Before Going Home!This post only SEEMS to be occurring too soon after returning from R&R because I forgot to tell you about R&R in its proper chronology. R&R happened in December. My week's leave in Japan happened in February. (I left Vietnam forever on March 4!) In the earlier Camp Zama post, I forgot to tell you about the winter coldness of Japanese February -- much different from tropical Vietnamese February! Commercial coat-renters met us at the plane to rent us heavy winter coats which we were very thankful to have throughout that week! I had already received my written orders to go home before heading to Zama. I had intentionally saved my 1-week official leave & my money that whole year so I could go shopping at the end. But it was serendipitous that my stateside orders exempted my expensive purchases from the U.S. Customs duty -- I didn't know that until well after I had scheduled my Japanese leave! GI's usually got to choose when to schedule their leaves and many took it much earlier in their tour than I did. But it was my typical pattern of gratification-delay from being raised so strictly -- no hedonism or impulsivity allowed. If I had a goal or worthy reason requiring it, I could easily put off enjoyment or pleasure in the short term to achieve the goal or greater good in the longer term. That may be the "secret" to high achievement, but not necessarily "high status." I think many status-seekers do NOT delay gratification of their desires. They want status and they want it soon, whether they have really achieved anything particularly worthwhile or not. Some have, some haven't. But that doesn't stop many from pretending they have achieved significance!A day trip arranged through the Army recreation office at Camp Zama took us by bus to see that classic Japanese cinder cone, Fujiyama. The large lake at the base of Mount Fuji was frozen solid. From a distance we could see adults and children ice skating and ice fishing by the near shore of the lake. I only noticed them emerging in the distance as we rose up the little inclined railway gaining perspective on the side of a smaller mountain to observe Fujiyama from the top. The bus trip proved to be a populist excursion into the countryside, seeing smaller towns, and stopping to let us shop in small stores that local residents were using in that instance. It allowed us a unique perspective of familiarity with the Japanese people.Back at Zama, I bought some nice furnishings to set up a brand new household when I got back to the States, and I got a nice massage where a lightly-clad Japanese masseuse walked on my back to finish. I decided to venture out on another day and find my way through the railway labyrinth traveling a long distance to get to Tokyo and to see its sights: the Ginza's underground shopping, the Emperor's Palace, and the Nichigeki (burlesque) theatre. I should comment specifically on the Nichigeki, where I was pretty sure I would see some naked flesh -- but not much to it in spite of its worldwide reputation. Very artsy and well-choreographed Japanese stylized dancing & singing, but nowhere near as risque as California when I returned a month later! Of course, California was the vanguard in a time of permissive transitions in the States. Hippies, drugs, and Jim Morrison's rock still dominated Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. It was legal to participate in the full nudity of the musical troupe presenting "Hair" in the Sacramento Civic Center -- toward the end, the actors disrobed completely and came singing into the audience. (But not vice-versa -- it was not THAT permissive, yet). Nixon had gotten elected with his "secret way" to end the Vietnam War, whether he really had one or not. Kissinger & Nixon sold out the South Vietnamese and Montagnard peoples by bailing out of the war (i.e., they had us cut-and-run). US war protesters were listened to more by US politicians than were US military experts. And from 1965 on, there was a tremendous increase in the availability and use of all kinds of drugs among the non-military young people of the United States. International drug dealers must have LOVED the War for the drug-laced, oppositional counter-culture it created at home![Bob Dylan was right -- THE TIMES, THEY WERE A-CHANGIN'. But change is not automatically for the better! Those were shocking changes for so many of us raised on the very straight-and-narrow! Even my bride later told me her alleged-first-sex-boyfriend, Alexander, had regularly sold marijuana in Laredo when she dated him -- don't know now that I still believe her denial of using that boyfriend's drugs! But this was clearly the difference between people who graduated high school before and after 1963. Very, very few high-schoolers at the beginning of the 60's were into drugs and sex although everyone liked rock-and-roll!]But the strangest thing I found on leave in Japan was the feeling of complete culture shock and isolation I experienced at about 10 PM one night in Tokyo. Although I knew 5 simple sentences in Japanese, how to count to 10, & how to write my name in Kanji, that wasn't enough! Luckily, I could survive somewhat by noting the Arabic number-labels by each dish of food shown in the windows of restaurants because they were used to dealing with Gai-jin (foreigners)! See what you want and write the Arabic number that was next to it on paper for the server so they could bring you the desired, corresponding entree! Traditionally, number symbols in Japanese are calligraphic, but Japanese people also know & use the Arabic number symbols -- both are printed on their artful Nippon Ginko paper money. But, as I stood outside the moat to the Emperor's Palace late at night in Tokyo, I felt truly "Lost in Translation!" The bright, multicolor, commercial neon signs in vertical Japanese characters were ubiquitous. NOTHING was in Roman characters! I couldn't read a thing and felt completely isolated and alone in a foreign nighttime -- unable to read or speak with even the occasional passerby. I could not read a single word anywhere around me for the first time in my life since age 4! If I had had an emergency need of any sort, I might as well have been on the cold, full moon shining brightly from so far away.
Back to the War on Christmas Eve!Well, Crap! Our chartered airline jet took off on December 24th from Hickam AFB/Honolulu International Airport in the late afternoon. We were flying west back to Vietnam so we crossed the International Date Line about 9:30 at night in pitch black skies. At the Date Line, there is a "time warp" straight out of Sci-Fi! Suddenly, it was 9:30 PM on December 25! That's how it works the moment you cross the Date Line going west... Instantaneously, we were teleported ahead 24 hours in time!! Not only sad at leaving sweethearts in Hawaii, it seemed like we were cheated out of Christmas Eve, too. I guess it actually allowed us not to dwell on being alone Christmas Eve for quite so long. It just seemed ironic to be going back to the War and having Christmas Eve taken from us as some great cosmic joke.The Hawaiian sex with wifey had been good (now, I'll kiss & tell a little), having had none for 10 months! (Not counting the surprise end to a relaxing Vietnamese massage with the concessionairess' abortive attempt at a Vaseline handjob when I first got in-country as an "apparent" bachelor.) But back to the Ilikai and R&R, the first night included nine lengthy, completed couplings! I believe that is MY lifetime record! For 10 months, I had been stockpiling my deposits for her bank -- maybe it would have been no surprise if I hadn't been such a newlywed. For that matter, I was a virtual newbie as a "near-virgin," anyway. What would I know about frequency of intercourse, let alone MARRIED intercourse?I took a few vacation photos of my bride to last me but none were racy -- you have to remember this was still the era of 35 mm. film developed in commercial photo processors. I even had to send mine out from Vietnam via snail-mail to be developed in Japan! I would have liked a few intimate pics of my bride to look at in-country but, between our old-fashioned modesty and a concern that military or Japanese censors would destroy the film or worse, we just took fairly-regular clothed pics. Wouldn't it be different today? Today's privately-processed digital cameras and computer electronics would have made the rest of the Vietnam tour much more bearable (for BOTH of us)! Even then, I probably could have bought a Polaroid camera in Hawaii, but after 3 days in the bedroom, we wanted to see a little of Hawaii before R&R Week was totally gone! (She had found me at the Honolulu airport's Military R&R Center on the 18th and I had to head back on the 24th.) Together-Time was running out the moment I stepped off the airliner!From Vietnam, I had also reserved a bungalow at Bellows AFB on the northeast side of Oahu where I had vacationed and camped with the Scouts as a kid. (This was my only chance ever to share MY roots with my bride -- this was MY childhood family setting and the only chance I would ever have to share that important history with anyone.) But it was also our belated honeymoon. I thought I had reserved a nice, new air-conditioned base hotel room near the beach, but something had changed and they gave us an old wood-frame building with screened windows for our fresh-air conditioning. This could be viewed as a romantic, idyllic setting but Raquel was shocked and in tears when she first saw it from our rental car! This large bungalow was right on the beach and one of the older buildings that my boyhood family had probably used to stay in on a holiday weekend. But Raquel never went camping or roughing it when her mom had a Girl Scout troop. And her parents had always "holidayed" at nice resort hotels since her mum got a great discount as an employee of La Posada Motor Hotel, a fancy, resort hotel on the Rio Grande, itself. We had to take that bungalow -- there was nothing else left (like the story in the ORIGINAL "posada of Joseph and Mary", a wonderful Mexican Christmas social tradition). Raquel made do -- and even enjoyed it after we settled in and had a little recreational sex in the honeymoon sack and finally spent the next day out on the beach there at Bellows. A nice beach and not packed with people like Waikiki (Bellows Beach WAS on an AF base, after all). I was amazed by our bodies' reactions to Bellows' Oahu sunshine -- stripped naked back in the bungalow, I was lobster-red and Raquel's half-Tex-Mex skin was already instant tan (no burn whatsoever)! My mind's eye can still picture her standing there after removing her 2-piece swimsuit -- little, white butt and titties contrasting with a noticeably-darker shade of tan everywhere else. Like many young Mexican women trying to stay as white as they can, Raquel usually avoided sun exposure and the outdoors. I imagine she'd say it was to avoid skin cancer, but I suspect it was vanity as much, and to look more like her Spanish ancestors instead of Native American or African ones.
Why did I forget to tell you about R&R in Hawaii? You want me to kiss & tell? Well, we didn't come out of the bedroom for 3 days once we got there. What do you expect? We hadn't seen each other for TEN MONTHS and we were newlyweds who had never spent a full night together, anywhere! Duuh! I guess you can presume SHE had been faithful then -- I know I had been! Anyway, one of those 3 days was my December birthday so Raquel practiced the celebratory lighting of my birthday candle and we got fired up!The Ilikai Hotel on Waikiki was in a nice romantic setting but the romance was INdoors, not outside -- I'm not kidding... Three days & nights out of the 7 total to be on R&R, and I can't even remember what we did for meals during that time! That third floor window overlooked the Ilikai's marina and that was all we saw of Waikiki for the longest time. I think I remember taking Raquel out for supper a couple of times because I have a vague memory of the Ilikai's beach bar area, and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Hawaiian Village Hilton's dining rooms at least once . I'm sure I showed her where I lived in Hawaii as a boy and my dad was stationed next to Pearl Harbor at Hickam Field. I know I took her on a boat tour around Ford Island where the USS Arizona has lain docked at rest underwater since December 7, 1941! When you see TV History Channel's film of Pearl Harbor being attacked, the ship whose central smokestack is emitting a rapid plume of thick, black smoke straight up at the beginning of the explosions... THAT is the Arizona! One of the first Japanese bombs dropped right down her smokestack just a few moments before those film frames were shot. Most of her crew went down with the battleship and are still aboard her! Over 2000 bodies released their souls that day and left their corpses never to be recoverable from the water inside the Arizona there. When we visited their final resting place, the nation had not yet turned it into the beautiful and appropriate white memorial docking platform that it has today. We could still see some of the rust-red Arizona superstructure reaching up to us -- makes me think of the underwater statue of Jesus in the Florida Keys' John Pennekamp Underwater State Park reaching up to save divers looking down to him. I still imagine the sailors buried in the Arizona looking up like Jesus, but looking to BE saved. Even today, they are still there under the water! So is the Christ. I didn't realize it until the movie, "Pearl Harbor," came out a few years ago. But after I'd seen it a few times from start to finish, I had one hell of an epiphany! I suddenly realized it was because of Pearl Harbor that I spent 24 years in military uniform! It was all those Hawaiian experiences as a kid at Hickam Field, Wheeler Field, and Pearl Harbor (I attended Pearl Harbor Intermediate public school.) Somehow, I was deeply touched by those first 4 perfectionistically-tough years living with my very strict father at a very impressionable age. Wearing a Boy Scout uniform on Memorial Day, I'd placed plumeria leis around the small Stars-&-Stripes planted on each veteran's grave in Diamond Head's Punchbowl (the National Cemetery of the Pacific). My memories are etched in clear, vivid, technicolor! The Boy Scouts gave me opportunities away from my father just like the military would later. My dad was never involved with me in either; but, I can't imagine I was any better off without him in either. BTW, Loyalty is the second point of the Scout Law.
A True Week's Leave at Camp Zama, Japan
"If you go to Japan within 30 days of rotating back to the States, put a copy of your reassignment orders in the shipping box of anything you buy and it will go home Duty-free!" This was great advice from someone at Pleiku who knew that the orders made it count as household goods! Of course, I have "fast-forwarded" from the shorter Hong Kong "good deal trip" with limited purchasing to an official 7-day leave at a U.S. Army base near Tokyo which had MANY retail sales concessionaires with shops in a PX complex! Great! I bought myself the exact stereo receiver of which I had to buy a slightly different model for a "buddy" while in Hong Kong; he had shown a truly thankless self-centeredness over it -- I should have bought my ivory chess set instead and brought him nothing!But, at Zama, I also purchased (and shipped to my Aunt Blanche's home near my next base in Sacramento) a set of the best speakers Pioneer made, and a full 12-place setting of good Noritake china. Also, the latest Akai reel-to-reel tape recorder/player. The Japanese electronic industry kept changing so rapidly that I found, a year later, my "latest" equipment was obsolescent. Many acquaintances returning from the war zone after me brought home equipment with ever greater improvements and features than I had been able to find. The Vietnam War did MUCH to stimulate a rapidly-developing, vibrant Japanese electronic industry! Anything I bought overseas was less than HALF its retail price in the U.S.! We have a high standard of living in the U.S. -- we can get anything from all over the world. BUT WE PAY FOR IT! Each "middleman" entrepreneur has to take "his cut" of the ultimate sales price, of course; and each cut raises the retail price by that amount. I sometimes toy with the idea of getting into the import-export sales business!I must remember to mention Seiko wristwatches, another growth industry due to the Vietnam War! They were very good watches and available in every little military exchange in Vietnam -- the first watches I ever knew that were self-winding and didn't need batteries! (Handy for a grunt in the field far from BX/PX/Navy Exchanges.) I'd really rather have a self-winder now than deal with trying to replace a watch battery. The Seiko's were great -- we marked the weeks by them, not just days. One day seemed just as routine as the next, so every Sunday we would say, "Well, damned if it isn't another Seiko red-letter day!" Our Seiko watches showed a red "SUN" in the day-window on Sundays when all the other days were labeled in black. So, it was a way of greeting each other or exclaiming that another week had passed and we were getting "shorter" (having less time before we would rotate home). The most shocking thing I ever heard in-country was a particular response with the grisly sense of humor we developed in the combat zone. We WERE in AF sidefiring gunships, AC-47's, remember. We shot gatling guns every night and killed bad guys as they tried to kill us with AK-47 or .50 cal rounds. (Sometimes they had more -- "quad-50 cal's".) Occasionally, every base was rocketed by the bad guys on the ground from off-base at night. One guy in my flight crew was SO happy to be finished after landing, he yelled out, "SHORT! I'm so short I can crawl under the door to my Hootch. I'm going home in a week!" To which, one of our younger pilots immediately replied just as loudly, "Yeah. In a BAG!" (Meaning, a body bag for dead guys.) --Cold, man!
Intercepted while Flying back to the War Zone!
On the 5th day we headed back to Vietnam. Our C-47 was packed with purchases and GI's. Our flight plan had been filed in Hong Kong so I felt safer knowing that Red Chinese authorities would almost certainly know our intended non-combat route on the return trip. We followed the same basic navigation procedures for the return Airways-Route on the way back to our "home away from home." It was very quiet for all 33 of us on the trip back to Vietnam.I don't remember whether we were undercast this time or not when crossing that reef near Hainan. Seems like we could see it. This inexactness of memory underlines my not having kept a regular journal for later when finally deciding to expose inner thoughts to the population of the world. (I didn't know how much they would help, then.) We DID have lots of crap (stuff our GI passengers had bought) loaded in the back of the airplane; thankfully, our flight engineer and pilots figured the weights & balances sheet correctly. We didn't crash on takeoff, and everyone still got to bring all their purchases back. See -- I COULD have brought back that uniquely beautiful ivory chess set, after all! Damn!You know this makes me wonder how many extra, little passengers had caught rides on the bodies of our pax in the form of STD's from selected Hong Kong prostitutes!? It is worth mentioning the "PCOD" -- a very important date to each GI in Vietnam. That was the "Pussy Cut-Off Date" after which no G.I. wanted to have sex because it would be possible for him to catch an STD, & have it undetectable when leaving Vietnam for "the World" (home), and wind up giving it to his wife or sweetheart(s) back home. Now, lest you think I am "projecting" my personal involvement & desire for that counter girl at the China Fleet store, nothing happened there! I am sure, with a little more effort on my part, I could have found the world of Suzie Wong. I only stopped into one regular dance club for a little while one evening, but felt so alienated because of my newlywed status that I just went back to the hotel. Of course, there, I looked out the hotel window at the high-rise tenements across the street . There were a lot of little late-night family businesses operating in their apartments even on the higher floors! Of course, some were relaxing and having supper as families. I don't think I ever DID see a Suzie Wong undressing in high-rise anonymity. Too bad.Well, back to flying the southern route across the South China Sea! The only noteworthy event was when we were approaching the coast of S. Vietnam, two American jet interceptors with Delta tails (F-102's or F-106's) started buzzing us. They came so close, it made our little propeller-driven plane pitch around rather erratically (like entering weather turbulence) because those jet fighters crossed directly in front of us disrupting our wings' airflow. I was in the cargo compartment looking out the windows of the C-47 along with 30 other goof-ball Americans waving and laughing. We could see the faces of the single-seat jet pilots looking us over to make sure we weren't bad guys invading! Who else but a bunch of American GI's would get ecstatic about the military fun of actually being intercepted by planes prepared to shoot our asses out of the sky if our plane had the wrong insignia on it? I guess our flight plan made it to China's Hainan Island but not to Da Nang AB's U.S. interceptors! I just hoped that the pilots HAD filed our official flight plan or the "front-end" aircrew (pilots & nav) would be tagged for the jet fuel costs of an unnecessary scrambling & intercept!
