Memories of an 058
by Ralph R. Reinhold
ralph.r.reinhold@boeing.com
Torii Station:
I developed some problems with my family and finances to continue with college. Somehow, I
let my mother talk me into re-enlisting to get me out of it. I regretted it from day one. I spent the
next three years with a short timers attitude. The local recruiter said I couldn't change my
MOS. So, I signed up for number of different stations. I got one of them...Torii Station.
When I first arrived at Torii, I didn't have a clearance. I worked in the mail room with Ron
Vella. He called me a shirmula which he claimed was Italian for bum. One day while still
awaiting a clearance, I was sitting the NCO Club griping about the needless secrecy. Anyone
with half a brain could figure out the mission from the location and the direction of the rhombic
antennas. One of the guys challenged me. I said that I bet there was mostly Whiskey in the
operations building. He laughed saying that I was stupid. The other three guys at the table told
him that I knew exactly what I was talking about and they would explain it as soon as they got
to work the next day.
Tichenor, I can't remember his first name, had a Tuhatsu motorcycle which had about 75 ccs.
He drove it like it was a 425 cc. One trip between Koza and New Koza, he slipped on the dirt
while leaving the pavement and broke his hip. This left Camp Kue Hospital with a situation the
dreaded. Surgery of some one from Torii Station because 1) they couldn't put the poor sucker
out and 2) the ASA would send one of his fellow workers down to listen and see if he revealed
any classified information. There is one thing that the surgeons hated and that was a guy with
the 2,000,000 questions an hour of a 2 year old. The security guard assigned to him reported
that inspite of being heavily sedated, Tichenor pinched one of the Nurse's Ass. Never
underestimate the power of a 20 year old's libido.
When I was on casual detachment waiting for my clearance to be reinstated, I was asked to
move some "empty" teletype boxes around. One of the top ones wasn't empty. When we tried to move the stack, the weight made it feel like it was stuck on something. Using the primary
ASA theme for mechanics, if it is stuck get a bigger hammer. I pushed as hard as I could (130
lbs didn't mean much). The stack moved about two or three inches and started to wiggle. Then
the top box dropped and landed on my toes. Lucky for me that I was wearing combat boots.
Also, it happened to strike the very toes which I had chopped an extra joint into when I was
about four and there was strong scar tissue. The doctor at Camp Kue told me that had the two
events not combined, I would have had a crushed toe.
I remember a transmitter going down while listening on Okinawa and sitting there. The trick
chief asking why I wasn't copying. I told him, "He went, diddly dah dee dah!" He asked,
"Reinhold. You got them singing to you now?"
At the Torii Station NCO Club, I walked up to an unoccupied slot and dropped a quarter in
and hit the Jackpot. Later someone told me that the Sergeant at Arms had been feeding the
machine all day and probably would have liked to kill me.
At the time of my stay, there was sort of an agreement that we didn't salute. One time four new
shavetails were coming up the hill from the Operations Building toward the Headquarters or
Main Gate. Someone, was with me and said, "Let's salute 'em '
n' see what the do." Well, of course their reaction was quite shocked and one managed to slug
one of the others. We had a good laugh over it for months.
It seemed every VIP that passed through Okinawa needed to go through the Operations
Building. When they were coming, we had to cover up all of the operational aids on the
receiver consoles. We affectionately called them "Suzy Tours" after a commercial agency on the island of that name.
The Chief of ASA Pacific (CASAPAC) had his own business jet. We went to see it at
Kadena. It was easy to spot, instead of the standard markings, it was white with an "Old Crow
and White Lightning" (Later known as the Lightening Fast Chicken Plucker) patch on the tail. In
those days, we didn't have commanding generals, we had chiefs.
With the threat of Vietnam hanging over our heads, the Base Commander decided we should
have practice war games out in the antenna field (which was also occupied by sugar cane).
After the first trick had theirs and 34 ended up in the hospital with injuries due to the wadding in
the blanks, CASAPAC instructed him this was not a good idea and it would be remembered at
the time his bird was considered for the third time.
While Major Rigo was OK, the favorite officer with the troops was Lt. Thomas. Some of the
guys held an impromptu promotion party at the NCO Club for him when he became Captain. I
don't know if he ever knew it. Having a party at Torii usually didn't require much of an excuse.
Before it was the Officer's Club, one of the Quonset huts was an Annex to the NCO Club
which was open from about 5 at night until 6 in the morning. It was not unusual for some of us
to get off the Eve' Shift and order a table full of San Miguels. One night, after quite a few table
fulls some of us became a little bit rowdy and the Sergeant-at-Arms decided we were too loud
for him and required too much watching so he through us out. We sat out on the steps singing
songs...two I remember were "We Shall Overcome." because of the imagined injustice
and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" because of the song having been sung as background for the execution of the PFC deserter in WWII as depicted in "The Longest Day." We probably irritated the shit out of the guys in the lower two barracks, but I don't recall anybody complaining.
One night, Walt Sims and I decided to hit all the bars in Nomanue (Naha). As we were
wondering from the bus stop, we passed a shop with a very pretty mannequin. Walt said that
he was in love. Each bar we hit, we bought a round of drinks and drank ours. Then we
collected a match box and left. At the end of the night, we had 123 match books. I still have
them pasted to a board someplace.
One typhoon hit the island about time to break for lunch, we put on our ponchos and steel pots
and headed from the operations building to the mess hall. The wind blew my steel pot off. I
have a lot of respect for hurricanes, but I can't understand all of the damage in our hurricane
areas each year.
In 1964 & 1965, the straight day "Trick" of 51st Special Opns Company was mostly one high school graduating classf from Maui who all enlisted on the buddy plan. Most of the guys were
sansei with one haole. One guy, I think his name was Allen Ishikani, would be checked by the
MPs and claim to be Okinawan and couldn't speak English. If he was checked by the
Ryukyuan Police, he claimed to be American and couldn't speak Japanese. I don't want to
insinuate he was the cause, but they started joint patrols after that.
After someone had done something particularly idiotic, a skill many of us possessed, Major
Rigo, the CO of the 51st SOC, made the statement, "One of these days, I'm going to get a sign
made and post it at the gate to the operations building. It will say, 'Through these portals pass
the most brilliant criminal minds in the world.'" I think we were precursors of "Hackers."
One linguist re-enlisted for 6 years. With Pro-pay 3, he got 18 months of E-5 wages in a
chunk. He then took re-enlistment leave and disappeared. After he was 45 days overdue,
they posted a reward and he had his sweetie turn him in. They were going to nail him with
desertion. However, at the time, Okinawa was under Military Government and therefore, a
military base. All they could get him for was failure to repair, a misdemeanor. He offered to
take a General Discharge if they would let him keep his bonus. They accepted.
The base was also known as JSPC which stood for Joint Sobe Processing Center. Sobe was
the village just north of Torii Station. I was there for several months before it dawned on me
that SOBE was not an acronym. It got the name Processing Center from a then very powerful
computer...a pair of IBM 1040s strapped together. Probably about as powerful as a 386,
maybe not quite. I know of one benchmark on an IBM 360 in compiled FORTRAN which ran
faster on a VIC-20 in interpreted BASIC. Anyway, in those days people lived in awe of
computers. The story went that they had programmed it to look for certain common errors
made by newguys. If these occurred during the Mid shift, it would print out "I'm tired leave me
alone." Then, shut itself down.
Torii Station was long the site of protest. Why it and not any of the larger bases, I don't know.
The story goes that shortly before I arrived there was a group protesting the foreign dogs on
Japanese soil at the operations building. A few weeks later, the same bunch was protesting the
JSDF being on foreign soil at Kadena Air Base. Protests have continued through today. There
was one on national news and later in the June 1997 National Geographic at the Wollen-
Weber.
A couple tales from the Korean war. Probably apocryphal:
One guy was working a DF site by himself. A North Korean broke into the hut and held him at
gun point. This guy figured it was time to bend over and kiss his ass good-bye, but the North
Korean ordered the DFer back against the wall. Then the North Korean grabbed the mill and
left.
One instructor at Devens swore this happened to him. They had a receiving site in a cave with
transportable (gin-pole) antennas set up. Everything went silent. They went out and looked and
all of the antennas had been knocked down. They put them up again and went back to work.
About six hours later, the same thing happened. When they opened up the Stars and Stripes
the next morning, they found they had been behind enemy lines for six hours.
After all:
About ten years ago, my organization was doing research in millimeter wave seekers and low
resolution imaging. The needed a high bandwidth tape recorder to analyzed the data. After
much whining and gnashing of teeth, they finally got approval to buy the latest high bandwidth
recorder from Ampex. After its arrival the test engineer proudly lead me down to the signal
processing laboratory to show off his new acquisition. When I saw it, I broke out laughing. He
asked what was so funny. I said, well, this may be the latest, state-of-the-art recorder, but I
had seen one of these before. He challenged me and I said, "The first time I saw one of these
was in 1961 and it had a label at the top and bottom of each of the 4 racks which said
'SECRET...PROPERTY OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY." I couldn't help but
wonder what the true state of the art was.