Good Duty
Sometime in April of 1954, I arrived in Okinawa along with hundreds of other Air Force and Army enlisted men, to start a tour of duty that was supposed to last for 18 months. We came by troopship, a method of transport that I believe the Air Force has long since stopped using, preferring to use its planes instead, apparently because it has so much gas to waste.
It shouldn't have been a great crossing for me, because I had had to spend much of the trip buried below decks in the soaking wet grime and labor of the worst job of KP, washing pots and pans, from dawn through the day till well into the night, every other day. Added to that was sleeping in one of a number of holds that were crammed with guys piled in tiers of canvas bunks three or four high, that had a habit of swaying in the usually active seas, below the waterline where you could hear the waves constantly and loudly crashing and banging against the steel bulkheads.
But I was 22 and secure in the knowledge that I could easily endure any indignity that would only last two weeks, and I treated the trip as a pleasure cruise that, when not on Pots and Pans, I spent topside, leaning on the rails and checking out every sight that offered itself, and they were all unusual, compared to everything I had ever seen before.
When we landed on Okinawa and were loaded into strange buses that had no roofs, to take us to our various bases, I was fascinated out of my mind, because everything looked and sounded and even smelled so exotic and different. I had already lived in D.C. and had been to New York City many times, and in the Air Force I had spent time in southern Illinois and in southern California. But Okinawa was something else! It was definitely on the other side of the world, as far as it was possible to get from the tried and true comfort of anywhere in the U.S. It was definitely the Orient, and closer, even if it hadn't been a bitterly contested battlefield, to 150 years ago than I am certain it is now. I know I wouldn't recognize it if I were to go back..
In 1954 the island was still recovering from the total devastation that large areas of it had suffered from the fighting that had started with the American invasion on this day of the month, April 1, in 1945, plus in the interval since then huge typhoons had swept through and added to the woes of living there. All the people I saw from my bus looked different and wore different kinds of clothes, oriental yet also threadbare -- except for young ladies standing in front of buildings labeled simply "Bar," in tiny communities that looked a lot like the frontier towns that you see in Westerns that don't have big budgets. Those ladies were sheathed in tight-fitting, shiny outfits, and they seemed especially happy to see us passing through, smiling broadly and cheering and waving and carrying on, as did the children though with more restraint, while the other adult Okinawans, wearing their wide-brimmed Oriental hats, gave us scarcely a glance before bending back to their activities. And here and there I saw genuine rice paddies, neat as could be, with green shoots sticking up as uniformly as the spikes in fakirs' beds of nails, and the trees and bushes looked so intensely green and healthy with their branches extended in evocative shapes, just like those in Japanese prints.
Because of this experience and others subsequently, I have never known what to say about the American policy of plopping down military bases everywhere they can, all over the world. It has its drawbacks and its benefits, depending on the locations and the attitudes of the citizens in those farflung countries.
In observance of April 1, 1945, the day that American marines and soldiers landed on Okinawa and, against the bitter resistance of hard-bitten, fanatical Japanese soldiers, started a three-month battle that ended up causing close to a quarter-million deaths of themselves and others on an island only one-third the size of Long Island, I just want to comment on how happy I was that the U.S. government afforded me an experience like this that otherwise I would never have had.
I have had the peculiar fortune -- I suppose that mostly it's good - to have noticed that strange obverse, yingyang phenomenon in other areas, too.
The people who made the recent movie "Jarhead," about American marines in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, put their finger right on this paradox, in what is for me the climactic scene in the film.
Though till then they haven't particularly enjoyed each other's company, the platoon leader, played by Jamie Foxx, and the main character, a private or something played by Jake Gyllenhaal, are sitting together in a Kuwaiti oil field, at night. Exhausted and with their clothes blackened by oil-drenched sand, they are taking in the incredible scene in which they have found themselves. Dozens of oil wells, set afire by Saddam's retreating Iraqis, are burning in the distance in every direction, the flames vivid against a background in which the desert and the skies have blended into an otherwise solid pitch blackness,.and the two men, staring, are awestruck in spite of their normal blase ways.
Finally the Foxx character says something like, "Look at this! Just look at this! This is why I just love being in the Marines. I just love it, because where else would you get to see s--t like this!" And the Gyllenhaal character can't help but agree.
The military is great for allowing young Americans to see all sorts of fabulous things, save when somebody calls on them not only to suffer grievous injury and death themselves but also to inflict even more of the same on others. The first situation in my day was called "good duty." The second was called "chickens--t."
It shouldn't have been a great crossing for me, because I had had to spend much of the trip buried below decks in the soaking wet grime and labor of the worst job of KP, washing pots and pans, from dawn through the day till well into the night, every other day. Added to that was sleeping in one of a number of holds that were crammed with guys piled in tiers of canvas bunks three or four high, that had a habit of swaying in the usually active seas, below the waterline where you could hear the waves constantly and loudly crashing and banging against the steel bulkheads.
But I was 22 and secure in the knowledge that I could easily endure any indignity that would only last two weeks, and I treated the trip as a pleasure cruise that, when not on Pots and Pans, I spent topside, leaning on the rails and checking out every sight that offered itself, and they were all unusual, compared to everything I had ever seen before.
When we landed on Okinawa and were loaded into strange buses that had no roofs, to take us to our various bases, I was fascinated out of my mind, because everything looked and sounded and even smelled so exotic and different. I had already lived in D.C. and had been to New York City many times, and in the Air Force I had spent time in southern Illinois and in southern California. But Okinawa was something else! It was definitely on the other side of the world, as far as it was possible to get from the tried and true comfort of anywhere in the U.S. It was definitely the Orient, and closer, even if it hadn't been a bitterly contested battlefield, to 150 years ago than I am certain it is now. I know I wouldn't recognize it if I were to go back..
In 1954 the island was still recovering from the total devastation that large areas of it had suffered from the fighting that had started with the American invasion on this day of the month, April 1, in 1945, plus in the interval since then huge typhoons had swept through and added to the woes of living there. All the people I saw from my bus looked different and wore different kinds of clothes, oriental yet also threadbare -- except for young ladies standing in front of buildings labeled simply "Bar," in tiny communities that looked a lot like the frontier towns that you see in Westerns that don't have big budgets. Those ladies were sheathed in tight-fitting, shiny outfits, and they seemed especially happy to see us passing through, smiling broadly and cheering and waving and carrying on, as did the children though with more restraint, while the other adult Okinawans, wearing their wide-brimmed Oriental hats, gave us scarcely a glance before bending back to their activities. And here and there I saw genuine rice paddies, neat as could be, with green shoots sticking up as uniformly as the spikes in fakirs' beds of nails, and the trees and bushes looked so intensely green and healthy with their branches extended in evocative shapes, just like those in Japanese prints.
Because of this experience and others subsequently, I have never known what to say about the American policy of plopping down military bases everywhere they can, all over the world. It has its drawbacks and its benefits, depending on the locations and the attitudes of the citizens in those farflung countries.
In observance of April 1, 1945, the day that American marines and soldiers landed on Okinawa and, against the bitter resistance of hard-bitten, fanatical Japanese soldiers, started a three-month battle that ended up causing close to a quarter-million deaths of themselves and others on an island only one-third the size of Long Island, I just want to comment on how happy I was that the U.S. government afforded me an experience like this that otherwise I would never have had.
I have had the peculiar fortune -- I suppose that mostly it's good - to have noticed that strange obverse, yingyang phenomenon in other areas, too.
The people who made the recent movie "Jarhead," about American marines in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, put their finger right on this paradox, in what is for me the climactic scene in the film.
Though till then they haven't particularly enjoyed each other's company, the platoon leader, played by Jamie Foxx, and the main character, a private or something played by Jake Gyllenhaal, are sitting together in a Kuwaiti oil field, at night. Exhausted and with their clothes blackened by oil-drenched sand, they are taking in the incredible scene in which they have found themselves. Dozens of oil wells, set afire by Saddam's retreating Iraqis, are burning in the distance in every direction, the flames vivid against a background in which the desert and the skies have blended into an otherwise solid pitch blackness,.and the two men, staring, are awestruck in spite of their normal blase ways.
Finally the Foxx character says something like, "Look at this! Just look at this! This is why I just love being in the Marines. I just love it, because where else would you get to see s--t like this!" And the Gyllenhaal character can't help but agree.
The military is great for allowing young Americans to see all sorts of fabulous things, save when somebody calls on them not only to suffer grievous injury and death themselves but also to inflict even more of the same on others. The first situation in my day was called "good duty." The second was called "chickens--t."
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 1:45 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Carl,
I just read your comment on my site and decided to reply here to ensure that you would see it.
I have heard that the Florida congress is looking into these rules. I am pretty sure that I heard it on NPR, although it could have been on the local news.
I thought I had blogged about it, but looking back I didn't. While it is possible that the Dem candidate could win Florida anyway, it would only be by a write-in campaign and how likely is that to happen? I know maybe 10 people who would go to the trouble, and maybe 5 more bloggers. I shudder to think of it. But I will see if I can find something concrete.
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