Always WW II at tiny Japanese bar

I walked deep into the Nakasu pleasure district of Fukuoka, Japan, looking for a legend. Painted ladies were strolling off to the private clubs -- six to a building, building after building. Suited touts whispered "special massage inside" as I pressed on with a piece of paper in my hand for 3-3-4 Nakasu. After going around the block twice and being misdirected by a policeman, I stopped in a music store hoping for help.

A 30-ish clerk was sitting behind the counter.

"Bushido bar," I said, using the word for the Japanese warrior code. He screwed his face up with a slight frown.

"Anchor," I said.

"Ah, anchor," he echoed, and came from behind the counter.

He walked me to the doorway and pointed at a small sign high on a building across the street. There was a Japanese rising sun, the symbol of the battle flag.

I had found the infamous Anchor Bar, the place where I had heard that Japan's fight in World War II is celebrated in drink and song.

"A beer," I said with a smile.

"Hai," he replied, Japanese for yes.

An American tries to blend in

A bell clanged, one of the bartenders shouted through a bullhorn and the next customer began singing along to the martial tune in the bar's songbooks. I received a copy, along with some salty bar munchies, a warm towel to wipe my face and hands, a small salad of pasta in mayonnaise-like sauce and a big Sapporo beer served with a napkin bearing the silhouette of the great World War II battleship Yamato.

The woman poured the glass. I slugged it down. She poured again. I eyed a picture of a turn-of-an-early-20th-century battleship. "Tsushima?" I said, naming the great Japanese victory over the Russians in 1905.

In Japanese, Baka means "idiot." Oops.

I tried another word, "Chiran," the name of the famous kamikaze base in Kyushu, south of Fukuoka. I was trying, and showing a little knowledge of my environment seemed to put everyone a little more at ease.

As the songs continued, I got up and wandered around the tiny bar. There were uniform coats of the imperial army and navy, which singers could put on for the karaoke. A few U.S. uniforms, too. On the walls were pictures of generals and admirals, battleships and airplanes. The Zero. The Kate. A rare Japanese version of the German ME-163 rocket jet.

Old Rising Sun flags hung on the walls. One of the bartenders came over and opened the songbook to a picture of a tall American standing next to Emperor Hirohito.

"MacArthur," the man said.

A different view of history

Little seemed sinister here. Just unsettling. I could never imagine a place in Germany where people openly met each night to put on Waffen SS uniforms and sing the "Horst Wessel Lied" under photos of Adolf Hitler.

But this was a bar, not a museum. The customers didn't want depictions of the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March staring down from the wall while they slurped their lagers. Here, all was honor and sacrifice. The emperor. The flag. The sword. Misty-eyed songs about the sacrifice of the kamikazes, whose name means "divine wind" in Japan.

I have little fear that the Anchor Bar will become trendy, a rallying point for a new generation of militarists. The bartenders were mostly elderly or middle-age, the buttons straining on their uniforms. The sparse group of patrons, all men in their 40s and 50s, were forgoing the traditional businessman's evening with girls with too much makeup and hair extensions to come to a tiny bar to get drunk and sing war songs from more than a half century ago.

I finished my beer. The bartender did a rolling motion with his finger -- meaning "another?" I shook my head and made a cross with my index fingers, the sign for "bring me the bill." The woman in the imperial navy outfit jotted it down: 3.000 yen. About 30 bucks. Steep for a beer. But there was a little time travel thrown in.