And then I wrote...

by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"

... that having once visited Okinawa for a few days courtesy of the Navy, I was both bemused and amazed by the stories and photos of the island in the dailies this morning.

The story was to the effect that the citizens of Okinawa, who are Japanese, want the American air base removed. The U.S. has proposed moving it to another, less populated and less hospitable to humans part of the island.

It is not a large island. Only about twice the size of little Guam, the U.S. protectorate in the South Pacific. I was not impressed. My main memories, and I have color slides of both, are of the waterway which ran through Naha, and of the unusual concrete constructions in several places.

The river, if that is what it was, looked like an open sewer, with junk of all sorts on the banks. Someone told us those concrete structures were “womb tombs,” that is, family burial places. Another view said that wasn’t true, that in fact, they were antiaircraft gun emplacements constructed by the Japanese for use in WWII. A third said both were true.

Today’s photos showed high rise hotels (maybe even a Trump tower?) which leads me to believe it has, like Guam, become a major tourist attraction for rich Japanese. But I got the impression that mainland Japanese considered the Japanese of Okinawa to be sort of second class citizens.

Whatever, there seems to be no doubt that the island would be economically viable without the American presence, which was of significant support right after the war.
But then, that’s a story familiar on the mainland of the United States, too.

The California air station where I spent a large portion of my enlistment was once located in a lightly populated wasteland. But then a freeway was constructed nearby, and business and industry followed, and eventually the so-called Silicon Valley developed. The Navy was feeling the pressure to remove its noisy jets from that now heavily populated, heavily traveled area.

It was about that time that the Navy decided it no longer needed non-flying aviation officers, and also when it was announced that the air base would be moving to a lightly populated California desert area. I was told I would have to change from aviation to line officer designation (brown shoes to black shoes and more sea duty) if I wanted to stay in the Navy. However, the CO said that based on my previous fitness reports and the officers under whom I had served (two became admirals) it might be possible to have me assigned to that new base for a couple years where some knowledge of naval aviation paperwork would be needed.

I was tempted, but decided to get out instead. Several years later, someone who had been assigned to the new base said a significant town had sprouted to service the base personnel, and residents were already complaining about all the servicemen and noise in “their” town.

I don’t know if the base has survived.