Okinawa a beautiful island

This was my unit in Okinawa

It was December 1966 shortly after I finished basic and AIT, I was only 17 and to young to be sent to Vietnam so when I got my orders they said I was going to Okinawa. As a young boy growing up my uncle who was in Okinawa in WWII use to tell stories about this island. So the first thing that came to mind when I read my orders was that I would now get to see this place that haunted my uncle.
I left from St Louis,MO and our first stop was Hawaii, then Guam before landing in Kadina, Okinawa. Once getting settled in to my new duty station as a clerk in the Missile command center I discovered that Okinawa was a Paradise waiting to be discovered. I had it made on this island I worked from 8am till 5pm with an hour off for lunch with the weekends off so I had plenty of free time to explore this place. The Island is 60 miles long and 12 miles wide with a nice tropical breeze year round making it feel like you are in a Paradise.

My unit was stationed near the town of Naha which was a quaint little town with many shops and stores to check out. Nearly everyone here spoke English so communication was no problem. Naha was filled with strip bars , brothels and massage parlors which I did ,manage to visit a few times. Here is a picture looking downtown Naha.


On the weekends when the tide was low I loved to walk way out in the ocean just to see what I could find. I had discovered lots of treasures buried in the sand left over from a generation before during there landing on this Island. But on this particular day I found a piece of metal sticking up out of the sand so I started digging it out to my surprise what I had found was an old bomb from WWII, I got a picture of it with me and left it where it was. Here is a picture of me showing off what I had discovered.


Some of the other enjoyable things I like to do was go downtown and listen to the girls play the Oriental music. Here is a picture of the girls I took.


This next picture is of Suicide Cliff, this cliff is where hundreds of Okinawan people jumped to there deaths Rather than being captured by the Americans.


This picture is of the entrance to the Okinawan College .