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 lose 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, etcetera.

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 unfortunatly 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.

David Robert Crews
Dundalk, Maryland
ursusdave@yahoo.com

If you would like to see some of David's photographs, from Okinawa, from Maine, or from Baltimore and Dundalk, Maryland, CLICK HERE.

Editor's Note: Copyright retained by the author.