My second tour of duty was with the 53rd Special Operations Unit, Torii Station, Okinawa. We called this Island - The Rock. It is a part of the Ryukyu Island chain that belongs to Japan. This volcanic island is only about 70 miles long and about 30 miles wide. There a quite a few nice beaches on the island but you have to worry about coral. It is ruff on feet and on shoes. The meaning of the word, 'Okinawa' is 'Sea Rope', which is what the Japanese thought it would look like from above. It was a good thing that I was doing a lot of travelling at this time or I would have gone crazy on the 'Rock'. I did do some work while I was there in our Operations Building. Another building surrounded with government fence topped with razor wire and with no windows to look out at the sky.
I remember one evening fixing to go to work and the platoon sergeant told us to put on our steel pots and ponchos because we were being hit by a typhoon. Our Operations Building is only about 35 - 40 feet above sea level, we had to walk down a sidewalk parallel with the beach to get to work. There was a government fence along this sidewalk separating Torii Station from the public on the other side. Along this fence was a public grade school for little kids. I remember that we used to pass apples and oranges from the mess hall over the fence to watch the kids fight for the food. I noticed that one little girl did not ever get any of the apples or oranges because she was so small. After we had passed over the fruits and everyone was fighting for them, I motioned her over to the fence and passed her a candy bar through to her. After that day, when she saw us coming, she would light up when she saw me. I always had a candy bar or chewing gum for her.
On the day the typhoon was beating down on us, there was no kids in sight. In fact, we had to walk bent way over to keep the wind from blowing us away. Once we were in the Op Center, we were told to relieve the trick working there and let them go while they could. Well, eight hours later, no relief was in site for us, we opened the outside door and the wind was still blowing strong.
Finally after about 16 or 17 hours on the job, out relief showed up and we went out to a strange new world outside. Between the side walk back to the barracks and the beach was a great big, ocean going ship, beached, completely out of the water. Even though we were only 35 feet above sea level, we were quite a way from the actual ocean.
On one of my down times between flying around and actually working at the Op Center, some guys from our trick rented a boat and went deep sea fishing. I was laying up on the top of the deck while everyone was below deck fishing. I fell asleep. When I woke up two hours later, I was sun burned, almost a lobster red. I put in for the evening on the home island of the man who owned the ship. We built a bonfire on the beach but I could not enjoy it because of the sun burn. I was still red but the soreness had worn off by the time I had to report back for duty. I sure did not need an Article 15 for being sun burnt.
It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life. Enjoy it while you can.
Until the next time my friends, God speed.
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