25 Years Ago Part I
On January 1, 1981 if you would have asked me to go eat Chinese food after watching the ball the drop in Times Square I would have refused. Give me a hamburger or a steak. Vegetables, we’re talking corn or beans right? I had only met Six Asian people in my entire life, besides just passing someone on the street. The first four was a missionary family that our church sponsored from the Philippine Islands. They lived in Houston for a couple of years and my aunt gave them rides to church until they got a car of their own. I remember the older brother, who I must have been a real pest to, as I was younger than he. He just did not seem to like me. There were only two Asian kids in my entire High School, a brother (my year) and his sister. I never talked to him the entire time we were in school as we never sat in the same class. We spoke when we both met at US Army basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO more than a thousand miles from that school. Then we were homies and it helped ease the tension of getting our butts kicked all day. The next Asian acquaintance was my roommate at Fort Huachuca, AZ and he was from Guam. We had some crazy times together. Might prove to be a blog worthy post on another day.
I do not recall the exact day in January 1981 that I received orders for temporary duty in South Korea . Back then my image of Asia was MASH, the TV show. I knew nothing of 1980s Asia. Everything I knew of Asia involved World War II and General Douglas Macarthur. Also the previously mentioned Filipino family roused my curiosity as to what happened in that part of the war in the Philippines. These things I learned on my own, as the American school system hardly touched on Asia outside of the Opium wars, Russo-Japanese war and the Big War. Even the Korean War was a footnote. I avoided watching Shogun, which was a 12 hour movie shown in six parts about Tokugawa Japan. I was too busy playing Dungeons and Dragons or drinking to watch any TV shows. Japanese products had not made a noticeable impact in America yet. Japanese quality was a joke to us then. We laughed at the itty bitty cars they sold. For a joke we used to pick up our friends’ Honda Accords and turn them around 180 degrees, facing opposite of how they parked. This is the mindset I possessed before I went into the great unknown called Asia. Basically, I was scared stiff when I received and read those orders.
At this time I was a soldier in A (or Alpha as we called it) Company of the Communications Electronics Installation Battalion at Fort Huachuca, AZ. We referred to our unit as CEI or see-ah. My rank was Specialist Fourth Class, which is equivalent to a Corporal in other armies. The month before I had returned from a job at the Yuma Proving Grounds and I had been kicking around doing details (Army honey dos) in the barracks and headquarters. I was ready for another job, which turned out to be Korea. This is not the job I sought though. I wanted to go to Germany and drink beer for a few months.
There was a trio of us assigned to this job. We had a few days to get ready. I was the gofer on this trip as the rest of the team included a Specialist Fifth Class and a Staff Sergeant. Both of these guys were good fellows. The Spec 5 and I had been at Fort Gordon for training together. The Staff Sergeant had a Taiwanese wife and was in fact one of the last American soldiers to leave Taiwan when we abandoned them diplomatically for their Communist brothers. Getting ready meant storing the stuff I would not take, packing the things I would take, getting cash advances, and receiving a set of tools.
When the fateful day came we caught a plane out of Tucson and flew to San Francisco. It was really kind of neat. We were traveling which gave me my first experience with expense accounts. I was feeling good tipping everyone and eating at the per diem rate for San Francisco. We caught a cab and it drove us to Travis Air Force Base. There we boarded a Flying Tiger 747 which would take us all the way to Korea with stops in Anchorage, AK and Yakota Air Base, Japan. The flight was long. I pitied this one Sergeant that was flying with his pregnant Korean wife and three kids. Those poor kids were cranky the entire flight. All I remember of Anchorage is being allowed to disembark and seeing the darkest dark ever. And at an airport too. It’s a wonder we did not crash. How could it have been so dark? Amazing. Yakota Air Base was memorable, for when we landed we were bumping horribly across the runway. We were not supposed to disembark, but they made us offload. Why? Because they needed to change several flat tires. Damn! That put us two hours behind schedule. But for the first time at the age of 21 I had stepped on Asian terra firma.
When we landed in Osan Air Base, Korea it was around noon. Cannot recall how many hours of flying it took us to arrive. Two hours later we had offloaded from the plane and got everything through customs. It was cold and snow covered the ground. We caught a cab and began our 70 mile journey north to Seoul. The road took us right out of Osan and much to my surprise I did not see any mud huts or shanties. Beautifully sculpted rice paddies lay covered in snow and ice. The buildings were brick with brightly colored tiles and they looked very pleasant as they dotted the Korean hills. The city of Seoul was not what I expected either. It looked like New York or Tokyo. Skyscrapers filled the air. People had clothes hanging off the balconies of high rises drying in the cold sunny day. Everywhere I looked the streets were packed with Hyundai Colts. The streets were wide and the driving was different. No one seemed to pay attention to the lanes and if you honked first you had the right of way. Soon we reported to the Korean support detachment. Cannot remember the Army name for it any longer. They let us leave our tools there and drove us to the Hotel Crown in the Etaiwan neighborhood of Seoul. From here we could see Yongsan, the old Japanese base, which is where the American Headquarters is located. The Hotel Crown was beautiful. Brand new, completed only the year before. We went up to our rooms and it was pretty nice. Especially, for a 21 year old that had never seen the inside of anything more splendid than a Holiday Inn. I had queen size bed all for myself and no roommate to annoy me.
The phone rang and I figured it was Sarge wanting to go eat dinner. I answered the phone and to my surprise an accented female voice asked, “You want a pretty girl?” Korea was quickly crumbling my preconceived notions.
