Dateline: Tokyo, Japan; September 13, 2010—At first there was a typhoon and then there wasn’t a typhoon, and in between, Mt. Fuji was closed. And the climb that was to happen, did not happen and now I learn the mountain is closed for the season. What a bummer. And I had bought all of the requisite clothing to surmount this, the highest peak in all of Japan at 12,385 feet. So, next year I will try again.
This Monday morning I sit in a Tokyo hotel room conveniently close to Hanada Airport where I will be flying in a few hours to Okinawa. So many memories swarm my mind about Okinawa. It was my first assignment as a newly minted Marine Corps officer. It was 1974 and I was an 0302 infantry officer bound to be a rifle platoon commander in Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. Of all of my memories from that time, the one that haunts me the most is of Private Cheatham. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I first saw him across the aisle on the plane to Okinawa. He was firmly ensconced between two military policemen, a reluctant member of some poor platoon commander’s platoon. Turns out that was me.
Cheatham wasn’t a bad guy at heart, he just didn’t want to be, first, in the Marines, and second, in Okinawa. He had a wife and two sons back on the east coast and would much rather have been there. The 13 months dividing them seemed an unfathomable gulf. Indeed, it did seem hopelessly long. It made all the other branches of the military’s overseas duties of 12 months seem luxuriously short. And those 13 months ravaged many marriages. Fully one half of the staff and officers of my company alone, saw the strain of that separation prove an insurmountable obstacle their marriages. Thirteen months of constant training, totally in a man’s world, only to return home and to a woman who has been on her own for the same amount of time and survived without your help, thank you. So many of us were unprepared to return to the real world. Looking back on that time so many years ago, those 13 months seem but a passing breeze, sweeping in with its elixir of youthful idealism and passing unnoticed in a swirl of years that has cast me upon the shores of my 60’s, wondering where it, and they, all went.
But Cheatham was impatient to get home and embarked on a campaign to involve himself in every malfeasance and misdemeanor he, or his all too helpful buddies, could conceive. No manner of punishment seemed to dent his resolve. He intended to make himself so odious to the Corps that we would be forced to give him his release, discharge him and ship him home on the earliest flight. He took a lot of our time. He was one of the ten percent we spend ninety percent of the time dealing with. Finally he passed the full measure of the system’s patience and was court-martialed and received the prize he had worked so hard to win; a Bad Conduct Discharge, a BCD. Reassigned to a casual company, he was awaiting a port call, or a place on a stateside bound aircraft. He had gained his objective and was happy.
One night he went out to the village of Kin to celebrate. Kinville, as we called it, was a cluster of homes, bars and businesses outside the gates of Camp Hansen. Coming back fully tanked (drunk) the night of August 14, he fell asleep in his bunk. Sometime in the night a “buddy” came in, shook him awake, and offered him some “blues.” Blues were depressants you could buy over the counter and were popular with that segment of men who never felt quite normal unless they were rendered slightly abnormal by chemical processes. Cheatham took a few of the blues and fell back to sleep…on his back. After a while the cheap Orion beer he had swilled began to rebel and the body’s subconscious reflex system caused a spasm, sending the frothy stew back up the esophagus. But being now in a drug-induced stupor, Cheatham could not respond by rolling over and splattering the floor with the foul reward of his celebration. He just lay there.
On the morning of August 15, 1974, as the men of the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, sat on the parade field awaiting trucks to take us to Kin Blue beach to board ships to become the battalion landing team, an officer came to Mike Company asking for someone from first platoon report to the hospital. My platoon sergeant, SSgt. Inouye, the senator’s nephew, was dispatched. His job was to identify the body of a Marine who had aspirated on his own vomit and died in the early morning hours. It was Private Cheatham. He beat us home by many months. But he missed Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong and eventually the evacuation of Phnom Penh and Saigon. And he missed ever seeing his boys and his wife again. That was 36 years ago and today I return to Okinawa. Wish there was more I could have done for Cheatham. I had befriended him but his desire for home outweighed any other consideration.
And thus it is with my work these many years later. So few people understand the blessing God has in store for them. They see only a life of religious drudgery and not the joys of a life beyond the limits of time and space. So they cling to this earth as their only home and are willing to surrender all and anything for it. And at the end, they find they have missed everything for the relative nothing this life has to offer. But we labor on.
Tokyo is an interesting place. I arrived in the city on Friday for an evening meeting followed by teaching Sabbath school the next morning and having a lecture in the afternoon. There followed a lecture and class on public speaking on Sunday. This was all in the Tokyo Central church where also meets the Tokyo International church, a united nations of members from all over the globe. Africans, Filipinos, South Americans, Europeans, Australians, Americans; from all stations, all walks of life, for many reasons, they come to the Harajyuku area to worship with like believers. It is always a blessing. But it is in this Harajyuku area that an even greater diversity is seen out in the public domain. It is a place of Goths and mystics, tourists and transvestites, women dressed in childlike pinafores and men waxed down like Elvis. A large park sprawls though the area and here they come to see and be seen. They play their music so-called, skateboard, blow bubbles, practice trans-space massage, ogle, google (if they have 3G) or juggle. They sleep and eat, preen and parade, and generally enjoy the passing scene. And as night settles over the park and the motley masses head for their favorite watering holes, another class emerges from the streets and alleys.
Tokyo has a large population of denizens of the streets. It seemed every bench had its occupant as I walked through the shadows of gathering night. Some were striking up their gas burners to cook what supper they were able to forage or beg; some were unfolding their neatly bundled possessions, making their concrete beds as comfortable as possible. The heat has been oppressive this summer in Japan and I am sure these social wrecks look forward to the cooler days and nights of autumn. And as I walk amongst them, they either ignore me or scrutinize me from perspectives as narrow as was Cheatham’s, from lives as hopeless as was his. And yet I do pass on.
My plans have changed quite dramatically, and not just in my intentions for Mt. Fuji. On 18 October I was to fly to Beijing and resume my teaching duties at our new school there. But enrollment problems have rendered the third module impractical and so I was released from my China duties. For that I am sorry but I have learned that whenever one door closes, another opens. I thought first of Aenon in Malaysia. It had been a great blessing last year when I lectured there and so I sent a query as to whether they had any special needs. At the same time I sent an email to a friend named James Hartley who heads up a program named LIGHT and conducts training programs all over the world. Perhaps he knew of a need in the Pacific basin that I could fill.
Aenon responded that they were in the middle of a move but could find something for me to do. James, and through him a man in the Philippines, responded they NEEDED a teacher of Daniel and End Time Events in Northern Luzon. These are subjects I love and so I chose the need over the accommodation. I am excited.
In the Philippines the school, way up north, meets and lives in bamboo huts. For an hour each day they turn on the generator to charge the things needing charging. The rest of the time it is mostly primitive. Suits me fine.
There was a problem, however. I had a ticket to Beijing, not Manila. To cancel the Tokyo to Beijing leg would have cost me a penalty. So I decided to fly to Manila from Beijing, which turned out to be cheaper than flying from Tokyo. So, to fly to Manila I will fly from Oita, Japan, to Hanada, take a bus to Narita, fly to Beijing, then to Hong Kong, then on to Manila for a 12 hour bus ride to Laoag, Philippines. To return I will take the bus from Laoag to Manila, fly to Hong Kong and then on to Beijing. From there to Tokyo and then on to Honolulu and finally a short hop to Hilo. It will be so good to stop for a few days.
More in a bit. Getting ready for the flight to Okinawa.
God’s richest blessings,
Don
No comments:
Post a Comment