Finding the Unexpected on a Postcard - Printable Version

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Finding the Unexpected on a Postcard - Janet MacD - 17-08-2025

A fifty-cent purchase provided many hours of entertainment and some lessons in history …

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This postcard has a tear across the centre, but to me it holds excellent value because it led me through the Google-verse to learn about: US Marines in China, Naval Hospitals in Japan, the Boxer Rebellion, and two natural disasters.

It was the illustration that caught my attention first, and then the fact that it was postally used, unlike other Japanese cards in the dealer’s box. But what sealed the deal (pun intended) was the blue sticker, which reads “United States Naval Hospital Yokohama”.


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Dated January 26, 1906, and postmarked the following day, it was sent to a woman named Edna Idle in San Francisco from a man named Ted, who noted that he was leaving for Shanghai in the afternoon.

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By the time the card arrived, Edna had moved. The card was forwarded to a hotel and then to another address, all in the Nob Hill district. The San Francisco earthquake occurred on April 18, 1906. I don’t know if the card reached Edna before the earthquake. Nob Hill suffered devastating damage from the earthquake and the fires that followed.

The naval hospital in Yokohama was built in 1872. It was still a busy facility at the time this card was sent, but it was no longer the preeminent naval hospital. Operations were winding down and by 1906 many cases were convalescents.

Edna Adle survived the San Francisco earthquake. She married, had a daughter named Jean, and died in 1951. She is buried in Washington State.

The naval hospital collapsed in an earthquake on September 1, 1923. Like the San Francisco earthquake, the Yokohama earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 and was followed by devastating fires.

I doubt I will ever know what happened to Ted.

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