Now, I want to tell you a story. It’s a true story, more or less, but I’m telling it from mem’ry and it happened away back in 1957.
In 1957, I happened to be in Naha, Okinawa and this is the locale of the story.
Back in those days, in Okinawa, there was this communist fella named (I think) Kamejiro Senaga. And Senaga was a natural born politician who wanted to be Mayor of Naha which at that time and place was the most important civilian position on the island seeing as how Okinawa was under the military control of the United States.
As you might suspect, the military government didn’t have a whole lot of use for Senaga. As a matter of fact, he had been kicked off the island a number of times. Kind’a ridiculous when you think about it because he was, after all, Okinawan and had a perfect right to be there.
But he was an avowed communist and we didn’t like communists back in those days so the military government would have him arrested and put on a plane to Japan.
Problem was, he wouldn’t stay in Japan. He kept coming back to his home in Okinawa. Not too unreasonable but my guess is that the whole thing had a lot to do with viewpoint. His versus the United States military government.
So, now that you’ve had a little bit of history, much as I c’n recall anyway, on with the tale…
Seems that Mr. Senaga was back on the island, driving around in his 1950 black Cadilac sedan (actually being driven becuz Mr. Senaga was far too important to drive his own self)…he was giving Yankee go home speeches all ‘round the island ’n the crowds were getting bigger and louder and I figured that after this speech in Naha, he was going to be escorted off the island again.
My Bakersfield buddy and I were lounging around in the neighboring village of Naminoue (that was one of the things that we did well) in our way too short kimonos ’n drinking rice beer and flirting with the girls who were all big fans of Mr Senaga and wanted to go attend the Yankee go home demostration…
Made perfect sense that we went to the celebration. In our way too short kimonos and rubber shower shoes and yelled“Yankee, go home”with as much gusto as we could muster…
It seems that Airman Harkins ’n me were the only Americans attending and so it was that we found ourselves at an after rally party being plied with sake and rice beer with lots of grins and back-slapping and our picture took with Mr. Senaga…
I believe the most salient fact of that p’ticklar party, at least for Airman Harkins ’n me was that the licquor wa free…at least to us…all part of that perfect sense thing that I mentioned before. I supposed it was a communist thing and we were appreciative of that fact since neither one of us gave a hoot in Hell if the Okinawans had a communist government or not as it didn’t apply to either one of us.
HOW SUM EVER~~and whenever and wherever booze flows freely, there is always a howsumever that appears in the equation…
As you might imagine, at a Yankee go home rally, there is a lot of anti-American talk, a lot of yelling and shaking of fists and stuff like that…and at the after-rally party, as the booze flowed freely, they ramped up the rhetoric…(Let me point out here that it was not Mr Senaga who ramped it up as he left fairly early for his upcoming flight to Japan courtesy of the American military government)…No, it was our hosts, our newly acquired friends that Airman Harkins and I began to find a little on the rude side…so we told them that…
Well, the Japanese (’n the Okinawans are basically Japanese) are an extremely polite people, sort of like in the American south and being seen to be rude is a big no no for them and they almost immediately began to apologize, saying that they liked us, they just didn’t like Americans and me and Harkins explained that we were Americans and we went back and forth and round and round until somehow we got it all figured out and shook hands all around and they told us “Yall come back now, you hear!”(which I explained to Bakersfield born Airman Harkins was sort of a polite lie and they didn’t want us to come back at all) and Airman Harkins and me grabbed on to a couple bottles of rice beer and made our way back to the muddy streets of Naminoue (well, they were muddy streets back then)…
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