21 February 2007

Kitty Hawk



We were screwing around in the South China Sea when the word came, or maybe we were conducting voyage repairs at the sprawling naval complex at Subic Bay in the Philippines.

Don't get me started on the Philippines. It was a sad wonderland, and it always makes me think of pleasure and loss, almost simultaneously.

The word spread like wildfire. The Vice President was coming! He was going to visit us for important consultations, and demonstrate the relative importance of our mighty chunk of steel and noisy jets.

I think about that because it was my first brush with greatness, since there was the bare possibility that I might present part of the command briefing to Mr. Mondale as our ship strained at the hook in the perfumed harbor at Hong Kong.

It would have been 1979, or thereabouts, the angry dog-end of the Carter Administration's collision with the reality of the Middle East, and the death of innocence in foreign policy.

As it turned out, more senior officers were deemed suitable for the presentation to Mr. Mondale, and I missed seeing the Vice President that time. Instead, we contented ourselves with some quality time at the Club Bottom's Up and a wild trip across the harbor to Ned Jelly's Last Stand, an Aussie place on the Kowloon side.

I was thinking about Vice Presidents this morning it because some of us are still out there, and still playing the backdrop to senior Administration officials. This time it is Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Veep is taking a break from the end of the Scooter Libby trial to take a week-long wing through the Pacific to make nice with the Allies who are supporting us in Iraq. They have been nervously looking north and west to the resurgent China while we dally in Mesopotamia.

They think that Washington has been a little distracted of late, might even have taken its eye off the ball, so to speak. The Veep was in one of my old homeports to rally the troops aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, addressing the crew of the only permanently forward-deployed aircraft carrier. Later, there will be more rallying at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam as the Vice President heads for meetings with leaders in Australia.

Guam is critical to the nation, since we own the property by right off conquest, and we are getting the boot, gracefully from Okinawa.

Between the Japanese and American dollars, they are going to spend $15 Billion to relocate the Marines and the Air Force from the island that has chafed with their presence since 1945.

After the rally, Mr. Cheney will travel to the old COMNAVFOR Tunnel, originally dug by the Imperial Navy as protection against American bombs for some sensitive briefings on the state of the bilateral relationship. Then, it is off to Tokyo for talks with Prime Minister Abe and a welcoming dinner at the premier's official residence.

If he is smart, the Veep will be taking a helicopter. Trust me, you do not want to try to drive it. I still have the patch commemorating a hundred trips up Route 16 from Yokosuka to Yokohama.

We were locals, or at least the wives and children were. On 5 October 1973, Midway, with its embarked air wing and escort ships, arrived at the peir at Yoko, marking the first forward-deployment of a complete carrier task group. An American carrier has been there ever since. First Midway , then Independence , and currently Kitty hawk .

We called the experiment the Overseas Family Residency Program, OFRP for short, and when I arrived to join it in 1978, the scars were still raw and new.

A certain modus vivendi had been established between the families who were living there, and the Japanese. We sailors were gone most of the time, and it was up to those who lived in the ancient Army housing in Yokohama or out on the economy in Hyama near the Emperor's summer palace to sort things out in a strange land.

Later that year, in November, we happened to be in the Indian Ocean on a routine presence mission. On the 4th of that month, Militant followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 63 hostages. One of them was a firebrand named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is now the President of the Islamic Republic.

We turned right immediately, but President Carter and his Veep decided to put us into Mombasa to see if things could be resolved peacefully. It was not a happy visit, and we drank as much beer as possible, considering that we would be at war, soon.

On the 18th we had got over our collective hang-overs, and the nation's spine had stiffened. We were orbiting menacingly south of Bandar Abbas. On the 21st, we were happy to look toward the horizon and see familiar gray shapes. It was Kitty Hawk and her escorts.

It is a good thing we got along well. We were going to be there a long time.

We clearly did not drink enough beer in Africa. As it turned out, the war that started that year is still going on, and Kitty Hawk is still forward deployed.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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