Iwakuni

Well it's official, I'm 99% sure the Russian chick is a scam. She finally asked for money in the manner of all of the Russian scam websites said she would. I haven't let her on to this as of yet. I just told her in a few emails that it wasn't a good time to come over but she doesn't read my emails anyway.

I've started to scan in my pictures of my days in the USMC so hopefully as relevant ones get scanned I'll include one in the blog as I just did for the Millington one.

Beaufort:

My first overseas trip was upon me in early 1991. They call this a WestPac and a squadron is sent over there to stay for 6 months. I volunteers for chase crew and this meant that a small group would follow the aircraft on their voyage over to Japan. We tagged along to maintain the aircraft if anything critical arose and to launch the aircraft before we left. Unfortunately this meant we would be flying via C-130. Our first leg was from Beaufort to the Los Angeles area and took about 8 hours. There was a USMC base there at the time. We spent the night there on base and left in the morning. I found that chase crew meant very little daylight hours for us. Our next leg of the journey would be to Hawaii and it was the shortest trip it took about 6 hours to get there. These trips were basically filled with a combination of playing cards and finding a comfy place to sleep. It was amazing that we could sleep the majority of the trip and still be tired enough to sleep that night. Again Hawaii was met at dusk so I didn't get to see much of the island. I did manage to look up my friend from A & C school while I was there. The chick I left to MEPS with from Traverse City wasn't around so I didn't get to see her this trip. Our next leg was to Wake Island and took about 8 hours to get to. I loved this little island but again we had very little daylight after we arrived. But I did manage to see a few of the old Japanese bunkers still left scattered about the island. The evening we spent at the one and only bar on the island where they mixed their drinks real strong. The final leg of the trip would be to our semi-permanent home at Iwakuni, Japan and this trip was the longest at about 9 hours.

When arriving at Iwakuni the rest of the squadron was already there waiting for the aircraft. So we, the trail crew got the day off to settle in. I moved into the barracks where I roomed with Birkmire. Birkmire was from Erie, PA and was a skinny dark haired guy who worked in Airframes. We became friends in Beaufort and we did go to Daytona Beach together once during a spring break. I also explored base a little that day. They had a shuttle bus from our end of the base to the main part of the base where the base exchange was. There was a little e-club right across the street from the barracks. They had the best cheeseburger there which was open after the bars closed. There was also a golf course, which i didn't use, and a movie theatre on our side of the base. The theatre showed only movies that were already out on video in the states. As far as TV goes there was only one channel for us English speaking people the rest were japanese channels. We worked out of a big old hanger that put our stateside hangers to shame. I pretty much got stuck on day crew for the duration of this WestPac. There was also another e-club over on the other side of base but it was to far to walk to and the busses stopped running at about 10pm. So you could get dropped off and walk back, which I did on a couple of occasions. But most of the time I either hung out at our quaint little e-club or ventured out in town.

Another person I hung out with that first WestPac was Rico. He was a mexican guy who was short as must have been real overweight before he joined the corps. He still had all his extra skin :P He was a mild mannered guy and drank at my pace. I, as a beginner drinker, stuck to wine coolers and candy drinks. The bartender at the quaint e-club took pride in his job and designed a new drink everytime we showed up. He would give it to us cheap to test his concoction.

The bars out in town were the place to be though. For one thing very little women showed up in the e-clubs, especially our quaint one. The drinks were dirt cheap on base and about $5 a drink out in town. But the clubs in town were packed with Marines and locals. It was $20 to get in the door and your first three drinks were included. Now this was quite a walk to get to these clubs. I seemed to do alot of walking on deployments. They had "Binjo Ditches" lining the sides of the streets. These were open sewage areas where water runoff from the streets would go. But they also doubled as public toilets for the locals and Marines.

That's enough for today, I'll continue this Iwakuni trip on the next installment.