City Inside A City

Moving from Chofu to military housing at Washington Heights was none too soon for me.  We were right in the middle of Tokyo.  Wow!  What a city!  But, there are a lot of restrictions on military dependents .. and just as many ways to get around them.

Washington Heights was like a city inside a city.  Entertainment everywhere.  The Officers' Club, NCO Club and Airmen's Club all imported name entertainment from the States on a regular basis.  Bowling alleys.  Tennis courts. Hobby shops for ceramics, photography, leather, electronics or fixing your car.  Archery.  Baseball fields.  Basketball.  Track.  Golf .. somewhere .. but who cares about that when you're 15 .. closing in on 16?

The Base Exchange (BX) was huge .. and, like everything else on base, cheap.  The prices were lower than those on the Japanese economy, and about half what they were in the States, if not less.  Cigarettes .. we all smoked then .. were a dime a pack.  No taxes at all.  I think 45 rpm records were a dime .. maybe a quarter.  Japanese clerks staffed the store. They would occasionally run an outdoor sale, with Japanese artisans and merchants from surrounding areas selling their wares.  You could get some major bargains at these events, if you collected Japanese ceramics, art, bronze, statues, wall hangings, masks or silk.  The BX manager had set the prices, so you were assured of a great deal.

On occasion, there would be a shipment of clothing aimed at the teenagers .. in other words, outrageous.  One time, they brought in this assortment of shiny, flourescent-colored pants in red, yellow, green, blue and other such putrid hues.  They were sold out in days  (what was I thinking?).   This is the never-ending story: teenagers have to be different.  And, the weirder the better.   But, wild colors was not enough.  We had to have them pegged down to 10" wide at the bottom.  Being a fashion victim can occasionally be downright painful.  Back to the BX .. they had tailors there, as well.  For 50 cents, they'd peg your pants.  If you were in the mood for a custom-tailored shirt, that was about 3 bucks.  All payable in MPC .. military payment certificate .. we traded in our U.S. currency for it, colorful and in the same denominations as greenbacks, but no dollars or yen could be used on base.  One weird thing that took a while getting used to .. paper nickles, dimes, quarters and half-dollars .. and getting back into using coins again when you ship back to the States (CONUS or ZI to you career military types).

There was a moderate black market selling MPC to the Japanese.  Well,  it was more than moderate.  I was too scared shitless to try it .. at first (but that's another story!) .. because  I just knew I'd be the one to get caught.  I always wondered how the Japanese would use it, if they couldn't get on base and into the BX, but perhaps they had their ways.  I do know that they loved American cigarettes, and a pack of Marlboros could do wonders in making new friends.  Japanese cigarettes were just awful!  Too strong!  And on base was the only place to get American ciggies.  Selling butts to Japanese nationals was considered a major crime, but I know that airmen did it all the time.  Especially to the yakuza, the Japanese gangsters, who loved American cigarettes.  We were infatuted by the yakuza .. and crime in general .. and we'd wait for them in bars we knew to be their hangouts.  One yakuza and his three buddies whom I met in a bar with a Nisei friend and my buddy "Covert" Carl (you'll meet him later) offered me a Marlboro .. and had a hell of a time pronouncing it right .. but I didn't correct him.  He showed us all the tattoos adorning his arms and his .45 automatic in a shoulder holster, and we bought him a whiskey.   He loved being the object of American teen boy adoration.   Anyone who would chop off their little finger to prove how tough they were was, in our books, one bad mutha.  Actually, we would find out that it was for a really bad foul-up, and the finger chop was to atone for it.  More .. much more .. about the yakuza in later pages.  Half an hour later, a drunk Japanese guy insulted him, and there was this lightning-quick blur as the yakuza whirled on the bar stool and kicked the drunk three times in the face before anyone knew what had happened.  Down for the count!  We bought our yakuza friend another whiskey as the drunk was being dragged to the sidewalk.  As much as our dads told us to stay away from them, we were magnetized by the yakuza, and they seemed to tolerate us, so we kept going back to those joints every week.

Speaking of illegalities, there was one dependent I knew who was a major shoplifter at the BX.  He always complained that his dad wasn't giving him a decent allowance. Well, that was his excuse.  Almost none of us had jobs.  The Japanese had all the jobs on base.   The shoplifter actually took ORDERS at school for stuff in the BX that he would go in and steal.  Record albums were the #1 item for which he would take orders.   He would wear a trench coat (it did rain a lot there), so he could shove his hands through the pockets and out the front.  It looked like he was just looking at the merchandise, while he was filching everything he could get his hands on.  He could swipe 15 albums as a time.  Then, he got greedy.  He was taking orders for big ticket items, like TVs from Japanese merchants outside the gate.  He thought he could buffalo the Japanese clerks, just because they didn't speak English well.  He stole some "SOLD" tags and put them on TVs and had a clerk actually carry them out to his car.  About the third time, the APs (official teenage designation: "Apes") were waiting for him.  He was on the next plane to the States, minus his parents.  You can bet his dad's career suffered as a result.  Another physics lesson: action = reaction.  At least, this time,  it wasn't my ass in the sling.  It got me so scared that I threw away the albums I had bought from ... uhhh ... better left unsaid.

One summer, to try to keep us busy, the BX gave barber lessons to a bunch of us bored teenagers.  What we thought we would use that for is beyond me.  It was something to do for a month.  Every morning, we'd spend several hours being taught the trade by Japanese barbers at the shop.  We had to experiment on each other, not their regular customers.  It was the summer of bad haircuts.  "Covert" Carl had conned his younger brother by saying he'd give him the latest teen style, a sure-fire way to get a pre- or just-barely-teen to do your bidding.  Well, Carl preceded Mike Tyson by 30-some years, and lopped off a goodly portion of his young frère's ear.  I can hear the scream, even now!  We tried to convince our friends to give them free haircuts.  When they saw what we'd done to each other, their laughter was enough to convince us not to press the issue.  The clippers and scissors rusted away in a drawer.

I loved the BX.  We would travel to the other BXs at Tachikawa or the Navy Exchanges at Yokohama or Yokuska to see if they had any neater stuff .. especially new U.S. fashions that ours didn't.  After all, we all bought at the same place, and we started to look alike ... well, maybe not everyone.  You didn't see the jocks wearing flourescent red pants.  The difference in merchandise was usually Japanese cultural things that were made in their area.  Sometimes, they would have newer 45 rpm records .. we weren't much into albums yet .. 45s were the hot commodity.  The more you had, the cooler you were .. which leads me to ... the Teen Club.
 

[Ed. note - Wanted: Stories of your run-ins with the bane of teenage tranquility, the Apes.. and, for you really bad guys, your run-ins with the dreaded O.S.I.  If you were pulled in by the O.S.I., you were just one step removed from Leavenworth (in your dad's eyes).  Even better: stories of stuff you got away with!]