In Japan we lived on Tachikawa Air Force Base, and this is where my earliest memories formed. In Japan I went to Nursery School, and loved it.
I remember Smiley’s family
Smiley worked on base as a culture person, he taught the Americans what they needed to know not to give offence if they had interactions with people off base. He and my dad became good friends. His real name was Yoshi Shinjiburo (sp?), and he had two daughters a little older than I, Minobu, and Nobuyo that I often played with. I remember singing songs with them, like So Jo Ji, which I can still sing the first verse of of today. We kept in touch with them after we left, and his family got another two kids later, Miyuki and Takiyki.
I remember my best friend at school
Laurie Shriner. She had long blond hair, and since we lived near to one another we played together outside of school too. She was the one who joined me in mischief, like the time we got to talking about how much we both liked the taste of baby aspirin. My babysitter, Hanoko was busy, but I knew where the baby aspirin were kept, on the shelf in the linen closet at the end of the hallway. Being a rather independent, but impulsive two or three year old, we went straight to the closet, opened the door, and I climbed up the shelves till I was high enough to spot the bottle of baby aspirin, and grab it. We then happily chewed our way through all the tasty little pills in the bottle, till Hanoko discovered us, and called my parents in panic.
Dad rushed home from work, and took us straight to the hospital, where they explained to us that it was very important that we get those aspirin back out of us, and that they were going to give us medicin to make us “spit up”. My family used the term “throw up”, or even “puke”, and I had never heard “spit up” before, and Laurie and I thought it was a hilarious way to describe it. We sat on the floor next to the basin provided, and took turns spitting into the basin and laughing. That part I remember. I do not remember what happened next, but dad tells me that it was a pretty pitiful sight. I never ate medicin I didn’t need again, and never, ever experimented with drugs, either. I learned my lesson good and well
I remember being small enough to be frightened of the big people’s toilette
…and how comforting it was the time that Laurie and I both needed the loo at the same time, so rather than perch precariously on the edge, afraid I would fall in if not careful, we sat on the toilette seat back to back to pee. I remember the feeling of her back against mine, and the comfortable certainty that with our backs in contact like that neither of us would fall in.
I remember the trip to the Philippines
We went to visit the Malloys, who were stationed there. I had my own little carry-on bag for the flight—it was blue, with a blue strap, but on one side there was a drawing of a baseball in white, with red lines. I saw a plane with propellers for the first time, and asked dad what those were. I remember when we kids were playing in the room mom and I were sleeping in Julie and Beth came up with a fun idea, and easily talked Ray and I into doing it. First they pulled out the drawers of the dresser out progressively, with the lowest one out the furthest, to make stairs. Then Ray and I climbed up to the top of the dresser and got down mom’s cigarette carton and opened the packages. We managed to unwrap every last packet before we were caught, and mom carried her cigarettes in a peanut-butter jar for the rest of the trip. I don’t really remember playing with the geckos that climbed on the walls there, but mom says that we did.
I remember the moon landing
The moon landing happened shortly after folk in Japan were getting off of work. We had a TV, and the curtains on our living room window was open. My parents turned on the TV to watch the landing, and mom noticed that a crowd was growing outside the window, with folk trying to see what was happening, so she invited them all in. I didn’t really understand what the big deal was, the picture quality wasn’t anything like the shows I was used to watching
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