Author: ezgo109

The old prop plane lands a little rough and taxis to a small Quonset hut with a small white sign saying” Chitose”. Not a whole lot to see just a few people standing around a 3/4 ton Army truck. No dancing girls, No band, No nothing. IJust the way we were sitting I was the first off the plane. I will explain how this will prove to be inportant later on. I can remember much but I dont think there was any other Army guys on the plane . The Chitose airport was not where we were going. We were going to Kuma(Bear) station, the 508th, and it was a few miles away. Carts, bicycles, mud and a light haze was all I remembered on the ride to post. Everyone was pretty nice as we checked in. Some hazing but nothing like at other places I had been. I went down the to office to sign in. I handed my orders and such to the company clerk and he started to process me in. The he looks up and says” Hey How did you get here?, we need a 059s and a 058s not a damn 980. ” OH no. This is the moment of truth. “Oh Well He says ” Damn Army is always messing something up. Welcome to Chitose” I DID IT. YES. From the Silver Dollar in Temple Texas to Chitose Japan. I was home free. Only one slight problem, I was here for 2 years I think at this time I had about 32 to 34 months left in the Army. I was assigned to a 4 man room. BY Army standers it was very good. A big Bonus was that we had Japanese Nationals that were employed by us. They took so much out of your pay each month to pay fro their services. It was not too much around 20 dollars or so, I never really thought much about it. I just paid it. There were used as” House Boys” and to work in the Kitchen and on the post to do general labor. Being “House Boy” was not a demeaning term or a bad job. Basically Each house boy had 2 room or so and their job was to keep our rooms clean, take care of our Uniforms, shoes shined and keep our locker ready for inspection. They were good guys and we used to buy them things from the PX to help them out. They knew everything. Their friends worked over at the Officers Quarters so they knew when any type of surprise inspections or Bull s,it was coming down. Very very neat not having to fool with you uniform and such. Get up in the AM or when ever you had to go to work and there was all your gear laid out and ready to go. Very Very Good. A word on how how the pay thing worked. Back in the 60s you had Pay call. Everyone fell out in the street and lined up by squads. The XO and the First Sargent was the pay masters. I guess the XO was paymaster and the First the Sarge was his helper . Pay day was usually in the day room. As the Sarge called your name, you came to attention walked in front of the XO and saluted. ” PFC McGoo reporting for pay, Sir!” You signed your pay voucher and the XO counted out your money. In Cash!! yep No checks no bank drafts, good old cash. After you were paid you had to pass some card tables set up. House boy table Laundry table. EM club table. If you had bought chits from them. Looking back I guess it was some kind of racket going on but no one cared. Hell not having KP and having someone to clean your room , shine your shoe, etc was a very good deal. I never saw anything out of order but I never looked either. Different story when I went to Korea. More on that later.

If you ran low on money during the month you could buy “Chits” at the EM clund If you were a PFC you could buy unto 30 dollars in Chits. They looked like the old food stamps. A small booklet with tickets you tore off and cashed. They only came in 5 dollar books. Cigarettes were 90 cents a carton for Camels, Lucky Strikes, Filters and Pall Malls were 1.00 a carton. I think the Em club charged 15 cents a pack. You could buy whiskey and mixed drinks for 25 cents a drink. Happy hour drinks were 10 cents. Once a month they nickle night where every thing was 5 cents. Drinking and smoking was not taboo. You could not go to work drunk but if you had been drinking it was no big deal. We smoked at work. I did not smoke so I may not be up to speed on all the smoking rules. But I can not think of any other than No smoking in bed and that was a very serious offense. MPC stands for Military pay certificate. You could not have “Green Backs” or “Real Money. We were paid and used something that looked a lot like Monopoly Money. It was changed every year or so as to help curb blacking marketing. So when you went off base you had to change your money into Yen. It was 360 yen to a dollar. That was pretty good and it made you money go a little further. A Large Beer was 100 yen when I first arrived when I left 2 years later they were 300 yen. Ramin was 100 yen a bowl. It was the real deal and it was very very good. Each of us had our favorite place to go. To sum up the money thing, On post was MPC and down town was Yen. There was no bank, at least I never found it, and most money matter could be handled at the EM club or the Office. You could not buy a bottle of whiskey unless you were E5 or above. Of course a soon as you got off post you could buy all you want for 2 or 3 dollars a jug.

I had a very small apartment and one night after we had been drinking all day we went to my place. It was winter and the place was really cold. Maybe -5 inside when we got there. I had a stove that used granulated coal but it took awhile to get it going. I also had a kerosene heater that worked pretty good so we fired it up. I was pretty drunk, as was everyone else. There were 4 of us. I told the other guys ” Dont leave the heater on if you go to sleep “. I had a single 75 watt light bulb for light. I went to sleep and when I woke up I could barely see the light. WTH? The heater had exploded and was pumping out black, oily smoke. We were all sleeping on the floor and that is the only thing that saved us. I crawled over and opened the door to the outside to let some of the smoke out. I was able to awake on of my friends and we drug the other 2 outside. I really thought they might be dead. We all were black and looked like coal miners. It really messed up the but the others chipped in and helped clean it up. Had to replace all the tatami mats, and I hired some people to finish cleaning it up. We had to go back to the post and it was a week day. We worked shift work so we had the day off. We went to the buss stop to catch the buss and it was full of sargent and officers coming from chitose 1. They asked” What happened to you guys?” I told them that We had a part time time job working in a coal mine. I thought it was pretty funny until a day or so later I had to explain it to the First Sargent. The dumb asses turned us in for working for the japanense with out a permit . LOL

The EM club on a Army base is or was a pretty good place.  The EM club at Chitose  was nothing special.  It was just a Quonset hut with a Juke Box a Bar and some slot machines.  Slot Machine?  Yep They were pretty common in the Far East Army bases.  Even though we used MPC for paper money we still used U. S coins.  They paid off a little bit, nothing special,  I would drop a couple of coins in every now and then.    I heard they took them out later of after I left.  Somebody’s Moma got mad because her son lost his pay on the machines.  Pretty funny, you can go get shot but dont piss your money away.  There were worse things you could spend your money on.  It was better to drink in your room(highly against the rules)  but if you stayed quiet they did not say much and if you tipped the house boy, he would make sure all the cans and stuff were cleaned up.  No aluminum can back them  Good old steel cans w/no pull tops.  You had to have a Can opener to get the bad boys open.   The opener was referred to as a Church key.  No twist off bottle tops either.  There were all kinds if ingenious ways of getting bottles open but can were almost impossible to open unless you had a opner or a good knife. Not a good idea to be opening beer can with a knife after you have drank as case or so.  Drinking in Chitose was legendary  The entire post really went though some beer and whiskey.   Work was very stressful  so I guess it may have been away to cope.  But I really dont know.  I really enjoyed drinking.  I was damn good at it.

The town of Chitose in 1965 was a very unusual place.  Most of the US Military was station in Southern Japan.   Chitose is on the island of Hokkaido, the most Northern island in the Japanese chain.  Most of the Japanese that I met in southern Japan looked  down on the people of Hokkaido.   The climate is very cold and has some of the largest snowfalls of any place. In 1965 WW2 had only been over for 20 years.  Lots of Japanese had lost family members in the conflict.  It was very interesting to listen to their stories of the war.  Chitose was a small city or town.  Other than the Agency there was not much other Military on the island.  There were some Air Force up north but i never had much dealings with them.  The Japanese Self Defense force was near the Airport  but I dont think they went to town  much.  I heard their pay was was something like 12 dollars a month .  So,  you have a small town in a very remote Northern   area of Japan with small group of American Service men living near by.  Most of the citizens were tolerant of us.  We were crude but we tried not to be rude.  The called us “barbarians’ and many times rightfully so.   I would say that 99 per cent of us tried not to be offensive  and  treat them  with respect.   Chitose for the most part was a city of bars.  Not big night club places like here in the states but small coffee shop type bars.  Many bars could only hold 10 or 12 people.  People went to certain bars and that was it.  Most were very simple establishments.  Just a bar/stools, a record player and some type of heater.  Most of the heaters burned coal.  Many of the bars were owned by women who could speak a little English or had a bar maid that did.   Most of the bars did not have “Hostess” or girls who sat with you.  A very few places did but I never went to them very much.  In Southren Japan it seems to be much more more prevalent than in Chitose.    There was very little prostitution.  Hard to believe but true.   For  a Japanese girl to go with a American like a White girl going with a back guy in the 1950s in Mississippi.  Sometimes the bar owner had a boy friend and sometimes they did not.  I think some of them may have got set up in the bar business by former boy friends.  Not all women wanted to marry a soldier and come to the United States.  It was a very difficult physiological issue that some people had to address.  People went down town and started drinking in their favorite bar.  No age restrictions, 7 days a week, Some places had to close at 2 am or so but others did not.  Guys brought their favorite albums, they cost 2 dollars at the PX, and sat around and listened.  Bird of feather flock together so do Army guys.  One shift or “Trick” would only go to certain bars.  The bars took pretty good care of every one.  You could run a bar tab most of them never tried to cheat you.  If you got hungry they could order stuff from the many different food shops.  There was a young lady that  had a small food shop close to the Bar “Ronnie”.  She cooked something  we called a “Chow Hound”   Most likely a gross mispronunciation of the real item. It was kink of a fried rice dish.  She also cooked “OM rice” It was fried rice with a omelet wrapped over it with Ketchup.  I think she could cook more but that is all she understood.  There were women who had what looked like Hot dog carts.  But they had different items in them.  Some sold  corn on the cob and others sold steamed sweet potatoes.  They would stand outside and it would some times be -20 below and sell their wares.  Most of the time we tried to buy something from them if we could.  They would put the little sweet potatoes in a rolled up piece of newspaper.  You would break them open and they would just steam all over they place.  We called the lady that sold the corn “Bar Corn”  ie Lets go eat at the Bar Corn.  A very hard way to live.   Back to the bars we would just sit and BS then go to another bar and repeat the process.  After a few months I had chance to take over a small apartment from a guy who was leaving.  It was  not very expensive.  I got to know the man who ran the little store and he liked me .  I bought a LOT of Beer and Wine from him.  One day I went in the store and they had a student that spoke pretty good English.  He said that since I was such a good customer and was always polite that they would offer me credit.  WOW  Very neat.  In Japan people used to carry a little rubber stamp, looked like a tube of lipstick, that you put on bills and such instead of your name. They had it in a nice little box.  I was very very proud of that stamp.  When I left I gave it back to them. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Quote More than just rubber stamps, hanko–horn, wood or stone seals imprinted with the bearer’s name, like a signature to a Westerner–are indispensable tools for Japanese adults in authorizing a myriad of transactions, from automobile registration, to bank activities to setting up house utilities. Nearly any occasion that would call for a Westerner’s signature would call for an impression of a hanko in Japan.

Hanko were formally introduced to Japan in 701 AD, but were available only to those in positions of high authority. During the early to mid-seventeenth century, hanko were adopted by the general populace. Interestingly, the common people of Japan were not allowed to have family names until the late nineteenth century, so there must have been much confusion with hanko prior to this time with so many people having the same name…………………………………..           I always paid on time and never abused it.  I used the apartment to just get away from everything and read and just think.  Times were hard and I really did not like the Army but I had to do it.

I had a very small apartment and one night after we had been drinking all day we went to my place. It was winter and the place was really cold. Maybe -5 inside when we got there. I had a stove that used granulated coal but it took awhile to get it going. I also had a kerosene heater that worked pretty good so we fired it up. I was pretty drunk, as was everyone else. There were 4 of us. I told the other guys ” Dont leave the heater on if you go to sleep “. I had a single 75 watt light bulb for light. I went to sleep and when I woke up I could barely see the light. WTH? The heater had exploded and was pumping out black, oily smoke. We were all sleeping on the floor and that is the only thing that saved us. I crawled over and opened the door to the outside to let some of the smoke out. I was able to awake on of my friends and we drug the other 2 outside. I really thought they might be dead. We all were black and looked like coal miners. It really messed up the but the others chipped in and helped clean it up. Had to replace all the tatami mats, and I hired some people to finish cleaning it up. We had to go back to the post and it was a week day. We worked shift work so we had the day off. We went to the buss stop to catch the buss and it was full of sargent and officers coming from chitose 1. They asked” What happened to you guys?” I told them that We had a part time time job working in a coal mine. I thought it was pretty funny until a day or so later I had to explain it to the First Sargent. The dumb asses turned us in for working for the japanense with out a permit . LOL

Here is couple of pictures of the Operations building. At one time I am sure they would have been classified. It may look small now, but it really seemed big back then. Times change. The Army Security Agency worked with the National Security Agency but was supported by the US Army. In some ways we were immune to some of the BS that the regular Army had to endure. But not all of it. Many of our Sargents had re upped into the Agency. To say they were not very smart would not be nice. Let us say they were different. Sometimes they had to do the actions that came with their jobs. Some of their actions were just mean and stupid. There was a big problem in ASA. We worked for the most part National Security Agency. When we were in the Operation building they told us what to do. What reports to send and when to send them. I am not going to talk much about what we did. Working in Operations was not a game. It was damn serious work and was very demanding. No windows, No real break room, no reading material other than official papers and books. I was a Radio Traffic Analyst. Usually there was only one of us on a shift. If your relief was sick or was running late you had to work till some one could relieve you. I took my job very serious. I was not a good solider but I was a damn good TA guy. I worked with a room full of 058(Morse Code) guys. They had to copy what was assigned to them. It was hard work but they were very very serious about what they did. This is a close as I am going to come to talk about Operations. But sometimes you could see history being made. Our unit has the ability to get a message to the white House in less than 15 mins. Not a small feat 50 years ago. When you spend day after day, hour after hour in a fairly small room with 20 or so other people, you really get to know them very well. Not only did we work together, we all lived together. After a year or so you really got to know each other. It was a strange type of bonding for me. You knew who you could trust and who you could not. My fellow workers were the only reason I made it. They helped me when I was sad, wrecked, drunk, Etc. I am not a drama queen, we all had problems and helped each other. Maybe I helped a few others, I dont know, but I hope so. Here is where the real issues start. After 10 to 12 hours in a high pressure environment you finally get off work. I guess it was a mile or two from Ops to the Barracks. We rode buses back forth to work. Well surprise, surprise Someone thinks today is a good day for a room inspection. Most lifers did not work shift work so 8 to 5 was a good time to jack with the troops. Remember you can not say anything about what you have be doing all night. I guess some of them thought we just sat around drinking coffee. It was mostly BS because the house boys took care of that stuff. But you still got bitched at about pocket being unbuttoned, scuffed boots, hair too long any thing trivial. Some of the trick Sargents would stand up for us. But there only a few that did. I worked with a lieutenant He was a damn good guy. He was tough guy but he was fair. He also worked at Ops so he knew what we did. One day when I was getting off work the Lt was just coming to work. He was looking all over his desk looking for something. He saw me and asked ” You getting off work?” Yes sir was my answer. “let me borrow your belt I left mine in the BOQ” Sure thing. I was going to put my field jacket on so you could not see if I had a belt on or not. I gave him my belt and everything was cool. Well Almost. As the day shift crew came in, one E7 Sarge spotted me. This guy really did not like me. I stayed away from him the best I could. He was a real dumb ass and mean as a snake. He noticed I dont have on a belt as I have not put on my jacket because of a last minute issue. He goes crazy. He decides to make a major issue of it. “Shift guys being out of uniform” He is really showing his ass. Red face, arm waving like I have craped on the floor. The LT gets up and everything gets very quiet, they think he is going to join in on busting my ass. He takes off my belt and hands it to me. You have your name printed on the back so every knows if it is your belt or not. He says ” Sorry I will go get mine, I guess it is a big deal” The ass hole Sarge got me later but I dodged it that day. LOL Most of the time I got in trouble was at the end of the Mid night shift. Daylight came and you had a few days off, time to party. Time to get a quick bite to eat, change clothes , go to the EM club get a few drinks and get ready to go down town. If you got off at 7am it did not take much to get a good buzz on by noon. Booze+ Enlisted Soldiers+Money+time off=Trouble. Some guys just could not drink very well. It was pretty funny to watch someone fall out of their chairs or drop their food in the Mess hall. Smart move was get your pass and get the hell off the post quick. Sometimes easier said than done. So there you have it. It was a kind of them versus us. To tell the truth I liked that way.

When I first arrived at Kuma station there were very few dependents. There was not much if any, on post housing for them. I was not married so I really dont know all the details. This somewhat conjure on my part. Before on post housing was opened up many of the NCOs and such had to live in barracks. So they had a good Idea of how we lived. This all changed when people started bringing their wifes and children over. It did not take long for the American wifes to start bitching about every thing. For example. Our rooms did not have any shades or blinds or if they did no one used them. The wifes said they could see naked people running around when they were going to the USO or EM club. That was BS because everyone always wore at least a towel around them at all time. We had muli person showers but people were more modest than you would think. Believe me no one wanted to see another guys junk. Then they want us to not be able to go the commissary for 3 days after payday. Because we bought all the good stuff to take down town. We had ration cards and really could not buy very much. . I guess the biggest deal was when they wanted to work in the EM club. We had Japanese ladys that waited tables and such. They were pretty good at it. I would guess they understood more than they let on but they never seem to let anything bother them. When a few of the wifes tried working in the club they all went crazy when some drunk went on a cussing spree or started telling what he was going to do to his girlfriend. In this case the ability to understand English was not a asset. Then of course people started bringing over the Children. More BS. I really resented the differences between the married and single soldiers. If you were single you had to live in the barracks and put up with all that stuff. Hell if you were married you just went home, kicked back, and the Army was just like a job. Also if you were single you had a good chance you would be picked for some kind of BS duty. It was just damn sure wrong. It was not long before they had Begervile up to full speed. I had very little inter action with the dependents or wifes. I was a trick animal and lived in my own space. In many ways we had very little in common with the rest of the post. We spent most of our time at operations with maybe 30 or 40 other guys. We worked rotating shift so when many were sleeping, we were working and vise versa. Shift or “trick” loyalty was immense. We wore the badge of Trick Animal proudly because we were the reason that the post was there. Dependents changed everything but I tried not to stay on post much so I really did not care. I did have a couple of good friends who had brought their wifes over but they lived down town on the economy. Maybe they will read this and if it is ok I will tell a few stories about them. Clue Home of the Maytag Washers. They were good people. I think they tired to get in touch with me later on but I was on the road trying to get sane.

Working in a Top Secret area is quite a experience. First you had to have your badge. I had heard that even the badge was rated Confidential.. I do know that you NEVER wanted to lose or let anything happen to your badge. You had to find a secure area in your locker to keep it. It could not be taken off post and it was not a good idea to wear it when you were not working, One time I was on my way down town and realized that ” Damn IT” I still have my badge on. I got off the bus and took a cab back to post to put it up. I can not ever remember anyone ever losing a badge, I am sure it might have happened but I never heard of it. Every book in ops had the pages numbered and you had to sign of almost every thing you used. Some times they would check the working material to be sure there were no pages missing. I never heard of any any security breaches. I did hear that a guy got drunk and talked to a Bar maid down town about some indexing system we used. She freaked out and turned him in. He could have talked for a week and she would not have known anything as the process was complex. Secrecy was like a fog, always around, it really did not bother you very much but you were always aware of it. Everything worked of the Need to Know principle. You might have a good friend that worked down the hall and you would not know what he did. You might have a good idea but he would never tell you any details. Sometimes you knew from all the buzz and the officers running around that something big had went down, but 99% of the time no one said and you did not ask. Like I said before there were a lot of people on the post who had no idea what we did in operations. I dont think it was the threat of what would happen to you if you leaked info, rather than it was your honor and your duty to keep quiet. It is very hard to explain. I remember one time when I had to take a lie detector test. It was a routine thing that came around every now and then. It scared the hell out of me. Not because of anything I had done, I knew I was OK, but just the guys that gave it. You can read about what we did as it is all pretty common knowledge now. One time my father, who was a very intelligent person, researched who were and what we did. He sent me a letter with all the info in it. He had gleaned it from his job as a Training Supervisor for the Navy. I had to burn the letter and told him dont do that any more. He meant well but he did not understand the mind set of the ASA at that time. I can see where that type of work can be very addicting. My problem(among others) was that I am not really a office type person. I enjoy outside work, construction, maintenance etc. Something when we just talking someone would say “Man I hope I do not ever get captured because I dont know anything, I am sure they(the bad guys) will not believe that!!” Funny story about the badges. When people really got mad or upset they would sometimes say ” One day I am just going to burn this damn badge and be done with it” Remember we burned all trash, paper etc and the end of every shift. The incinerator was a good sized one that was gas fired to help with the burning. Burning papers is not a easy job. It is very hard to burn a ream of paper or a stack of books. They have to be pulled apart and crumpled up a bit for them to burn quickly. As at Fort Devans the incinerator had to be swept clean after every firing and anything unusual noted in a log book or given to the Officer in charge. Our badges had two metal eyelets and a chain. Story has it that one day they found a badge chain with 2 eyelets on it in the incinerator. Panic time. Someone had did it!!! They had burned their badge. Wow. Everything went to a super secure mode until ALL the badges could be accounted for. They found it was a Hoax as someone just put 2 eyelets on a chain and put it in a burn bag. I do know that a guy put a picture of a monkey on his badge just for a joke. He got his self in a BIG bind over it as well as the MP guard who let him in. Stupid move as he got the MP in trouble who had nothing to do with it. I mean you see the guy every day for a year or so , do you have to check his picture EVERY time? The answer is yes.

Sapporo is a large city that is maybe 30 miles away from Chitose. We used to ride the train to get there but I do remember taking the bus a couple of time. You can not say 2 words about Sapporo with out saying something about the Ice festival and Sapporo beer. I went to the Ice Festival two times while I was there. I will have to admit it was pretty neat. But I dont think it really lived up to the hype. But what do I know about Ice Sculpture, I live in Florida. Sapporo was a big town and you could get lost pretty easy. Not many people spoke English and there were very few Tourist or Americans in the area. All this was about to change in 1972. In 1972 Sapporo hosted the winter Olympics. The airport was at Chitose so they expanded the Chitose airport and vastly improved the road and rail systems going to Sapporo Chitose is now a very large international airport. I would suspect the change would be very hard to comprehend. Maybe like trying to explain what Orlando Florida was like before Disney. Anyways we used to go Sapporo every now and then to just look around and drink a little beer. Not a real good idea to get wasted when you cant speak or read any of the signs and such. Back then there was very little English on signs. I knew a few basic words and could ask a few questions get around ok but it was hard to do. I had the symbols for Chitose written in Katakana so I could find the right bus or train if I really got lost. There are 3 different type of writting in japan. There is Kanj(hard complex Chinese style) then there is Hiragana(not as complex) and Katakana. Katakana is the simplest of the 3 and you can actually learn to read some of it. I always thought that the symbol for Chi looked like a double telephone pole sitting on a hill. Some people picked up on it very fast and could write Katakana pretty good. I never advanced that far. People used to leave notes to each written in Katakana quite a bit. Guys got to doing it in Ops but the lifers could not read it so they made everyone quit using it. Sometimes people would stop you and try out their English on you. It never bothered me and it was neat that they were trying to learn. They was a demand for people to teach English.
Sometimes not formal stuff but conversational English. My friend and his wife used to teach a class for a Swedish Steel company that had a office in Sapporo. The Swedes did nor want to learn Japanese and the Japanese did not want to learn the Swedish language so they used English. I taught a couple of times when my friends could not make it. It was weird see every thing in English and very few people could speak it. They could read and write fairly well but speaking English was difficult for them. They were very nice to me and it was always a very enjoyable time. There was a very large market that sold everything. There was a guy that sold snakes that were used a medicine some dried, some pickled, some alive. No I never tried any of them. We used to go skiing when they had the Olympics. I almost really hurt my self a couple of times but I survived. I think I will make a separate chapter on skiing. In the winter tt was neat ridding the train and seeing all the houses down in the valleys all covered in snow. I meant they really got covered up with many of them only the chimney and part of the roof would be showing. Snow, snow and more snow always a lot of snow in the area. I never went to the Sapporo brewery. Like I said I did not hang out much in Sapporo, too big.