by J. E. Park
Yabuta-san did not wait for a counterstrike. With a yell more appropriate for a karate dojo than an intimate Japanese eatery, he brought his hand down upon the table, crushing the little monster. He also scared half of the restaurant, including me, right out of our seats. After that, Yabuta-san rose his hand, showing me a palm covered with pulverized shrimp guts. He then told me, with complete sincerity, “Got it. Save your rife!”
Dixie howled in laughter, and the rest of us followed suit. While in hysterics, Dixie asked, “How do you say ‘crazy’ in Japanese?”
“Baca,” I answered, practically crying.
Dixie pointed at Yabuta-san while roaring with laughter. “Baca! Yabuta-san baca!” Then the whole demeanor of the party suddenly changed.
“I NO BACA!” Yabuta-san yelled, jumping to his feet, his face red and ready to fight. He was beside himself with fury, and Takahashi, Koshimizu, and Sasaki had to restrain him from leaping over the table to break Dixie’s nose. Yabuta lacked the English skills to tell Dixie what he wanted to, so he unleashed a flurry of vindictive down upon him in torrential Japanese.
“Why did he say that?” Kida asked me.
“Say what?” I asked, utterly clueless about what Dixie did that was so offensive.
“Baca! Why Dikushi-san call Yabuta-san crazy?”
“Why wouldn’t he?” I asked, still not sure what exactly had happened. “Yabuta-san is a very funny guy! He is trying to pay him a compliment! In English, crazy means funny! It means he likes to have fun, to drink a lot, to get crazy.” Turning to Yabuta, I pled, “Gomen nasai. Gomen nasai.” I was telling him we were sorry.
Kida-san jumped in and got things calmed down. As a show of remorse for the misunderstanding, Dixie and I picked up Yabuta-san’s tab. The conflict got cleared, and everything was explained, but the atmosphere was still tense. Sensing that it was too late to return the party’s dynamic to what it had been, Yabuta, Takahashi, Koshimizu, and Sasaki decided to call it a night. Dixie did too and was pointed in the general direction of the base by Kida-san. I offered to go with him, but Otsuka-san invited us to one more place, and, sensing that I really wanted to go, Kevin told me that he was fine on his own.
That left only three of us to finish out the night.
*****
Kida, Otsuka, and I ended up in a small nightclub somewhere closer to base, but way past the ginza, near where the town ended and the mountains began. As we walked in, I noticed one of those “No Foreigners Allowed” signs and pointed it out to my hosts. Kida-san shrugged it off. “You okay if you with us. They no want trouble. Foreigners bring trouble with fighting and getting rude with girls. You okay, so if we responsib-oh for you, they ret you in. If you act good and they trust you, you can come yourse’f. They no ret you bring friends, though.”
Once inside, I realized that calling the place a nightclub was a bit of an overstatement. It was actually a glorified karaoke bar. Otsuka led us all to the back, where four girls sat waiting for us. Hisako appeared to be Otsuka-san’s girlfriend. She kissed him and held his hand once we arrived. Her hair was in pigtails, and she was outfitted in a schoolgirl sailor top with a plaid miniskirt, platform shoes, and knee-high socks. Her English skills were on par with her boyfriend’s, and she greeted me with, “Herro. Nice meet you.”
Mamiko was older and introduced to Kida-san by Otsuka. She wore typical business attire, which was understandable as she was a bit more mature. Hitomi spoke no English, greeting me with “Hajimamashita.” She ignored me after that, seeming much more interested in the match potential of Mamiko and Kida. The last girl was clad in Goth garb, black from neck to foot, and she was positively gorgeous. Her English was perfect too, her accent oddly flavored with a hint of the American south. “Hi, Doyle. I’m Yukiko Fukuyama. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Wow,” I said. “Your English is better than mine. Where did you learn it?”
“I studied English at university. I also spent two different years in the United States as an exchange student. One in San Francisco and another in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.” She pumped her fist in the air and said, “Roll Tide.”
I laughed and ordered each of us a beer as Yukiko bummed a Marlboro Light from me. After inhaling, she coughed. “Damn. I was hoping this was an American cigarette.”
Shrugging my apology, I said, “I ran out hours ago. I had to get these from a vending machine. They do seem a lot harsher for some reason.”
Yukiko nodded. “They are. Japanese cigarettes use charcoal filters. They’re not the same.”
“Next time, I’ll make sure I bring more American Marlboros.”
Yukiko waved me off. “Don’t do it on my account. I smoke one cigarette a month usually.”
“I wish I could say that,” I told her. “I smoke about once an hour. One every ten minutes if I’m drinking.”
“And you’re drinking now?”
I nodded. “Oh yeah. Taking in the Japanese salaryman culture, I guess.”
“Cool.” Yukiko exhaled her smoke. “And now here you are, about to ascend to the pinnacle of it: karaoke. Do you sing?”
Shaking my head, I answered, “I wouldn’t call what I do singing. I don’t think anyone else would either.”
“Well, you better get used to it. It’s terrible form to refuse karaoke in Japan.”
I sighed. “No respectful way out?”
Yukiko shook her head. “None whatsoever. If it comes down to it, they’ll hold you at gunpoint until you’re up there singing Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I suggest you squeeze yourself in your private areas to hit the high notes.”
I laughed. It was not that Yukiko’s joke was so funny. I just found it amusing how un-Japanese she was. Every local woman I had met to that point was very demure, shy, and seeking approval. This was most evident in how often they ended their sentences with the word “neh?” which means, “isn’t it?”
Granted, Yukiko was speaking to me in English, but even when she spoke Japanese, the “neh?” was conspicuously absent. As I sat there trying to figure her out, she passed me a book of songs that the club offered. It was written in katakana, though, and I could not read it.
“You didn’t do your homework before coming to Japan?” she asked, taking the catalog back. “You can’t read the script?”
I shook my head. “Yukiko, I studied my ass off before coming here. I did my best to learn the language, but without anybody to practice on, I still suck at it.”
“Well, if you really want to learn Japanese, you will. It’s very easy to do when you're immersed in it.”
“I don’t even need immersion,” I told her. “Picking up foreign languages is kind of my superpower.”
“Really? What do you speak?” she asked as she turned a page in the karaoke catalog.
“French and Spanish,” I said. “My Spanish got really good while in San Diego because we spent so much time in Mexico. One of the guys in my shop is from French Guiana, so I keep current in French as well. I also have a working knowledge of Tagalog. I picked that up from working on the mess decks.”
“The what?” Yukiko asked, showing the first weak link in her English skills. She was not familiar with nautical terms.
“The ship’s kitchen.”
“So, you’re a cook?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m an electronics technician. I fix radars.”
“Then why were you working in the kitchen?” Yukiko asked.
I flashed her a mischievous smile. “I got into a little trouble and ended up down there for ninety days as punishment.”
Yukiko grinned back at me. “Oh, so you’re a bad boy?”
“A little.” First impressions were important, so I kept the rest of my rap sheet to myself.
“How did you learn Tagalog in the kitchen?”
“It’s mostly Filipinos working in the mess decks. I was in the wardroom, the officers’ mess, so I had a lot of downtime. I learned it from the cook I was teamed up with. We’re going to the Philippines at the end of this month, so I�
�ll improve my Tagalog there, I’m sure.”
“You live on the base then?”
“Yes.”
“I pass by it often,” Yukiko told me. “I work near there for Kodak as a translator, in Yamagatacho. I live in Sonodamachi. That probably means nothing to you, does it?”
I shook my head. “Not a thing.”
“They’re different neighborhoods. The base is between them. When I walk home, I usually go through the park, by the river.”
“Cool,” I told her. “I hope to see you around then.”
“If you’re there around seven at night, you probably will.”
As Yukiko warned me, my turn eventually came to sing. She helped me pick something I could musically slaughter, settling on What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. Doing my best to imitate Armstrong’s gravelly voice to conceal the fact that I could not carry a tune, I accidentally nailed it. To my surprise, Satchmo was very popular in Japan, and everyone knew the song. The crowd went nuts, sending me back on stage time after time to sing every Armstrong hit in their collection. By the time the night was over, I could barely speak.
Yukiko and I talked a lot about what she missed in the United States and what I should try while I was in Japan. We also spent a lot of time discussing punk rock, which was a shared interest. I told her a story about how I got thrown out of a concert for being underage and spent three hours breaking back in, only to succeed in time to catch the last thirty seconds of the final act. When things wound down at about one in the morning, we shared a cab home.
I thought we had a pretty good time. Because of the confidence that came from ten straight hours of drinking, I leaned in to kiss Yukiko when the taxi parked to let me out at the Albuquerque Bridge. She stopped me by putting her index finger across my lips. “Ah ah ahhhhh. You need to behave.” She then held out her hand. “Just friends. Okay?”
I grinned. It was a little much to expect to come away with a Japanese girlfriend on my first night in Sasebo. So, I took her hand, shook it, and said, “Okay. Friends. I hope to see you around.”
Yukiko smiled politely, but without any sign of whether she shared the sentiment. She did tell me goodnight as the cab started up to take her home, though.
I waited for Yukiko to drive out of sight before I crossed the bridge into Nimitz Park. Halfway across the path back to the base, I ran into Palazzo, who was with two other sailors walking a beat on Shore Patrol. “So, how was it?” he asked as I passed by.
“How was what?” I asked back.
“Japan.”
Looking toward Sasebogawa Street, back into town, I took a moment to think about it. I thought about Japanese beer, saké, dancing shrimp, anime girls on roller skates, strobe lights, megaphones, street signs I couldn’t read, karaoke, and Yukiko. I then turned back to Spanky Palazzo and told him, “It’s eventful if nothing else.”
*****
CHAPTER 7
J apan seemed to agree with me. It was a land so different from Detroit that it was like hitting a reset button somewhere deep within my mind. With few things to remind me of home, I had fewer triggers to summon my demons. My nightmares decreased dramatically and I stopped having my episodes altogether.
I had spent a lot of time in stateside bars where it was too easy to cross paths with another drunken hooligan and end up in trouble. That could still happen in Japan if you hung around Four Corners with the other sailors. Because of that, I opted to spend more time with my Japanese friends like Otsuka Hideki. That kept me deeper in town, away from the base, and allowed me to keep my nose clean.
I enjoyed my new friendship with Otsuka. Besides being my age, he was also something of an adrenaline junkie. Instead of bar-brawling his way through Tijuana nightclubs, though, he had healthier ways of getting kicks. When he broke away from his day job as an electrician, Otsuka spent his time in a local dojo honing his martial arts skills. When he was not doing that, he would hike the more treacherous trails around the local mountains. When he found out that I was into scuba diving and surfing, he expressed an interest in giving both a try. We planned on researching Kyushu surfing spots when the Belleau Wood returned from the Philippines at the end of November.
As much as I enjoyed Otsuka-san’s company, I had other motives for spending so much time with him. Otsuka was the person who introduced me to Yukiko Fukuyama the day I arrived in Japan. She had been on my mind ever since. Yukiko was gorgeous. She was also exotic, mysterious, and intelligent, speaking flawless English. I was a long way from being fluent in Japanese. Since landing in Sasebo, I had met other girls, but communicating with them outside of very basic topics proved exhausting.
Yukiko told me she passed by Nimitz Park going to and from work, and if I hung out there, I would see her. I tried that a couple of times a week, but we never came across one another for some reason. It was not until the end of October, a few days before we were to leave for the Philippines, that I finally saw her again.
On my last duty day before setting sail for Subic Bay, I was assigned to serve on Shore Patrol. Unfortunately, the crews of the Belleau Wood and the Dubuque came to blows in the Enlisted Man’s Club and leveled the place the night before. With the best Shore Patrol assignment left in shambles, we were all sent out into town. As an E-5, I ended up in charge of a three-man team ordered to walk Nimitz Park.
BM3 Danny Gibson from the Belleau Wood’s Deck Department was with us. That was good because Danny was a huge guy and could de-escalate a situation simply by his size. The downside was that Danny was about as swift as a three-toed sloth in the throes of a savage valium bender. Conversations with him were painful and they tended to make a long night even longer. YN3 Curtis Sorenson was my third man. Luckily, he was smart enough to take the edge off of walking a beat with Gibson.
My chief, ETC Ramirez, was also on Shore Patrol that night, but he was a little closer to the action at Four Corners. Our beats had some overlap and we would periodically meet in the middle of the Albuquerque Bridge. There, he would give me a fresh can of mocha pulled from a heated vending machine, which made a great hand warmer. Sasebo was a lot like San Diego, where the nocturnal breezes coming off the cool ocean waters could cut you right to the bone after the sun went down. It was not bad if you were bouncing from bar to bar like Chief Ramirez was, but if you were walking out in the open like we were, you stayed cold.
For all the excitement of the night before, our watch started off largely uneventful. There was a lot of foot traffic along the path that ran along the river, and I enjoyed it while it lasted. Most of the people passing by were Japanese. I greeted each one with a smile and a “Kanban wa! Ogenki desu ka?” Good Evening. How are you?
This drew a warm response from the older folks, who would stop and talk back. They were not used to having a gaijin addressing them in their native tongue. None of the pretty Japanese girls I was hoping to talk to stopped, though. They just giggled, returned the greeting, and picked up their pace to get away before I said something else.
When the Japanese traffic decreased, the American exodus away from the base accelerated. I spotted several familiar faces. Sergeant Fordson, ET2 Darius Cleveland, and Claude Metaire stopped to say hello. I also crossed paths with Marty Pruitt from the AG shop next door a little while later. He was hanging with his snipe buddy, Vinnie Decker. It was the person who ran into me that made my night, though.
“Well, well, well! Is that Doyle Murphy?” It was a girl’s voice coming up from behind. There were very few young women in Japan that had even heard my name at that point, let alone remembered it. I only knew of one who could pronounce it. Yukiko Fukuyama. “Look at you, Doyle! Why is your government dressing you so funny?”
I was in dress blues but wearing a pea coat that at least covered up the part of our uniform that made us look like Japanese schoolgirls. My coat was cinched at the waist by a white duty belt, from which hung a two-foot-long nightstick. My right bicep was adorned with a black armband emblazoned with the letters “SP” in bright yellow. The bell bo
ttoms of my trousers were wrapped around my calves, then covered with white leggings to keep them in place. With my white Dixie Cup hat cocked a bit to the side of my head, I might have been considered dashing had it been the 1940s.
“Yukiko! How are you?” I called out. She was with two of her friends, so I bowed to them, held out my hand to shake theirs, and said, “Kanban wa! Watashi no namae wa Doyle Murphy desu. Hajimemashita!”
Yukiko and I both laughed as her friends tried to pronounce my name. We settled on Do-ru, which was where English and Japanese pronunciations seemed to intersect. As I introduced Danny and Sorenson to the young ladies, I saw Pruitt and Decker heading back toward the ship. More importantly, they saw me.
Having heard the account of my sexual adventures in Hawaii, Pruitt gave me an enthusiastic thumbs up and mouthed, “Three?!? Three girls this time?” He had no idea that I had been friend-zoned by Yukiko weeks before, but I felt no need to correct him. I just smiled and waved.
Gibson attempted to make conversation with one of the young women. Instead of trying to speak Japanese, however, Danny just enunciated louder, as if volume was the key to breaking the language barrier. He turned to the girl closest to him and shouted, “Do you like Motley Crue?” It was a line that probably did not work any better with women who actually spoke English.
As the boatswain’s mate continued, the rest of us stopped talking and stared at him. Trying to describe his favorite band to the girl, Danny started playing air guitar and serenading the young lady with a horrid rendition of She’s Got the Looks that Kill. He was so loud that people walking on the other side of the river stopped to gawk at him too. After Petty Officer Gibson brought his hillbilly courtship ritual to an awkward end, I glanced at my watch. Seeing it was 10:30, I looked back at Yukiko and said, “It’s a little late to be coming home from work, neh?”