Chapter Six
Japan
I got married in October 1950. I was sent to Connecticut for recruiting duty in South Norwalk for a while, then to Bridgeport. While here my wife and I learned that we were to be parents, and she wanted our child to be born in her home state. I asked for and received a transfer to Raleigh, NC.
Gail was born at Duke University Hospital, and I settled down to recruiting in earnest. One day I was walking down a street in my dress blues when a boy about six years old pulled at his mother's coat tail, "Mama, dat's de kind of sojur I wants to be." I gave him one of my cards and told him when he became 18 maybe he could be like me.
I'd usually have a cup of coffee in Walgreen's drug store in Raleigh before I went to the office, and I became friends with the young man who ran the counter. He usually kept a large punch bowl full of fruit cocktail sitting in a pan of ice. One Monday morning I came in and he said someone had failed to put the fruit cocktail in the freezer over the weekend and it had soured. I asked if he had thrown it out and he said no, so we went down to the basement to inspect it. I told him to put it in something for about three weeks or a month and let it make brandy. He was dubious about it, but he kept it. About a month later, I stopped in for lunch and he asked me if I wanted some orange juice and winked. I told him okay and he brought me about a pint glass of it. It was delicious. After that, he had about one bowl of fruit cocktail a month that somehow got left out over night. He got caught though. A district inspector came around on a surprise inspection, found it, and made him pour it out.
In July 1953, I received orders for Korea. While I was home on leave prior to shipping out, the cease-fire was signed and my orders were changed. I reported to Camp Pendleton, where the 3rd MarDiv was forming. I was assigned to Company "C," 3rd Tank Battalion as a platoon sergeant. We trained for a couple of months, then left for Japan.
Nippon
We landed at Numazu and drove the M47 tanks over the mountains to South Camp Fuji. There were three portions to Camp Fuji — South Camp, where the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment plus the 3rd Tank Battalion was stationed; Middle Camp, where the lst and 2nd Battalion 3rd Marines and a squadron of "Grasshoppers" (five Stinson observation planes about the size of a Piper Cub) were; and North Camp. The rest of the division was on Okinawa.
North Camp was home to the 7th Army Calvary Regiment. We never got along with them. This was Custer's old outfit and they thought they were at Little Big Horn and wanted to wipe out us Indians. Their shoulder patch was yellow with a black diagonal line and a horse's head in black. We said it represented their Korean service — the horses they never rode, the line they never crossed (38th parallel was called "the line") and the background of their favorite color (indicating that they were yellow).
Our liberty town was Fujioka, a Dodge City-type of village just
outside the gate. The Middle and North Camps went to Gotemba.
So, there was lots of trouble between soldiers and Marines.
The first two weeks there was no liberty allowed so we were confined
to camp. Some of the enterprising Marines went down a ditch,
through a culvert, and across the rice paddies to Fujioka.
There were six of us (staff sergeants) in our end of the barracks. We had a room about 20 x 30 feet for our bunks, lockers and heater. One of the staff sergeants decided he'd go on a little unauthorized liberty, so he went via the ditch-culvert route. He was doing okay until he fell into a "honey hole." The Japanese used human waste to fertilize their rice paddies. The "honey wagon" would go around to all the houses in the villages collecting this waste, then they'd dump it into a hole in the ground and let it age. This caused it to become liquid, and they'd then dip it out and pour it over their crops.
These "honey holes" were about four feet square and about five feet deep. This staff sergeant went in to his upper chest. A Japanese farmer pulled him out and he came creeping back to camp. We wouldn't let him in until he threw his clothes in the garbage can and went in the other end of the barracks where the showers were located. Of course, thereafter his nickname became "Honey Hole."
As I noted earlier, our corpsmen were special to us. They weren't Marines; they were Navy Pharmacists Mates. One of the corpsmen attached to the lst Battalion, 3rd Marines was on liberty in Gotemba when he was jumped by four "doggies" from the 7th Army Calvary. He was beaten so badly that he spent three weeks in the hospital and for a while he wasn't expected to live. The lst Battalion's sergeant major fell the entire battalion out in dungarees at 2200 and marched it into Gotemba on "dungaree liberty." All soldiers were fair game and every one of them were thrown out of every hotel, whorehouse, bar and café and were forced out of town. The Marines wouldn't let them back in town until it was certain that our corpsman would live. They wouldn't have done it for a Marine, but they would for a corpsman. Don't mess with our "Docs."
One Sunday morning, the first sergeant came over and woke me. I told him it was Sunday but he said to get up because we had two men from my platoon in jail in the little town of Mitayama, about 50 miles from South Camp. One of them was Steve McQueen, who later became a movie actor. He wasn't famous then, but he was a pretty good Marine, so I told the top okay. We drew a "dead horse" (a loan against their pay) for both of the men and set off to get them. The first sergeant was driving the jeep as I enjoyed the country. When we got to Mitayama, we found out they had rented motorcycles, got drunk and crashed the cycles into a rice paddy. The bikes weren't damaged but villagers charged the two Marines $200 each for the rice they destroyed.
When we had arrived in Japan, the only NCOs in the platoon were myself and two section leaders (sergeants). I finally got my five tank commanders promoted to corporal. One of these was McQueen. He was all or nothing. He played hard and he worked just as hard.
Our first sergeant had a small "head" (toilet) in the corner of his office. One of the other staff sergeants (who had a friend in the "Grasshopper" squadron) got a piece of Plexiglas cut the same size as the top of a commode and one morning we slipped it under the seat of the first sergeant's commode. We thought he'd come in, urinate with the resulting splatter and everyone would get a big laugh. It didn't work out that way — the first sergeant had been drinking the night before and arrived with a case of the "beer GIs." We heard him sit down and the, "Pffft" . . . "God damn!" His output had hit the Plexiglas and curled around his butt. Years later we were both stationed at Albany, Ga. and he was telling a bunch about it when I burst out laughing. He finally found out who'd done that to him.
While in Japan, we were under the Army system of rations. The Navy and Marines drew rations for the number of men on the morning report, whether they went to chow or not, so we had pretty good chow. The Army did a head count at all mess halls and the mess sergeant drew that many rations the next day for that many men. For instance, on a Sunday, not many men were aboard to eat, so the resulting meals on Monday, weren't much. The only meat that was cheap enough for the mess sergeant to acquire enough for everyone was turkey. We had turkey twice a day for six months, so I still don't like turkey.
The Japanese electrical workers for the power company were something else. They'd climb a pole and instead of climbing down to go to the next pole they'd walk the power lines between the poles. They didn't use climbers like American linemen, they wore jika-tabi (right) which were like black, split-toed tennis shoes that enabled them to grasp narrow lines.
I walked out of the barracks to go to the tank park and noticed one of the linemen dancing on the wires. He had a small rip in his shoes and got on a hot wire. He couldn't get off and fell straddling a wire with his hand caught in a metal brace on the cross arm. He was already unconscious. I ran back to the company office and told the first sergeant what was happening. He called sick bay for an ambulance right away.
I ran back outside just as the man's partner cut the juice off at the next pole. The man fell like a sack of sand and landed across one of the open sewers running through the camp. These were concrete, about 18 inches deep and six inches wide. The ambulance and corpsmen got there just after I got back out. The flesh on his wrist was completely burned away as it was around the groin area where he had been sitting on the power line. He died later that day.
Honey wagon
