First time here?

If this is your first visit to my blog, catch on up on the story by reading the first post.

Skiing How hard could it be?

Snow and more snow.  People ski down town, people seem to ski every where.  Close to the front gate was a small hill (little Fuji).  people used to check out a pair of skis from special Services and go play on the hill.  It was not very high so it was a good place to practice.  Some times the trick schedule made it hard to get off post so sking was a good thing to  do.  It was a lot of fun but damn hard work learning to climb back to the top after each run.  One part of the hill had some big bushes at the bottom.  There was a small gap in the bushes that you could try and get though. If you missed the gap and you hit the bushes and it hurt.  So the trick was to learn to shoot the "Banzai Gap"  Most of the trips and sight seeing trip were on the weekends. Most of the time trick workers could not go due to the work schedule.  I am sure the Lifers and Dependents liked it that way.   So we raised a lot of hell and they set up a over night skiing trip to Sapporo.  I know there was one full bus but they maybe have been two. 

So away we go the ski slopes.  Wow this is big time stuff.  There was a very nice lodge with a big fire place a lot of cool chairs to sit and rest in.  they had a full Bar and the prices were no too bad.  We stayed in a big room with a jillion little covered bunks stacked 3 or 4 high. .  They were a little big small and cramped but it was ok.  We all get our skis and run and jump on the chair lift.  the chair lift is not as easy as it looks but we made it with just a few minor mishaps.  Not knowing much about skiing and having a language barrier  proved to be  interesting.  There were many different ways to ski down but which ones?  Some employees of the resort pointed out what they thought was the best routes for a bunch of goofy Gaijins to use.  Yee Haw  I made it down.  Way cool.  Time to do some more.  For the rest of the day we rode the lifts and skiied on the Novice slopes.   Then It happened.  Some of us were standing at the top looking at the Grand Slalom.  This is really a bad boy. Very steep with lots of moguls(sp)  bumps thay you use to crave you way down.  It is like trying to weave the line on a highway.  Not too hard when you are going slow but the faster you go the harder it gets.  I am looking over the edge and some one pokes me in the back and pushes me over the edge with their ski pole.  OH damn this is not good.  There are other people on the run and you can really hurt someone if you run into them.  I make the first couple of cuts but I am way way over my head. I fall to stop my self.  But I still have to get down and it is very damn steep where I am.  There are flags that border the edges that mark the out of bounds of the course edges.   My plan was to get up and ski to the edge of the course and work my way down with out hurting anyone, my self included.   I make it to the edge ok and as luck would have the are very few people on this part of the run.  Too steep and hard. Duh.  I get to the edge and turn and start down , not too bad  pretty smooth snow is a little deeper. I think hell, I can make it, no one is in the way so it should  clear sailing .  The faster I went the more afraid I became and I crouched lower on the skis.  This made me go even faster.  Still no one was even close and I was still standing going very fast.  As I got to the bottom my path crossed another trail that was almost bare ice.  I fell.  I bounced, hit, rolled. spun, It was spectacular to say the least.  I guess it knocked me out for second or so,  when I retained my bearings, there were alot of Little japanese guys with Green Crosses on their vests, talking to me.  They were saying " Itai?  Itai?"  I guess they thought  I might know the meaning of that as it is a fairly simple word meaning  Ouch or That hurts.  I rode me down to the lodge on a sled.  I was was not hurt.  All the people in the lodge thought it was a good show and none seemed to be very mad.  Some guy bought a shot of whiskey(Suntory) so in a little while I was ok.  I took a break from skiing for the rest of the day.  That night we meet some Japanese  guys who want to hang with us.  It was ok with us.  Some what later that night we got into a discussion about if you could ski down the road that led up to the resort.  They said you could not do it.  I said I could.  So as the night wore on, we made a wager.  100 dollars(A lot of money) if I could do it.  They would call the Taxi at the bottom and have him bring me back up if I made it.  Looking back It was a pretty stupi thing to do.  I had a small back pack and loaded with a bottle of wine and took off down the road.  It was snowing pretty hard so the skiing was not too bad.  Problem was I could not make all the turns.  I just ran into the snow drifts to slow down.  By the time I made it too the bottom I looked like a huge snowman.  I walked into the Taxi station and scarred the hell out of them.  But they ran me back up the mountain and I collected the money.  True story.  Later on I went skiing closer to Chitose at a much smaller place.  I had been there a couple of times so I knew which trails to take. It was fun and I really enjoyed it.  The chair lift had 3 stops on it.  I always got off on the 2nd stop because like in Sapporo the 3rd stop was for very advanced skiers.  One day I am not paying attention and I miss the #2 stop.  Double damn.  The ski  chair lifts were balanced so they did not want you to ride them down.  There were a lot of trees on this part of the slope.  I decided to give it a try.  I was doing good and almost made it when I skied in to a stump.  Boom!! The ski shattered and leg hit the stump.  I was really hurt.  I took my one good ski and sat on it till I got down to where my friends could help me.  There was a Japanese Doctor there and he looked at my leg and thought it might be broken but he did not think so.  Someone had a car so we packed my leg in snow and they drove me back to town.  Mr friend had a car in town so they drove me back to the post.  The Medic took a xray and said it looked ok to him.  I still have a large bump from that stump even today.

Sapporo

Sapporo is a large city that is maybe 30 miles away from Chitose.  We used to ride the train to get there but I do remember taking the bus a couple of time.  You can not say 2 words about Sapporo with out saying something about the Ice festival and Sapporo beer.  I went to the Ice Festival two times while I was there.  I will have to admit it was pretty neat.   But I dont think it really lived up to the hype.  But what do I know about Ice Sculpture, I live in Florida.   Sapporo was a big town and you could get lost pretty easy.  Not many people spoke English and there were very few Tourist or Americans in the area.  All this was about to change in 1972.  In 1972 Sapporo hosted the winter Olympics.  The airport was at Chitose so they expanded the Chitose airport and vastly improved the road and rail systems going to Sapporo  Chitose is now a very large  international airport.  I would suspect the change would be very hard to comprehend.   Maybe like trying to explain what Orlando Florida was like before Disney.  Anyways we used to go Sapporo every now and then to just look around and drink a little beer.  Not a real good idea to get wasted when you cant speak or read any of the signs and such.  Back then  there was very little English on signs.  I knew a few basic words and could ask a few questions get around ok but it was hard to do.  I had the symbols for Chitose written in Katakana   so I could find the right bus or train if I really got lost.  There are 3 different type of writting in japan.  There is Kanj(hard complex Chinese style) then there is Hiragana(not as complex) and Katakana.  Katakana is the simplest of the 3 and you can actually learn to read some of it.  I always thought that the symbol for Chi looked like a double telephone pole sitting on a hill.  Some people picked up on it very fast and could write Katakana pretty good.  I never advanced that far.  People used to leave notes to each  written in Katakana quite a bit.  Guys got to doing  it in Ops but the lifers could not read it so they made everyone quit using it. Sometimes people would stop you and try out their English on you.  It never bothered me and it was neat that they were trying to learn.  They was a demand for people to teach English. 
Sometimes not formal stuff but conversational English.   My friend and his wife used to teach a class for a Swedish Steel company that had a office in Sapporo.   The Swedes did nor want to learn Japanese and the Japanese did not want to learn  the Swedish language so they used English.  I taught a couple of times when my friends could not make it.  It was weird see every thing in English and very few people could speak it.  They could read and write fairly well but speaking English was difficult for them.  They were very nice to me and it was always a very enjoyable time.  There was a very large market that sold everything.  There was a guy that sold snakes that were used a medicine  some dried, some pickled, some alive.  No I never tried any of them.    We used to go skiing when they had the Olympics.   I almost really hurt my self a couple of times but I survived.  I think I will make a separate chapter on skiing. In the winter tt was neat ridding the train  and seeing all the houses down in the valleys all covered in snow.  I meant they really got covered up with many of them only the chimney  and part of the roof would be showing.   Snow, snow and more snow always a lot of snow in the area.  I never went to the Sapporo brewery.  Like I said I did not hang out much in Sapporo, too big.

Secrecy and such.

Working in a Top Secret area is quite a experience.  First you had to have your badge.  I had heard that even the badge was rated Confidential..  I do know that you NEVER wanted to lose or let anything happen to your badge.   You had to find a secure area in your locker to keep it.  It could not be taken off post and it was not a good idea to wear it when you were not working, One time  I was on my way down town and realized that " Damn IT" I still have my badge on.  I got off the bus and took a cab back to post to put it up.  I can not ever remember anyone ever losing a badge,  I am sure it might have happened but I never heard of it.  Every book in ops had the pages numbered and you had to sign of almost every thing you used.  Some times they would check the working material to be sure there were no pages missing.   I never heard of any any security breaches. I did hear that a guy got drunk and talked to  a Bar maid down town about some indexing system we used.  She freaked out and turned him in.  He could have talked for a week and she would not have known anything as the process was complex.   Secrecy was like a fog, always  around, it really did not bother you very much but you were always aware of it.  Everything  worked of the Need to Know principle.   You might have a good friend that worked down the hall and you would not know what he did.  You might have a good idea but he would never tell you any details.   Sometimes you knew from all the buzz and the officers running around that something big had went down, but 99% of the time no one said and you did not ask.  Like I said before there were a lot of people on the post who had no idea what we did in operations.    I dont think it was the threat of what would happen to you if you leaked info, rather than it was your honor and your duty to keep quiet.  It is very hard to explain.  I remember one time when I had to take a lie detector test. It was a routine thing that came around every now and then.  It scared the hell out of me.  Not because of anything I had done, I knew I was OK, but just the guys that gave it.  You can read about what we did as it is all pretty common knowledge now.  One time my father, who was a very intelligent person, researched who were and what we did.  He sent me a letter with all the info in it.  He had gleaned it from his job as a Training  Supervisor for the Navy.  I had to burn the letter and told him dont do that any more.  He meant well but he did not understand the mind set of the ASA at that time.   I can see where that type of work can be very addicting.  My problem(among others) was that I am not really a office type person.  I enjoy outside work, construction, maintenance etc.  Something when we just talking someone would say "Man I hope I do not ever get captured  because I dont know anything,  I am sure they(the bad guys) will not believe that!!"    Funny story about the badges.  When people really got mad or upset they would sometimes say " One day I am just going to burn this damn badge and be done with it"  Remember we burned all trash, paper etc and the end of every shift.  The incinerator was a good sized one that was gas fired to help with the burning.  Burning papers is not a easy job.  It is very hard to burn a ream of paper or a stack of books.  They have to be pulled apart and crumpled up a bit for them to burn quickly.  As at Fort Devans the incinerator had to be swept clean after every firing and anything unusual noted in a log book or given to the Officer in charge.  Our badges had two metal eyelets and a chain. Story has it that one day they found a badge chain with 2 eyelets on it in the incinerator.  Panic time. Someone had did it!!! They had burned their badge.  Wow.   Everything  went to a super secure mode until ALL the badges could be accounted for.  They found it was a Hoax  as someone just put 2 eyelets on a chain and put it in a burn bag.   I do know that a guy put a picture of a monkey on his badge just for a joke.  He got his self in a BIG bind over it as well as the MP guard who let him in.  Stupid move as he got the MP in trouble who had nothing to do with it.  I mean you see the guy every day for a year or so , do you have to check his picture EVERY time?  The answer is yes.

Dependents or Beggers/Brats

When I first arrived at Kuma station there were very few dependents.  There was not much if any,  on post housing for them.  I was not married so I really dont know all the details.  This somewhat conjure on my part.  Before on post housing was opened up many of the NCOs and such had to live in barracks.  So they had a good Idea of how we lived.  This all changed when people started bringing their wifes and children over.  It did not take long for the American wifes to start bitching about every thing.  For example.  Our rooms did not have any shades or blinds or if they did no one used them.  The wifes said they could see naked people running around when they were going to the USO or EM club.  That was BS because everyone always wore at least a towel around them at all time.  We had muli person showers but people were more modest than you would think.  Believe me no one wanted to see another guys junk.  Then they want us to not be able to go the commissary for 3 days after payday.  Because we bought all the good stuff to take down town.  We had ration cards and really could not buy very much. .   I guess the biggest deal was when they wanted to work in the EM club.  We had Japanese ladys that waited tables and such.  They were pretty good at it.  I would guess they understood more than they let on but they never seem to let anything bother them.   When a few of the wifes tried working in the club  they all went crazy when some drunk went on a cussing spree or started telling what he was going to do to his girlfriend.  In this case the ability to understand English was not a asset.  Then of course people started bringing over the Children.  More BS.  I really resented the differences between the married and single soldiers.  If you were single you had to live in the barracks and put up with all that stuff.  Hell if you were married you just went home, kicked back, and the Army was just like a job.  Also if you were single you had a good chance you would be picked for some kind of BS duty.  It was just damn sure wrong.   It was not long before they had Begervile up to full speed.  I had very little inter action with the dependents or wifes.  I was a trick animal and lived in my own space.   In many ways we had very little in common with the rest of the post. We spent most of our time at operations with maybe 30 or 40 other guys. We worked rotating  shift so when many were sleeping, we were working and vise versa.  Shift or "trick" loyalty was immense.  We wore the badge of Trick Animal proudly because we were the reason that the post was there.   Dependents changed everything but I tried not to stay on post much so I really did not care.   I did have a couple of good friends who had brought their wifes over but they lived down town on the economy.   Maybe they will read this and if it is ok I will tell a few stories about them.  Clue Home of the Maytag Washers.  They were good people.   I think they tired to get in touch with me later on but I was on the road trying to get sane.

My job

  Here is couple of pictures of the Operations  building.  At one time I am sure they would have been classified. It may look small now, but it really seemed big back then.  Times change.   The Army Security Agency worked with the National Security Agency  but was supported by the US Army.  In some ways we were immune to some of the BS that the regular Army had to endure.  But not all of it.  Many of our Sargents had re upped into the Agency.   To say they were not very smart would not be nice. Let us say they were different.   Sometimes  they had to do the actions  that came with their jobs.  Some of their actions were just mean and stupid.     There was a big problem in ASA.  We worked for the most part National Security Agency.  When we were in the Operation building they told us what to do.  What reports to send and when to send them.  I am not going to talk much about what we did.  Working in Operations was not a game.  It was damn serious work and was very demanding.  No windows,  No real break room, no reading material other than official papers and books.   I was a Radio Traffic Analyst.  Usually there was only one of us on a shift.  If your  relief was sick or was running late you had to work till some one could relieve you.   I took my job very serious.  I was not a good solider but I was a damn good TA guy.  I worked with a room full of 058(Morse Code) guys.  They had to copy what was assigned to them.  It was hard work but they were very very serious about what they did.  This is a close as I am going to come to talk about Operations.  But sometimes you could see history being made.  Our unit has the ability to get a message to the white House in less than 15 mins.  Not a small feat 50 years ago.    When you spend day after day, hour after hour in a fairly  small room with 20 or so other people, you really get to know them very well.  Not only did we work together,  we all lived together.  After a year or so you really got to know each other.  It was a strange type of bonding for me.   You knew who you could trust and who you could not.  My fellow workers were the only reason I made it.  They helped me when I was sad, wrecked, drunk, Etc.  I am not a drama queen, we all had problems and helped each other.  Maybe I helped a few others, I dont know, but I hope so.  Here is where the real issues start.  After 10 to 12 hours in a high pressure environment you finally get off work.  I guess it was a mile or two from Ops to the Barracks.  We rode buses back forth to work.  Well surprise, surprise Someone thinks today is a good day for a room inspection.  Most lifers did not work shift work so 8 to 5 was a good time to jack with the troops. Remember you can not  say anything about what you have be doing all night.  I guess some of them thought we just sat around drinking coffee. It was mostly BS because the house boys took care of that stuff.  But you still got bitched at about pocket being unbuttoned, scuffed boots, hair too long any thing trivial.  Some of the trick Sargents would stand up for us.  But there only a few that did.  I worked with a lieutenant   He was a damn good guy.  He was tough guy but he was fair.  He also worked at Ops so he knew what we did.  One day when I was getting off work the Lt was just coming to work.  He was looking all over his desk looking for something.  He saw me and asked " You getting off work?"  Yes sir was my answer.   "let me borrow your belt I left mine in the BOQ"  Sure thing.  I was going to put my field jacket on so you could not see if I had a belt on or not. I gave him my belt and everything was cool.   Well Almost.  As the day shift crew came in, one E7 Sarge spotted me.  This guy really did not like me.  I stayed away from him the best I could. He was a real dumb ass and mean as a snake.   He noticed  I dont have on a belt as I have not put on my jacket because of a last minute issue.  He goes crazy.  He decides to make a major issue of it.  "Shift guys being out of uniform"   He is really showing his ass.  Red face, arm waving like I have craped on the floor.  The LT gets up and everything gets very quiet, they think he is going to join in on busting my ass.  He takes off my belt and hands it to me.  You have your name printed on the back so every knows if it is your belt or not.   He says " Sorry  I will go get mine, I guess it is a big deal"  The ass hole Sarge got me later but I dodged it that day.  LOL  Most of the time I got in trouble was at the end of the Mid night shift. Daylight came and you had a few days off, time to party.  Time to get a quick bite to eat, change clothes , go to the EM club get a few drinks and get ready to go down town.  If you got off at 7am it did not take much to get a good buzz on by noon.  Booze+ Enlisted Soldiers+Money+time off=Trouble.  Some guys just could not drink very well.  It was pretty funny to watch someone fall out of their  chairs or drop their food in the Mess hall.  Smart move was get your pass and get the hell off the post quick.  Sometimes easier said than done.  So there you have it.  It was a kind of them versus us.  To tell the truth I liked that way.

Close call in Chitose

I had a very small apartment and one night after we had been drinking all day we went to my place.  It was winter and the place was really cold.  Maybe -5 inside when we got there.  I had a  stove that used granulated coal but it took awhile to get it going.  I also had a kerosene heater that worked pretty good so we fired it up.  I was pretty drunk, as was everyone else.  There were 4 of us.  I told the other guys " Dont leave the heater on if you go to sleep ".  I  had a single 75 watt light bulb for light.  I went to sleep and when I woke up  I could barely see the light.  WTH?  The heater had exploded and was pumping out black, oily smoke.  We were all sleeping on the floor and that is the only thing that saved us.  I crawled over and opened the door to the outside  to let some of the smoke out.  I was able to awake on of my friends and we drug the other 2 outside. I really thought they might be dead.  We all were black and looked like coal miners.  It really messed up the but the others chipped in and helped clean it up. Had to replace all the tatami mats, and I hired some people to finish cleaning it up.  We had to go back to the post and it was a week day.  We worked shift work so we had the day off.  We went to the buss stop to catch the buss and it was full of sargent and officers coming from chitose 1.  They asked"  What happened to you guys?"  I told them that   We had a part time time job working in a  coal mine.  I thought it was pretty funny until a day or so later I had to explain it to the First Sargent.  The dumb asses turned us in for working for the japanense with out a permit .  LOL