Wow. Fun times back then. When we were there in the early '90's, about the worst we had to deal with were the annual Union picket lines -- About once a year, for a couple of days, the union that most of our Okinawan civilian base employees belonged to were directed by their leadership to picket outside the Camp Foster Gate -- the main gate for the IIIMEF HQ (where my office was). My ComRel officer, Hiroshi, had to go out and spend a couple hours carrying a sign. He didn't want to but the union said ... The funny thing about the "Demonstration" picket line was if a car needed to enter or exit the gate, the "protestors" would clear the opening and hold traffick so the car could enter or leave safely. They were very polite and courteous. It was all just a big show, but the Japanese media treated it like it was some sort of riot like you guys were talking about. When Hiroshi returned, he'd bow and apologize profusely for being away for so long (two hours tops).
I was in a real riot when I deployed to Thailand for Cobra Gold '92. That was a coup against the Suchinda government. I had been out in town (Korat) with the SJA (Attorney) on official business when they riots broke out. We were caught in an angry mob that was turning cars over and burning them, smashing stuff and being violent. When they came to our van and saw two VERY wide eyed caucasian U.S. Marines in Uniform, they paused for a moment and then went on their way. THAT was a gut check. Thankfully, we weren't the 'droids they were looking for ... They probably *didn't* know that we were not armed ...
We all had to bug out on that one as they terminated the exercise and it was pretty much a free for all to get the heck out of there and back to Oki. The funny thing was, my crew and I had been out in the field and got back to Korat too late to catch the C-141 going to Kadena. BUT .... if we could get to Utapao in 4 hours, we could catch a Navy KC-130 ... So there we were, running across the tarmac at Utapao...the Squids had the engines running and were about to pull chocks but we caught them in time, jumped on the ramp as the Herc started to taxi. When we got to Kadena, the guys in the C-141 were still stting there next to the airplane ... someone had called them in on a drug smuggling thing, so they held them all while the dogs worked the plane over. They left Korat 4 hours before we left Utapao ... in a C-130 ... and they were still sitting there when Peggy came with the van to get me at Kadena. I waved to the other members of the IIIMEF PAO (including my Colonel ...
) staff baking in the sun while I drove off, headed for my quarters. Their response wasn't as friendly ...
The slow bird to Kadena wasn't such a bad deal afterall ...
