Army Comrades and I Enjoying Life Off Post on Okinawa

Okinawa 1971, my camera's self-timer allowed me to be in the shot. L -R: that's me wearing bell bottoms; then Colorado mountain country boy John; California biker Earl; and Chris from the upper Midwest. All warriors who could trust each other in combat. That's Chris's chain driven Honda Sports Car, which did not have a radio but the driving sounds while riding in it were music to our young men's ears. We were in front of an off-post house Chris and John rented for $45 a month. The bars on the windows were protection from typhoon blown objects. The house was furnished with old thin Army mattresses for sitting and sleeping, a coffee table, a TV on a stand, nice stereo equipment on stands for the hippie style record album collection, and a spider web painted parachute set up hanging over the living room. The chute was Day-Glo painted psychedelic fashion for the black light they had, plus each room had a regular lamp. Shoes were left outside Japanese style, as those Asians normally do not have chairs or modern beds. 

It was a party pad, back in an all-Okinawan neighborhood. In GI housed areas, we'd have been busted for living off post because only married guys with wives there were supposed to be staying off post. Plus, there sometimes was pot smoke smell in and around the place. Many cases of cold beer and bottles of other boozes were enjoyed in that humble abode off-post. We were polite, considerate and not one of us and other friends and buddies - who sometimes partied there - ever got out of hand being drunk in the neighborhood. The Karate trained, average, Okinawan males would have run us out if we had been jerks. 

When Okinawans smelled and saw us smoking, they'd smile and say, "Happy smoke, happy smoke," even though no weed was grown on Okinawa - due to the soil not being good for marijuana plants - so it was imported from Southeast Asia. Very few natives had ever tried the dried flowers. 

Earl had an apartment where he lived with a cool-chick Okinawan lass who had graduated high school the previous year. Chris had a true-love Okinawan girlfriend who came over on days off school and sometimes with a couple of her female high school friends; a cute one of whom I had hooked up with for a while. John was having an affair with some other GI's wife, and she sometimes came there and got loaded with us. I was with a 20-yr-old Okinawan woman, a bar hostess, for a couple of months, who had smoked cannabis with previous American boyfriends and lived in her own apartment; she was the only local at all with whom we shared pot pipes or joints. Females working in bars hustled drinks and conversed with GIs, but only girls in brothels who possessed health department registration cards were paid sex workers. Most had graduated high school a year or two prior and were working off loans their fathers had made from the brothel mamasan, and that was a shame on the entire society.

For several months, I rented an apartment across a little valley (see photo below) from Chris' and John's place, above the neighborhood convenience store.

 

We never offered, nor would allow any of our buddies to offer, the Okinawan girls any intoxicants; the girls showed no interest in alcohol or catching a buzz. Delightful young Asian ladies whom we did not wish to change abruptly by them consuming any intoxicants. The Okinawan girls' families were against them being with Americans, so had one gone home high we may have had a serious problem with their fathers. Those girls were not as sophisticated as some of the ones we GIs each knew back home, who had been getting drunk and/or stoned with us since our early teens. 

When we were in the store and kids were there, with their parent, we might offer to buy the children each a candy bar after clearing it as OK with the parent and the store owner papasan. In respect of what the parents wanted the children to have in their diets, plus definitely due to fear of diabetes; then also there is the "never take candy from a stranger rule" we were taught while growing up. 

One Saturday, when we were at the house with several other buddies, John told us he had promised his Okinawan papasan neighbor that the next time enough of us were around we would remove the remnants of a typhoon toppled tree in his garden that most of it had been sawed off for usable woods. Unfortunately, the wood salvagers had left a huge stump with large roots sticking all out of it higher than our heads. John couldn't stand the sight of that, due to his family living off their garden and not only was the huge stump taking up a lot of space in the small garden - in a crowded suburban neighborhood - the stump shaded some of the plants. 

With 7 or 8 young military members together for a friendly physical challenge like that it was, "Yeah man! Let's do it." We got all around the stump then hoisted it up by hand and set it off to the side. Damn we loved that. After that, the usually politely cordial, but Asian society reserved, Okinawan neighborhood who had accepted us there were really happy to exchange greetings when we walked past their homes. 

A few months later, I was in the house watching TV with Chris, when John came walking back from somewhere and spoke into the window telling us to come outside. There was an Okinawan family there with the front tire of their car in the small benjo ditch next to the road. Sewage ran from buildings on out to somewhere in often partly open cement trough benjo ditches. The three of us may have been able to lift the small Japanese car ourselves, plus there were two full grown 30-some-yr-old Okinawan men and two women from the trapped auto. 

As we three GIs approached the smiling men and two women out around the car making unsuccessful attempts to lift it, John reached his hand out across my and Chris's chests to stop us a second and look in the back seat. There was a 4- or 5-year-old girl in there with her fingers holding closed a deep bloody gash behind her ear. We three smiled with warm feelings of respect and care for the brave child. We appreciated and honored the Asian ways of how they raised their kids to be reserved, calm and collected during all times. We also knew that there was a medical clinic up the road they were heading to. It was a swift lift of the auto by we five men and away the Okinawan family went. 

On time, six of us American friends were playing touch football up the road a couple of blocks away on a bare dirt school yard, when some Okinawan kids over on the other side of the schoolyard kicking around a soccer ball got up the nerve to walk over and see what that was we GIs were playing. I was surprised they didn't know what the game of American football is. The oddly oblong ball puzzled them, so we handed it to them and indicated they should show us what to do. 

One boy, all were smiling inquisitively friendly, dropped the ball like it was a round soccer ball and they began to pass kick it to each other while laughing wonderfully at how the oblong ball moved zanily as a soccer ball. One of us picked up the pigskin ball as one of us said, "Let's teach them like it was football practice." 

We six young American Army men in their home country got them to form two lines, then had them run out for passes. As they got a good grip on what's the deal in catching footballs, we six took turns drawing the lines a receiver would make on a pass catching run. Then every time a kid got it right, we'd dig a coin out of our pockets and reward them. Thier parents made an average of a meager 25 to 35 cents an hour at work and candy bars were one nickel plus sodas a dime, so our coin rewards were welcomed by the boys. We Army dudes drew out the receiver's running patterns to be more complicated to small degrees - just like football practice should be - and it was a whole lotta fun. 

Schoolboys on Okinawa were taught Karate at school and by men in their families. It was assumed by GIs that all Okinawan men know some Karate and some are 100% deadly dudes. One hot evening after sunset, 5 or 6 of us friends were out in front of the house and over sitting on the low wall of the neighbor's garden, sipping beers and relaxedly passing a joint. Suddenly, we hear this strange swishing sound coming at us from out of sight just up the road. A group of about 40 young Okinawan men our age were in karate gis jogging barefoot, in tight formation, on the tar surface behind a mature man karate instructor - their sensei. The swishing was due to them not placing their feet in normal running form straight down then up with every step but each step was made by pushing their bare feet down in a forward action across the rough tar surface in order to toughen the soles of their feet. 

Us guys knew not to say anything to them, because it could be misconstrued as being rude or actually be rude. Karate is a lot about self-control, and it would have required some seriously aggressive stupidity on our part to anger any of them enough to launch into physical attack against us, but if one or more of them had walked over and insisted, we'd sure enough been convinced to apologize. All told, respect for all Okinawans was a lot more palatable to the friends I had on Okinawa. It allowed us to walk through back street neighborhoods to and from Ft. Sukiran or the shopping, bar, legal brothel and steam bath massage parlor districts any time of day or night.

Late at night, when walking through the neighborhoods, a few times we encountered an Okinawan man sitting cross legged at his front door and skillfully playing a stringed instrument. The men usually wore American style clothing out in public, but the musicians were dressed in their colorful, comfortable, native Asian style. The first time we stopped and smiled appreciatively approvingly, the man got up and went inside. After that we knew it was offensive to be Americans in his country and have us be friendly to a man peacefully playing his beautiful music. After that, on the 2 or 3 other occasions we were blessed to encounter one of those musicians at night, when no vehicles were moving about, and the majority of the residents were asleep in dark homes, we'd walk down the road a ways then stop and listen - in the darkness of backstreets not lit well by street lamps. For brief, magical moments. 

(photos best viewed clicked on to enlarge)

Across the small road next to the house, and looking down into the little valley. My apartment & the neighborhood store were one of the cement-style, two-story structures at the top of the photo.