Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan

There was a lot of stuff to do on the base in Yokosuka. The O’Brien was moored alongside one of the many piers in a little harbor that we shared with the Japanese Navy. Every morning before colors, if I was out on the smoke deck, I could look across the harbor and see the Japanese naval personnel out routinely exercising before work. If you were outside when colors was called, they would play both the American and Japanese anthems, so you would have to stand at attention and salute for over fifteen minutes.

We were moored to a different pier every time we pulled back into port from a deployment; just to change things up a bit. Sometimes it sucked if we were moored at the aircraft carrier dry dock, because it was on the complete opposite side of the main gate. If you had a late night of drinking and the cabs weren’t running on base, you would have to walk miles just to get back to the ship. I have walked it many times, by the time I got back to the ship, I was completely sober.

At the main piers we usually moored at, across from a small self-serve laundry mat, there was a sub sandwich and pizza place. I didn’t have to go far to get a pitcher of Miller for $5. Walking further down past the sandwich and pizza place you come across the Air Craft Carrier, the USS Kittyhawk. Past it there was an ATM machine and then across the street from that was the recreation center. It had weight rooms to use the machines and free-weights, there were two basketball courts, a racket ball court and we could rent all the sports gear we wanted to use. They had a rock climbing machine that was always broken. I had my own personal stand up locker that I rented to store stuff I gathered from all my port visits. They had real showers to use without worrying about water conservation.

Upstairs they had a couple of fast food joints to grab something quick. Downstairs they had a computer room for surfing the web and sending out emails, but it was too expensive to use their computers at the time. Over the years I was in Yokosuka I had set up like ten hot mail accounts because I rarely wanted to pay to use the computers and I was always forgetting my entire log in info by the time we roll back into port.

In the back of the REC Center they had a bunch of washers and dryers to do laundry at. We would always bring beer to drink and it would always seem to make our laundry time go by a little faster. They had pay phones all throughout the REC Center, the phone cards were $20 for half an hour. As you walk out the front of the rec center there was a barber shop that Philippine navy wives would cut your hair and would all gab with each other.

On the way to the front gate of the base, I would pass by one of the movie theaters that only cost a dollar to watch a newly released movie. I remember watching the Matrix every night for a whole week while it was playing. I was sitting in the back row and pulled a beer out of my backpack…let me tell you, nothing quite sounds like a beer can opening as soon as the scene goes quiet.

After a movie I would make my way to the “A-Club” for enlisted personnel on base right at the front gate. You had to be 20 to drink at the “A Club”, and it had a couple of different bars. Upstairs they had a dance hall, and a Hip Hop Club, and a small room with some slot machines, and a sports bar. My shipmates and I hung out on the lower floor where they had pool tables and they had large vats on one end where the base brewed its own beer, called Shark’s Brew. I have been kicked out of the “A-Club” a few times for underage drinking and once for giving an alcohol soaked cherry to a girl off the ship, so we would just walk out the front gate to go get a drink on the haunch.

When I finished a night of drinking I had to walk, what seemed like a couple of miles just to get back to the ship if the taxis were not running. I would take a short cut to get back to the ship by walking over the dry dock gates and cut through a maze of all the ship yard repair facilities.

All of the Ship Repair Facility workers were Japanese, and hundreds of them would come on base every morning for work. We would see them playing baseball down in an empty dry dock during their lunch break. They were so nice to work with, hardly any of them spoke English, but they were hard workers. We would give them a few old Playboy and Penthouse magazines to get our work orders moved to the top of their work list.

On the weekend when I got up and didn’t have duty I would head to the Navy Exchange (NEX) all the way over on the other side of the base. I would get off the ship, go down the pier, pass the pizza place, walk past the large Air Craft Carrier, cut through the rec center, stroll past the officers barracks, stop at the bank and pull some money out of the ATM, walk past McDonalds, cut through the temporary personnel units, pass by the base galley, and arrive at the NEX. I would always stop at the Dunkin Donuts there for some breakfast.

The NEX is filled with anything you can think of to buy and resupply. I usually didn’t buy much since I had no place to store anything on the ship. I always bought CDs and snacks. I would go to the electronics department and look at the video camcorders, I always told myself I was going to buy one to document all the crazy shit I’ve seen, but any money I saved up would always get spent somehow.

Even farther on the other side of the base was a hotel, you would have to wait all day just to get put on a list for a room. They fill up so quick I hardly stayed there. The few times I did stay there it was one big party, bouncing from room to room. I remember the girls off of our ship would come knocking on my door at the late hours of the night; wanting to hook up.

There was another bar and a restaurant over there by the sea wall. Every weekend night they would have a band up on stage playing some live music. Nobody famous, but unknown bands would stop by and play on their world or Japanese tour.

Back the other way through the base housing was the soccer fields, driving range, the pavilions, another rec center, another movie theater, and more fast food restraints. They had a bowling alley on base that our ship would reserve every now and then, to build team working skills. It was always one big ship party though, and everyone would get so drunk and try to bowl. Every Friday and Saturday night they would have cosmic bowling with black lights and florescent colors everywhere.

I have walked almost every square inch of that base. There were the towers for military families, schools for the kids, a brig if anyone got out of line, the firefighting training range, officer barracks, and a lot more other places. Let’s just say the base has everything to sustain its self for the long haul. They did have a taxi service on the base that military personnel could get a night job driving around. Our ship had a little green van that looked like the mystery machine and we could get picked up if we called them. There was a bus transit system that went throughout the entire base. When I first arrived on base, I would jump on the bus for free and tour around the base and then get back off where I got on.

The base was fairly flat so a couple of us bought skateboards and we would cruse around, until the MPs started pulling us over and tell us we needed helmets. We could still take the skateboards off base and just down the road was a skate park. We would get some beer and watch some Japanese kids pulling sick tricks on the half pipe. I never attempted to try anything on the course; I didn’t want to embarrass myself or worse. Any way beer and skateboarding doesn’t mix well, I biffed hard a couple times. One time off base my skateboard got away from me and rolled out into traffic and got ran over by a car, and I had to carry the broken pieces back to the ship.