TRUST a bombardier to get himself in a peculiar spot and make the best of it.
    While Lieutenant Orville W. Elmore was flying over Hitler-held Europe, cranking in the drift factors on his B-17 bombsight over the Ruhr Valley, Berlin, Cologne and the rest of the tough ones, it's a cinch he didn't think he'd become the champion Sumo wrestler of Hokkaido.
    Now stationed at Misawa Air Force Base on the north reaches of Honshu, Elmore plans to return to the States with his wife soon . . . and probably feels he's done just about everything. To prove it, way down deep in the curio-packed foot locker is an ornate, gold and straw woven belt. It is the championship belt of the Sumo wrestlers of Hokkaido.
    Elmore says the championship one that will never again change hands as far as he is concerned. In other words he intends to become a Sumo Gene Tuney. He is definitely going to retire on his laurels.
    It seems that when you decide to enter the ring with a Sumo wrestler you have to put thoughts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the back of your mind and forget about them . . . and be plenty lucky to boot.
    Sumo wrestlers - and that's pronounced smoe, aren't like the rest of the Japanese people. They're a rather mysterious branch of the Ainu people who live on Hokkaido; still Japanese, but like none you ever saw before. With features more Mongolian than Japanese, the families every once in awhile become parents of massive "men children" who turn out to be head and shoulders taller than their normal-sized parents. These young giants have no choices in the matter, they're definitely going to become Sumo wrestlers, and are trained from early youth for the job.
    Geneticists don't do a very good job of explaining these "throwbacks." The best, and quite a probable reason, concerns Mongolian invaders who were eventually assimilated in the population of normal Japanese people. Now only an occasional giant lumbers on the scene from the lost generation.
    To get back to Lieutenant Elmore and his championship belt, it seems that the Air Force is pretty fortunate to still have the service of one of its 'bombardiers ... in unmaimed condition. Elmore decided to take one last - vacation on Hokkaido a few weeks ago and in company with several
of his friends left for the north Japanese island as oblivious of Sumo as the rest of us are to the where abouts of Al Capp's Lower Slobovians.
    Near the coastal town of Hakadate they stopped, to watch an exhibition wrestling match being staged before a large and enthusiastic crowd of Japanese school children. A magnificently built, king-sized individual and a smaller ju-jitsu expert maneuvered inside a ten-foot circle, size and agility matching each other. Elmore was invited into the ring, Americans automatically being given every courtesy in this section, where they are rarely seen.
    Undoubtedly most of the rest of us would have said, "so sorry, please," but not Elmore. He'd stepped into the ring quite often with a friend, who later became his brother-in-law, Marvin S. Stone, at the University of Wisconsin. Stone was at that time Big Ten Champion, 147-160 pound wrestling class.
    According to his friends, and very probably to Elmore, it looked like a mistake. Chinoyama, which means something very close to "Man Mountain" in Japanese, his opponent, towered over him with a height of six feet five inches. The Air Force "pickle dropper" managed a very modest five-feet-ten. His wiry 167 pounds didn't look too impressive alongside the Man Mountain's 295, either.
    Rules of the Sumo wrestlers are quite simple; when a wrestler is forced from the ten-foot circle or when a part of his body other than his feet touch the ground, he's had it .... and against a guy like Chinoyama that's a mighty good expression.
    At first it didn't look like Elmore would last very long. Once when the Sumo-trained husky got a good hold it looked like an early finish. After nearly ten minutes Elmore managed, an escape-proof wristlock. For several minutes the two strained, neither giving way. In a sudden lunge the bigger man was thrown to one knee and the bout was over.
    By this time half the town was around the ring, cheering the American's win in the international language of good sportsmanship. When disbelief faded from the young giant's face he caught Elmore up, holding him above his head. "Then," said the ambitious bombardier, "I really worried."
    Not satisfied with his recently won laurels, and possibly feeling that nothing could beat him if the young Man Mountain couldn't, Elmore engaged in another peculiar Japanese form of wrestling called table wrestling. The trick of this contest is to clasp hands with an opponent above a table and when one hand is forced to the table top the other man wins.
    It was his afternoon, certainly, as he won this one, two out of three times. His opponent was a member of a traveling exhibition team, and while fifty years old was the acknowledged champion of central Hokkaido, where he is mayor of the town of Aibetsu.
    Elmore, whom we started to respect just a little bit more by this point in his narrative, had the gaudy ankle-length ceremonial belt to prove it. He was awarded the ornate sash, along with a gold Sumo shirt in an evening ceremony with all the delighted natives of the area cheering the affair.
    Confidentially, Elmore will tell you he feels pretty lucky about the whole thing . . . but don't let a man from Texas, and particularly a bombardier, fool you . . . he's no schmoe.