Story and photos by Lawrence I. Charters
Seahawk, August 3, 1984, p. 5.
Early one morning, a barely awake dining hall patron, newly arrived in Japan, searched about for something to read. Nothing was in sight but a milk carton. Prominently displayed across the side were the words “Filled Milk.” Filled milk? What is “filled milk?”
So began an exciting journey that ranged from the shores of Yokosuka’s Navy Base Commissary to the vast plains of Yokohama’s Kanagawa Shinmachi train station. At the edge of the station, where hundreds of rail cars (known to insiders as “rolling stock”) feed contentedly from the overhead electrical lines, is the Kanagawa Milk Plant.
The Army no longer uses this type of old-fashion equipment at the plant (Photo by Suzette Hendricks)
Owned by the U.S. Army Garrison, Honshu, Japan, the Kanagawa plant is the last of five milk plants which once served the needs of U.S servicemen in Japan. Milk is not as popular in Asia as it is in the U.S. or Europe, so there has never been a large native dairy industry. At the end of World War II, with Japan’s farm economy in shambles, what little milk there was could not even begin to meet the tremendous thirst of the American occupation troops.
The Kanagawa plant, used by the U.S. Army since 1947, was built by the government of Japan ten years earlier as a school for chemical laboratory technicians. Today, as a GOCO (Government Owned, Contractor Operated) facility, it is the sole source for milk and associated dairy products for all U.S. military facilities in mainland Japan.
Coconut oil is melted in this stainless steel tank pnor to being blended with skim milk.
Servrite International, based in New Preston, Connecticut, currently operates the plant, along with similar facilities in Turkey, Greece, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Robert Burroughs, general manager of the Kanagawa installation, makes sure the plant meets its contract obligations concerning type, quantity, and quality of products. Among other things, Burroughs also deals with such questions as: “What is filled milk?”
Saito Hideo fills half gallon cartons on the Pure-Pak machine.
“Filled milk is any milk which uses something other than butter fat.” Usually, in place of butter fat, filled milk uses a vegetable fat. “We use coconut oil – it’s stipulated in the contract.” To make filled milk, first you start with powdered skim milk, drawn from surplus government stocks in the U.S. The powdered milk is then mixed with 500 gallons of water in a spotless stainless steel tank, while a separate melting tank heats 50 pound cubes of coconut oil. Once in liquid form the oil is added to the milk, and the mixture is both homogenized and pasteurized by passing back and forth through heated piping.
Kuroiwa Tohru inspects every batch of every product in the plant’s laboratory.
Milk is then piped into 5000 gallon holding tanks, where it waits for packaging. Two automated packaging machines can unfold, heat seal, fill, and close cardboard milk cartons ranging in size from half a pint to half a gallon. The larger machine can fill, for example, 35 half gallon cartons per minute, while the smaller machine operates at 65 pint cartons per minute.
Ogawa Namiro stacks cartons of milk on the refrigerated loading dock.
Milk is also packaged in six gallon bulk containers for cafeterias and dining halls. In addition to regular white milk, the plant also produces chocolate milk, low fat milk, skim milk, and buttermilk. At present, 4,500 gallons of various types of milk are produced every day, using up 105,000 pounds of powdered milk every month.
More than milk is produced at the Milk Plant. Current daily production also includes 600 gallons of ice cream, 300 gallons of fruit drinks (ranging from orange drink to guava nectar juice), and 750 pounds of cottage cheese, yogurt, and other cultured products. Some items, such as egg nog, are considered “seasonal” products, and are not produced on a regular basis. Still, it is comforting to know that, if needed, daily ice cream production could be boosted to 2,800 gallons per day – enough to cope with virtually any “emergency.”
Kobayashi Tatsunao, superintendent of the Kanagawa Milk Plant, monitors the operation of the Vitaline machine, used for making “novelty” items. On a hot summer day, it is very difficult to maintain a proper degree of journalistic detachment as you watch thousands of orange flavored popsicles march down the conveyer belt in nice, neat rows. After the machine bags them, the popsicles are moved to the ice cream freezer, where the temperature is maintained at a constant 20 degrees below freezing.
Harold Toda, the Army’s Contracting Officer’s Representative for the plant, notes the Army is no longer a big consumer of the plant’s products. At present, the U.S. Navy uses 58 percent of the total production, the U.S. Air Force 32 percent, the U.S. Army just 7 percent, and “others” (such as the New Sanno Hotel) 3 percent. If you ever wanted to know “what is filled milk,” well, now you know. And if you are a city kid, and once suffered ridicule from country kids for thinking milk was manufactured in factories – well, it turns out you were right.
Article as it appeared in the Seahawk, reconstructed from several scans of a printed original.