Dec
It was close to April 24, 1971. My unit had left Vietnam, and I was stationed in Okinawa at Camp Hansen. We had boarded the Navy ship, USS WEST CHESTER CTY LST headed for cold weather training at Mount Fuji, Japan. It was only two weeks of getting used to the cold. After spending a few months in Southeast Asia, it was a treat for me. The jungle rot on my arms and buttocks was healing now that I was out of the tropics and that was good.
The two weeks went rather fast, and my mind was set on Tokyo that entire two weeks so the training was a blur and little of that memory remains with me today. What does remain with me is the memory of planning and traveling to Tokyo from Mount Fuji. I was resolute that since I got this far in Japan, I just had to see Tokyo no matter what. There was a train that left Mount Fuji headed for Tokyo and I had enough money for a quick round-trip ticket, a meal, and little else. A Lance Corporal pay in those days didn't pay a lot of money. Even the combat pay in Vietnam didn't amount to much but we always had a roof over our heads, enough clothing, and plenty of food provided by our beloved Corps.
The train trip to Tokyo from Mount Fuji didn't take all that long but I was cutting it close. The ship I was on was scheduled to leave shortly and if I didn't make it back to the ship in time, I would be considered AWOL (Away With Out Leave) and subject to court martial and time in the brig which was something I didn't want to experience. No one else in my unit wanted to make the trip and since I was on a mission (to see Tokyo, eat some Japanese food) I didn't spend much time trying to recruit any other travelers because they might have their own agenda which could create a bottleneck in Tokyo. I knew it would be unlikely that I would ever pass this way again and just had to see Tokyo. I had made a great friend with a girl from Okinawa named Ikuko Kishimoto. She wanted to learn to speak English better and I wanted to learn more about the Japanese culture, so it was a win-win relationship, platonic but very pleasant for both of us seeking different goals. I had estimated the time for getting to and from Tokyo and I only had time to get off the train, look at the city for a few minutes, eat a meal, and get back on the train. Time was precious and I couldn't afford to be late in returning to Fuji.
The train ride itself was a marvel. It was comfortable but what amazed me beyond anything I had seen before were the mountains alongside the train tracks on the way to Tokyo. The train tracks always seemed to be at the base of the mountain so I seemed to be looking up the sides of the mountains all of the time and what amazed me were the trees, yes the trees. The Japanese had planted trees in straight lines up and down the mountains. There didn't seem to be any underbrush between the trees and it was as if they manicured the land in between the closely growing tall trees. At the base of the mountains near the railroad tracks they had cemented the bottom of the mountains, I suppose to keep the mountains from deteriorating and tumbling onto the tracks.
I arrived in Tokyo, and I could feel time quicken its pace. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry. After the train ride which might have been just a couple of hours, I needed to use the restroom to relieve myself. I looked around and saw some signs in the train terminal that indicated that there might be a restroom so I headed in that direction. After I entered the facility, I looked around for a traditional "Western" toilet but I saw none. On the floor, there were many holes in the ground. The holes seemed to be about 18" in diameter maybe 24" but no more than that and the holes had brass bowls inserted in them, with another smaller hole in the center of the bowls. So, I'm thinking, this must be the Japanese urinals and kind of understood that but where were the toilets. Finally, I looked at these numerous holes in the floor and realized that these were their toilets, no chair, no handle to flush, just a place to squat if you chose to do so. These thoughts are running through my head, and I just couldn't believe that they didn't have traditional Western toilets so I walked on further and finally located a couple of traditional toilet stalls and took care of my constitutionals.
My next goal was to get a quick look at the city. I only had about an hour to get back on the train so I didn't have much time and needed to eat a meal before I left. I marveled at the buildings with all of their electronic colored signs and although I didn't have a camera with me, the memories of the tall buildings and thousands of people walking the streets at a quick pace remain in my mind. I looked around for a Japanese restaurant and found one rather quickly. Now you have to remember, I am 21 years old, a United States Marine and can barely say "hello" in Japanese. As I stepped inside the restaurant, the hum of the many Japanese people eating dinner suddenly stopped. It was as if they were holding their breath. I glanced around the restaurant and heads and eyes quickly turned away from me and the hum returned but at a slightly lesser volume and intensity. A waitress greeted me and pointed to a table, and I set down quickly. She brought over a menu and the menu was entirely in Japanese. You see, I was in a bona fide Japanese restaurant where the locals ate. They did not expect tourists or young Marines to stop in for a meal. In the Marine Corps, they had taught me to adapt to my surroundings. I looked confidently at the menu as my waitress stood there looking slightly amused but polite. I looked around at the tables close to me and spotted a meal that someone else was eating and the waitress was intently watching me, so I discreetly pointed at the meal sitting on a nearby table and nodded my head. In return the waitress nodded affirmatively and went on her merry way. The buzz in the room continued and I could tell that the conversation was most likely about me but that didn't matter. I learned to tolerate a lot of things in Vietnam and the Corps in general, so this wasn't too hard to take. The locals were polite and if I happen to look up from my table at one of them, I barely caught an eye looking at me and sometimes didn't have time to catch them looking at me. The waitress brought the meal, and it was delicious. I ate rather quickly knowing that my time was very limited. I could not miss the train. If I missed my train connection, there was no way that I would be back in time before the USS West Chester CTY LST would leave. I had noticed that the patrons of the restaurant paid for their meals at a cash register near the exit so when I finished eating, I got up from my table and walked to the cashier and handed her my meal receipt which was written in Japanese. She murmured some Japanese words which I knew were numbers, but they made no sense to me. I did what any ignorant American Marine would do and reached into my pocket and pulled out all of my money and placed it in both of my cupped hands and offered it to her. She giggled and the restaurant patrons' hum intensified with some high-pitched elocution spread around the room and she very carefully plucked a couple of dollars from my cupped hands and thanked me. I in turn bowed slightly and responded "domo arigatogozaimasu" which was my limited way of saying "thank you very much" and headed for the train. I was kind of nervous that the train was going too slow but arrived in time to board the ship headed back to Okinawa.
As we headed out to sea, most of us were up on the deck of the LST (Landing Ship, Tank) which was a ship designed to land troops, vehicles, and such onto a beach. They were widely used during World War II and were still being used toward the end of the Vietnam War and might still be used today.
The LST's reputation for being a smooth-riding ship in rough waters didn't exist and this trip would just confirm that. Everything else went rather smoothly until we were well out to sea and saw dark ominous clouds in the distance. The thought never entered our mind about bad weather or severely bad weather. After all, we were on one of these fine Navy ships and we made to Japan from Okinawa without trouble. Then we started seeing sheets of rain in the distance and I thought we might get rained on a bit, but soon after that thought, word was passed down throughout the ship that we were going to try and outrun a typhoon. Well, most of us didn't know a typhoon from a hurricane but growing up in Louisiana we knew how dangerous hurricanes could be.
In the distance, we could see this very long cargo ship, a merchant marine ship, trying to do the same thing as we were, however, they had already been caught by the fast-moving typhoon. Our ship was still sailing along without being rained on or dangerous winds. We were top side on the ship's top deck watching the merchant marine ship trying to stay afloat and that was when it dawned on me that we could be in for some trouble. The merchant marine ship which looked like it was as long as a football field was doing this see-saw motion in the ocean, with the bow of the ship diving beneath the ocean. It was like watching a movie. The front of the cargo ship would dive beneath the ocean, and it looked like it was going to sink. The front half of the ship was submerged, and we stood mesmerized waiting for it to sink at any minute. SLOWLY, almost like it was in slow motion, the cargo ship would start struggling to raise it's bow, water gushing from it's sides, like a waterfall with volume that made Niagra Falls look tame. It continued this see-saw until word came down to return below deck and to batten down the hatches because we were losing the race with the typhoon.
Everyone promptly went below deck and then the fun began. We hadn't been below deck for more than a few minutes when our LST began to ROCK & ROLL. Just now approaching 21 years of age, having earned the title of Marine and having survived combat in Vietnam, I didn't have much fear in me. The lack of fear probably had more to do with my youth than with my life's experiences at this point in my life. I had been pretty concerned about surviving while in Vietnam, having survived firefights, snipers and boobytraps and I figured the Navy knew what they were doing and simply accepted the fact that I couldn't change anything. After a short while of the ship rocking and rolling bobbing up and down in the ocean like a cork, most of our Marines and many of the sailors had already taken sick. Yep, you guessed it, seasick. The vast majority of the Marines hurled every ounce of food and fluid they had consumed in the last 24 hours. There were a few of us who did not get seasick and while the floors were covered with vomit, those of us who could, would walk through the ship, seeing how much damage was done. Since we were not seasick, we still had an appetite so we went searching for the mess hall to see what food we could find. To travel in this rocking ship, you had to be extremely careful and hold on to things that didn't move as you shuffled your feet from one spot to the next. If you didn't hold on to something that didn't move, you were almost certainly going to be thrown rather violently into something that also didn't move and that would most likely send you to the ship's hospital or worse. The mess hall was closed but some of the Navy guys gave us some oranges and we stuffed them in our pockets and made our way back to the bunks where our fellow Marines were now dry-heaving and weak as kittens. It is pretty common in the Corps to tease or even taunt your brothers, just so long as it doesn't endanger their lives, so the handful of us that didn't get seasick would move from one bunk to the next, getting close to those who had taken sick, taking large bites of oranges and offering it to those poor devil-dogs that got seasick. They didn't take kindly to our tease but were physically weak and despite trying to grab a hold of us and give each of us a thumping, they had no strength so we continued taunting everyone we could until we ran out of oranges. Eventually the typhoon passed our ship, and everyone survived, and we returned to the monotonous days at Camp Hansen, Okinawa. None of the seasick Marines held any grudges because early on in the Corps you learned, sometimes you're the bug and sometimes you're the windshield.
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