An American GI On Okinawa In 1970-71

I Was Trained to Be A US Army Photographer

2010-06-01T23:21:00.002-05:00

My first day at the US Army Photographic Laboratory Technician School in Ft. Monmouth New Jersey. Our first class assignment was for us brand new, and very happy, students to pair off and take a photo of each other. That's a 4 x 5 Graflex Speed Graphics large format camera, and at my feet is the rest of the issued gear plus the tripod was mine to use for the next FIFTEEN -- FRIGGIN-AYE-ALRIGHT -- WEEKS. Every soldier has their complaints, but mine 'ur all about basic training and then after I graduated Photo Lab Tech School and was sent to Okinawa, because I loved every minute of photography school. The instructors were outstanding, the schedule was serious but easy enough for me to handle, the barracks were totally livable in, and my barracks mates and buddies from other barracks were some kinda' Rock 'n Rolling great guys to be around. Our barracks theme song was "Let It Bleed" by the Rollings Stones. And I'm an old, original Rolling Stones fan from the early 1960s. For me, Ft. Monmouth was all good.

When I was in army basic training, we recruits weren’t allowed to have any radios or record players in our barracks at all; but I did smuggle in one of those little 9-volt transistor radios about half way through my basic training. After basic training, when I was attending U.S. Army Photo Lab Tech School, I had one of only two little radios that were available to be listened to by us photography students who resided on the second floor, twenty-man squad bay of the barracks which I lived in. The one record player we had was a small, white, plastic, General Electric music machine with a turntable and tiny, weak amplifier manufactured into an about 18 x 18 x 7 inch carrying case along with one, cheap, 2 x 3 inch oval speaker built into it. That minimal machine was owned by a Jerry Lewis type character named Bill Dickout (swear to it, that was the guy’s name, and he was a Sad Sack type clown with a high degree of natural intelligence and great taste in music).

Bill and several of our barracks mates bought record albums for us to listen to while we worked to complete our photo course homework, polished our boots and brass, did our barracks cleaning chores, swapped wild stories and true facts about our lives back home, matched wits in all kinds of manly but not too overly aggressive ways (no fist fights broke out), and trepidatiously waited to see if we were gonna’ be sent to Vietnam. I didn’t bring any of my records to that barracks for us to listen to, because I always took real good care of my records, and them guys didn’t care so much as me about not getting scratches and greasy finger smears on theirs, so they weren’t getting their paws on mine. Fortunately for me, we all had a lot of the same albums in our personal record collections, so the ones we listened to in the barracks were my kind of music. Our squad bay ‘theme song’ was Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones; we’d sing along to it with loud abandon ‘cause it sure enough helped relieve some of them possibly Vietnam bound blues.

We heard some great music for the first time up on the second floor of that barracks: including James Taylor’s first album, and side one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s first album—Two Virgins. That is the album with John and Yoko posing frontally nude on the front and a rear nude shot of their raggedy asses on the back. Side two of that album is mostly Yoko (Oh, no!) wailing and screaming high pitched vocalizations of her infamous, artistic personality. Ya’ gotta’ take the good with the bad though, and one time we all had to hear side two of Two Virgins completely through. Bill Dickout wanted to listen to the whole album at least once, and when some one of us ripped the record off the turntable after we had heard about sixty-six seconds of that awful, assaulting noise on side two, Bill went into a rage, grabbed a hold of his record player, raised it up over his head and threatened to smash it to bits if we didn’t let him play side two all the way through just one time; unfortunately, we were such low paid soldiers that none of us could afford the twenty-five bucks to buy another record player like Bill’s; nor could we afford to go to the enlisted man’s club and have a few beers for a while, because it was too far past payday at that time; and, it was too cold outside to go sit out there and study our homework or just hangout together for awhile; so we had to bitch and bear it—twenty some freakin’ minutes of Yoko’s vocal, artistic assault on our senses, or Bill was definitely going to smash that record player to bits, which was treasured by all. That’s how much our music meant to us average GIs in 1970.

That's Specialist Fourth Class Crews there - yours truly - at the left side of this shot heading into position to photograph an approaching parade of 30th Artillery Brigade missilemen and all the other guys - every cook, clerk, and driver, etc. - who were my comrades-in-arms. The soldiers you see in the photo are the 30th Arty Bgde officers and their families. It was part of an all day change of command ceremony for our brigade commander. And I worked hard at photographing it all day then spent the the evening, till after 11 PM, developing film and custom, hand printing 90 4 x 5 photos of the event that were given out to all of the officers there.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

Leroy Takes Charge

2007-04-24T17:44:00.003-05:00

This blog post and the other three

below it on this page

are actually four parts of one continuous story

that is read from here to the bottom of the page.

One day on Okinawa in 1970, I was over in the 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters office building's little snack bar sitting on a stool at the little snack bar lunch counter there while eating a two-bit fried bologna sandwich and sipping on a nice cold, Grape Nehi soda.

The snack bar was run by an Okinawan husband and wife who were very friendly and great jokesters; they had outstanding Americanized Okinawan comic timing and were easy to get along with. I always enjoyed my times with them.

There was this African American U.S. Army captain in there that day, Capt. Sawyer, whom I had never seen nor heard of before. He was sitting over at a table and talking to a buddy of mine, Sp.4 Marion. Marion was a clerk somewhere in the 30th Arty Bgde Headquarters.

Marion was asking the captain about what could be done in retaliation if Marion’s suspicions that his wife had a live-in lover, back home in America, were true. For some reason, Marion had been reading strange things between the lines of his wife’s letters to him that made him believe that the monthly, Army dependent checks, which the Army was sending to his wife and their two kids, were not only supporting her and the kids but also a new man in her life. Marion was a pleasant, sober thinking and acting married guy, but he had some bad things to think about that day, which would cause most people to contemplate doing the wrong thing.

Sp.4 Marion said to Capt. Sawyer, “Can I cut the checks off?”

Capt., “No you can’t do that, it’s illegal. There are rules that keep the paymaster from doing that without a lot of the right paper work going through, and that could only happen if you and your wife got a divorce. But, then you would probably have to pay her alimony and child support.”

Sp.4, “I can take care of stopping those checks without getting a divorce; between what I can do at my desk, and who I know at other desks, I can get it done.”

Capt., “Aha! Then I can get you for bloobidy blabidy (I wasn’t listening to every word they were saying or hearing it all clearly, because of my usual comic interactions with the husband and wife snack bar hosts).”

Sp.4, “But what if I blimpity blampity, and then that will get her good.”

Capt., “Ahh. Well then I’ll get you for shippity shmapitty.”

Sp.4, loudly, “Well what if I go home on leave, when they don’t know I’m comin’, catch him there in my house with my wife and kids, and beat the livin’ daylights outa him.”

Capt., sneeringly, delightedly, “Yeah! Then I can get you for all kinds of charges and put you in the stockade to do hard time.”

My attention had fully peaked by then, and I heard every word of those last two statements clearly.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Capt. Sawyer was relishing the thoughts of punishing Sp.4 Marion for doing something that he had not done yet, probably couldn’t get the nerve up to ever even attempt to do and so most likely wasn’t ever going to do.

Them two soldiers went on with their conversation a bit longer, until, all totaled, I had heard Capt. Sawyer say the words, “Then I’ll get you for,” or “Then I can get you for,” at least eight times.

In my time in the Army, I had witnessed too many men getting Dear John letters and other bad news from home.

There’s an old dogface soldier saying:

“What’s the best thing that can happen to a soldier?

Answer= “Getting mail.”

“What’s the worst thing that can happen to a soldier?”

Answer= “Reading it.”

Usually, when a guy is in my buddy Sp4 Marion’s position, some other one, or several, of us soldiers, who know him best, helps him to work it out somehow. We talk with him, we walk with him, we sit with him, we stay with him till we’re sure that we have done all that we can to ease his troubles.

On several occasions previous to that, I had overheard Jilted Johns being warned not to do something stupid, which they had just told one of their higher ranking comrades that they were contemplating doing. But, up until that day, the higher ranking soldier had always given his lower ranking comrade that warning not to do something stupid in a tone of voice, and with obvious body language, that indicated that it would cause him personal pain to have to levy the required punishment on his lower ranking comrade.

Capt. Sawyer was the first and only GDSOB who I ever knew to relish the thought of getting to punish a lower ranking soldier for loosing his grip over his own personal family problems.

As I sat there sharing jokes and laughs with the snack bar hosts, I had been glancing over towards the heartless Capt. Sawyer, and I kept thinking,
“Who the fk, what the fk, where the hell did you come from?”

The next thing that Capt. Sawyer said to Sp4 Marion was, “When I take command of headquarters company in three days, things are going to change. I’m going to straighten that mess out over there. I’m going to clean the place up and change some poor attitudes, or they will suffer the consequences.”

Capt. Sawyer was talking about the barracks that Marion and I lived in.

I took a good, hard, cold, but slightly grinning, look over at Capt. Sawyer and projected the thought towards him, “You and me is gonna tangle. Real soon.”

The 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Company Barracks wasn’t any kind of a mess. I assure you that our attitudes were adequate for the given conditions.
Most of the guys who lived there in barracks worked in the main office building, which was catty corner across the street from the barracks. They were friggin’ easy goin’ 9 to 5 clerks for kryste’s sake, not a bunch of hard charging infantry guys who had too much steam to blow off after training hard all day playing dangerous war games.

We kept the place as clean and as orderly as it was supposed to be.

Most guy’s personal hygiene was fine. Those men who’s personal habits began to stink were told so, and they were threatened with retaliation, in a reasonable manner, by the barracks mates who had to live near them.

And there was only one drunken fist fight in the barracks, during the whole time that I was there.

Nobody got too noisy in the barracks, especially when others had to sleep.
Conversations were always cordial, and often comical, in the chow hall. The day room was always clean, comfortable and relaxing.

I rarely ever heard of any nasty arguments amongst my barracks mates, and only one came close to physical violence, when Andy couldn't take anymore of his roommate J. T.’s twisted tormenting.

Andy was a self controlled, sensible man who was a dedicated karate student. And Okinawa was the best place in the world to be a karate student.

J.T. was a part time stereo salesman up at the Main PX, and he looked, dressed and acted the part. He gave me great advice and good deals on stereo components.

They both worked together in the company commander’s office.

J.T. could get under anybody’s skin, if they spent enough time with him. I learned quick not to invite him to drink alcohol with us, because, when he got drunk, he could really screw up a good time. He got way too drunk way too fast. I still have a set of color slides of him getting drunk and demented at a typhoon party.

When Andy had finally had his fill of J. T.’s jabbering jaw one day, he still had just enough self control left to keep him from hitting his fellow soldier, but he had to hit something, so he smashed his hand against a cinder block wall and broke his damn hand in several places.

Us guys who lived in the 30th Arty Bdge Headquarters barracks were well mannered army men. I had no idea where that new captain got his dipshit ideas, that we needed to be reigned in and retrained.

When Capt. Sawyer took over command, he immediately began to push everybody around.

His first big clean up the barracks and straighten out the bad attitudes technique was to make us scrub down the squad bays and rearrange the furniture in them.

When Capt. Sawyer took over at the 30th Arty Bge HHB, in our twenty man squad bays, we had double stacked, bunk beds set up with make shift room dividers placed between each pair of bunks. The dividers were made of wall and foot lockers. From left to right, first there was a side by side pair of wall lockers, then a pair of side by side foot lockers on two wooden stands, then another pair of side by side wall lockers.

We had the double bunks arranged across from each other in an alternating pattern that gave us the most possible privacy. It was the best pattern that anyone could come up with for any privacy at all.

On the evening of Capt. Sawyer’s first day in charge of the barracks, while the bays were being scrubbed down and the furniture was being rearranged, I happened to be CQ Runner that night.

The CQ Runner and CQ (Company Quarterly) are two guys from the unit who stay up all night, in the day room, to be there to answer the phone and/or rouse the troops in case a war breaks out or some other emergency like a fire in the barracks arises. CQ duty times were 5 PM to 9 AM on weeknights. The CQ had to stay in the day room, and the runner could only leave on official business. They both had the next day off work.

It was unusually quiet in the day room that evening, because all of the other guys, who lived in the barracks, were upstairs doing the captain’s bidding by cleaning every nook and cranny up there while totally rearranging the furniture. The CQ and I didn’t know all that yet though. We only thought that there was a big cleanup going on; we did not know about the furniture being moved around, till the next morning.

I already knew that Capt. Sawyer was the kind of SOB to make them guys do more work than was necessary for the given tasks, and I informed the CQ of that fact. Consequently, when no one came down to the day room, all evening, to watch TV, play pool or anything, we thought that they were just cleaning the place up for longer than usual.

While we were doing the first part of the CQ shift, just before 11 PM bed time, we had a couple of guys drop in from upstairs with weird looks about them. They were hot, sweaty, dusty and tired, which was normal for the kind of work they were doing, but they had weird, flustered, pissed off looks on their faces and in the way that they walked and moved. And they weren’t talking at all. Everyone else in the barracks were either already cleaned up and in bed or still taking their turns at showering and shaving.

The guys who came into the day room were all obviously having a severe, weird reaction to something. It turned out to be Capt. Sawyer’s new Feng Shui (pronounced Fung Shway), that he had instituted up in the squad bays. Those poor, tired, quiet furniture rearranges could only sit down and stare at the day room TV for just a bit.

Oh, in case ya don’t know what Feng Shui is: it’s an ancient Far Eastern system of arranging a positive home or an environment. Unfortunately, Capt. Sawyer was a thoroughly negative individual.

Our barracks mates’ weird ways caused the CQ and I to look at each other with puzzled questions on our faces, then to inquire of them as to what they had been up to up there. They only shook their heads a little and muttered mumbled words that amounted to, “You won’t believe it.”

When I went up to go to bed in the morning, I couldn’t believe it.

Most of what little privacy that we had managed to secure before, with the old furniture placement pattern, was kaput. The place looked crowded and cramped.
It was dismal.

Capt. Sawyer must have gotten the idea on how to rearrange things from a scene in an old 1940s war movie, when the future war veterans were still recruits in basic training.

Brand new Company Commander Captain Leroy Sawyer had made all of the squad bay residents take all of the wall lockers and line them up back to back, side by side in a long row down the center of the large room.

Then they had to take the top bunks down and put all of the bunks side by side, about three feet apart, perpendicular to and between the outside walls and the wall lockers, all the way down the room. The foot lockers on stands were placed at the foot of every owner’s bed. There was one long row of bunks on each side of the wall lockers, with the head of each bed placed about two and a half feet from the wall lockers.

Sure, we only had half of the beds on each side of the wall lockers, but all but the guys on the end bunks had one pair of someone else’s snoring nostrils to agitate each of their ears as they slept.

All of that previous meager privacy, that we had had, was greatly diminished. Gone were most aspects of privacy for everyday things like dressing, writing emotional letters home, quietly reading a book, just sleeping—people don’t like to be looked at by others when they’re sleeping.

The rearranged furniture definitely wasn’t placed according to the usual arrangement of a 1970 era US Army fully trained soldiers’ barracks, which afforded barracks mates as much privacy from each other and comfort with each other as possible. It made my stomach wretch and my face turn away in disgust, when I walked into the bay and saw what Leroy had done.

That was a miserable morning. There was nothing that I could do but crash out in my public area bunk.

About noon time, I was awoken by a commotion. I looked around and realized that two non-Vietnam Veteran, lifer, sergeant, clerks were re-rearranging the squad bay Feng Shui again. One was an E6 and the other was an E7. They were both married men and had homes off post. So this was interesting to see them taking care of something that normally was not their problem. It didn’t take but a few moments to find out why.

E6, “What the hell happened?”

E7, “Aw, they went to the Inspector General, the Chaplain, The Mole Hole guys went to their section chief, one who works in Colonel Hergert’s office complained directly to him, somebody called their congressman, all totaled at least a dozen of them made formal complaints to five different higher ups. Now we gotta do this.”

Them two lifers were at it all alone for the rest of the afternoon. They put every thing back the way that it had been up till the day before. Our most possible privacy was once again restored to what it had been.

Eventually, I had to get up and go take a walk. I sure as heck weren’t gonna pitch in and help, like I woulda done if I had held just a smidgen of respect for them two individuals.

The next day, a bunch of 4×8 sheets of ½ inch plywood were delivered to each bay. The two unhappy lifers came back with an electric drill, some screws, and attached one sheet of plywood to the back, inside edges of each of the two inside, side by side, wall lockers, that again had the two foot lockers on wooden stands placed between them. That added a nice bite more privacy.

Shoot, it got even better later on. An Army directive came down from way up above us, and it declared that from then on all Army barracks living quarters, at least on Okinawa, were to be set up and decorated pretty much like the residents living in them wanted to do (see http://okinawa1970-71.blogspot.com/2007/04/rockin-on-rock-okinawa.html ).

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

Penciled In Changes

2007-04-24T17:22:00.002-05:00

During that first encounter of mine with Captain Leroy Sawyer, up in the snack bar, I had realized that he and I were going to tangle soon after that. He had come to the 30th Arty Bdge looking for trouble, and I was it. He was a heartless, arrogant, dumb GDSOB, and I wasn’t in the frame of mind for suffering quietly through juvenile jackass attempts at bullying myself and my comrades at arms.

It only took a week and a half till Leroy and I tangled. It was a good one.

I was scheduled to do CQ Runner Duty on a Sunday. That meant that my duty times were from 12 PM Sunday afternoon to 9 AM on Monday morning. That gave me Monday off work. It was a long stretch of added duty, but almost everyone got it sooner or later.

Saturday CQ Runner Duty had the worst deal. Duty times were 5 PM Friday evening till 12 PM Saturday afternoon. Then there was no time off, because the CQ and CQ Runner had plenty of time to get a good night’s sleep before Monday morning.

On the day before my CQ Runner duty was scheduled to take place, I didn't roll out of my bunk in the barracks till around 11:40 AM.

Ever since I was in high school, I usually showered and shaved when I woke up, because my hair has lots of body, and it looks goofy thanks to ‘bed head’ when I wake up. It is always out of style and hard to manage in the morning. I wash my hair every time that I shower, so that the water puts my hair back into the style that I like it in.

On that fateful Saturday morning, at almost noontime, in the 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Battery barracks, I decide to eat lunch down in the mess hall, then do my morning shower, shave, and brush my teeth routine. I don’t remember if I was hung over from the night before, but I was feeling low in the saddle. I put civilian clothes on and went into the latrine, peed, and washed my hands and face.

I looked hard at myself in the mirror and thought that I looked awful, with my morning beard hair stubble growing and my sagging soul clearly visible in my cloudy eyes. It was not a happy to still be alive type of start to my day. (You will have to read The Illegality and Immorality blog entry to see why I felt do low.)

I walked on out of the latrine and down to the first floor of the barracks where the mess hall was. Then I moseyed on over to the first floor bulletin board, where the CQ Duty Roster was posted. We were all required to check the duty rosters posted there every other day. I had checked it earlier on the Friday morning the day before that Saturday, and I saw that I still had Sunday CQ Runner Duty. There was a duty driver roster on that board, but I never had a military driver’s license, on purpose, so that did not affect me. And there were also one or two other duty rosters on there that did not pertain to me.

The duty rosters were changed every Wednesday, that was when I saw my Sunday CQ Runner posting. I had checked it again on Friday morning after breakfast. Army Rules and Regulations required that we only had to check it every other day, but I felt like looking at it on Saturday morning anyway, just to double check. I was hoping that I had been moved up to a weekday, when the duty times are 5 PM to 9 AM, and then we got the next day off.

Instead, I had been mysteriously moved back to that Saturday.

My name on the roster had been scratched out with a pencil, the name of the soldier who was originally scheduled for Saturday was scratched out with a pencil, and our names had been switched and rewritten in pencil.

Holly O’ Jeezus!

The first thing that a CQ Runner had to do on a Saturday was to take head count at 12 noon lunch. He had to stand at a podium in the entrance to the mess hall and take head count. Guys who lived in the barracks had meal cards, and they had to sign the head count sheet, put their meal card number down and show the head counter the meal card. Married men who lived off post got extra pay for meals at home, so they had to sign in and pay for their meal.

I looked down at my civilian clothes, rubbed the palm of my hand across my beard stubble and realized that I had less than fifteen minutes to get back upstairs, shower, shave, scrub my teeth and gums and run back down to the mess hall. I don’t know that I could not have done that, but I sure as hell was in no mood to do it.

When a CQ Runner was late, the CQ took head count. When they were both late, a cook took head count. I figured jeeze o’ wiz, I’ll let the CQ do headcount, take a shower, by One O’clock, and come back down and finish the twelve hour duty shift.

I knew at the exact moment that I saw the penciled in changes that those penciled in changes weren’t right, well I knew at the time that they weren’t fair.

I will tell you this now, instead of at the end of this part of my 30th Arty story, because of what happened that was too late to help me on that Saturday morning. I found out many months later, from a close friend, just before I received my Army discharge, that changing the names like that was 100% illegal. The company clerks were required by Army Rules and Regulations to retype any changed duty rosters, and replace them on all of the company’s bulletin boards with the new rosters at least three full days prior to any changes on said rosters. Either a Major or a Warrant Officer, in our brigade, told this to a friend of mine, just before I was discharged. The officer was a section leader in The Mole Hole, and my friend worked there for him.

The officer was a hard working, no nonsense technician. He didn’t play any Army games; he did his important job right and expected the same from his men. According to my friend, the officer didn’t like the way that my total screw over by the 30th had gone down. He knew that the photo lab was illegal, it was in his work area, but he couldn’t risk his career over it. He knew that the incident that I am now in the middle of telling about was wrong too. But it really wasn’t his place to do anything about it; he told my friend that the officers in my section should have done something about it. The officer sent this message to me through my friend in order to help me deal with what had become a miserable situation at the end of my time on Okinawa.

I believe that I do remember his name and rank now, but the memory of that tiny bit of support that he gave me, when I desperately needed it most, keeps me from revealing his name to you. He may still be alive, and he don’t owe me a thing.

After seeing the penciled in name changes on that CQ Duty Roster, I shuffled on back upstairs with the heavy weight of some kind of bullshit bearing down upon my shoulders. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it sure did stink.

I went into two friend’s on mine’s double room on the third floor and told them about the penciled in changes, and that I was going to go back down to do my CQ Runner Duty after I showered and shaved and put my army fatigues on. But I was in no mood to have anyone come hassling me in the latrine, when the CQ sent guys looking for me, so I decided to wait at least a half-hour before getting ready for duty. One friend put a record on his turntable, so that I could listen to it while those two went down to eat, but they stayed there with me for awhile anyway.

All of a sudden, we heard doors being banged on loudly, down the hall, by two barracks mates and voices hollering forcefully, “Is Crews in there! Is Crews in there!”

One barracks mate was my buddy Sp4 Marion, and the other I didn’t know. Man, I couldn’t figure Marion to act so shook up on account of the CQ wanting to know where I was; the CQ was only an E5 Sergeant or Spec. 5. Marion should have just come to me on the Sergeant’s behalf, and I would have explained the pencil in changes thing and all and Marion would have denied seeing me. The other guy, I would have told what it was that I was doing and why and that he could go on down and tell the Sergeant what ever he wanted to.

As the banging and hollering moved quickly in our direction, my friends frantically asked me what I wanted to do. I said I’ll tell them what I plan on doing and that they can go away and leave me alone.

My friends said, “Crews, they sound serious, let us hide you.”

I said, “Where man, where? There ain’t nowhere, I can’t fit in a wall locker. I’ll just tell ‘um to calm down and go away. They either know I’m that way or they can learn it real fast.”

My one good friend said, “Uh uh man, no, let me listen at the door. (He puts his ear against the door.) Holy shit man! I’m tellin’ ya, they sound all shook up, you can fit in his locker, look he’ll show ya, get the fuck in there.”

My other good friend helped me get into his locker. It was the smart thing to do, because as the two Crews hounds got closer, I could hear what my friend listening at the door meant, them two, who were coming our way fast, out in the hall were like a couple of hound dogs hot on a Bob Cat’s trail.

BANG, BANG, BANG, BOOM! Went the knock on the door.

One friend opened the door and said, “Hey man! Take it easy. What’s all the noise about?”

“Is Crews in there! Is Crews in there?”

My other friend said, “Whoah! Hey, slow down! You see Crews in here? Look around. You see Crews in here? He ain’t here. What the fuck’s all the noise about? How come you want ‘im so bad? What’d he do?”

“He has CQ Runner, and he didn’t show up for head count. Captain Sawyer was in his office for half a day, and he came into the mess hall and saw the line waiting for the head count guy to show up. He told us two to go look on the board and see who’s supposed to be on CQ Runner. He’s taken over head count himself. He’s standing there yelling all over the chow hall that he’s gonna have the stripes of the man who’s on CQ Runner.”

The two hound dogs ran on down through the squad bay howling my name all over the place, the door closed, and I was let out of the locker.

My friends were concerned for me. They looked far more worried than I felt. There faces were all drawn in tight around their mouths.

I was pissed. I knew that GDSOB Sawyer had set me up somehow. He was looking for a fight. A fight that an enlisted man could not win against an officer.

“Gahdamn man, what are you gonna do Crews?”

“I can’t go down there now. That gahdamned fuckin prick Sawyer will make me stand at attention while he tries to ream me out in front of everybody. I know what it is gonna be like. He’ll start yelling at me right up in my face right there at the head count podium. He’ll have the whole mess hall full of guys there watching him from behind me. He’ll make quick glances past me to check out the looks on everyone’s faces as he does it. He will be in his idea of heaven. It will be his finest military hour. That lousy son of a bitch. I won’t be able to take it. He ain’t no combat bad ass. He’s been fuckin’ with us since he got here; and everybody went over his head against ‘im when he rearranged the bunks in the squad bays, so he has it in for us all. He wants to prove somethin’ to the whole company that ain’t true. It won’t be with me. I won’t be able to take it. He sure as hell isn’t my idea of a fine, respectable leader of men. I will grab that fukin bastard by his throat, and bang his head against the wall. I won’t even know I did it till I already did. He’s bigger n’ me. But he won’t expect that. He ain’t no hand to hand combat bad ass. Does he look like a boxer to you? Don’t look like a boxer to me. He’s a lame ass nuthin. I won’t be able to hurt him too bad, before some of the guys pull me off of him. Definitely Andy will, he’s Sawyer’s clerk, he takes karate all the time, he’d have to jump in. He has to. He won’t hurt me, just stop me. I would if I was him. It’s his ass in a sling if he don’t. But I’ll be put in the stockade, sent to Ft. Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary and given a Bad Conduct Discharge. I can’t go home with that. Can’t get a good job. I’d be done for. Maybe never see my family again. That gahdamned fukin piece of shit ain’t worth it. I’ll go down after lunch and do the rest of CQ Runner. You two go on down and eat, then come back up and tell me when that asshole leaves. He ain’t getting’ away with tryin’ to make an example out of me. That penciled in crap just isn’t right. Something’s wrong about this. He set me up somehow, I know it.”

It was the break that Capt. Sawyer was looking for. He knew that it was unlikely that I would have had enough time to see that penciled in duty roster change, before I was supposed to be at headcount that day. His normal office hours were from 9AM to 5PM on weekdays only, he didn’t have to be in his office on that Saturday morning, but he was. His well stated number one goal in the 30th Arty Bgde was to always look for someone to get for something that they had done which was against Army Rules and Regulations. I knew that Capt. Sawyer was out to put on a show of power that day in front of a whole mess hall full of men, but, unfortunately, I did not know at the time that he was the only one who had broken any Army Rules and Regulations in that situation.

At one o’clock, I went down and did the rest of the CQ Runner shift.

The story that I got later, from company clerks, about the penciled in change was: the guy who originally had Saturday CQ Runner Duty and his family had been invited to a big, family style picnic. It was some official or just big important affair. Important to his wife anyway.

He was married and his wife and two kids were living on the island with him. She did not drive so he could not leave her the car to take the kids and go be with her best American girlfriends who were living on the island. Shoot, women need buddies to help them through too.

She had bitched at and bullied him about her and the kids missing the picnic, because he had CQ Runner Duty on Saturday. I heard that she was extremely nasty about it. For some reason she had to go to that picnic, or she was going to leave him and go back home to the states.

Dependent families had more than their share of depression and other similar problems on The Rock. Some people are not travelers and adventurers. They couldn’t get into the cool Asian Culture and make treasured friends amongst the Okinawans, like some military dependent women and kids did. Some people have to live close to where they grew up, and that’s all there is to it. I understand.

The Saturday guy had bitched and moaned, miserably, to the infamous Leroy and his unfortunate clerk, Andy. Then the penciled in changes were made.

All that married man had to of done would have been to ask me if I would swap duty days with him, to try and make a trade of something like a promise to switch a duty day with me later on. That’s how stuff like that was done by most guys. And like most guys, I would have asked the guy if he was crazy or something, at first.

But then, if he had told me about them kids stuck over there away from their grandparents and cousins and all, and then them not getting a chance to have fun at a rare, neat event like a picnic, I would have done it for them alone.

I would have understood his dilemma with his wife, but hey, he was tappin’ her tush, not me. Ah, OK, I wouda’ made the trade, but my price woulda’ been steeper if it was just for her sake. Say, maybe, that promise of a future duty day switch, plus a free ride in his car to the PX and back on the next payday.

He could have told me he wanted to switch days. He could have bitched and moaned to me. It may have turned my stomach, but I would have understood his dilemma. I would have made the switch.

I knew what we men went through while dealing with our emotional problems there in the barracks, even though our friends were there to help us and sometimes our wild party ways definitely did let the good times roll. I would have made the switch, even for a woman who’s husband had said that she had been a nasty bitch about it. She deserved a break from going through some of the same things, and worse, that I was. It had to be difficult and lonely at times, for her type of a woman, being stuck at home most of the time in military housing with two little kids to raise.

I would have made the switch for that family.

Okinawa was Lifer’s Family’s Paradise, but many of the low ranking two year draftee, or three year enlisted men’s families, had a right to be miserable; they never wanted to travel the world in the military and to be taken to a strange land, where most of the American families out ranked them. In the society of military dependents, a soldier’s rank is his family’s rank. The lower the rank the less the living standards are.

The Saturday CQ Runner guy had most likely enlisted for three years, one year more than the draft’s requirement of two years, so that he could be guaranteed his choice of an overseas duty station, and he had chosen Okinawa, which meant that he would not be going to Vietnam.

When I was in basic training, several guys there serving with me had done that third year enlistment for a guaranteed overseas duty station deal. They all had tried for Germany, for the white women and the strong-dark beer, but there was a waiting list for Germany that went on for many months ahead of time no matter what state the guy had enlisted from. So they took what ever was left. The Army could only make a soldier do one overseas duty tour per three year enlistment. It was all about not going to Nam, baby, all about not going to Vietnam.

When I enlisted, I had thought about pulling the overseas guarantee trick myself. It would have been a four year deal for me though, because I was definitely in for some job training that would last me my lifetime, if I didn’t get killed in Nam. I was due to become a two year draftee in less then two weeks from the day I enlisted. My recruiter offered me an Army school of my choice for one extra year enlistment. Then he filled me in on the overseas guarantee and that his waiting list for Germany was full up for at least a year. I told my Army Recruiter that three years was enough, that I wasn’t sure whether the Vietnam War was right or wrong, that I’d take the gamble, because there was some action going on over there that I might like to check out, but it might get me killed, so I am not going to ask for it. My recruiter neither encouraged nor discouraged me from signing up to go to Vietnam.

On the Monday morning following the CQ Runner incident, I was told to report to Captain Leroy Sawyer’s office to receive my second Article 15. Leroy was in his putrid prime. He had finally gotten to get somebody for something.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

Leroy Reads

2007-04-24T17:13:00.003-05:00

On that Monday morning after the penciled in changes situation, waiting for me in the 30th Artillery Brigade's Headquarters Company Commander’s Office, sitting there behind his desk, was Capt. Sawyer in his swivel, halfway comfortable desk chair, with the First Sergeant stiffly standing at ease behind the captain, and also there was an E-3 private first class, a pfc, company clerk sitting there to my left looking all scarred and worried and sitting as deep down as possible into the pant-seat polished hard wooden planking of a 1950s era, plain, oak or maple, office waiting room type chair. The clerk was there as the one required witness.

I walked up to the front of the desk, saluted and said, “Sir Specialist Fourth Class Crews reporting as ordered, sir.”

Leroy returned the salute, and I dropped mine.

He told me, “At ease.” And I went into the required stance of legs spread shoulder width apart and hands placed together behind my lower back.

I was terse and tight all over. I showed neither respect nor outward disobedience for the purported authority in the room nor fear of punishment.

Then my legs started wiggling tensely; they wiggled sort of wildly at my knees, with my knees going forward and back to lock position like plucked strings on a stand up bass fiddle. It was a manifestation of unadulterated, deep, justified anger.

Just then, company clerk Andy came from my right, looked down and noticed my plucked-like-bass-strings knees, and stood in the doorway that led between his office and the commander’s. As I looked over my right shoulder at my friend Andy, he crossed his arms slowly up onto his chest and leaned, tensely, up against the door frame. That put karate guy Andy next to but slightly behind me, where he could stop me quick and easily, just in case I went after his boss with violent intent.

When I had looked over at Andy, his face betrayed that he was suffering from serious turmoil and seething anger down inside of him. He was pissed at the Captain for pulling that penciled in fast one on me, and he was pissed at me for letting the Captain get me.

Andy hated the Captain just like the whole company did. And Andy had to work right there in the SOB’s office every day. That had to be real bad.

I nodded slightly to my buddy Andy. He looked straight at me without changing his expression a sliver. Neither of us were in a position that we wanted to be in. We were both clearly, thoroughly pissed to have to be there, but with our own individual best interests in the forefronts of our own minds. He would do what he had to do; I wasn't planing to do anything to cause Andy any problems.

I had never seen a look like that on his face before. It was serious business to him. His military record was on the line. He timed that move into the doorway for effect. He wanted me to know that he was there because he had to be, but if it came down to him or me, he was fully intent on coming out on top.

We both knew that he would probably stop me from hurting Capt. Sawyer too bad, if I lost my grip completely and jumped over the desk at him. Also, we each knew that he would only as much force and inflict as much physical pain as was necessary to stop me. But only I knew for sure that I would never hold it against him if it had come to that.

I wouldn’t have trusted a justifiably angry buddy of mine, like I was as that day, either. A buddy might forget all about our friendship and go all out to hurt anyone who tried to stop him from whomping and stomping all over the captain.

When a soldier receives an Article 15, they must be read their rights. They have the right to accept their charges and punishment without question or to refuse the punishment and take it one step higher to a court marshal and fight the charges. That means a chance of dismissal of charges, or an increasingly more severe level of punishment.

The rights are read to the offending soldier by the commander, from an approximately six inch by ten inch card. The lettering is rather large and clearly printed. Leroy had a dickens of a time reading that card. It wasn’t because he needed reading glasses, he was dumb, period.

We all four other soldiers who were in Capt. Sawyer's office knew that he was dumb as dirt when it came to handling soldiers efficiently or fairly, but this scene with him reading me my rights was 'off the scale' for each of us. Our company commander couldn’t read any word that had more than five letters in it.

He would get to a part that goes: if you accept this punishment---and it would be, “If you assep--asss-a--eccc-assip.”

The first Sergeant had to look over his company commander’s shoulder and pronounce the word for him, then Captain Sawyer repeated it.

He went on and on with, “Thisss pun-pahnis-poon-poonis.”

The rights are about six sentences long. They are a whole, complete, well written paragraph.

Captain Leroy Sawyer couldn’t successfully read more than three words in a row without the First Sergeant leaning forward to see what the next word was and pronouncing the word for him, then the Captain repeated it to me.

First Sergeant was pissed, pissed, pissed, pissed! He turned slightly pale, then pink, next he was looking up and mouthing something to a merciless God while beginning to glow red from ear to ear; then his complexion went bluish; and by the end of his excruciating, God fearing ordeal, he was a purple faced fool. His lips were moving involuntarily in a slight trembling motion, but his thoughts were silent. He was nearly out of his mind with rage. He had to of wanted to throttle that idiot captain from behind and throw him out the window.

The quiet, frightened clerk sitting over in the plain wooden chair there to my left looked all scarred at first now looked so shocked to his bones that he ended up nearly sliding out of his chair from the downward pull of both his drooping jaw and his military moral. It was a hard lesson in military madness to him. I didn’t know the guy. I never did, he had a dull, empty personality that precluded him from having the kind of fun that most of us were into. I’m sure though, that he never thought that he would see anything like that morning in the Army. He had sat there fearing me having a violent reaction to my punishment and ended up seeing what the hell my growing reputation of openly rebelling was rebelling against. The last I remember of him was, he was all slumped down, hanged jawed in the chair staring stupefied somewhere off into the office air.

As Capt. Sawyer screwed up the verbal reading of my written rights, I perceived that Andy’s vibes were getting tighter and tighter, from where he stood next to me, while he tried to focus on what karate moves to start with if I exploded violently onto Capt. Sawyer. Any half decent martial artist thinks and plans out their available moves in a situation like that.

My buddy Andy sounded like a determined, self controlled torture victim being slowly squeezed in a giant vise. His tight breathing was barley audible but, to me standing so close to him, it was clearly escalating in intensity. The cloth of his uniform rustled lowly, as he slightly shifted position with every mispronounced word that came out of his boss’s mouth.

Of the five men in the company commander’s office that morning, my guess is that, only one of us didn’t feel gut sick for the rest of the day. The other one felt like he was God’s gift to the 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Battery. He wasn’t, but he was too dumb to know better.

Andy and I talked it all over after supper that evening.

First I must say, due to the fact that, at the time, I thought that the penciled in duty roster changes were perfectly legal, I never mentioned that to my friend Andy. What ever he may have known, about it being against Army Rules and Regulations, he had to keep to himself. In the world of the military, except in a combat situation, when it comes down to my butt or theirs going into a sling, I can’t hold it against someone for choosing themselves. Would you have wanted to rat out your commanding officer for making illegal changes to a duty roster, a self righteous jerk like Capt. Leroy Sawyer, then have to go work in his office next to him? I doubt it.

Anyway, I couldn’t figure out how such a poorly educated man could be awarded the rank of captain. During my short Army career previous to that day in Captain Leroy’s office there had been other Army officers who were mean, arrogant, self righteous, back stabbers who had turned my stomach, but at least they were able to read efficiently and had never screwed me over personally.

Andy informed me that Captain Sawyer had gotten were he was through affirmative action. I knew that Leroy Sawyer did not deserve that affirmative action promotion, but some other African American GIs did.

Andy’s statement made me think of several African American GIs whom I knew of who did deserve to be advanced in rank through affirmative action, because of their segregated lives growing up in the USA and the ongoing prejudices of the Euro American civilian and military power class made for an unfair disadvantage against them. I thought of several black guys stationed on Okinawa at the time whom I would be glad to have serve under if they had been commissioned as officers.

My old Ft. Dix basic training company’s first sergeant stood out foremost in my mind as a black man who deserved the benefits of affirmative action the most of all who I knew. He was an impressive soldier to us recruits in basic. His uniform was perfect every day, not Dandy Dan type perfect but military strack. That man could guide lower ranking men through their Army training difficulties or their personal problems better than any human being I have ever known. When he gathered us troops around him to talk to us, we listened with awe and respect. The man was kind, gentle, and generous with his respect for us. We loved him.

By the way, Leroy didn’t take all of my stripes, like he had sworn to do in the mess hall. The 30th Arty higher ups only allowed him to take one stripe, that lowered me to PFC, Private First Class. But that only bothered me on payday. Exposing Leroy’s complete incompetence might have been worth that loss of pay though, let me think about it; I’ll let you know after this story of mine gets around some on the World Wide Web, if somebody reads it to Leroy Sawyer, it was worth it.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

Leroy Inspects the Troops

2007-04-24T16:52:00.001-05:00

It only took me till about a week after receiving that Article 15 from Capt. Sawyer till I had my chance to partially get him back. It was during his first, formal command inspection of the barracks and the troops.

We had to clean every nook and cranny of the barracks real good for Capt. Leroy Sawyer’s first command inspection. We didn’t mind keeping clean, but everybody figured that that jerk Leroy was going to find something wrong no matter what.

While Leroy inspected the barracks, we all had to stand and wait in formation out back.

After Capt. Sawyer did his thing up in the barracks, he came down and stood in the front of the middle of the formation. As he did that the First Sergeant called us to attention.

Formation, for you civilians, is when the company of troops stands in four even rows at given intervals. Formal inspections meant wearing dress uniforms. Even though we all had to go back to work that day, and some of our jobs were messy and dirty which required us to wear work fatigues. My job sure could be messy, in the chemical filled environment of a photo lab.

I was in the third row back, over on the left side of the center of the formation, where the captain stood to signal the time to stand to attention and the beginning of the inspection, and maybe to address the troops, if he had anything to say. Standing inspections go from his left to right, from the front row, then back to the left on the second row and so on.

When a soldier is standing at attention they must not show any emotion. Cracking a smile or laughing is considered to be “breaking attention” and is a punishable offense. Unless the officer in charge tells a joke and expects you laugh.

As soon as Capt. Sawyer started in on his close inspection of each man in the front row, studiously looking over each man for any unshined brass or crooked lines in his clothing, stuff like that, low and behold, I hada’ fart try to escape my sphincter. It was one of them kinda’ bubbles of gas that felt like they were definitely all air, and easily controlled. I could have let it pass out slowly and silently, or I coulda’ let ‘er rip.

I weighed the facts.

It was not against 1970 era Army Rules and Regulations to pass gas, out one’s ass, like a bugler blowing reveille, during standing inspections. Sometime in the past, farting while standing at attention used to be punishable, but before that day in 1970 the Army had somehow been forced to accept farts as uncontrollable natural bodily functions.

But, I had the guys around me to consider. Not just that they had to stand there, while I went rude in their faces, and then they had to smell it, if it stunk (all right, mine stink), but if the solemn looks on their inspected faces broke into grins, giggles, smiles, smirks, or laughter it was their butts in a sling not mine. Capt. Sawyer would have torn into them worse than they deserved, so that they would maybe get real mad at me for causing their uncomfortable run in with the hated Cap’n Sawyer.

Lordy, Lordy. What ta’ do.

Leroy was a comin’ down the line up there on the front row. My butt was merrily bubblin’ inside. Leroy got closer and closer to the guy standing two rows up directly in front of me. My butt wanted to toot its troubles away. Leroy inspected each soldier on the front row faster and faster. I tightened up my gluteus maximus muscles like a nearly fartin' teenage boy sitting in a church pew in front the prettiest girl in the entire congregation. Leroy stopped at the man who was standing at attention directly up there on the other side of the guy in front of me, ahhh man, this is the chance of a lifetime, I gotta’ make it blast like a Moose lettin’ loose and that I did.

It was a loud, perfect, comedy movie style fart: baaraaraaraaruupp!

Fortunately, nobody broke being at attention.

Captain Leroy Sawyer had to go on about his inspection like nothing had happened.

Some of the guys grumbled about it to me a little right after we were dismissed from formation, but most of ‘um where right in tune with it. They only wished that Capt. Sawyer had been right behind me at the time, to receive the full blast of it. They were glad that I had the guts to pull it off and the backing of the Army Rules and Regulations to get away with it.

And a belated, “Excuse me,” to the poor fellow who was standing directly behind me when I passed gas.

Now, before you go too far in believing that I was just a disgruntled, lone wolf soldier who thought up a bunch of excuses to convince myself that I had a right to be disrespectful to all of the sound reasons why periodic military inspections are necessary for the health, safety, and general well being of the inspected troops, read this next tale of a military inspection that I was a part of. If you take into consideration what happened during the next inspection, you will see that just about the whole gahdamned 1970 era US Army must have had lackadaisical attitudes about inspections. Here is the link to that story:
http://okinawa1970-71.blogspot.com/2007/01/generals-laughing-wazoo.html

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

Rockin' On The Rock (Okinawa)

2007-04-16T20:01:00.003-05:00

Here is the ‘musical soundtrack’ to my
working manuscript about my time as
a U.S. Army Photographer during 1970-71.

In 1970-71, the majority of American military barracks on The Rock (GI jargon for Okinawa) had plenty of personally owned stereo music systems set up in them. Most of those stereos were the first high quality, separate component stereo systems that many of us GIs had ever listened to music on or had even seen for sale in a store. And, they only cost us about 40% of what we would have had to pay for them in the states at the time. Best of all, the other GIs usually played plenty of my kind of music on their stereos.

When I was growing up, in the 1950s + ‘60s, in a blue collar neighborhood, which was flanked by a steel mill on one side and an automobile assembly plant on the other, the very few people whom I ever knew of who had nice component stereos were Jazz or Classical Music aficionados with higher than average incomes. Most of the kids I grew up with, and I, only had little 9 volt battery powered transistor radios tuned into Top 40 Pop Music stations for our listening pleasure, until we received old hand me down, monaural (one small, lousy, built in speaker) record players, or we got a new one for a birthday or Christmas present that for us lucky few like me was an inexpensive stereo with two small, lousy speakers. In my 1960s teenage world, the best recorded music players that we had were them Magnavox brand, long, stylish and polished wooden furniture type, console stereos. They sounded fine at the time, but the audio quality of them big old things was no match for a good component system with its separate high quality amplifier-radio tuner, speakers, turntable, and maybe a reel-to-reel tape deck. These kids today have no idea how much better their little computer speakers and small, personal stereos sound compared to my teenage generation’s average home stereos.

When I was in army basic training, we recruits weren’t allowed to have any radios or record players in our barracks at all; but I did smuggle in one of those little 9-volt transistor radios about half way through my basic training. After basic training, when I was attending U.S. Army Photo Lab Tech School, I had one of only two little radios that were available to be listened to by us photography students who resided on the second floor, twenty-man squad bay of the barracks which I lived in. The one record player we had was a small, white, plastic, General Electric music machine with a turntable and tiny, weak amplifier manufactured into an about 18 x 18 x 7 inch carrying case along with one, cheap, 2 x 3 inch oval speaker built into it. That minimal machine was owned by a Jerry Lewis type character named Bill Dickout (swear to it, that was the guy’s name, and he was a Sad Sack type clown with a high degree of natural intelligence and great taste in music).

Bill and several of our barracks mates bought record albums for us to listen to while we worked to complete our photo course homework, polished our boots and brass, did our barracks cleaning chores, swapped wild stories and true facts about our lives back home, matched wits in all kinds of manly but not too overly aggressive ways (no fist fights broke out), and trepidatiously waited to see if we were gonna’ be sent to Vietnam. I didn’t bring any of my records to that barracks for us to listen to, because I always took real good care of my records, and them guys didn’t care so much as me about not getting scratches and greasy finger smears on theirs, so they weren’t getting their paws on mine. Fortunately for me, we all had a lot of the same albums in our personal record collections, so the ones we listened to in the barracks were my kind of music. Our squad bay ‘theme song’ was Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones; we’d sing along to it with loud abandon ‘cause it sure enough helped relieve some of them possibly Vietnam bound blues.

We heard some great music for the first time up on the second floor of that barracks: including James Taylor’s first album, and side one of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s first album—Two Virgins. That is the album with John and Yoko posing frontally nude on the front and a rear nude shot of their raggedy asses on the back. Side two of that album is mostly Yoko (Oh, no!) wailing and screaming high pitched vocalizations of her infamous, artistic personality. Ya’ gotta’ take the good with the bad though, and one time we all had to hear side two of Two Virgins completely through. Bill Dickout wanted to listen to the whole album at least once, and when some one of us ripped the record off the turntable after we had heard about sixty-six seconds of that awful, assaulting noise on side two, Bill went into a rage, grabbed a hold of his record player, raised it up over his head and threatened to smash it to bits if we didn’t let him play side two all the way through just one time; unfortunately, we were such low paid soldiers that none of us could afford the twenty-five bucks to buy another record player like Bill’s; nor could we afford to go to the enlisted man’s club and have a few beers for a while, because it was too far past payday at that time; and, it was too cold outside to go sit out there and study our homework or just hangout together for awhile; so we had to bitch and bear it—twenty some freakin’ minutes of Yoko’s vocal, artistic assault on our senses, or Bill was definitely going to smash that record player to bits, which was treasured by all. That’s how much our music meant to us average GIs in 1970.

You can now imagine how fantastic it was for me when, after graduating from Photo Lab Tech School, I arrived on Okinawa and discovered that there were high quality component stereo systems well placed in every barracks and their owners were often cranking out rockin’ sounds from them. They were rockin’ on The Rock.

On The Rock, the variety of recorded music that was available for listening pleasure was outa’ site. Some of us GIs had brought as many of our record albums as we could to The Rock, and the largest retail store on my U.S. Army base over there, the Main PX, not only sold record albums at the lowest prices that I had ever seen, there was an outstandingly large number and selection of them.

I had been collecting record albums since I was thirteen years old. I was one of the first kids in my high school to buy the first albums of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Country Joe and the Fish, Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, plus I had albums by The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Blues Project, Muddy Waters, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and I could keep on truckin’ with puttin’ names this list. When I flew to Okinawa in June 1970, I took about twenty-five of those albums with me, in a psychedelic art covered record carrying case.

But (Hallelujah!) them army buddies of mine on The Rock turned me on to all kindsa’ new music.

My good friend Bart, from San Francisco, had all of Quicksilver Messenger Service’s album covers displayed on his barracks room wall, because that was his favorite band. I had never heard of them till he turned me onto to ‘um. Bart had grown up living two blocks from the world famous 1960s hippie haven known as Haight-Ashbury. When he was a teenager, hundreds of other teenagers were running away from their homes all over America to go to “The Haight” to “Turn On-Tune In-and-Drop Out” but all Bart had to do was walk up the street from his family’s home to get there. Them other kids were infamous for bumming spare change off of strangers in order to be able to buy themselves some food to survive on. Bart said he knew it was a good thing for him that whenever he got hungry all he had to do was walk home and ask his mother what was in the fridge that he could snack on or what was for supper.

I was in Bart’s two man barracks room one day when one of our barracks buddies walked into the room and said, “Hey man, I really dig this cat from England named Elton John, have any of you guys ever heard this album of his, ever heard of him before?”

Bart, his roommate, and I replied, “No.”

Then Bart told him, “No, man, we ain’t ever heard of him yet, but you can put that record on the turntable when this Pink Floyd one is done playing. We’re gonna’ finish listening to Careful With That Ax Eugene first. Crews never heard it before.” Musical adventures like that happened to us quite often on The Rock.

There are two notable but rare albums I first heard on The Rock that are still amongst my favorites: First Step by The Faces, with Rod Stewart on vocals and Ron Wood on guitars, and one of the most finely crafted albums of that era–The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus by Spirit. Friends, buddies, and new acquaintances of mine over there often insisted that I sit down and listen to some record album that I had never had the pleasure of hearing before.

Some GIs had great selections of Rhythm and Blues albums to play for themselves and us buddies of theirs. They’d add to our musical mix the solid soul sounds of Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops, Areatha Franklin, Junior Walker and the All Stars, and the hardest workin’ man in show business—James Brown.

I love the fantastic 1960s-70s Top 40 songs that are still played on oldies radio stations today, but there are many other dynamite songs on those music artists’ albums that’re rarely ever heard by most people. On The Rock, and in army photo school, we were into what I have always been into, listening to whole record albums, not just the most popular songs on each album which were issued as 45 RPM singles and played over and over again on radio stations.

We GIs had some great Rock ‘n Roll and Rhythm ‘n Blues and Blues and a bit of Folk and some Jazz and a little Classical music listening times in our barracks on The Rock, during the time that I was stationed there in 1970-71.

We loved our music.

Life in our barracks even got a lot better when, sometime in late 1970 or early 1971, an official U.S. Army directive came down from somewhere way up above which stated that we lowly, low ranking GIs living in army barracks could redecorate our places of residence to suit ourselves (with some reasonable limitations of course). At least it was that way on The Rock. The stated spirit of the deal was, “Make ‘um up just like home, after all, they are your home away from home for now.”

Nice coffee tables were issued all around to every one who wanted one in every army barracks on The Rock, and, if I remember correctly, floor and/or table lamps too; portable, wooden, chest high, eight-foot wide office type room dividers were issued. I can’t remember all that they issued, but I do remember that I got one of everything that they did issue. I also got my hands on a comfortable, living room type, well cushioned, bamboo framed chair from somewhere. Can’t remember if the Army gave the chairs out, or I bought it off of somebody, but it was great to have it right next to my bunk were it would have been against Army Rules and Regulations prior to that directive making things more homey.

There were men living in double occupancy, semi-private barracks rooms, and they were told to paint their rooms any color that they wanted to–as long as it was all one color. And they could chose their roommates. My good friend Doug from Florida and his roommate painted their room bright red. Doug loved walking up to our barracks with a few of us barracks mates of his and pointing out the way that his beeerite red room appeared to be jumping right out through the windows.

Men in the twenty man barracks squad bays were given permission to rearrange their bunks in what ever pattern that facilitated their maximum achievable privacy, comfort, and social needs.

In some army barracks, groups of the closest buddies living there would all form various sized living pods in their squad bays. They lined their wall lockers all up into nifty room dividers, that went in a semicircle or squared U shape from the wall then out and around their bunks and back to the wall again; then they put a rod with a curtain hanging down from it across a door sized opening which they had left between two wall lockers in the semicircle.

The pod buddies and the two double room residents, always liked the same kinds of music, which they had amassed in their individual record collections.

I’d go visit some Janis Joplin or James Gang fans for awhile, walk out through their barracks afterward and hear some Otis Redding or Ike and Tina Turner albums playing in a different pod or room, some Beatles playing in just about any pod or room, and the music of my all time favorites, The Rolling Stones, was liable to come wafting towards me from any direction at any time from any barracks on The Rock.

Barracks buddies often followed the same professional and college sports games with a passion, but not always the same teams, we were all from too many places back home. Athletes, science guys, electronics buffs, history buffs, outdoorsmen, book worms (most of us had a bit of that in us) all formed close friendships in their living quarters. Any combination of common interests that could help a wide variety of heterosexual American men to live together comfortably and peacefully in such limited privacy and personal space was the glue that binds.

Due to that Army directive, every barracks received government funds to redo their day room (recreational room). We all were given permission to buy new stuff for our day rooms, paint them up nicely, and arrange them as we felt was best for all. Anything that was still good stayed, anything that needed replacing was replaced.

Well, the other barracks got to do their own day room redecorating, but our 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Battery Company Commander, the intrepid Cap’n Sawyer, took over control of our day room project. He used our funds to buy us the lamest, out of style, cheap crap that he could find. He musta’ felt that it was his own, personal space, and we were uninvited guests there. (Much more on Captain Sawyer in other parts of this manuscript.)

Day rooms generally had a TV, a stereo, a Ping-Pong Table, you know they had to have a Pool Table, a reading room stocked with a few books and magazines, plus there were board games and decks of cards for all to share. There was always at least one soft sofa and several soft, comfortable chairs in the TV viewing area.

The men down at one of the Army Intelligence Command barracks, who lived on the top floor, did the most outstanding job of all on their day room redecorating project. For some reason, they had a small day room for their squad bay, instead of just the one large day room on the first floor like other barracks. It must have had something to do with the top secret nature of the different jobs that the men who were stationed in that barracks had to do.

Those guys, up on that third floor, built a wooden wall across the back third of their day room, made from 2 x 4s and plywood. It was about 2 ½ feet thick and hollow in the center. They cut out rectangular holes, put shelves in them and made a recessed component stereo entertainment center. Their TV viewing area was set up in the back third of the day room, behind the stereo system in the wooden wall, and accessed by a doorway sized opening built into the wall, so that the music would not override the sound of the TV. The Pool and Ping-Pong Tables were set up in the front two-thirds of the room where the music ruled the scene.

Now, here’s the coolest part:

Have you ever seen the cover art on the Moody Blues album named In Search Of The Lost Chord?

It has a beautiful piece of art work on it, I’m looking at my CD copy of it now. It’s a soft, mellow, flowing painting of an ancient, wizened man sitting down wearing a robe with its hood up over his head, a human skull is on one side of him and a human fetus floating in its mother’s womb is on the other side. The man’s meditations, dreams, deepest human feelings, the sum of his life experiences all seem to flow upward and outward across the album cover.

One of the guys who lived there on the third floor of that army intelligence barracks painted a perfect mural of that album cover on one of their day room walls where the Pool and Ping-Pong Tables were located. When they showed it off to me, I looked up at it and darn near fell over backwards.

My best friend from Army Photo Lab Tech School, Bruce, from Pennsylvania, was the Public Information Office Photographer for that intelligence unit. He lived there on the third floor, next to the day room where the mural was painted. Bruce was a gentle, humorous fellow. He was ¼ Gypsy. His grandfather had ‘kidnapped’ and married his non-Gypsy grandmother. The kids at Bruce’s elementary school did not believe their little classmate Bruce, when he told them about his full blooded Gypsy Granddad one day on the playground at recess. The other kids teased Bruce something terrible about claiming that his grandfather was anything as mysterious and interesting as a Gypsy. So, one day, Granddad dressed up in full Gypsy regalia, and went down to visit the kids at recess. Way back then, he was one of the only men in America who could get away with wearing a big, round, golden earring in each pierced ear like some famous pirates used to. Bruce was real popular amongst the other kids after that.

The other men who lived on the third floor there, where Bruce lived, had all spent eighteen months going to the U.S. Army Intelligence School at Ft. Holabird, Maryland. I grew up about two miles from Ft. Holabird, it was in my neighborhood. The fact that they had all spent a year and a half in my childhood neighborhood helped us bond as army buddies just a bit easier than usual. And then of course, we had similar record album collections to listen to together.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

The General's Laughing Wazoo

2007-01-31T17:25:00.002-05:00

Warning: In the interest of historical accuracy, this story has the F word and other cursing in it.

The General’s Laughing Wazoo

One day, Two Star General Smith came to the 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Battery Company Barracks to conduct a command inspection of our barracks and us troops (In the interest of historical accuracy, I remember it as being General Smith, but if it isn’t, we can consider it a generic name). You ain’t gonna’ wanna’ believe this one anyway, because, the second or third highest ranking US Army Officer on Okinawa didn’t give a hoot about military manners when he gave his own obligatory, periodic command inspections.

We 30th Arty Bgde HHB troops had our barracks spick and span, top to bottom, inside out for that one. Capt. Leroy Sawyer was in command of the cleanup preparations, so you know it wasn’t about team work, male bonding and clean living; with Leroy in charge, it was more about subordinanteness to his demands than maintaining necessary living area cleanliness. That jackass captain had no clue whatsoever as how to be a good team leader.

On the evening before the general’s inspection, after we had all finished our cleaning assignments, I strolled on out behind the barracks to get some air. It was a nice, warm, although rather humid, typical Okinawa evening time.

A buddy of mine, from the barracks next door, came walking by on his way back from the PX snack bar. He inquired as to why I looked so hot, sweaty and tired in my dirty Army fatigues at that time of the evening, a time when most GIs over there back then had civilian clothes on and were relaxed, clean and casual looking.

I replied that Two Star General Smith was going to inspect my barracks and company the next day.

My buddy said, "What? General Smith! Are you kiddin’ me man? You’re all dirty and tired lookin’ cause General Smith is comin’ tomorrow. What’sa’ mattah’ Crews, don’t you know about his inspections? You ain’t ever heard? He inspected my company about three and half months ago. You know what he does? Let me tell you what the fuckin’ guy does. First, he shows up in front of the barracks in his long, black, chauffeur driven limousine. Then he comes in and eats lunch. He knows it’s the best damn lunch that will ever be served in your barracks. Don’t miss that meal. The officers and NCOs (Non Commissioned Officers—sergeants) in your company will be right up his ass the whole time. They will all be brown nosing and sniffing around for the best angles to get close to the General and vie for compliments from him, that they think might lead to a promotion in rank or somethin’. After the big man finishes his meal, his adjutant (personal aid) will stand up in the chow hall, and ask who are the two best pool players among the lower ranking guys in the company. Then General Smith is going to take them two guys, along with your company’s officers and top NCOs, into your day room. Meanwhile, his adjutant will go back out to the limousine and fetch the general’s personal, custom, hand made pool stick. It’s a beautiful piece of wood, all hand carved and perfectly balanced, it was made in Thailand or Japan or somewhere, I sure as hell wish I could afford one like it. Then the general will play each of them two guys in one game of pool each. He will most likely beat them both. They may loose because they’re scared to beat a gahdamned general, but most likely they’ll just be outranked in skill on the table. Smith is good, real fuckin’ good, I never heard of him loosing to anyone during any of his inspections. After that bullshit, when the kiss asses in your company think it’s time for the big ass general to put on his white gloves and check your barracks over for dust and dirt left in cracks and crevices and then look all you guys over for any crooked creases on your nice clean, starched and strack uniforms, the man will walk out the front door and leave."

"Are you fuckin’ shitin’ me man!!?"

"Crews, my brother, I’m fuckin’ aye serious. Awe man, don’t look so down bro, don’t even worry about it. I’ve been here for over a year, I know what da’ fuck I’m talkin’ about. We all felt like shit when it happened to us. Smith knows that the barracks is in top shape and that the men are lookin’ their best that day. There isn’t gonna’ be any inspection of anything but the gahdamned pool table. He don’t want to look at all you fuckin’ assholes up real close. We’re a fuckin’ peasant army to him jack, nuthin’ but lowly ass, gahdamned fuckin’ cannon fodder. Gahdamn man, the whole fukin’ island knows that General Smith’s inspections ain’t nuthin’ but a bunch of bullshit, how come your dumb ass officers don’t know that?"

(Authors note: What my buddy meant when he said that the whole island knew about those fake inspections is that most of the Army personnel on Okinawa knew about them, not the civilians or Marines, Airmen, and Sailors. The sour look that he had on his face as he was telling me this stuff showed true contempt for that bullshit, so his emotions got the best of him, and he exaggerated a bit.)

The next day, it all went down exactly as my buddy had said that it would.

I did not miss that meal. But let me tell ya’ somethin’, it was a strange scene in my barracks’s mess hall that day. 30th Arty NCOs and officers were hangin’ around that general like a pack of adolescent aged puppies sniffing at their moma’s butt and dried up teats while vying for nonexistent, tasty, nourishing treats, like a good word from the general about their military manners or something—anything to talk about and gloat over later in front all the other soldiers. The sights and sounds of them 30th Arty soldiers kissing the general’s ass like that, well, shit, that sickening scene gahdamned near ruin’t my appetite.

I had gone over to Okinawa believing that any member of the United States Army who has conducted themselves as normally as I had during my basic training and the US Army Photographic Laboratory Technician School has earned the right to stand proud and tall and be counted while being inspected by soldiers who were superior in rank to them. I saw no legitamate reason for anyone in the Army to kiss anybody else’s ass. I believed that we soldiers were supposed to train hard, work hard, do our duty, and show each other proper respect amongst the ranks, not play little political games like Kiss The Higher Ranking Soldier’s Keyster. I may have been wrong about that, but I had never witnessed any soldiers in basic training or Army Photo Lab Tech School acting so worthless and weird the way that those higher ranking soldiers in the 30th Arty mess hall had that day. I may be wrong, but I still can’t see any reason why those 30th Arty kiss asses could not have conducted themselves in a more manly, self respecting, military manner when showing the proper respect which any general’s well earned, high rank deserves and requires for sensible, efficient military discipline.

When General Smith and his aid walked out the front door of my barracks, after they had eaten that good meal and then the general had beaten two low ranking 30th Arty guys on the pool table, I was standing up in my third floor, squad bay, bunk area looking out of an open window and watching down onto the front lawn of our barracks. Several times though, I had looked out over the barracks directly across the street to glance at some comfortably soft looking, well defined, cottony clouds which were floating by in an azure-blue, subtropical sky. It was
absolutely beautiful outside there that day on Okinawa. I had gone up there to the third floor see if the faked inspection was going to end the way that my buddy from the barracks next door had said that it would. From up there, it was a clear, bird’s eye view of mangled military brew-ha-ha. It turned out to be an unforgettable, demoralizing experience.

I heard, then saw, the front door of my barracks open up wide down there below me. General Smith and his aid calmly strolled out the door and onto the front sidewalk.

My 30th Arty HHB Company’s administrative officers and top NCOs followed right behind, or slightly to the sides of, them two military inspection fakers. The 30th Arty butt kissers had a steady flow of useless small talk spilling out through their brown tinged lips, as they were trying to figure out what was happening—they were wondering why the general hadn’t commenced to carefully inspecting the barracks and troops.

As those, higher ranking than me, headquarters company personnel tried to make small talk with the general and his aid, the general and his aid kept turning backwards and sideways to look and delightfully grin at the bewildered, brown tinted faces of the 30th Arty soldiers. General Smith and his aid both had real big, broad, toothy, ha-ha I got ya’ type, mischievous grins on their faces as they continued to slowly move towards their waiting limo—all the while laughing out their asses at the other soldiers.

Them thar’ 30th Arty butt kissers were all smooches and smiles as they kept steadily sticking their distinctly dark brown noses up the general’s laughing wazoo. I clearly saw them each turning slightly back towards the barracks and ever so lamely beginning to limply motion with their hands and arms from the direction of the general back towards the front door of the barracks in an obviously useless, pleading attempt to ask the general about the missing formal barracks inspection. The grinning general’s aid glanced down at the butt kissers’ limp limb movements, and then back towards the limo waiting at the curb, and as he did he briefly brushed his hand across his mouth to gain control of an ever expanding grin and stifle an involuntary snicker. The general gleefully looked right between the pleading eyes of the faked out, fuckin’ dumb ass 30th Arty soldiers, he damn near laughed out loud at their darkening brown noses, smiled with sincere satisfaction, went to his limo, got in and rode away.

My 30th Arty ‘superiors’ looked like a pack of bewildered puppies being weaned from their mamma’s teats for the final time. They stood there and waved bye-bye to the highest ranking Army officer who had ever come into their beloved Headquarters Company. Then they lamely looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders at each other, mumbled some puzzled questions or half-ass explanations amongst themselves, then slowly, without any purpose in their movements, walked back through the front door and disappeared into the barracks.

I had chosen my high angle of view well, like a sniper looking for a safe and secure advantage point to shoot from. I had observed that weird scene from up there and stood at the window without worrying about being seen by them down below because that third floor window was just high enough above them that they most likely would not notice me, but then I could sure enough see and hear them quite clearly.

After that strange scene, which I wish I had never seen, dissipated and went away, I stood there at the window for a moment enjoying a warm, moist sub tropical breeze which was gently flowing in upon me. I looked out over at my left towards the Mole Hole and the 30th Arty Bge HHB Company office building. I didn’t feel anything inside of me, not even numbness; it was an odd thing that I found no humor in the experience, if I hadn't already been through so much soul crushing bullshit because of my illegal assignment to the 30th Arty as brigade photographer, it would have been a hilarious scene to witness—it was like a funny, rib ticklin' comedy skit in a Hollywood movie; on the other hand, I wasn’t angry, disgusted, sad, or anything like that.

On that strange afternoon, on the beautiful, blue skied, warm and humid Far Eastern Island of Okinawa, in the 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Company barracks, the demoralizing idea seeped into my psyche that there did not seem to be any worthwhile purpose left in life. I don’t know exactly what happened to me that day, but I lost something which I have been struggling to recover ever since.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

In Okinawa, 1970-71

2007-01-28T01:40:00.003-05:00

In this part of my working manuscript about my time spent as an Army Photographer stationed on Okinawa (The Rock), I tell some more about what it was like for the average American GI who was stationed there. This part is about what typical GIs are like when stationed in foreign countries. In response to other parts of this manuscript, which are published here and on Magic City News, other veterans of The Rock have sent me several emails which shared their similar, personal experiences about Okinawa with me. My writings here speak for many. And I say this: 1.These are the kinds of things that our troops would be doing more of in Iraq and Afghanistan today if they could; 2.The media doesn’t report enough about the good things that our troops are doing over there.

Like many other GIs who were stationed on Okinawa (The Rock), during 1970-71, I loved being in Okinawa.

Being in the Far Eastern, sub-tropical, Prefecture of Okinawa was a great, soul satisfying adventure for me, and for many other American military personnel who were also stationed on The Rock, along with any of their family members who were living there with them at the time.

Many of us GIs serving there spent a goodly amount of our off duty time as far back into the side streets of the island and as far deep into the wonderful Asian culture there as we could politely, safely go without offending any Okinawans and getting our keysters karate kicked. We liked walking through the side streets, the same way that we used to like to take Sunday drives back home. Sometimes we had a destination picked out, other times we went exploring. We were always friendly, polite and respectful to the local population; the locals treated us the same.

The sub-tropical weather was often hot and humid, but usually tolerable. The sky over the island tended to be a sensational, rich, blue color and have gorgeous cloud formations floating through it, except in rainy season, which was wet and gray, but still fun to walk around in at times. In the winter it got chilly, but never cold.

At night, walking through the side streets was a wonderful adventure. When it was dark outside, we had to be real quiet and polite as we traveled, because Okinawan homes were mostly small, open air houses with no insulation, thin wood and paper sliding doors and their windows were often no more than sheets of plywood with hinges at their top edges. The poorest homes had no screens anywhere, so the occupants burned mosquito coil repellent at night.

The coolest thing, at night, was when we encountered Okinawan Folk Musicians playing their centuries old music in the doorway of their home. They plucked and strummed delicately and expertly on ancient style, Asian musical instruments. It was sweetener for one’s soul.

Oh, geeze, it was magical.

We GIs learned fast that the musicians needed their privacy from Americans’ intrusion into their personal space. If we stopped and admired their musicianship, right there in front of their home, they became embarrassed and felt that we were rude, so they would loose their musical flow, stop playing and go inside the house.

We learned to bow and wave as we walked by any musicians playing their personal culture’s ancient folk music, and to go on a short ways, then sit down and listen for a bit. It felt like being in an old black and white movie about some happy Americans living in Asia.

Four of my closest friends rented a house off post. They paid thirty-five bucks a month for it. It was a civilian style bachelor pad, an escape from constant military madness. Friends and their friends were welcomed there anytime. I crashed out there often. It was deep in an all Okinawan neighborhood, and we young American Men loved it there.

The house had a parachute, which was painted like a giant spider web, draped up inside of its living room. It really added some cool atmosphere that made the room more intimate for sharing stories about our families, girl friends, wives or lovers back home, our civilian school days, the cars-motorcycles-boats we owned or wanted to own, favorite sports teams, our Army experiences (both good and bad), Okinawan girls, Okinawan anything, etceteras.

The parachute house was furnished with old style, thin Army mattresses, to sit or lay upon, placed one each along all four walls in the living room, a coffee table in the center of that room, a stereo on a home built stand was in there too, along with hundreds of record albums. In the only bed room was a TV on a stand along with two mattresses placed against two opposite walls. There was a little kitchen that didn’t get much use other than for chilling beer in the small fridge.
That was actually close to how Okinawans furnished their homes. They rarely had chairs or sofas or beds, just mats to sleep on and little tables for lamps, artworks and things like that.

We GIs got along well with the Okinawans who lived in the neighborhood around the parachute house.

We often trod across the road next to the house, down through a tiny valley, then up another road about fifty yards to a little papasan store--they were like the old mom and pop corner stores of American inner cities. The man who ran that store liked us a lot. We bought sodas, snacks and canned goods like beans and sausages.

When we had a few extra nickels, we always treated any little neighborhood kids, who were in the store there, to some candy bars and soda--as long as their parents were there to approve or if the store owner OK’d it. The average hourly wage for Okinawans was about a measly thirty-five cents an hour, so we didn’t want to offend any low income parents, cross any anti-American boundaries or give sugar to a diabetic child. Any group of friends usually has some member who has a diabetic sibling, neighbor back home or ex-schoolmate. One of my friends on The Rock had warned the rest of us about the diabetic danger.

The local kids over there were great. We were all friendly with each other, but we usually kept a respectable, invisible barrier between us. They had their culture, and we had ours. So we were careful not to impose our Western Culture attitudes--hey kid how ya doin’ there shorty, on Eastern Culture attitudes--children should be polite and respectful to adults. But, sometimes us GIs got to make up for missing our little relatives and neighbors back home by having a bit of friendly interaction with the local kids.

Many nonexplosive type fireworks were legal on The Rock, so now and then us guys, who hung out at the parachute house, would buy a bag of fireworks to shoot off. That always brought out a few Okinawan neighborhood kids to watch the show. We would always plan for that and have some sparklers or some other things that were more or less safe for them to set off. Their families could rarely afford to buy themselves fireworks, except on certain Okinawan holidays. Again, we were careful not to give those children more than what would be respectful to their parents’ wishes.

There was a local school right up the road from the parachute house that had a dusty soccer field on its grounds. One Sunday, eight of us guys from the parachute house went up to the school field to play some four on four touch football. There were about fifteen or twenty Okinawan boys playing some soccer there; it not a serious game, they were just having fun. The kids were all in their middle teenage years.

One of our long, forward passes went over in amongst the kids playing soccer. They laughed, waved and hollered to us, one of them picked up the American style football, looked at it with a screwy, puzzled look on his face, tried to get a good grip on it, and then threw it our way. He had no idea what the ball was all about, because it was the first time that any of them had seen an oblong ball with pointed ends.

Us GIs looked at each other, thought about it, and someone said that they must have seen our style of football on television at least once or twice in their lives. But, then we guessed not.

We walked on over to the crowd of kids. It was unlikely that any of them had ever had any personal contact with an American before. They were very curious about us young, healthy GIs with friendly smiles on our faces, a few rudimentary words in Japanese stumbling out of our mouths and a real weird sports game ball in our hands. They crowded all around us and tried some of their school taught English on us.

We held the football up and asked if they had any idea what it was. They didn’t. The ball was handed around to them, and they could not figure what could possibly be the right way to handle it. Then one kid dropped it on the ground and it turned into a wobbly soccer ball being passed about between their feet. They thought that that was hilarious; it was just as enjoyable to us GIs too.

One of us suggested that we teach them some basic ball handling and running and stuff. Hey, that sounded good to all.

That football fun then went on for over an hour.

We had them practicing pass patterns in no time. We would draw the patterns into the dirt, set up two lines of kids, and then out one kid would go a running and one of us would throw the ball to him. After a few good catches, the patterns would get a tad bit more difficult. They missed a few catches each, and they started getting frustrated, but that is how all football practices go.

We GIs got into it more than them kids did. We felt like coaches back home at our old neighborhood YMCAs. It was gratifying.

The kids started getting more frustrated, when they missed catches, so some one of us took a coin out of his pocket, put it on the ground next to a pass pattern drawn in the dirt, and the kids got the message. Catch the ball, and then come back and pick up the coin to keep. All eight of us GI guys there ended up dropping our pocket change, one coin at a time, onto the ground, till the kids had all gotten real familiar with catching a football, and we ran out of coins.

Then we set up two equal numbered teams and had a little scrimmage game. Us GIs had to do the quarterbacking; the ball always went to a kid, and we made sure that all the boys had a good chance at getting the ball. It was a demonstration game, no winning or loosing involved. The kids all ribbed each other for their misses and catches. It was all laughs, harmless pokes-shoves and hollers between the Okinawan boys.

Just before the kids got over tired and started acting too differently from their self controlled Asian male character, a few had started acting goofy and imitating American stereotypes (their parents would find that offensive), we eight guys called the demo game off. At least one of us always knew when it was time to quit our intermingling with locals. That’s one of the reasons why we never had a problem living in their neighborhood.

One evening, just after dark, when I was leaving the parachute house, I encountered two of the guys who rented the place, my good friends John and Chris, coming into the house. They had just been trying to help an Okinawan family get their car out of the Benjo Ditch that was out front, along side the road, there. Those ditches were about 2 ½ feet deep, 1 ½ feet wide, rectangular in shape, made of cement slabs and usually covered by cement slabs on top. That was the Okinawan sewer system. Their toilets and sinks all drained into the Benjo Ditches. When the public utilities workers had to unclog a Benjo Ditch, they simply shoveled the crap out of it and piled it on the side of the road. That had happened next to the parachute house, but unfortunately the dang workers didn’t put the cement slab back on top of the ditch, there, though. The Okinawan family’s car’s front right wheel had gone into that opening.

Chris and John saw me and said that they were just coming in to see who else was in the house who could help them lift the car out of the ditch. There was one other guy in the house, Jim from Cleveland, and Chris went on in there to get him.

I took one look at the way that the car was jammed in the ditch and knew right away that with my help and Jim’s, along with Chris, John and two Okinawan men who were standing there, who had been riding in the car, we could all six lift the car up out of there without hardly breaking a sweat. And that we did.
We GIs were standing there shaking hands and exchanging polite, Asian style, bows with the two Okinawan gentlemen, and one Okinawan lady who was with them, when John tapped me on my shoulder, pointed into the back seat of the car and whispered, "Dave, look."

In the back seat of car, there was a small, four or five year old girl. She had the fingers of her right hand pressed against the side of her head, next to her ear. The girl had a deep, red gash in her flesh, right where the front of her ear met the side of her cute, innocent face. She looked like she was in some pain, her face did have a worried look on it, but she was not crying or making any sounds at all. Then John discretely informed our other two friends about the injured child.

There was an Okinawan civilian health clinic about seven blocks away from the parachute house, but it was on a different road. We often walked by it on the way down through some twisty, turny side roads that separated the parachute house from any American military families’ houses or apartments. The Okinawan man driving the car had taken the wrong fork in the road, down about a block below my friends’ house. He was upset about the injured child in the back seat, and when he got lost, he lost control of his driving and wrecked. When we all four realized what was up, with the girl and her family, we did our best to communicate the directions to the health clinic for them. Then we hoped that they would find it fast.

As we four friends walked into the house, we commented on the little girl’s self control and bravery; it was an Asian Culture phenomena; it really impressed us; no little American child, including ourselves, that we ever knew of, would ever sit there with an awful cut like that on their body and not be crying and completely upset.

John was from the mountains of Colorado. One of his favorite songs was Soapstone Mountain by the group It’s A Beautiful Day; the song is on their second album, Marrying Maiden. John said that it reminded him of home, because his family lived in a cabin on a mountain side. John hated cowboys. I don’t know exactly why, but he hated cowboys. It had something to do with the, oft seen in cowboy movies, struggle of hard working, peaceful homesteaders vs. hard working, red neck cowboys.

John was a cook in my 30th Arty Bge Company. He had done a year as a cook in Nam, before he came to The Rock. He said it wasn’t too bad for him over in Nam, except when the rockets and mortars started coming in or his compound was under direct infantry attack. Then it was time to drop the spatula and pick up an M16.

One Saturday afternoon, John asked a group of us guys, who were visiting the parachute house, if we wouldn’t mind helping him help his neighbor by removing a large stump, from a blown down tree, that was in the neighbor’s vegetable garden. John told us that he had grown up helping his family take care of their vegetable garden. He said that not only was the stump taking up good, fertile planting space in the small garden next door, its was obtrusively putting shade on some of the growing plants. He said that he knew how important every inch of a good vegetable garden can be to a hungry family.

John said, "I told the old papasan next door that I would help him move it as soon as I got enough of you guys here to help me."

Naturally, all John had to do was ask.

A minute or two after he asked us, about eight of us guys were over there in Papasan’s garden looking down at the stump and figuring out where to grab onto it and where it should go, where it would be totally out of the way for Papasan. It was one of them deals with the roots all sticking up in the air, so it was free from any gripping attachment down in the ground. The trunk and limbs had already been sawed off and probably burned for firewood.

We surrounded that stump, grabbed a good hold of it, lifted, heaved, hoed and hauled it on over to the side of the garden, where it could rot away unobtrusively. We loved the physical challenge and team effort--it was male ego a-go-go all the way.

John had let Ole Papasan know that we were doing it, before we started our heavy lift. The old fella had come out and pointed to where the stump needed to go. After we finished moving it, he ran into his house and ran back out with a hand full of homemade Okinawan cookies for us. He was extremely happy; we were happy too.

The next day, when a couple of us guys walked from the parachute house over to our favorite papasan store, the neighbors, whom we encountered in that tiny valley, were really outgoing in their usual friendly waves and smiles to us. We knew why, of course, news spreads fast in a tiny community like that. We had been accepted as friendly foreigners, before the stump move, then good neighbors, after the stump move. All because one Colorado mountain boy knew what needed to be done.

Chris was the only buddy of mine who had found true love with an Okinawan girl. She was a senior in high school at the time. Her father was against her dating Chris, but that did not stop her. She was a mighty fine young woman. I spent a fair amount of time in her company, over at the parachute house, when she was there with Chris. There is no doubt in my mind that it was as good of a relationship as a young couple could have.

When I left The Rock, they were still dating. I used to think about writing Chris’s parents to tell them not to worry about any racial or cultural differences if Chris decided to marry his mighty fine girl friend and take her back home with him. But, I left The Rock before it was time for the young couple to decide on what their future would be.

I loved being in Okinawa. Ya wanna see some photos?

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

The Illegality And Immorality Of My Assignment To The 30th Artillery Brigade On Okinawa

2007-01-27T19:35:00.008-05:00

When I enlisted into the Army, in 1969, I signed up for three years - which was one year over the military draft’s requirement of two years of service. I voluntarily enlisted for a third year so that I could go to the US Army Photographic Laboratory Technician School at Ft. Monmuoth, NJ.. After graduating from Photo Lab Tech School, I attained the rank of Specialist Fourth Class (E-4 after only ten months of military service, three months inactive - before I had to report to basic training - plus seven months active duty and I made E4 is an awesome accomplishment, which required hard work and dedication to duty). I had become a damned good soldier. Then I was sent to Okinawa.

My assignment to Okinawa was great news to me. Because, during the time that I was in Army basic training and studying at Photo Lab Tech School in Ft. Monmuoth, not one soldier, whom I ever knew of, wanted to be sent to Vietnam. Neither did I.

Besides being trained in a set of professional skills, that I had an interest in, and natural talent at making good use of, the one thing that I wanted most, to get to do while serving my country in the military, was to be sent as far away from the East Coast of the United States as possible. I had lived all of my nineteen years on Earth there, and it was time for a change; I wanted to travel, and see some of the rest of world.

Plus, during the time that I was in Army basic training and studying at Photo Lab Tech School in Ft. Monmuoth, not one soldier, whom I ever knew of, wanted to be sent to Vietnam. Neither did I.

On Okinawa, the Army assigned me to Headquarters Battery 30th Artillery Brigade as ‘Official’ Brigade Photographer.

The 30th Arty Bgde was a missile unit. We had great big Nike Hercules Nuclear Missiles on some of my unit’s thirteen missile sites! And, we had smaller Hawk Missiles on some of our missile sites too.

Our brigade motto was, "Always On Target."

The Island of Okinawa sets way out from Communist China’s coast line, at just exactly the right spot for an alert, fully prepared missile brigade to be able to steadfastly maintain a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year missile defense shield. The 30th Artillery Air Defense Brigade was assigned to be there, on Okinawa, to help defend the free world from Communist Chinese nuclear attack.

I was the first Army trained photographer to be assigned to work as the 30th Arty Brigade’s ‘official photographer’. The 30th Arty had finagled paperwork to get themselves a real photographer. They wanted their-picture-taken as often as possible. The entire situation thoroughly violated countless Army Rules and Regulations. I do not know what I was listed as on the unit roster, or if I was listed at all.

Before I was assigned to the 30th Arty Bgde, their photographers had been soldiers from the brigade who were supposed to be working there as radar techs, company clerks or whatever their original jobs had been in the brigade. But they wanted to be photographers, so they eagerly volunteered to shoot and print photos of the 30th Arty personnel at work and play.

The man whom I was replacing, as brigade photographer, was Spec 5 Swigget (Swiggert? I’m not sure of the spelling). Swigget told me that his mother owned the franchises to three Pepsi Cola bottling plants somewhere in the Mid-West States, and that she used to send him a check every month that equaled half of his Army pay, so that she could declare him as a deduction on her income tax. His mother used to donate tons of Pepsi Cola to political campaigns. She used those political connections to help her son in the Army get away with lots of crap that no one else could. Swigget told me that he had "HAS POLITICAL INFLUENCE" stamped on his Army record folders, so that everyone knew not to mess with him and to outright coddle the guy.

When Swiggett gave me my inaugural tour of the 30th Arty Bgde photo lab, I was stunned by the real crotch kicker in this historic narrative == the brigade's photo lab was not only illegal, it was set up in the nuclear fallout decontamination chamber for an underground nuclear fallout shelter communications bunker called "The Mole Hole." That secretive bunker was hidden in a hillside next to the 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters office building.

Holy cow chips Batman!!

That photo lab compromised our stated military mission!!!

The Mole Hole was snuggled into that hillside right next to headquarters, because if America got into a nuclear boxing match with Communist China, the 30th Arty would need a safe, secure nuclear fallout chamber full of radio gear and other equipment that we would need to be able to coordinate offensive and defensive strikes with our missiles, along with the missiles of stateside military units, US Navy submarines and other war ships, US Air Force and US Marine jet planes, etcetteras, against enemy aircraft with nuclear bombs aboard and passing overhead of us on their way to obliterate my family, friends, neighbors, former school teachers and school mates and everyone else in America.

If the area immediately around brigade headquarters and the Mole Hole bunker was not obliterated by a direct hit from an enemy nuclear war head, the area might be contaminated with nuclear fallout snow from war heads that had dropped on other parts of the island. In the case of that scenario, certain, pertinent 30th Arty technicians and command personnel, who were authorized and trained to use secret codes and all that stuff, had to be in the bunker. They had to be able to verify who they were when they contacted outside military commands to inform them of what condition the Okinawan US Military’s Bases were in and to supply any info that the Mole Hole guys had on enemy movements, casualty figures and all that jazz. If any of those pertinent personnel were not in the bunker at the time of the nuclear attack, they would have to hightail it over to the bunker; but before they could be allowed into the bunker, they would have had to have been decontaminated of any nuclear snow that may have fallen on them.

The main door that we used to enter the Mole Hole, to go to work everyday, was a large, thick, steel, bank vault style door that was to be closed, locked and guarded if a nuke attack occurred. About thirty feet from the vault door, there was a regular sized steel door that was the entrance to the decontamination chamber. That second door was never used and was always padlocked inside and out. In the case of a nuclear attack, there would have been armed guards at that door too, after the two padlocks on it - one inside and one outside - were removed.

When the hightailing technicians and command personnel made it to the Mole Hole, they were to identify themselves to the guards, then step through the regular sized door and into an outer chamber, disrobe, and step into a shower to wash off the nuclear snow - so that they did not contaminate the other soldiers who were already in the Mole Hole; then the authorized personnel stepped into an inner chamber to receive some of the clothing that was kept in the bunker in large wooden crates that were full of necessaries and were always kept there for a two week stay underground.

The lab’s photo enlarger and print developing trays were on a tall, heavy metal table that blocked the padlocked door which gave access from the outside into the tiny outer room of the decontamination chamber. There was also a refrigerator in that cramped space for keeping film and photo paper in. Black curtains were hung across both open sides of the decontamination shower, so that we could keep white light (it ruins photo paper) out of the enlarging area of the darkroom. Then, in a small, janitorial closet sized inner chamber, where the decontaminated soldiers were to be given clean clothes, was where the photographers' print washing and drying equipment was located. There was also shelving in there for photo supply storage. There is no doubt that all of that negated any possibility of any quick, efficient use of the nuclear emergency decontamination aspect of the chamber.

Had that decontamination chamber ever been needed in an emergency, it would have been quite a frantic mess when the Mole Hole guys would have had to try disassembling and moving all of those heavy metal photo lab furnishings, the darkroom and other photo equipment plus the photo developing chemical supplies out of their way while dealing with freaked out, semi-nuked soldiers who were trying to get past armed guards and into the relative safety of the underground bunker. Of course, there would have also been all kind'sa unauthorized personnel trying to bust their way in with their wives and kids and all. "JUST TAKE MY BABY; PLEASE LET MY LITTLE BABY IN THERE!!"

Clearly, my photo lab was against Army Rules and Regulations.

Then Swiggett informed me that I could neither order any photo equipment nor any kinds of supplies - at all - to do my Army photo assignments. I had to find some way to scrounge them up somehow. That really took me aback.

In those days, both photo and stereo equipment that was sold on Okinawa usually cost no more than 40% of its stateside prices. Naturally, at those low prices on Okinawa, I intended to buy myself some top notch professional camera equipment anyway, so I ended up using my personal camera gear, and sometimes my money for film, to do all of my Army photo assignments.

On my second or third day at the 30th Arty Bgde, Swigget informed me that I could not advance in rank while I was there.

I was assigned to that unit for eighteen months, and, at that time, in the US Army, anyone who was posted overseas for a year or more usually got a promotion in rank if they did just a half-decent job at their MOS (Military Occupation Specialty -official job). So, I asked him why I could never advance in rank at the 30th Arty.

He told me that his MOS was not photography, but that he was being paid, by the Army, to work in an office in the 30th Arty Bgde’s headquarters office building. Then it sure enough shocked me, when the next thing that he informed me of was the hard, cold fact that there was no slot for a photographer anywhere in the 30th Arty Bgde. Consequently, when promotion opportunities came down from above, I could not apply for one.

Swiggert told me that when opportunities for promotion came down they would be distributed amongst the various army units something like this: three soldiers in a unit get to go from E2 up to E3, one soldier gets to go from E3 up to E4, and so on. The individual soldiers in each unit then had to compete for the promotions by proving that they were most worthy for them through their personal conduct and efficiency ratings, their MOS evaluations, maybe recommendations from their sergeants and officers. I don’t recall all of the exact terms or requirements that he cited, but it was by achieving requirements like that that a soldier had to show that they were worthy of the prize of a promotion in rank. Swiggert informed me that it was the fact that I could never receive an evaluation of my MOS that prevented me from getting a promotion, because my MOS was not authorized to be in the 30th Brigade.

I received my discharge from the Army while in the 30th Arty, and I can show you on my discharge records this official statement: “Soldier has no record of evaluation in his MOS.”

There were two guys working as photographers for the 30th, when I was first assigned to work there. One was Swiggert and the other was named Medley (not sure of the spelling). They were about as lackadaisical, nonproductive and sloppy about their photography as could be. Medley turned in 8×10 photos printed backwards and with white, photo chemical thumb prints all over them. Medley was off photographing, then in the lab developing and printing, his own stuff more than the 30th Arty’s; because he had a contract with a travel magazine that had paid him to do travel photos of Okinawa. It infuriated me. Swiggert just didn’t give a damn. Them two individuals had reputations for taking three months to get photos printed after they had shot an Army assignment. But when I took over the lab, it averaged me three days from assignment to handing in a full set of prints.

I asked Swiggert how he got away with being the way he was in the Army. He replied, while pointing his finger over at the 30th Brigade Headquarters office building, “I’ve got too much on too many of them for them to do anything about it.” My immediate guess at the time was that he meant the ins and outs of our illegal photo lab situation.

I later figured out it had as much to do with his mother and her political connections as anything else. But I have heard that he had been selling Army photo supplies to certain officers - including medical officers who would write him fake medical excuses, so he could get out of being a real soldier.

Those two clerks/jerks masquerading as official photographers had been in the Army, and assigned to the 30th Arty, for long enough times for them to acquire the army know-how and contacts to scrounge up photo supplies. Unfortunately for me, they never took the time and made the effort to introduce me to the right supply clerks or photographers in other units who could help me to get into a photo equipment and supply scrounging and swapping circuit. Those two Army jerks didn’t mind using their own camera equipment to do the job, because to them it was much better than working at a desk tap-tap-tapping their days away on an Army issue typewriter, or whatever their official jobs were.

I have natural abilities and compulsions to work hard at photography, and I did that for the 30th Arty, despite my film stock running low, then running out at times. I had to buy some film with my own money now and then, and then my film stock would be replenished with any old stuff that my 30th Artillery Brigade Headquarters Battery Public Information Office bosses (non-coms and commissioned officers) could scrounge up for me. I had no choice on the black and white film types that I had to use, and most of it was past its expiration date. No professional photographer wants to have to go shoot a sunny, outdoor job using high speed film that is designed for low light conditions, or visa versa. Nor do we want to use any expired film at all to do a job, unless we want some hazy, muddy looking negatives to print artistic, special effects photographs from.

The Army had trained me for fifteen good weeks, five days a week for seven-eight hours a day to be a photographer. It was top notch training, no doubt about it. I loved that training.

But, when I enlisted and signed up for the United States Army Photographic Laboratory Technician School, my recruiter informed me that the Army only guaranteed that I be trained as a photographer, not that I would work as one. The Army could have assigned me to do any job that they needed me in. The 30th Arty Bgde could have made me work for them as a clerk, a cook, a missile crewman, garbage can scrubber or anything else where they had a slot to fill, but there was no slot for a photographer there. I would have accepted working at any MOS they needed me in, as long as it was legal, there was a slot for me there and they supplied the equipment and supplies.

Despite all of that illegality and immorality, I kept up my good photography work until those gross infractions of rules and regulations caused me too many unnecessary and insurmountable problems.

When a person is in the military, they are government property. If I had taken any kind of legal military action against the 30th Arty for stealing me, in order to make me their personal photographer, or if I had contacted my Congressman about it, or had done anything like that back then, it would have meant the probability of retaliation from the personnel at 30th Arty who were guilty of stealing me as government property. I knew that if they could finagle the paperwork to get me there when it was against Army Rules and Regulations, then they would most likely pull a fast one and send me to the worst duty station possible, or something, before I could do anything about it.

Despite all of that illegality and immorality of my assignment to the 30th Artillery Brigade HHB on Okinawa, I worked hard at being the best photographer that I could be for the 30th Artillery Brigade Air Defense Hawk and Nike Hercules missile unit on Okinawa, during 1970-71. The 30th Arty Brigade personnel were thrilled by my printed photographs due to the way that my photos of them at work and play turned out real nice.

I had to print photos for publication in our brigade monthly magazine and other army publications, plus for display on our brigade’s bulletin boards. Also, I was always ordered to print extra copies of my photos that were to be given to the troops who were pictured in them. That made me feel quite complete inside, because I knew that my work would be important to those comrades of mine and their families for years and decades to come.

The 30th Arty’s photo lab had been set up, several years before I got there, by a guy named Jim Whitcomb of Houston, Texas. I found Jim through Internet searches using – ”30th Artillery Brigade” + photographer – as a search term. Jim is a successful photographer, and he had been featured in an issue of the American Society of Media Photographer’s magazine, which was on the Internet.

I spoke to Jim on the phone about a year or so ago; we talked for over an hour about how he had scrounged photo equipment and supplies through contacts that he already had had in the military and about the lab being set up illegally in the decontamination chamber, etc.. Not only had Jim been in the 30th Arty Bgde for awhile before he set up the lab, his father was a career soldier. I didn't ask what rank his dad had held, but Jim was an enlisted man who hung out after work on Okinawa with officers, not the enlisted men in the 30th Arty Headquarters Battery, where he had a private room in the barracks. When Jim could not get a promotion in rank, because there was no slot for a photographer in the 30th, an Army General - who was a drinking buddy of Jim's, personally saw that Jim received a promotion.

You can contact Jim at:
Studio Houston Digital Photography
5401 Mitchelldale Suite B2
Houston, Texas
Phone 713 682 0067
Fax 713 682 0067
Email sales@studiohouston.com

I believe that there is government evidence to prove that there was no authorization for the 30th Arty to have any photographers. The evidence is in the morning reports and unit rosters for the 30th Arty Bgde that are on file at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO.. The evidence could possibly be the lack of any entries that state a person with a photography MOS was assigned to the 30th Arty.

Something that can help me must be there. I tried to get all of the 30th Arty Bgde HHB morning reports and unit rosters, but I cannot afford to pay for the research, copying and shipping of them.

I did manage to order an official list of the number of clerks, cooks, etc. that my army unit was composed of, I have a copy of the Table Of Organization and Equipment dated 31 July 1967 for Headquarters and Headquarters Battery Air Defense Artillery Brigade, and there is no slot for a photographer on it.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade

A Wild Start

2007-01-27T13:58:00.002-05:00

In 1970, when I arrived on the Island of Okinawa, I had enough cash in my pocket to buy an Asahi (Honeywell in the states) Pentax Spotmatic Camera, with one Pentax Lens, during my second trip off post. At that time, the Spotmatic was the most popular camera among professional photographers around the world.

I really don’t want to discuss my first trip off post, which occurred only 3½ hours after I landed on Okinawa. You see, we newly arrived soldiers were supposed to stay on our posts for our first three days there, so our Army ID Cards were taken away from us when we landed and kept from us for our first three days on the island. When I took my first trip off post, I didn’t have my Army ID Card, which was the only pass that we soldiers needed to go legally off post. But my newly assigned base, Sukiran, didn’t have any gates guarded by MPs (Military Police), and there were no barriers to stop me from going into town and coming back a bit inebriated. Consequently, I went out bar hopping as soon as I could, and because prostitution was legal over there back then, I had sex with a prostitute for the first time, during my first evening on the island.

That three day rule was good for most new guys, because they often went wild if they went into town before they had a few days to settle in and adjust to being so far away from home. After World War Two, but previous to 1970, many of the GIs who landed on Okinawa -- realizing that they were about 10,000 miles from anybody they knew who could tell their families and friends about their getting loony drunk in the wild and crazy bar scene that was rockin’ and rollin’ on Okinawa at the time -- sometimes went way too wild and got into big trouble. The Army wanted their expensively trained troops to start work at their assigned jobs on Okinawa as soon after landing there as possible, not after spending an extended stay in the hospital and/or stockade. In a worst case scenario, of a wild drunken mistake made by a GI going out for the first time to get drunk and laid, the Army really hated sending bad news to a soldier’s family back home.

Fortunately for me, though, a GI gentleman who had sat next to me on the plane across the Pacific Ocean, when I had flown from the U.S. to Okinawa for the first time, was returning to The Rock (GI jargon for Okinawa) after being home on thirty-day leave. Previous to his leave, he had spent a year on The Rock. On that plane ride he became a true buddy of mine, because he gave me explicit instructions on the ins and outs of the entire bar and babe scene on Okinawa. Also, the way my young mind figured it, I happened to be an experienced booze consumer and was therefore rather well controlled when under the influence. So I exempted myself from that three day rule and headed for the downtown bar and red light district after only 3½ short hours on The Rock.

OK, I can admit it now. I knew I was taking a risk by going AWOL for a few hours, but I was just plain horny and thirsty, so I went into town anyway.

Several days after I had left the East Coast of the U.S. to wait for a few days at Oakland Army Base in California, until the Army flew me to Okinawa on a chartered commercial jetliner, my father sold a 1961 VW Bug for me that I had bought while going to US Army Photo Lab Tech School. He sent me the money during my first week on The Rock. I immediately went to the Post Exchange, the giant main PX (military Wall Mart) on Okinawa, and used some of the cash to buy two more Pentax lenses and some assorted photographer’s necessities like lens filters, lens cleaners and such. Then I went through the PX and did some other shopping. I hit the men’s clothing department and picked out some nice short- sleeved shirts and in-style pants, socks and a belt. I bought a small, used stereo from a guy in my barracks to play part of my record collection that I'd carried with me to Okinawa. I purchased some other odds and ends here and there and so started out on my tour of overseas duty with plenty of civilian amenities to help me feel comfortable in my own skin.

After that, I went out bar hopping again.

Gate Two Street and BC Street in Koza City was where the best wide-open bar district action was, except for the majority of Afro-American servicemen. Some of those guys did party with us Euro-American and Latino-American servicemen and go bar hopping with us, but most GI Soul Brothers stuck to "The Bush."

The Bush was an all black environment. The Soul Brothers had nearly completely segregated themselves out of all the other bar districts on The Rock a long time before I got there.

Oh, that probably isn’t correct. I bet that they had been segregated out of the light-skinned GI’s bar districts way back in the beginning of American troop occupation of the island. Then the black guys had liked what they were left with, because they had made themselves a place of their own that fit their lifestyles and cultural tastes, so they kept it.

I remember going by The Bush while riding in taxis or friends’ cars. It was located down a side street that, I think, lay off a main highway that ran between Gate Two and BC Streets. When I looked down that street, especially on a pay-day night, there were thousands of Soul Brothers walking all over the place in a dark, thick, smoky crowd. White Brothers and Latino Brothers weren’t allowed there, and if they made the mistake of entering The Bush, they got jumped by a bunch of black dudes.

During my time on The Rock, I heard one or two white dudes say that they had gone to The Bush a couple of times with some black friend of theirs, but I don’t know. Maybe it was at the end of the month, when the bar districts were sparsely populated, because most GIs were out of cash. Maybe they knew one bad-ass black dude who could keep the other Soul Brothers from thumping their white faces, but I never saw any white faces in The Bush.

We rarely had any kind of racial segregation in our barracks. We white, black, and brown GIs all usually got along fine while working, living and partying together. There were times when I had some serious conversations with a black GI friend or two, a few of whom had lived through a lot of combat in Vietnam. We felt the same about a many things in our lives, and we partied hard together, but The Bush was off limits to me.

Around 1989, when I was a patient in Ft. Howard Veterans Hospital, I got into a conversation with two African-Americans about The Bush. One was a male Army veteran, who was a patient there at the time, and the other was a female VA employee who was also an Army veteran. Both had been stationed on The Rock during their military service. One day we were swapping memories of our individual experiences on The Rock, and when I mentioned that I knew about The Bush, the male veteran said to me, kindly and sincerely, as he was a buddy of mine, "Ya know, a lot of white guys like to say that they went down into The Bush with some great big, bad-ass black friend of theirs, but they never did; them brothers down there wouldn’t ever have allowed that to happen. They woulda’ jumped both the white and black guy and kicked their asses." The female veteran looked at me and nodded in solemn but friendly agreement and said, "Yep, that’s right, no white guys were ever allowed in The Bush."

Bars on Okinawa were either A-Sign or non A-Sign. An A-Sign bar was designated by a large letter A that was printed on a two by three foot placard nailed in place over the top of the bar’s front entrance. The A stood for Army approved, but it was meant for all branches of the service. It was illegal for GIs to enter a non A-Sign bar. Each bar was inspected by the military before an A-Sign was given to the place. If there was something about a bar that the inspectors didn’t like, then no A- Sign went up. Bars were denied A-Signs because of fire hazards, filth, potential or actual drug activity, etc. If the Okinawan who owned a particular bar didn’t like GIs, he could refuse to have an A-Sign. In some non A-Sign bars, any GI who entered would get his butt kicked real bad, real fast, by the Okinawan men hanging out in the bar, and in a few others it was a definite ear-to-ear throat slice for the errant GI. All Okinawan men knew at least the rudiments of karate. Fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers and school gym teachers taught their male kids karate. Some Okinawan males practiced it religiously, from the time they were little boys until the day they died. There were a few non A-Sign bars which it was OK to go into as far as the bar owners, bartenders and any Okinawan clientele were concerned, but most places that did not have an A-Sign had refused to allow one and thus were 100% dangerous for GIs to enter.

There were good reasons for Okinawan bars not to want American GIs as clientele.

Some GIs drinking in bars were ignorant and would start to insult any Okinawans in the place, try to wreck the joint, and then get into a fight with a bunch of Okinawan men who were lifelong karate experts. Sometimes the Okinawans simply needed to have a private peaceful-and-quiet place where there weren’t any intrusive foreigners around, or maybe they just wanted some place to enjoy their own culture and music and to have some raucous good times. But the most important reason why it was usually no good to have GIs drinking alcohol in a bar alongside Okinawan men was that at least 99% of the Okinawan men did not want anything to do with Okinawan women who had dated a GI. So fights over women were inevitable in bars where Okinawan women were present and GIs and Okinawan men were drinking and thinking of spending time with the same women.

Only Okinawans worked in the civilian bars on The Rock. In a Gate Two/BC Street type of A-Sign bar, there were bartenders, bar bouncers and doormen who were all good at fighting Karate style. When a fight started in an A-Sign bar, between a GI, or GIs, and one of the Okinawans working there, if the GI, or GIs, didn’t give up, back off and get the hell out of there real quick, or get knocked unconscious right away, the unfortunate GIs got the crap Karate kicked out of them by some, or all, of the Okinawan men working in that bar. If any of the fighting occurred outside a bar, then the bouncers and doormen from the other bars in the immediate area came over and jumped into the action and backed up their brethren Okinawans; that way any other GIs in the immediate area would be discouraged from jumping in on the side of the unfortunate GIs. If any GI got knocked on the ground by the bouncers, then the Okinawans all took turns kicking the poor guy.

Rarely would any other GIs step in and try to rescue GIs getting beat up by Okinawans. In most cases, it would have been a bad mistake for the would be rescuers, as they would have been outnumbered and outfought as more Okinawan men in the area jumped into the fight and the Okinawans’ Karate strikes and kicks became more intense, numerous, and vicious. The Okinawans had all the martial arts advantages, along with the highest numbers of available and willing street fighters, who often carried knives; consequently, GIs had little chance of winning any street fights against those odds.

One time I saw two big US Army MPs using their night sticks to push two even bigger drunken Marines down the sidewalk on the opposite side of Gate Two Street. There were several angry bar bouncers following close behind them.

One of those Okinawan bouncers was no more than about four feet tall, but he was a regular Mighty Mouse. The top of his head only came up to about the bottom of the two Marines’ chests. That short bouncer looked almost as wide, at his thick, muscular shoulders, as he was tall; he had his coal black hair all greased down and slicked back, like a 1950s American-style hoodlum, and he was wearing pointed toe shoes with big Cuban heels that had metal cleats on them. His legs were short and solid, and he moved with a steady stride that showed he had some powerhouse kicking abilities in those short legs. As he walked on that sidewalk with a deep sounding thunk, thunk, thunk from his cleated hoodlum heels, it was clear that those boots were made for stomping.

That little powerhouse bouncer kept inviting the two great big dumb Jar Head Marines to come back and visit him any time. The stupidly unafraid Marines were huge; they had no problem looking back over top of the two MPs, who were six foot plus tall and all beefed up themselves. But the two dumb Jar Heads kept grinning at, and steadily insulting, the Okinawan Mighty Mouse stomping down the sidewalk behind them.

That bouncer was not acting tough because the well-armed MPs were between him and his two foolish adversaries; he was tough. I had been on The Rock long enough by then to be able to see clearly that this pair of drunken Jar Heads was lucky the MPs had encountered them in time. Mighty Mouse would have kicked their giant legs out from under them, with crippling, pain inflicting, precision and then bounced all over their big dumb heads and very large bodies like a gymnastic circus performer doing a double trampoline act.

I myself never had any problems like that on Okinawa because, luckily, that kind GI gentleman who had sat next to me on my first plane ride to The Rock had taught me how to avoid trouble with Karate trained bar bouncers. He had taught me that they were mostly very nice fellows until some dumb, drunk GI changed their attitude. He had also instructed me on how not to get hustled by bar girls, what the written and unwritten rules of engagement with prostitutes were, and how The Rock’s numerous steam bath-massage parlors operated. With all of that helpful information ‘under my belt’, the part of my VW Bug money that I didn’t have to spend right away on my camera equipment, which I needed for the photo jobs that the 30th Artillery Brigade made me do, lasted through several weeks of shopping, bar hopping and buying drinks for bar girls, plus a few trips to brothels and steam bath-massage parlors.

The bar girls were only there for conversation. A bar girl would intimate and promise sex to a GI as long as he was buying himself and her drinks, but whenever a GI’s cash ran out, so did she. My buddy on the plane had taught me never to buy a bar girl more than three drinks, and I never did. I liked their company and would buy them the maximum three drinks while talking to them until they had to move on, when the bartender signaled them to do so or after the girl saw that I wasn’t falling for the hustle.

The bar girls, steam-bath girls and prostitutes were all about the same age as I was at the time: twenty years old. I usually enjoyed the company of these working girls, and the feeling often seemed to be mutual. Some of them reminded me of girls back home I had had a crush on during my school days. Others were new flames that I would never get to fully ignite.

After had I finished getting a massage or enjoying some sexcapades, I liked to sit and talk with the young-lady/stranger who had just been so physically intimate with me.

I never used Pidgin English when I talked with Okinawans, it seems to me that when regular English speaking people do that they are belittling Asians. As in, "I come-a from-a Texas, ebby ting-a bigg-a bigg-a in-a Texas." It’s downright ignorant and often emotionally cruel.

When I tried to say some Japanese words and phrases to Okinawans, I sounded just as goofy to them as they did to me, when they tried speaking English. Sometimes it ticked me off when some Okinawan dudes laughed at my Japanese language goofs, so I learned to respect all Okinawans’ limited abilities to speak English.

I spoke English to Okinawans a tad bit slower than I normally talked and with clear diction, sans my Baltimore accent. One of the first questions that I usually asked the Okinawan girls was what high school they used to go to. That’s what I often used to do when I met American girls. The look I would see in an Okinawan girl’s pretty face when I asked her that was one of endearing appreciation of my question. We usually bonded in the next few minutes as if we could go on being together forever.

Unfortunately, in every brothel or massage parlor there was an intercom speaker in the corner of every room and the mamasan or papasan who owned the place, or one of their henchmen, would start yapping over the intercom, telling her to get me out of there. The girl never did that right away. As I would rise in response to the voice on the intercom, she would always put her hand on my thigh and say, "No dats-a OK-a, nex-a customer can-a wait." Then we would talk for a few minutes longer.

The truly great part of it was that many of the girls were desirable in every way.
The worst part of it was that most of them had been sold into their tragic lives by their own fathers.

The majority of the working girls’ fathers had borrowed money from the mamasan or papasan who owned the bar, brothel or massage parlor in order to -- and this is a direct quote from two different sweet young ladies with whom I had just made prepurchased love -- "fix-a da house-a, buy-a da car." Each of the two girls told me that right after most of Okinawa’s ‘working girls’ had graduated from high school, they had been forced to ‘work’ off their fathers' debts.

One girl told me that when she had been assigned to her bedroom in the brothel, where I was visiting her at the time, the mamasan had set her up with a nice selection of new clothes, a small stereo phonograph and some record albums, along with plenty of make-up and toiletries. That girl had never before had so many personal possessions; she was only eighteen years old and from a poor family. Her new possessions made her think that perhaps her life might not be as terrible as she had feared when she had learned that her father had used her as collateral on a loan, and that she had to work as a prostitute to pay off her father’s debt. But then the mamasan informed the poor girl that the cost of all of that stuff had been tacked onto her father’s debt, plus the cost of her room and board. The mamasan also let the girl know right away that out of every four dollars that a GI paid to have sex with her, only $1.50 went toward paying off her father’s debts. Those cruel facts meant that she had to work for several years longer than she had expected and dreaded, often deeply shocking and depressing her.

When the bar, brothel, massage parlor girls were eighteen years old, after studying hard during twelve years of going to school, six days a week, for eleven months a year, life as they had known it was over. If any girl ran away from the mamasan/papasan, who held her in bonded servitude, the Okinawan cops went and fetched her back. It’s a small island, after all: where was she going to hide for long?

They were locked into their unfortunate lives.

They were held in human bondage.

I was aware that most of those girls had not chosen to live the lives they were forced to endure. I believed, and still believe, that if love could have blossomed between one of them and myself, I could have dealt with what she had had to do before I met her. The devil be damned, though, they were all owned and operated by the mamasan or papasan for whom they worked. It was no use trying to get emotionally close to one of those attractive young ladies.

The brothel girls usually aged quite prematurely. They were often burnt out physically, mentally and emotionally by the time they were set free from their bonded, sexual servitude. This was drastically, tragically evident in their old and worn-out looking, but still rather young, faces and bodies. Then they had to struggle to survive because they were basically outcast by Okinawan society and their families, and they were rarely still attractive enough for a GI to want them for his live-in girlfriend, wife, or just a sexual partner and partial financial dependent.

If any former bar girls or massage parlor girls had had sexual intercourse with an American man, then 99% of Okinawan men never, ever wanted anything to do with them. Okinawan men believed that their peckers were always shorter and skinnier than those of most American men, so they did not want to try and sexually satisfy themselves with women whom they believed had been stretched inside by us American guys. That is what several Okinawan men told me, as well as some of my GI buddies, during my stay on The Rock. But it probably had more to do with Asian style racial prejudice and segregation.

Some former Okinawan working girls did marry GIs and went on to have good lives, but most of those had been bar girls or massage parlor girls who had most likely only had premarital sex with one or two GIs who had been their steady boyfriends.

I don’t know how the girls who provided sex for GIs but did not marry one, and who did not marry an Asian man, have managed to get along for the rest of their lives. I would love to see someone write a book about the fates of those former Okinawan working girls.

Okinawa
US Army
ursusdave
David Robert Crews
30th Artillery Brigade