With the US Army in Okinawa

This was a trip south from Japan mainland to the island of Okinawa. There's a big US military base there and we were there to film a day of training exercises. 





We were due to fly home after this, and I opted to take a few days' leave and stay, on my own, to explore the island. 


Unfortunately, it felt at the time, the army PR man learnt of my plan and invited me out with him for the evening. 

They had been so hospitable, warm and welcoming to us, it was impossible to refuse. What excuse could I have used? The solider in the top photo, btw, was NOT, unfortunately, he, or I might have been less reluctant. 

Anyway, he collected me from the hotel that evening, a Saturday night I seem to remember, and there were flowers. He did all the dating moves, like opening the car door for me whilst I cringed inside. I'll never forget the moment he pulled away from the kerb. My passenger seat wasn't fixed to the car in any way and it shot backwards. Yet more embarrassment. However the evening did turn out to be quite a night...


This is not my army PR date either. This is an Okinawan taxi driver. 

I have other photos of him somewhere. Why? He was a karaoke taxi driver. Karaoke was all the rage in Japan, this was around 1982/3, but unheard of in the UK. So I got a bit of a shock when he pulled out a microphone and started singing. I took a series of photos of him. Some with his microphone out. I've also, somewhere, got photos of my evening out with my PR man. For he took me to a karaoke bar inside the army base. And there I sang my heart out with a group of soldiers the evening through. I hope those photos turn up...








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lino Brocka's Philippines and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos's Malacañang Palace, Manila

Image
March, 1987 The Philippines, what a place. An edgy Asian Wild West, full of music and the loveliest people. I once returned there for a holiday on my own. I stayed in Manila (in a hotel that turned out to be a brothel) and then travelled down to the stunningly beautiful island of Boracay. Those slides will surface eventually.  I worked on several films there, including  Bayan Ko Pilipinas, (1987) a profile of the film director Lino Brocka .  Lino Brocka Lino was a cult hero, a folk hero, man of the people. We filmed a march to the Palace, days after several nuns had been fired at, with Lino (and us) at the very front. This wasn't long after the Mendiola Massacre. My first experience of a political march. What I remember most is the flow. Of being carried along by the emotion and the fear. A strange, silent purpose. We were marching towards the guns, to the stand-off on the bridge where those nuns had been shot just a day or so before, and the site of the Massacre just weeks earli
Read more

SAIPAN

Image
Saipan is the largest island of the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean. It lies just north of Guam, south of Japan, east of the Philippines and west of Hawaii. Our focus there was the importance Saipain played in ww2, with many of the battle's tanks and armory still scattered about the island and beneath the sea. The Battle of Saipan, from 15 June to 9 July 1944, was one of the major campaigns of World War II. The United States Marine Corps and United States Army landed on the beaches of the south-western side of the island and, after more than three weeks in heavy fighting, captured the island from the Japanese. The battle cost the Americans 3,426 killed and 10,364 wounded. Of the estimated 30,000 Japanese defenders, only 921 were taken prisoner. The weapons used, and the tactics of close quarter fighting, also resulted in high civilian casualties. Some 20,000 Japanese civilians perished during the battle, including over 1,00
Read more

Zaire (The Congo) - Under African Skies

Image
Continuing my random selection of a box of slides from storage, next up is Zaire (now known as DRC, The Democratic Republic of The Congo), around 1988.    Under African Skies was a BBC2 series about the music of Africa.  The programme actually exists on YouTube, a very blurred scratchy version of it, dubbed from a Danish TV showing,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaUo7TtZxo . There was also a BBC album: That's one of my photos, top L. 'Kinshasa is Africa's undisputed musical heart,' says the The Culture Trip .  Rumba , which developed into soukous, is impossible not to dance to. I remember a man in front of a stage whose movements were so fluid it looked like he was made of elastic.  Artists  in our film included  Papa Wemba , Ray Lema, Franco, and Zaiko Langa Langa. We shot a memorable sequence with the stylish  Sapeurs of Kinshasa , later picked up by  The Face  magazine.  Watching the film again (don't, it's just too blurry) reminded me that documentaries
Read more