from the number of passports from the former Yugoslavian Federal Socialist Republic that were used for foreign travel, it seems to me that the Yugoslavian government was not as strict on their citizens as other socialist or communist states when it came to leaving the country. And this was not a more recent development, either. As far back as the 1950s, when the communist government was still young and the ideology still strong, the average citizen seemed to have already enjoyed a fair amount of mobility.

Most of the passports I have seen had the usual European countries: Germany, Austria, France, Britain, Switzerland and Italy, to name a few. Occasionally, there were even passports used for travel to the United States and Canada! Rarely, however, have I seen passports used for travel to Africa, Asia, and South America, let alone Australia.

This is why I was very excited when I saw this passport, which was used for travel by sea to Japan.

It must have been an exciting voyage to go by sea. Of course, you would have to deal with the boredom of seeing the endless flat, blue horizon of the sea, and perhaps seasickness as well, but the thrill and excitement of seeing a different city with different people speaking a different language at each port of call must have made up for it.

In 1956, when the thirty-five-year-old Croatian lady embarked on her journey, air travel to Asia was already possible. While it was probably very expensive, it was not impossible, and the route to Asia would have probably taken you to the Middle East, then the Indian subcontinent, then on to the Malay Peninsula, and then to Hong Kong, from where you might take a flight to the Manila, Taipei, or Tokyo or, if you were lucky enough to acquire a travel permit to enter communist China, Shanghai or Beijing.

The fact that air travel was possible at the time (although it would admittedly cost a pretty penny) makes the story of this lady, Ms. Majda Dragomanovic, even more interesting. If she didn't have the money to fly, then it means that she was not a member of the "elite" of her society, which I imagine comprised mostly of government officials and their cronies.

Of course the fact that she went to Japan in itself is very interesting. Why was she there? Was she paying someone a visit? Did she do some kind of work? And, if she did, it was certainly not diplomatic work since this is not a diplomatic passport and it does not carry a diplomatic visa, but rather a tourist visa. But how much touring did she do? She stayed for almost three months!

There were many Americans stationed in Japan at this time. Was she perhaps visiting an American GI  whom she met in Europe somewhere during the war and fell in love with?

Or was she just simply interested in the exotic country in the far, far East? And, if so, had she saved up all her life to go? We have to remember that even sea travel was probably not too cheap and that she was coming from a socialist state, where you can't really "save money" since wages are so low since the economy is controlled. So where did she get all the money? Was she sponsored by her lover, who was a member of the government? Or did she work on the ship? Or did she do other types of work to earn easy money?

Hers must have been one heck of a story.

At any rate, here is a summary of her travels based on the immigration endorsements that are found in her passport:

• 05.01.56
• Passport Issued - Zagreb, Croatia
• Travel Permit to Japan granted - Zagreb, Croatia
• 24.04.56
• Indonesian Transit Visa - Belgrade, Serbia
• 28.04.56
• Japanese Transit Visa - Rijeka, Croatia
• 10.05.56 
• Exit - Rijeka, Croatia
• 17.05.56 
•  Transit - Port Said, Egypt
• 25.05.56
• Transit - Assab, Eritrea
• 31.05.56
• Transit - Karachi, Pakistan (handwritten)
• 12.06.56
• Transit - Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
• 06.07.56
• Travel Permit to Burma, Singapore, and Hong Kong granted - Rangoon, Burma
• 07.07.56
• Burman Transit Visa - Rangoon, Burma
• 12.07.56
• Exit - Rangoon
• 15.07.56
• Transit - Penang, Federation of Malaya
• 08.08.56
• Transit - Hong Kong
• 09.08.56
• Hong Kong Transit Visa - Hong Kong
• 21.08.56
• Entry - Kobe, Japan
• 23.08.56
• Entry - Osaka, Japan
• 24.08.56
• Entry - Yokkaichi, Japan
• 26.08.56
• Entry authorization granted - Yokohama, Japan
• 22.10.56
• Stay permit extension granted - Tokyo, Japan
• 08.12.56
• Passport extension - Tokyo, Japan
• 09.12.56
• Exit - Tokyo, Japan (by air)
• Transit - Hong Kong
• 17.12.56
• Transit - Singapore
• 31.12.56
• Burman Transit Visa - Rangoon, Burma
• 07.01.57
• Exit - Rangoon, Burma
• 11.01.57
• Transit - Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
• 09.01.58
• Travel Permit to Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Italy granted - Zagreb, Croatia
• Passport extension - Zagreb, Croatia
• 19.06.58
• Belgian Visa - Belgrade, Serbia

It is interesting to note that, just a little over a year after her return from her Japan trip, she renewed her passport and applied for travel permission to a few western European countries and that she was even issued a visa for Belgium. However, for some reason, the passport has no further entries.

Was it because she noticed that she no longer had enough pages to fill in her passport and therefore got a new one for her next trip? Or did she run out of money for another trip and therefore decide not to go? Was she denied other visas (although I doubt she was)? Did she no longer have a reason to go West?

On a final note, it seems that her documented intention to travel to European countries after visiting Japan makes it more probable that she was also in Japan on vacation for some sightseeing. In any case, this passport is surely an interesting piece with an interesting story to match.

 

A Vietnamese Girl Flees to Hong Kong, 1968

Here I proudly present what I believe to be a neat piece of history: a South Vietnamese passport issued in 1968 during the Vietnam War to nineteen-year-old young lady. I suppose she was among the well-to-do in Saigon, where she lived, as I am sure not many people at the time had the means to travel outside the country by air. Note also that the passport number is 00085, which might hint that either (a) passports at the time were issued few and far apart, so having one means you are among the fortunate few, or (b) this young lady was among the very first to receive a passport when they began issued them, which means she was among those of influence and power. There is also the possibility that (c) they simply ran out of serial numbers and so started from 000001 again, but I would prefer (a) or (b).

Also interesting is the fact that many visas were granted to the passport holder, but only one was used: the one for Hong Kong. This, plus the fact that there is no Hong Kong exit endorsement on this passport, leads me to believe that the reason why this young lady applied for all these different visas was to give immigration officials the impression that she was embarking on some sort of tour of Asia. In fact, the passport was valid only for travel to South Korea, Taiwan ROC, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia; and she procured visas for all of these countries (except the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia - perhaps they did not require visas?) without fail. This was probably done to boost the credibility of her story.

The visas issued were:

Japan 18 Nov 1968
Taiwan ROC 19 Nov 1968
Thailand 19 Nov 1968
S. Korea 21 Nov 1968
Hong Kong 25 Nov 1968

To further support my theory that the young lady's real intention was to flee to Hong Kong, the evidence shows that the very next day after the issuance of her Hong Kong visa, she took off on flight CX060 bound for Hong Kong!

I imagine that she fled with her family, although there is no evidence on this document that would support that theory.

It must have been an exciting time for her - deciding to up and leave her country in the midst of a radical war and in hopes of greener pastures! Of course, maybe she was terrified by the thought of leaving all she ever knew until that point in her life, and maybe she did not want to leave, but the fact that she did leave (most likely to escape the threat of the ongoing war on her safety) is a very interesting story for it would be the product of an infamous era of our history.

There is a possibility that Miss Dan My Diem is still alive to tell her story and confirm or disprove my theories as she was born in 1949 and would be 61 today. If she is still alive, she might be in the United States as that is where this passport was found.

Did she manage to make it all the way across the Pacific in search of a better life? Why did she? Was it because her life in Hong Kong terrible? Unbearable? And if she did, how did she? Was she granted leave to enter the United States with refugee status? She certainly id not use this passport for her onward travel, so she either stayed in Hong Kong for more than two years (the passport expired in 1970) or maybe she procured fake travel documents for her onward voyage to America? There are many spaces in the passport for renewals and extensions and all are blank. Did she have to go into hiding? Did the Vietnamese government condemn those who fled the country and, if so, is that why she had to procure other travel documents that this one? Or did she return to Vietnam? If so, how did this passport make its way to California, where its seller lives?

There are so many questions and so few answers, but that is the beauty of collecting such items as these: they tell you a story and leave it to your imagination to get carried away with trying to figure out the rest of it.



Above is an exit visa that reads in Vietnam and English, "Issued to Mlle. [Mademoiselle] Dan My Diem. Authorized to travel to Rep. de Coree [Korea], Rep. de Chine, Japon, Philippines, HongKong, Thailande, Singapour, Malaisie and to return within un mois [one month]. This visa is valid for (?????) from the date of issue. Saigon, 13 Novembre 1968."

A Spanish Resident in the Philippines, 1968

This will be the first of many posts I will publish of scans of the passports I have in my collection. I am quite proud that I have many interesting pieces in my growing collection. This one was among the first I received (that were not issued to relatives or parents).

This passport was for a Spanish citizen who was a resident in Manila. I suppose that he moved to the Philippines and was not born to Spanish subjects here (many of the Spaniards living in the Philippines in 1898 chose to leave the country after the Treaty of Paris was signed and the Philippines handed over to the Americans, but some did stay). He seems to have been a businessman and made very frequent trips to Hong Kong and Japan, although he did apply for a US visa (perhaps as a measure to convince immigrations officers to grant him visas/entry?) and did make a trip to Taiwan once.

Because the endorsements (especially the entry stamps in Hong Kong) were so large, the passport was cancelled even before it expired since there was no more space!

Personally, I do not find the stamps too interesting as they are repetitive, but at least I get to have many examples of Hong Kong, Japan, and Philippine immigration endorsements at that time and get to compare them. Notice how the Philippine entry and exit stamps have no common design and are not uniform. I also have an interesting "story" of a Spanish national living in the Philippines who frequently flew to Hong Kong and Japan on JAL and PAL, not to mention a nice Taiwan visa issued in Manila!

Third Passport Stamps

This passport, unlike the others has different stamps from countries other than the Philippines.


The stamps from 2003 are from a trip I took with my parents to visit my ailing grandmother before she passed away. There are immigration stamps for Korea because we had a 16-hour stop-over there. Our trip was last-minute since my grandmother's health was not doing so well, so my mother took the earliest tickets available. Since we had flown Korean to the Philippines before and stayed only for a brief 3-4 hours, she thought we were in for the same journey. But we were not. Apparently, there are two flight to Seoul daily from Los Angeles and we took the earlier of the two, landing us in Seoul with 16 or so hours of waiting ahead of us.

The stamps from February 2005 are from the trip we made to make arrangements and prepare for our move to the Philippines later that May. As the stamp shows, we moved to the Philippines from the States on 23 May 2005.


The US immigration stamp is from my February 2005 trip to the Philippines. I remember expressly asking the immigration officer to chop my passport, to which he agreed. I gained the confidence to do so after asking the Canadian immigration officer at Niagara Falls to stamp my passport (even if they don't need to stamp US passports for land entries).

The other stamps are from my 2007 trip to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Singapore uses a hexagonal stamp at the airport, which I take is a special stamp for social visitors allowed to stay for 90 days. The same day I arrived in Singapore, I went straight to the Woodlands border gate to cross over the bridge to the other side, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. We cross the bridge by bus and then waited for the bus to reach the end of its route. When we reached the terminal, we hopped onto the bus back to the border gate and returned to Singapore to check into our hotel room. This was the first time I would be doing something "crazy" just to get passport stamps and later I would learn that my antics would pay off.

Since we were leaving for Kuala Lumpur on a train (Air Asia was not yet so big and we also wanted to take in the sights of Malaysia along the way), we had to board at the Tanjong Pagar station, which was somewhere in the middle of Singapore. The company that services this station is Malaysian-owned Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) or Malaysian National Railways and the only destinations from this station are all found in Malaysia. Therefore, it is understood that if you are to board a train here, you are headed for Malaysia. The thing is, Malaysia seems to claim the strip of land on which the railroad tracks are laid and there is some dispute over ownership of the land on which the tracks are laid. But Singapore, of course, will not agree to this. So what happens is, you board the train until some part of Singapore that is close to the shore (Singapore is an island) and then you are all made to get off and go through Singapore immigration exit procedures, and then you board the train again. Once you board the train, you never have to get off again until you reach your destination. At first I thought it was strange that we never stopped to go through Malaysian immigration, and then I thought we might have to go through some immigration booth in Kuala Lumpur, but that was not the case. I would learn upon my departure from Kuala Lumpur that, as far as Malaysian immigration is concerned, my port of entry was Tanjong Pagar. You can read from the KL airport exit stamp, "Masuk melalui KTM Tanjong Pagar" or "Entered through Tanjong Pagar KTM..." and then the date. The immigration officer asked no questions about it, so I guess this is really Malaysian policy. The thing is, what if you are not supposed to enter Malaysia? What if you don't have the visa or what if you are blacklisted? Is this a way to sneak in without having to sneak in? Well anyway, thank heavens that I insisted on making the absurd trip to Johor Bahru so now I have a "Johor Bahru" entry and exist stamp!

Notice also that the immigration stamp applied at the Woodlands entry point is the generic stamp and that the number of days allowed to remain is filled in by the immigration officer by hand. No special stamp design at the land border, I guess. It seems immigration officers always neglect land borders: at Canadian and Mexican land entry posts, they never stamp your passport! But I guess it would matter a lot if you were passing from South Korea to North Korea by land.


Here are the stamps from my Hong Kong-Macau trip later that same year. Later on, I will post more stamps from HK and Macau and you can compare how the ones in HK have changed and the ones in Macau are still the same after 2.5 years. The HK immigration stamps do not indicate on the text the port of entry used by the visitor, but the color says it all. Black is for the airport and green was for the seaport (no it is purple).

The 11 October stamp is from an overnight business trip I took to Hong Kong a few days before my vacation trip. Note that 11 October 2007 was also the day the A380 was at the airport for its test landing and, yes, I did see it there. I unfortunately did not have the chance to see it land or take off, though. The May arrival stamp is from my arrival from Malaysia.

If you have been observant, you would have noticed that Philippine immigration stamps include the flight number of your arrival or departure flight. Notice on the 22 October departure stamp that there is no indication. This is because this was the time when I went through immigration without the officer even checking his computer! Yes, it seemed that there was some kind of system glitch. I was surprised that when I went through the check-in counter and headed for my gate, there were terribly long lines at immigration. This was the first time I had seen this, especially because it's not like MNL is like LAX where you have a flight departing every five minutes. We were stuck at the back of the line for something like fifteen minutes, and then the line started moving up so quickly! I was amazed at the sudden speed and then learned that the officers were, instead of individually scanning the passports, just stamping away quickly. I guess they were under pressure since some flights were already boarding! This was a chance for any fugitives or those on the immigration black lists to escape the country! I actually have a hunch that maybe there as some foul play and that maybe the Bureau Immigration was in on it and purposely processed the passports without checking them. Was this some kind of orchestrated corruption taking place once more? Or am I just too suspicious of Philippine government agencies?

Now, moving on, looking to the right half of the scan, you will see that all the five chops from three different authorities are from 25 October 2007! Include the HK stamp on top of page 12 and you have 6 all in one day! This was because I went on a one-day trip to Macau from HK that day and then returned to the Philippines that same evening.


This lone stamp from Canada is from my Toronto-Niagara Falls-New York trip in 2004. We flew from LA to Toronto and, since we were flying in this time as opposed to driving in like I did the last time I visited Canada in 2000, I got an immigration stamp! This one is from YYZ, or Pearson International Airport. The Niagara Falls stamp that I mentioned earlier is actually on Page 11, but the ink faded and the Malaysian immigration officer did not see it and stamped right on top of it! Today, the Niagara Falls stamp is almost invisible!


This last stamp was a bonus from my overnight trip to HK. Because I also hold a Philippine passport which I also present when I leave and arrive in the Philippines, officers often inscribe the letters "BB" for "Balikbayan status entry" or "w/PP" to indicate my dual citizenship. However, for this trip I decided not to present my Philippine passport so I received a special "restricting" date stamp which shows the day I must leave the Philippines (US nationals are allowed to stay only for 21 days). In the past, they used to write in "21 days," but now they actually stamp the date, which I think is awesome!