Something About Which Everyone Could Write

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Tell about your first visit to a foreign country, or to another area in your own country. My first visit to another country, was to Okinawa, Japan, in 1962. My husband was in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed at Kadena Air Force Base. He left a couple months before I could go. I had to pay my own way. My father gave me the money. I had a 19-month old daughter and I was 7 months pregnant when I boarded the plane. It was a VERY long trip, mostly in a Prop Plane, not a jet plane. I flew from Morgantown, West Virginia to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on a small shuttle plane. I took a jet plane from there to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport and then flew in a helicopter across the city to Midway Airport and boarded the Prop Plane to Oakland, California. From there I flew to Honolulu, Hawaii and then to Wake Island and then to Guam and finally landed in Naha, Okinawa about 72 hours later. I spent the next week in the hospital, with edema, a dangerously high fever and a kidney infection, brought on, I’m sure, by the many hours of sitting on the plane with my daughter on my lap. Even though I had paid for two seats, they forced me to one seat when we left California. I had no choice but to give up the seat or go back home. It was a “cheap” flight and they took advantage of my inexperience. I was 20 years old. After I got out of the hospital, I had to learn to live very frugally. We had no furniture, but managed to get a few things from some airmen who were going home with their family. I never had a stove to cook on. We purchased a one-burner hot plate and an electric skillet. We didn’t have a refrigerator either for the first six months. We had to keep food in a Styrofoam cooler with ice. My husband had to bring ice home every evening and food from the commissary. After the baby, my son, was born, we had to get a crib from family services and we were able to RENT a small refrigerator for $6 a month. Life wasn’t easy. I probably should not have gone, but I don’t think our marriage would have survived if I hadn’t gone. Looking back, I am glad that I had the experience but it was no vacation. There was a drought while we were there and we only had water in the small house we rented, from 5pm to 11pm. We had to boil everything we drank and bathed the children in. This went on for several months. I had no washer or dryer, so all the clothes had to be washed by hand, even the baby’s cloth diapers. Finally, we were able to hire a maid two days a week and she took over the laundry. Just about every month, my husband pawned his wedding band for $5 so we could make it to pay day. Then, he would buy it back. We came home with it. We also had to live with Palmetto bugs in the house and open sewer ditches outside the house. We had no vehicle so we could not go anywhere except on a bus. My husband had to do most of the grocery shopping because I had no way to go. We did make friends with an Army couple and they had a car, so the wife took me and the children shopping occasionally. We also had our friends from Colorado, finally arrive and they also had a car. We survived two typhoons, even though our house was near the sea wall. We shuttered the windows and rode out the storms. We lived to tell about it. We arrived back in the U. S. to California, two days before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We were staying with my cousin near Sacramento, trying to figure out how to get home to West Virginia. We only had $200. That’s another long story.