Saturday, March 17, 2012

THE MUTINY ON THE KOMATSU

Sometimes before you take a soaky tub in the big bath tub, you have to take out 5-117 Matchbox cars, 1-3 Happy Meal chipmunks, a squeaky toy that looks like the ghosts that can eat you when you play whatchamacallit from the early days of video games and assorted rubber sea creatures.

That's even BEFORE you can put in the drain plug and turn on the water.

So I just did that and as the hot water was starting to fill up the tub and I tried to decide whether I wanted bath salts AND bubbles, and if so if they were going to be Scooby Doo or Toy Story 3 bubbles. (My friend Kaye just gave me these amazing aromatherapy sea salt gift bath oil things, and the last time I used them was on Chincoteague . . . a lotion to help you relax and then in the morning the bath salts and oils to wake you up.) (Scheherazade from the preparation room of the Harem will explain this to you if you don't already get it . . . Esther/Hadassah can, too).

Soooooo . . . then I was thinking of the time that the USAF gals almost mutinied on Komatsu AB because we had to stay in the little clinic and only had a little therapeutic whirlpool, but the fighter pilots and maintenance guys could go to the Japanese hot volcanic mineral baths.

They take class and rank very seriously over there, so I was already sleeping in a bed behind a little screen and the 7 or 9 maintenance/support dolls I was with were in another part of the room behind another screen (yeah, they complained about it, but I did my best to be as egalitarian and diplomatic as possible).

So at the point when they warned me that they were going to storm the Japanese Hot Baths while the guys were all in there, I asked them calmly if they would give me a few minutes to try to make them happy without causing (another) international incident.

Komatsu is right across the Sea of Japan and our F-15 guys were flying around playing with the Japanese F-15 guys.

There were skits at our going away dinner and in their skit the Japanese F-15 guys pretended to be our guys at a de-briefing after flying, and quoted and acted out our guys from Alaska pointing their fingers at the Japanese F-15 pilots and saying, "NO!NO! NO! I got you first!!!

Go figure . . .

I got to Japan later than everyone else because I was in charge of picking up the F-15 guys' party suits -- kind of like flight suits with a big map of Alaska embroidered on the back and imperial blue instead of puke green. (And other embroidery on the front I won't describe here.)

And about $1300 worth of eel skin purses and wallets and briefcases . . . and eelskin is very very soft, but STINKS like fish (It's nauseous unless you like that sort of thing).

So . . . I went to our deployment commander and explained the highly volatile situation with the near-mutiny and after many consultations all the way up to the Japanese General, thee gals had some time scheduled in the Japanese baths.

Then on the 2nd to the last day I had the flu (or the mung or whatever) that everyone else had gotten over already during the 3 1/2 weeks we were in Korea, but the young airman I was with and I were invited by our hosts to go on a field trip to a mountain top and go shopping for that Japanese lacquer wear.  (http://www.jcollector.com/Japanese-Lacquer-Inro-Samurai-Carrying-Case-p/jm8x92.htm)

On the bus I was off and on dreaming that my children's Japanese ancestors were trying to tell me something, and then when we were having our 2nd tea ceremony of the day with the Japanese commander, someone came running in to say that my family was on the way to the Air Base three hours drive away and down the mountain, and we had to get back so we couldn't go shopping.

Not sure why my kids in Alaska at home with their Dad, who was at the time my ex of about 14 months, would be showing up in Japan on such short notice so I was confused.

Turned out it was my ex-husband's great uncle, the great uncle's father-in-law and two cousins my ex grew up with when he lived in Japan during the first part of his life.

So they were driving from somewhere near Osaka (I think . . .) and we had to hi-tail it back to Komatsu lickety split.

Our Japanese host was, I think, not too happy . . . but they are always extremely polite so you have to guess, usually.

When we got back to Komatsu, I was hurried off the bus and then I was raced into a room where every high ranking person from the Japanese Self Defense Force of Komatsu AB and the TDY (short tour of duty guys) -- except the general -- were talking politely to two very old Japanese gentlemen and two fairly young Japanese gentlemen (in their 30s I think).

I was in my green fatigues with very short hair and my kids' Japanese relatives were showing the Japanese Self-Defense Force people a photo of me, my ex and our babies from our Christmas card of 1974 (this was 1985).  In the photo my baby Tommy was on my lap (his first Christmas) Our sweet firstborn, Krista, who was almost 3 was next to me and my ex was on my other side.

I was wearing a long beautifully flowered Christmas dress my kids' Japanese grandmother had made for me.  My long hippie-style hair was piled up on top of my head like I was going to an ice cream social in the 1890s in River City, Iowa.

You can't make this stuff up, as my friend, Bob would say. (He also says "Don't take my name in vain," so I hope that is OK.) 

And as Miriam the Librarian said after the Cross Hand Piece and her argument with her Mom about the man who was following her all over town, "Well!  If that isn't the BEST I ever heard!"

*grin*

FADEOUT

http://www.komatsuforest.com/



Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com