by Jeff Noonan
Seeing the thick, tan, stinking water flowing down Olongapo’s Shit River didn’t shock me. But what did was the fact that there were children swimming in it! They were on small boats and rafts, yelling up to the Americans crossing the bridge:
“Pesos, Joe?”
“Centavos, Joe?”
When someone would throw them some change, they would dive for it, often fighting one another for the coins.
In every gathering, there are some louts who enjoy seeing desperate people degraded. This was true here. I was absolutely appalled, and it showed.
Fred Ross, who had been raised in an orphanage, turned away from the sight, saying, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Bob saw the look on our faces and smiled, “Guys, I feel the same way. But I found out that we can’t fix everything that’s wrong with this world. I try not to look when I cross this fucking bridge. If I do look, I want to cry.” This from one of the roughest, toughest, men I’ve ever known. I decided that there were a lot of reasons to like both him and Fred.
We got over the bridge and kept walking. Olongapo, in 1959, was a mere shadow of the huge place that it became a few years later during the Viet Nam period. In 1959, the town only had two major streets. Magsaysay Boulevard crossed the town from the Base to where the road took off for Manila. Then, a few blocks from the base, Gordon Road came into Magsaysay from the left to form a “Y.” Both roads were lined with bars, cafes and shops, with a ratio of at least two or three bars to every other business.
Bob had a favorite bar, the U & I Club, a mile or so from the Naval Station on Gordon Street, so we headed there.
The roads were jammed with strange-looking little vehicles. Bob explained that they were called “Jeepneys” and were vehicles that had grown from the thousands of World War II Jeeps that the GIs had left behind. They looked like Jeeps except that the rear seat area had been modified to look like a small, covered, pickup bed with seats. They were decorated with the most outlandish colors and designs that I’d ever seen. Some of them were acting as taxis and others were obviously private vehicles. It sounded like Jeepney drivers couldn’t drive without one hand on their horn. Interestingly, the horns had been enhanced to play everything from the beeping of a standard horn to a noisy rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The din was deafening at times, but somehow it just added to the exotic allure of this place.
The sights and sounds of Olongapo inundated us as we walked. There was loud music coming from every building. In front of most bars were groups of local men, and occasionally women, trying to get us to detour into their bar as we passed them. We were tempted a few times, but Bob kept us walking.
Bob explained that he thought the high Olongapo VD rate was primarily from the “amateurs” who went into the bigger bars that were nearest to the main gate of the Naval Base. He said that he had seen some really bad-looking women in some of them and knew a few guys that had been mugged in them, so he stuck to the smaller, more out-of-the-way bars where, according to him, the people were “more real.”
We passed shops that had Philippine products for sale. There were lots of leather goods and wood carvings. There were also vendors with carts on the street selling both soft drinks and roast pork skewers; things that looked like shish-ka-bob and smelled delicious. Bob called this “Monkey Meat on a Stick,” but I have to confess that I learned to like it and it really did taste like pork barbeque to me.
Finally we reached the U & I Club, and we went in. It may have been a “small out-of-the-way bar,” but it looked very big to me. When you walked in, you were in a huge room, decorated much like a stateside night club, with a bar along one side and a dance floor on the opposite wall. In between there were a lot of four-person square tables with an occasional sailor seated at them. But what was astounding was the fact that, even though it was only about four in the afternoon, there were at least thirty women in the bar, just sitting around, chatting.
As soon as we walked in, I heard a scream, “Bobbie, Bobbie,” and the night was started.
I soon found that Bob Lawler had many friends. He had made a point, when he was here the last time, to befriend the older lady that ran the bar; the “Mama-San,” as we came to know her. There were at least four or five women there that knew “Bobbie” and remembered him well. The fact that we were with him made us special people, and we soon found ourselves at a group of semi-private tables at the back of the hall surrounded by young ladies. The drink of choice there was San Miguel Beer, a concoction that tasted like a very green version of stateside beer. (In fact, I don’t think that I saw any other alcoholic drink there. Whenever we were in any local bar, we were always asked, “Buy me drink, Joe?” by the bar-girls who were served in mixed drink glasses. But I soon learned that these “drinks” were either tea or soft drinks. The sailors were all drinking San Miguel.)
I didn’t have any idea how to act in this situation, so I watched Bob and took my cues from him. He was very conversational and talkative and was joking with all of them. But he didn’t seem to have any favorites and he treated all of them as if they were the finest of ladies. He was their friend; a quite respectful friend. As the evening wore on, I noticed that most of my buddies were pairing off with individual ladies and were quietly disappearing from the bar. I had plenty of opportunities to do the same, but I kept my cool and watched the action.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bob whisper something to Mama-San. She looked at me with what I can only describe as a beatific smile on her face. She said something in Tagalog (the Philippine language) to the somewhat older and rather chubby woman who had taken up residence on my lap. She got up and left immediately. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed. She had managed to warm me up a bit.
Then Mama-San excused herself, and I lost track of her. Bob and I gossiped for a minute and sipped at our beers. Then someone sat down next to me and said “Hi Joe,” in a soft voice.
I looked at her and must have gasped or something, because Bob chuckled at me, and I saw Mama-San take her seat beside him again. But none of that mattered at all to me. I was staring at the one of the most beautiful woman, of any race, that I had ever seen.
She looked at me and said, “Let’s go somewhere, Joe.” I managed to gasp out, “My name is Jeff” and continued to stare, totally immobilized.
She took my hand and said, “Okay, Jeff. I’m Mary, and I’m glad to meet you. Now let’s go.”
My willpower became nonexistent and all of those Navy medical films were suddenly the furthest thing from my mind. I heard Bob yell out “Don’t forget to get back on time!” as I went out the door with this vision pulling gently at my hand.
The details of that encounter will always remain confidential to Mary and me, but I’ll readily admit that it was one hell of an evening. I made it back to the base with about two minutes to spare, thanks to Mary, who had put us both in a Jeepney and had escorted me to the base to make sure I got there on time.
When I walked through the gate, Bob and Fred were standing there waiting for me. Both of them were laughing. I immediately asked Bob, “What in hell happened back there?”
He was in stitches and couldn’t talk for a few moments. Then he gasped out “Mama-San asked me why you weren’t getting friendly with any of her girls, so I told her that you were a Cherry-Boy. So she decided to make sure that your first time was memorable!”
I was stunned. I said, “But I’m not!”
Bob replied, “Don’t make me a liar, Redhead. You’ve got a good thing going.”
I started laughing, and Fred chimed in with, “Hey Bob, when we get to Japan, will you make me a virgin there?”
We laughed until our sides hurt. Life was good.
CHAPTER TEN
The Orient
The next day, I stood watch as the messenger on the quarterdeck from midnight until four in the morning. This was known as the “Midwatch” and it was both long and boring. At first, we watched the sailors come back aboard after their
Cinderella Liberty. But by 1:00 a.m., there was absolutely nothing to do except shoot the breeze and watch the clock tick off the hours. I was on watch with Chief Evans and an older second class signalman named Cruz, a Philippine citizen that had joined the US Navy a few years earlier. As the long night wore on, we did a lot of talking about the Philippines, Subic Bay, and the life I had seen the night before.
The Chief had been in the Navy since the middle of World War II and he had spent most of his time on the West Coast. By now, he was a long-married family man, so he didn’t go off the base in the Orient as a rule, but he had watched Olongapo evolve from a small fishing village in 1945 to the bustling, hedonistic city I had visited the night before. He and Cruz had a tremendous insight into the world that I was visiting for the first time and I was an eager listener.
I soon learned that, for the average Filipino in 1959, the Americans were still the best of friends. The “Ugly American” had not yet raised his head in that part of the world. The glowing stories that the GIs—and later the sailors and airmen stationed there—had told about their home country had made the USA seem like Utopia to the Filipino natives. The Hollywood movies of that era only enhanced this image.
As a result, many young Filipinos endeavored to get to the United States by whatever means possible. Cruz was one of the lucky ones, very envied by his local friends and family. His parents had been business people and were fairly wealthy by local standards. He was a graduate of a Philippine university, so he had managed to pass all of the required tests and, as he very frankly stated, his family had been able to pay off the right people to enable him to enlist in the Navy. He was well on his way toward a twenty-year Navy career. This career would allow him to stay in the USA when he retired, or he could come back to his home country with a Navy retirement that would allow him to live lavishly.
We talked a lot that night about the downtown bar scene. As the Chief told me, and Cruz confirmed, there were basically three “classes” of women working in Olongapo. First there were the “Cherry Girls,” women whose ages ran from about fifteen to twenty-one, who had come to Olongapo with stars in their eyes, looking for an American who would sweep them off their feet and take them back to the utopia that was America.
Then there were the confirmed prostitutes, who came to make a fortune in a short time and go home. Some of the prostitutes were also former Cherry Girls who had succumbed to the lure of the fast dollar.
Finally, there were the women who ran the bars and all the little support businesses that depended on them. Called the “Mama-Sans,” they had usually been there for years and had learned the business end of the scene, often through a combination of college-level night courses and the school of hard knocks.
I did learn that both the Chief and Cruz thought Bob had been right to take us back off the beaten path in Olongapo. They had no good things to say about the bigger and noisier clubs that I had walked by the night before. They said that these were the bars where the confirmed prostitutes worked and VD was rampant. They also told me stories of pickpockets and muggings that occurred in the vicinity of these places. They told me that, if I was careful, the people that I met in the smaller, quieter, bars could be good people that I could have as good friends whenever I was in the area.
Cruz told me, “They’ll watch your back and take care of you if you are fair and honest with them.”
The next night, I went back to the U & I with Bob and Fred. We stayed there for a while, but Mama-San wasn’t there and Mary was being entertained by some big spenders, so we decided to check out a few other bars. We ended up drinking a bunch of San Miguel and buying a lot of “Bar-Drinks” for various girls, but none of us had any special escapades and we ended up back on the ship by 11:00 p.m.
Later that week, the three of us went to town again. It was my nineteenth birthday and we celebrated. Mama-San was there and gave us a lot of trouble because we hadn’t waited for her to show up the last time we were in town. But since it was my birthday and Bob was an old friend, she soon forgave us. But one of the young helpers in the bar, a girl that fit the description that the Chief had given me of a “Cherry Girl” gave me an unmerciful bad time; “You, Joe. First you a Cherry Boy and then next day you a Butterfly going from girl to girl to girl. Why you no make up your mind? Can’t be Cherry Boy and Butterfly both.” She stayed on my case throughout the evening. She was an obviously outgoing kid that was a bit of a pet in the bar and was looked out after by the other girls. They called her “Skinny Mini” and she fit the name. She was a tiny girl with a personality that made her a hit with all the customers. But she never sat with them or went out of the bar with them. She made it very plain “to all you dirty old men” that she was just a drink server and bar helper. But she had a major mouth on her and I caught the brunt of it that night.
We had a good time there and left in time to get in the gate before midnight. By now, Mama-San had kind of “adopted” Fred and I, so we knew we would be back. With her in our corner, there was no pressure to buy the Bar Girls drinks and that fit our pocketbooks just fine. We could go to town, have a few beers, joke with everyone and come back with only five or six dollars spent for the entire evening. So we returned whenever we could.
It soon became apparent to all of us that “Skinny Mini” had taken a liking to me. Whenever we came into the U & I, she would go out of her way to give me a hard time. She would occasionally set with us, but usually she was busy with her serving chores, as befitted a Cherry Girl in that society. She was very quick-witted and could easily match us in quips and comments. We became friends.
After being there for over a week, we were underway again. This time we were actually going somewhere that needed us, so we were hyped for the mission. We were headed for the Formosa Straights to do patrol duty between Formosa (later called Taiwan) and mainland China. Our job was to patrol back and forth between the two land masses so that China understood that the United States was firmly on the side of Formosa in their battle over who did or did not own the little island country.
We relieved another Destroyer in the Straights and began patrolling. We would slowly go from one end of the narrow waterway to the other and then we would turn around and go back over our wake to the other end. This went on for days, then weeks. We were manning the ship on “Condition Three” which was on an alert status just below General Quarters. For some unknown reason, my Condition Three Station was in the Sonar Control Room. So I put in my time learning how to operate the ship’s sonar system. It was interesting, but after the “new” wore off, I disliked it intensely. It was a cramped little room and the lights were always off so that we could see the sonar screen better. Noise was held to a minimum because we were wearing headphones and listening to the Sonar’s never-ending pinging. It was no fun. Whenever I could, I would escape to the Bridge, which was just forward of the sonar room, and get fresh air.
After a few weeks on the Formosa Patrol, we were relieved by another Destroyer and we headed south to Hong Kong for a week of Rest & Relaxation (R&R) in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was the most exotic place I’d ever seen. As soon as we neared the port, we started seeing junks and sampans. The harbor was filled with them to the point that navigation was almost impossible. The Captain, guided by a harbor pilot, just slowed as far as he could, pointed the ship at our anchorage, and plowed forward.
Luckily all the little boats were used to this and they scattered before our bow could hit them. The whole scene was overwhelming. The water was alive with big ships and little boats. The mountains that rose directly from the shoreline had thousands of buildings of all sizes and shapes clinging to their sides. Even the smell of the port was somehow different, with the odors of exotic spices and oriental civilization mingling creatively into a blend that washed over us as we approached, somehow enhancing the experience.
We anchored about a half-mile from the city and soon took aboard several delegations of local businessmen and women. The one that stands out most in my mind wa
s the famous “Mary Soo Side Cleaners,” who agreed to clean and paint our ship’s entire hull and superstructure. Mary Soo agreed to scrape the old paint, sand, and repaint it. She furnished the painters and the little boats that the painters worked from. Our deck force provided the paint, brushes and rollers they needed. She took her payment, literally, in garbage. She had a group of coolie ladies who took our treys after we ate, separated the leftover food and took it ashore. (I later learned that they then sold it to the local people at the little sidewalk stores that were everywhere on the mountainside above the city. When I last heard of Mary Soo, she was one of the richest people in Hong Kong with a net worth in the millions of dollars.)
Other entrepreneurs also came aboard when we arrived. Some were from local tailors and others were selling jade jewelry and similar items. They were not allowed to sell aboard ship, but they were allowed to stand on the ship’s fantail and pass out their business cards. I made a special effort to get all the business cards that I could. I didn’t have much money, but I figured that it would be interesting to go see the shops even if I didn’t buy much.
In the meantime, the ship was surrounded by small boats selling anything from jewelry and clothing to food items. The ship posted extra watches to make sure no one came aboard from these boats and the ship’s crew was told not to trade with the “Bum Boats,” but of course they did at every opportunity.
We were also visited by a British Naval Officer and two Hong Kong Policemen who came aboard to let us know where we should not go when ashore. Before we were allowed to leave the ship, we were assembled on the fantail where the visiting policemen gave us a fairly detailed talk on the dangers of Hong Kong and what areas were “Off Limits.” We were told that we were not allowed to visit either the rooftops or the nearby city of Kowloon.
The rooftops were off limits because some sailors from other ships had been hurt there. Apparently refugees from Communist China had built small cities on the roofs of the tall buildings that lined the waterfront. According to the police, a person could buy anything up there, but there were thugs that would lure you to the rooftops and rob you. Kowloon was off limits because it was actually located in Communist China and the authorities could not protect us there.