Memories of Okinawa

Okinawa has this perpetual summer. With lows in the 50s and highs in the 60s (in the winter) summer never really ends. Some people wear shorts and flip-flops year ’round. Not me, I’m allergic to any temp below 75.

Trepidation set in as we got ready for that first day of school after the summer of “big change”. I was the only one of the three of us going to high school, so my walk to the bus stop that first day was alone. I was the only American kid, so I thought, in the neighborhood in high school. That first morning at the bus stop learning continued. The walk through the neighborhood took about 5 minutes. The bus stop was at that gate for Makiminato Service Area (where had taken a left on the way to the house that first time). As I walked through the neighborhood, I noticed many things that I had never noticed before. About halfway to the bus stop I started hearing this chanting, I surmized that the family that lived in that house was budhist. Believe it or not, that chanting is one of the many things that I miss the most. As I rounded the corner that lead to the gate, there was another kid at the bus stop. He really didn’t look american, but he was. David Yamada lived in the house right below ours with his family, but he clearly looked Okinawan to me. We spoke over the years, but never really became good friends or anything, his circle of friends was quite different from mine. He was a really nice person just the same, and the rest of his family were good people too. His sister, Nancy was pretty good friends with my sister, Cheryl.

We waited for the bus about 5 minutes or so and then it rounded the curve and headed for the gate where we were. I always liked keeping a low profile, so I really liked sitting in the back of the bus. I was nervous as the bus rolled to a stop. The bus was already full, we were the last stop on the run. As we boarded the bus, I was amazed to see the back seat with only one person in it. I was further amazed that the dude in the back seat had long blonde hair (like mine). I headed straight for that back seat and sat down. Whew. The back seat was mine for the rest of my career riding the bus. The dude sitting next to me was named Steve Sawyer. We hit it off pretty quick. He was a newbie just like me, so together we experienced many new experiences.

The bus ride was about 30 minutes. I really don’t remember a lot about that first ride, except when we pulled into the school parking lot and started to get off the bus. We were wondering what were we going to do? We anxiously looked around through the bus windows. We inched toward the front, anxiety got stronger, we could hear loud talking, bansheeism, music, you name it. As we stepped down off the bus, we finally figured it out. There was this tree in the middle of this remote parking lot with about 15 long haired kids and 12 or 13 ladies hanging out smoking cigarettes and everything. We were home. “The smoking area” would be “home” for three more years until graduation.

We looked over our schedules and had all the same problems that all other high school kids have.  Where were all these different rooms?  What would the teachers be like?  There were these two kids up there in the smoking area that told us “how things were”.  Steve and Chris Larkin had been there for a couple years already.  They knew where everything was.  They were good to us and shared all of their vast wealth of directional information so we wouldn’t get lost on that first day.  While we were up there the first bell rang, then the second bell rang.  We set the tone, at the direction of the others, to not be on time.   The tardy bell became our signal to start the trek to homeroom.  This was a lesson that would stick for the entire three years also.

Nothing else that happened that first day carried near the significance that finding the smoking area carried, at least not to me. There is really only one other item that I carry in my memory of my first day at Kubasaki High School. One of my classes was algebra. I can’t remember the teachers name, but I vividly remember the opening line. She asked the class as she came in and shut the door behind her “What does a mermaid wear?” No one said a word for about ten seconds. She answered her own question “an Algae Bra”. How fitting that this joke (ocean related) would stick with me all these years.

My sophomore year was underway.

When we left the Hilton, that last time, our excitement level was quite high. The parents had been house hunting for weeks and weeks. We proceeded south from the Hilton down to highway 58 and took a left to go farther south. When we reached Urasoe City, we turned right. At the bottom of the hill there was this guard house with a sign that read “Makiminato Service Area”. Just as we thought we were pulling up to the gate we turned right again onto a little road barely big enough for a single vehicle. Another right, veer right at the “Y” and at the top of the hill – There it was, on the left. We pulled into the driveway and stopped. Dad turned the car off. The doors on the car opened. We all emerged from the car into this enchanted picture. We had arrived at D-20 Makiminato Point. We looked around. This place while new to us, had this feel about it. It really felt the we “belonged there”. There was a pretty good sized yard, nice three+ bedroom house. The largest bedroom was a tatami room. There was a dry fish pond just outside the front door. Every one of us chose up bedrooms – I chose this little room at the far end of the house, it probably would have been maids quarters traditionally. My room was barely large enough for the bed and dresser, and of course some audio equipment.

Our driveway was huge. Two cars could fit out front and three or four in the back. Little did my dad know at the time, but, that big ol’ driveway would come in quite handy a little ways down the road. There was a nice patio at the north end of the yard, and a view of the ocean on three sides (WOW). There was a little mamasan store smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood, near the “Y”. There were all sorts of goodies in that little store. Pocky, Felix Gum, crackers of all shapes and sizes, soft drinks, ice cream, and other tasty treats. We made a daily trip to the little store with 2 or 300 yen to buy our favorite treat. We stayed close to the house for a while, but, soon it would be time to explore.

After a week or so the movers arrived with all the furniture. That little house sure did get full fast. We went koi shopping at some point early after we moved in. Dad just had to get that dry pond wet, and of course, when in Japan ….. We all had a say in which fishes to buy. I don’t remember how much the bill was, but I do remember, the bigger the koi the higher the price. We ended up with about 7 or 8 koi. The largest two were about 10 inches long. One of the larger ones was this almost translucent white, the other was black. We also had some yellow ones and some orange ones. We learned how to get the water prepared and how to set up the pond and we were on our way. Took a day or two, but, we had us one really nice koi pond when all was said and done.

Well summer quickly came to an end and the dreaded school registration process got started. My brother and sister registered at Makiminato Elementary and me at Kubasaki High School. Once we were registered, we were required to make the pilgrimage to the Naval Hospital at Camp Kuwae for shots. I’ll never forget sitting in the line at Kuwae hospital. There were kids with parents all sitting in this corridor waiting their turn for shots. One would think that all these kids would talk to each other and meet, but we didn’t. I think, looking back, that we were all embarrassed (I know I was) because we were with our parents, so no one uttered a word. We just quietly waited our turn for the dreaded shots.

Ouch ….. And then Summer was over.

I am going to write down as many of the memories that I can possibly write over the coming weeks and months. Good, Bad, or Evil all the memories. I welcome other folks to share their own memories of experiences on the island.

We moved into the Okinawa Hilton in June of 1979. At first our world had opened up tremendously. There was a nightclub, a little cafe, a video gameroom, a restaurant, a pool, a mountainside garden and everything. We were three kids – me 16, my brother 14, and my sister 9. We set out exploring and meeting these wonderful people that ran the place. There were rarely any Americans around, let alone kids, so all we really had was each other for companionship. That got boring really fast.

We met the guys that tended the pool, and the waitresses in the cafe, and the people at the front desk. They were all very friendly to us and tought us little Japanese phrases and made certain we were comfy. The hilton was our new home and as isolated as it was we made the most of it. We made many trips up the mountain exploring in the garden. We figured out very quickly that there were many graves cut into the side of the hill. Every once in a while we would run across incense, or a bowl of food at the door to the graves. There was one grave that actually was not sealed, yet, we never even considered shimmying through the open doorway mostly because we were scared of what we might find in there. The Hilton personnel explained to us the importance of respect in the garden and we never breached their trust.

At the top of the hill one could see both sides of the island. The pacific in the west and the China Sea in the east. We could see three bases from up there, Awase Housing, Fort Buckner (as it was called at the time) and Kadena air base. There was a water tower up there, although I do not remember us ever climbing to the top.

We ate breakfast almost every morning at the cafe in the Hilton. The waitresses were very friendly to the three of us as well as to our parents. We even ate some Japanese breakfasts. We were a very curious bunch of kids. On occaision one or two of the waitresses would even sit with us, always at a seperate table. They were very aware of their role as hotel employees and it showed. We learned a lot about respect in the culture just by watching the hotel employees. The employees at the hotel always paid extra attention to the three of us, especially when our parents weren’t around. We learned to bow at the Hilton as a show of respect. We noticed that they always bowed to us so we bowed back. It’s kind of like shaking hands here in the US but bowing means so much more. The depth of the bow signifies ones position on the social ladder. The hotel folks taught us to bow less than they did to us.

Television on Okinawa for american kids was far less than what we had been accustomed to in the States. There was exactly one english station, AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service). Afternoons we found ourselves watching, believe it or not, Crusader Rabbit. A 1949 cartoon that I personally fell in love with. I watched every episode over and over. I even learned to emulate the Crusader Rabbit saunter. You can find a link to a crusader rabbit short on my Okinawa website. HERE

Our stay at the hilton immersed us and provided a buffered transition into the life we would experience over the next five years. I carried lessons learned and a deep respect for the Okinawan people from that hotel into the world. We moved out of the Hilton in August of 1979 and into a house in Urasoe City. The day we moved out was sad indeed. The waitresses in the cafe gave us a gift, and the bell boys gave us a card. Most of the hotel staff was at the front door seeing us off into the land of Okinawa. I think we all cherish the time we spent there and know that we so enjoyed the stay.

Sometime in late 1978 we moved from several different locations, dad from Garland Texas – Mom and my brother and sister from Albany Georgia – and finally me from Zwolle Louisiana (Where?), to Omaha Nebraska in preperation of moving overseas to Okinawa. We were all excited for many reasons. None of us had ever been outside the US, except for Dad, and we were all looking forward to the coming experience.

In June 1979, right after we all got out of school, we boarded a plane (Braniff) at Eppley Airfield, Omaha for a flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul. For us kids this was our very first experience in a plane. My butt puckered when that thing lifted off the ground, scared me half to death. When we arrived at MSP we changed planes (Northwest Air Lines) for a flight to Seattle. In Seattle, we changed again to another Northwest flight to Tokyo. On the flight to Tokyo we sat near an Okinawan lady on her way to visit relatives and she was adament in her opinion on the separation of Okinawa and Japan. “Okinawa and Japan are different” she said expressively. I really didn’t understand why at the time, but I understood later. Our plane in Seattle was delayed and we arrived at Narita Airport far too late to catch our connecting flight to Naha, Okinawa. The airline transported us to downtown Tokyo where we stayed at the Tokyu Hotel. We were all full of wonder and delight as everything was so different from the life that we had left behind. The streets were so different, the vehicles were completely different, everyone spoke in a language that none of us understood. We had dinner that night at the restaurant in the hotel, on the top floor, and I remember it was extremely expensive even way back then. We really didn’t do anything that night except eat and sleep, all courtesy of Northwest Airlines.

The next day we woke and readied for the final leg of the journey – the flight to our new home. We checked out of the Tokyu Hotel and were driven to Haneda Airport to catch our flight to Okinawa. Upon arrival in Okinawa the most vivid memory that I have is of Dad renting a car. You see, he had been there before and sort of already knew his way around. We departed the airport and were all amazed at how close the ocean (East China Sea) was to the highway. The images remain surreal to me to this day. We drove from the Airport in Naha to the Okinawa Hilton, of course dad did get lost a couple of times and the Okinawans were as friendly as any people on earth. The locals were very quick to offer directions and try to converse with this crazy American man who spoke absolutely none of their language. I remember that we ended up following this Okinawan man who led us up the hill to the hotel. Our home for the next three months would be rooms 351 (parents) and 353 (kids). The front desk folks tought us the Japanese words for our room numbers san-go-ichi and san-go-san. When we would arrive at the hotel the three of us would race to be able to use our new words to retrieve those room keys from behind the desk.