1962 - Okinawa

The Quonset huts seen in some of the pictures were being phased out at the time - they being very popular temporary barracks and storage sheds throughout the Pacific during WWII. Some of today's 'youngsters' have apparently never seen them up close. The lower ranked enlisted personnel (us newbies) 'bunked' in huts that were configured in a large H shape - the two side quonsets of the H were dormitories filled with bunk beds separated by 7 foot high double wide upright lockers that also served as partitions between the cubicles. The middle quonset served as a shared and wide open shower, sink and toilet area -- there being no partitions between urinals or toilets in those days. (The secrets we kept in those days didn't involve our personal toilets, obviously. ) Jack Turi and I shared the first cubicle next to the door where some of the pictures were taken. Note the window shutters used when 100+ mile per hour typhoons (hurricanes in the USA) hit Okinawa during the Hurricane Season - small earthquakes were also very frequent occurances -- the entire Far Eastern chain of islands from Japan down through Indonesia are on and formed by one of the largest still active volcanic/tectonic series of plates in the Pacific Ocean.

One quonset hut at the far end of the compound served as the enlisted club until the Landlubber's Lounge was finished in February 1962. [ A shipmate from this tour of duty told me that Gunny Snake (pictured with the club manager, Toshi), one of the 'work-hard, party-hard' members of our unit, and several others died a few years later when the car they were in drove over the cliff at the quarry across from the new Torii Station to which we moved in 1962. Another sailer and passenger in the car woke up in the Great Lakes Hospital outside Chicago a few months after the accident. ]

Some of these pictures came from slides taken in 1962 with a 35mm camera Ben Ciriacks checked out after buying per a request from his mother back in the States. They were originally developed in Okinawa with a process that didn't turn out very well. They show the "Original" pre-Torii Futenma Station a mile up the road from the town of Futenma.

Almost all of the 1962 pictures having very little color were originally recorded as movies on an 8mm wind-up camera. It broke toward the end of 1962 - (the film stock developed from it was not that great, anyway.) In the early 1980s, those 8mm films were converted to both Beta and VHS format video tapes. In 2004, the VHS tape was converted to DVD, which allowed the capture of the various snapshots reflected here via a laptop computer.
[ Better pictures of Futenma Station in 1960/61 can be seen at CTR1 Dick Ulrich's (USN retired) site. ]

Website link/location/URL: http://Okinawa.Jamrent.org (http://JSPC-2.Jamrent.org) or http://www.jamrent.com/jspc/index.html