stories 1                                                                                                                                                                                                             Wives

                                                                                                                                       take heed.

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    A new guy, Doober,  at the Service Club bar at Camp Stafford asks about fun places to visit. Grubah, the bartender, tells him to take a tram to Chusyojima and stay on the tram platform, preferably late afternoon. "Look out over the  town and wait  until the MP Jeeps roar in", says Grubah.

The next day, Doober is on the platform as directed. The MPs roar in and raid many houses.

At the same time, guys in varying levels of undress, even nude, run across roofs and some lie prone, clinging to the ceramic roof tiles. Doober laughs out loud. The town is off limits to GIs but that made no difference. It was an adventuresome and risky way to "get a little".

                 Special Services Ski Lodge bar

                              in the mountains

                        (Harlan Yates in center)

Buzz

Outside the mountain ski lodge was a short hill with a rope tow. Combat boots and strap on skis were the norm for most visitors.

Buzz had been downing quite a few and was pretty unsteady. He insisted that he was going to ski. Skis on and two guys to help him to the ski tow, he finally reached the top of the hill. He just fell over and couldn't get up so the guys put Buzz, prone position, on his back, feet first, on the skis and strapped him on. One little shove and he went flying straight down the hill.

A schussing inebriate.

Then, just a few minutes later, Duke, a mountain of a man, started down and uncontrollably went off the side of the hill into a large bush growth. Several minutes passed and guys thought Duke was injured.

Soon the bushes parted and Duke broke out like King Kong. He was a hoot. Some of the guys mastered skiing enough that they could direct themselves to fall on Japanese girls at the hill bottom. Why the girls (teens and older) were at that spot was debatable. There was a lot of screaming and giggling.

It was time to chuck the skis and hit the bar, less the gigglers.

Deep Thrust Duke

Mealtime in the Mess Hall was usually "down the chow and get out" unless an event took place. Someone noticed a big rat  moving along on top of an overhead pipe.   Duke, very quietly gets up, fork in hand and stalks the creature. Suddenly, Duke thrusts his fork into the rodent, blood runs down his arm. All diners, except Duke, witnessing this spectacle, disappeared quickly out the door without finishing their meals. A few, hands over their mouths, barely made it out.  Waitresses screamed and the cook blurted out some expletives. Duke just stood there and grinned.

Gourd Duty

Dreg had just exited the guard shack, Carbine on his shoulder on his way to the Motor Pool for guard duty. Several hours of pacing went by. Then a shot and more shots. The O.D, headed for the Motor Pool hoping not to find bodies. There stood Dreg, no emotion, as the O.D. approached. "What the hell is going on?" muttered the O.D.  Dreg says. "I  just got bored and shot some birds off the telephone line."  "You're out of your gourd!", shouted the O.D.  The word got out in a day that Dreg just had to pay for the spent ammo and was warned never to try his bird plinking again.

Dinghus

5 guys from Camp Stafford, standing in a tram on the way to Kyoto, witnessed a deplorable scene at the end of the tram car. A big GI,  Dinghus, reached down and grabbed a breast of a middle aged, seated  Japanese woman, and loudly said, "Nice chi-chi!" The mamasahn muttered some, possibly, swear words in Japanese.  Camp Stafford guys yelled at "Dinghus", using many choice words of disgust, then moved away from the pervert, showing their shame of  the situation. Hopefully, there were no more  obnoxious Dinghus types in the area.

Photo Lab Burnout

Yakdorf was in charge, part time, of the Photo Lab in Camp Stafford three months after arriving from Tokyo in January, 1950 Yakdorf brought his Photo skills learned in High school where he provided many of the photos and lab work for his class book. Guys would bring photos for enlargement to Yakdorf. Then the pictures became porny and Yakdorf had to refuse to print them. He could show others how to print their own.

Early one night Yakdorf came out of the mess hall and saw smoke coming from the Lab. He ran to the barracks and grabbed a fire extinguisher. Then he broke a window to the lab and tried to direct the stream to the fire but it was too late. The company fire group arrived and extinguished the flames before the building burned up. The Lab was never rebuilt. Official blame for the fire was electrical.