Base behavior: Memories of a military brat

The images were all as if they were frozen in time -- flat open field of grass, low housing buildings and the stodgy office and school buildings of United States military bases. Only this one is a former base, Lowry Air Force Base east of Denver. One building still featured a proud memento of its earlier incarnation: A shiny air force bomber left as a monument reminds passersby that this is a decommissioned military base currently being redeveloped as a model suburban community.

The symbolism -- a military facility is adapted for peacetime domesticity -- perfectly parallels how suburbs were first developed to accommodate the explosion of families as wartime GIs returned home in the late 1940s. The drive also took me back to my childhood, when I was raised on or near U.S. military bases and attended American schools on those bases.

The issue doesn't seem to be in the Japanese headlines these days, but because of Veterans Day coming up, I have thought about the U.S. military's presence in Japan. I've thought about it because if it weren't for our two countries' continuing -- and from to time, contentious -- military relationship, I wouldn't be here. My father was in the U.S. Army and stationed in Hokkaido during the Korean War, first at a small city called Kushiro, and then in Nemuro, a smaller city that serves as the eastern-most point in Japan (and therefore a popular destination for New Year's Day, because the sun first rises on Nemuro). That's where he met my mother, a schoolgirl who'd been named "Miss Nemuro" when she was 17.

I can only imagine what my dad was like when he was a teenager, or in his early 20s. He was a lean, handsome young man who was quick with a smile and quick to fool around while working. (The Japanese have a great onomatopoetic word, "charra-charra," which describes the nervous energy of goofing around... but I digress.)

But he won my mom over, and went through the mountains of paperwork and various bureaucratic hurdles the U.S. put up to make it difficult for GIs to marry foreign nationals like my mom. After they were married, and the Americanization of my mom began, our family took root on military bases. My earliest memories are of vast, fenced-in expanses of open fields and roads made for marching, bordered by row upon row of barracks-like housing units and administrative buildings trimmed with cannons, tanks, missiles or planes strategically placed as pieces of military sculpture, much like the ghostly remains of Denver's Lowry Air Force Base.

My youngest recollections as an infant include lots of snappy khaki pleats and olive accents, shiny black shoes and always the American flag -- waving, being raised or lowered, the sound of its flapping and the clinking of its rope against the flagpole a daily part of my noontime lullaby. We lived and attended schools in places with names such as "Grant Heights" or "Green Park," and we socialized in places with names such as Tachikawa Air Base or Atsugi, the former Imperial air field where MacArthur's Occupation forces first landed weeks after the surrender.

We also lived for a brief time in southern Japan, in Iwakuni outside of Hiroshima. We lived off-base from the U.S. Marine facility at Iwakuni, but as usual, my American friends and I were bussed into school on-base, where I attended Matthew C. Perry Elementary School. I have fond recollections of having hamburgers at the greasy spoon hut set up outside our school, next to the baseball field, then after school riding bikes around town with Japanese and American friends, stopping for Japanese snacks like frozen pineapple rings while we played in our blissfully mixed-race world. It never occurred to me, for instance, when I visited the Hiroshima Peace Park as a boy, that my father's friends and co-workers are part of the military might that dropped the bomb on such a beautiful city. As a child, those deeper questions were beyond my ken.

My father was never hard-core military like the father in the 1979 film "The Great Santini," but military culture was definitely part of my life until I was 8 years old and about to enter 3rd grade. That's when we moved to the States, so my dad could work in a civilian capacity for the Army Corps of Engineers outside Washington, D.C. Since then, I'm only reminded of my familiarity with the Army life when go on-base somewhere, or find myself driving through a former base like Lowry.

In recent years, American military presence around the world has been questioned and much of our presence has been cut back. For decades, a movement in Japan has protested the concentration of U.S. military installations still in that country, with an emphasis on the bases on Okinawa. Every few years, a headline bursts forth like the ones in the early '90s where GIs were accused of raping a young Japanese girl -- headlines that haven't changed much since the immediate post-war days.

What those headlines don't mention is how much friendship there has been over the decades between and the U.S. and Japan, and how many GIs have been stationed in Japan and left there enriched by the experience in many ways both personal and political. And how many GIs have fallen not in war, but in love while in Japan.

My best memory of all from my childhood on-base is a vivid image of being with my dad at the noncommissioned officer's club at Tachikawa, a dark smoky place with lots of red, and helping him choose Glenn Miller songs for the jukebox. It's easy to forget that in addition to everything else my father was, he was also a veteran -- and that his military service has left its impression me.

Thanks, and happy Veterans Day, dad!

You can "virtually" visit Iwakuni, where I lived briefly, through a wonderful Web site, The Spencers in Iwakuni, created by Donella Spencer, the wife of a U.S. Marine stationed at the USMC base there. She loved the city and being in Japan, even though her family's now   transferred back to the states. You'll find a lot of information about living in, traveling in and visiting Japan and Iwakuni at her site, and lost of links to other sites.