I was looking for another picture just now, and stumbled across this one that I didn't even know I had. OMG, did it bring back memories...it was many a morning I stood waiting for the bus at the stops over to the left, colors would sound, we had to stand and face the flag, and up it would go, propelled by Marines pulling on the lanyard.
My dad worked in the long, narrow building with the square columns at about the 1:00 position. (He was the base Security Officer and the Communications Officer, and also ran the Officers Clubs) My family of eight lived just about 50 yards behind the main building with the emblem on the front of it.
Our quarters were a portion of what I was told used to be a parachute hanger, one of six units. The quarters were huge, like nothing we had ever lived in before. Great place. We lived on the end unit, and the Seabees Headquarters were just in front of our quarters.
Japan was a culture shock for a nine year old kid. The open sewers. The pervasive smell of fish and diesel exhaust. Trucks with three wheels. Elementary school age kids in big groups with uniforms backpacks, and...facemasks. The bar district outside the base with all the Neon lights, sailors on liberty walking to and fro. Mount Fuji looming in the background.
(Funny...the air was so thick and smoggy that I could SEE Mount Fuji, but it had a dim, faint look through the smog that made me think I wasn't really seeing it, that it was an atmospheric mirage, a light bounce. Only after I got older did I realize that it was the air pollution that made it look so unearthly and fake.)
I went off base all the time and purchased fireworks and models. The Japanese were big on having a large variety of plastic ship and plane models, more than I had ever seen in the states. I wasn't old enough to go off base on my own (they didn't issue you a dependent's ID card until an age older than I was, so I had to sneak off. Over near the museum that was the Japanese Dreadnaught Mikasa, there was a hole in fence I was able to go under. That was a lot better than going over, which I had done, but even as stupid and dimwitted as only a nine year old kid can occasionally be, I recognized just how hazardous that was. I invariably tore clothes and incurred bloody scratches, but it was only a matter of time until something really bad happened.
I saw that they would always check the ID when going off base, but coming back on, the Marine guards dressed in those blue trousers, khaki short sleeved shirts, and white peaked hats would just let the young dependents walk on, so that is what I did.
Anyway, I had gone off base and purchased a bunch of smoke bombs, which were spherical, painted in the color of smoke they would emit, and had a thick fuse protruding from them like a little Felix the Cat bomb.
As I came in, for some reason they stopped me and brought me into the little white guard shack they had there. (in the picture above, it is the small white shack just to the right at the main gate) They sat me in a chair, asked to see my ID, and when I couldn't produce one, said "Well, how do we know you aren't a spy? Who won the World Series this year?" When I said it was the St. Louis Cardinals (which had my favorite baseball player on the team, Lou Brock) they let me go.
I laugh now, they were just a bunch of bored Marines who knew darn well who I was because my dad was in charge of base security, they were just busting my chops because they could. Or because my dad told them to. Or maybe they were just bored and wanted to amuse themselves...:)
So, I get home, and decide to go out behind my house with my slingshot, and fire some smoke balls through the air into the playground on the other side of the road.
After I had shot a few, one of the ones I shot landed in the un-mowed, dried grass of the playground. I could see even from where I was, that this was not going to be good, and I was right. The little smoke bomb was spitting out streams of sparks and smoke, and a large grass fire quickly developed. Fire trucks arrived, and I could see I was screwed. I looked out the same window I had hidden under when I nearly got caught shoplifting, and thought for sure the Shore Patrol were going to walk right over to my house and arrest me, but...they didn't.