I always had a personal shorthand about traveling the world- “50 states, 40 countries!” was the usual later mantra, but there are a bunch more. I thought I would recount, just to see if there were more or less in that mystical round number. The Sates were only a bit of a challenge, since Mom and Dad packed us in the Rambler Ambassador station wagon for that memorable early 1960s trip to the West Coast from Michigan. I will never forget the way Mom would wave the paper map from the front street and intone one of our destination cities: “El Segundo!”
The cousins lived in Miami, and we drove there too. That knocked out a bunch of them, leaving only some in the great north. I think a drive back from our outpost in Park City Utah knocked out both Dakotas with a breakfast in Couer D’elene putting Idaho in the charts. That seemed reasonable, at least for driving through. I have to put an asterisk next to foreign travel, since it is difficult to put perfectly normal ventures across the river to Windsor, Ontario, as “next door” travel.
There are many who have traveled more than I have, but it started early. Mom had encouraged participation in a summer work program overseas after Sophomore year in college as a character-building experience. It was in Norway, which struck all of us as a demonstrable foreign experience. I do not recall a visa requirement, but all the other parts unnecessary for a jaunt to next-door Ontario were present. Passports, a medical visit, catch up inoculation against something, forget what, and then the trip out to Detroit Metro airport to utilize a ticket on an unusual airline. “Loftleidir Icelandic Airways” was the budget carrier, and the first stop out of the Motor City was for fuel at Keflavik, Iceland. I made a note of it with mild disdain, since the commercial airfield was shared by the US Navy, the ownership of some of the hangars prominent in the letters spelled out in the shingles.
I must have had some flexibility in scheduling, since memory includes a train trip from Heathrow to Scotland, a view of mighty Ben Nevis, youth hostels and a vague memory of a ferry to Denmark with a connection to a train that wound from prosperous Copenhagen through a segment of SE Sweden (I recall a Tullverket officer boarding the train for screening) in pre-European Union times and then into Norwegian territory. It could have been the other way around and now jumbled, but on return, felt myself quite the international type watching the rioting back on campus.
It gets a little complicated after that, since travel and work got all balled up into one continuously changing spectrum. From Pensacola’s Red Neck Riviera to Denver, Aurora, to be precise, and basic Air Intelligence training at the Naval Unit on Lowery AFB. It was different on the Front Range before all the Californians moved in. Class material covered the basics of our prospective first job in the Fleet, and as our Vietnam-era schedule ran early bright to noon to accommodate multi-class training no longer required by a war that was over led to some afternoons at the O Club. Sometimes more. I remember the nuclear weapons part of the training with interest in both the prospective employment and the cool temperature of the beverages at the bar afterwards.
An assortment of jobs were offered as we approached graduation. They included the usual assortment of squadrons entitled to intelligence support, mostly deploying units from the east and west coast. There was one that attracted my spirit of adventure: a Phantom II fighter squadron permanently deployed to the airwing stationed in Japan and dedicated to flying off the USS Midway, a conventionally-powered if somewhat insensitively named carrier home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan.
I am not sure how the travel worked at this distance in the rear view. It might have been from Travis AFB outside San Francisco, and probably was, since I recall landing at Yokota after a fuel stop, probably at Hickham near Honolulu. Did we stay overnight? Like I said, there is no memory of that.
So Japan would have been number six in terms of foreign lands. Midway’s routine operating pattern included trips to Korea to support military exercise Team Spirit, and brief liberty in Pusan. There were a couple stops down in the Philippines, a remarkable nation once part of the Color-Impared Man’s Burden and then proud and independent. That would be worth an account all it’s own, since it was unusual by definition and also the place that signified departure for the wider and wilder world to the west. Number seven.
There was a “presence” mission after several months in the squadron, VF-151, and we steamed forthrightly west to the Malacca Straits, past the gleaming city state of Singapore which we got to see four times without deigning to stop. We were bound for Perth, West Australia, and another epic port visit still renowned for its exuberance. While there, the Iranian militants decided to seize the U.S. Embassy on 04 November 1979. Number Eight.
As you can imagine, there was some excitement that went on for another forty or fifty years. Then, we assumed we would be directed to alter our schedule and steam north to demonstrate resolve or something like it. Instead, we were told to execute the original schedule and preceded to Mombasa, in marvelous Kenya.
To get there we passed the Maldives and other lumps in the sea without stopping.
On arriving in Africa, we let all the stops out, since we assumed War was in the cards once we got back to work. The joy of new sights, seeing the veldt and meeting Masai people were overlaid with the nervous energy that we would be going somewhere else soon. To abate the minor anxiety, we decided a visit to Nairobi was in order, courtesy of the famous Night Train service from the coast. We bid farewell to peace from the vista of the New Stanley Hotel and posted a note on the message tree in the courtyard. It may still be there with all the others. Nine.
The rest of the Japan tour was spent elsewhere, nominally a featureless spot in a vast pale-blue northern Arabian Sea. No countries got in the way. Having been the first major America unit on station, we had exhausted our utility before DESERT ONE and were back in Japan. I think the first trip to Taiwan fell in there someplace when we were permitted some leave, and I was impressed with the place, including a momentary discussion with a senior Museum official in Taipei who described the challenges of exhibiting the collection in a space whole inadequate to house the entire priceless collection of the old Peking museum that had been appropriated when the Nationalists realized they had to get out of town. Ten.
But sauntering through Taiwan is where things begin to get complex. Being committed to the Nixon-Kissinger “One China” policy, I could count Taiwan as “China,” even if that distinction might offend some residents. We also called at Hong Kong to provide a backdrop to Vice President Mondale’s official visit. As much fun as Ned Kelly’s Australian-themed bar in Kowloon might have been, it was only a “Crown Colony,” and thus had a asterisk next to it, with the strange train announcement that you either had proper documentation or GET OFF THE TRAIN NOW.
June of 1980 brought a change. The “hardship” aspect of staffing a combat organization far away was recognized by limiting tour length to only two years for the inconvenience, while state-side assignments normally were set at three years. To make up for the hardship, the Navy kindly offered me the opportunity to “catch up” with the cadre by assigning me to a one year assignment in the Republic of Korea. Lodging was in Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, and provided some intense contextual frolics, including a bus trip to the Bridge of No Return, and thin glimpse of North Korea at the other end. Which considering the normal work routine of infiltrators, alarming aerial and submarine activity was completely reasonable. Plus General Chon Tu Hawn’s military coup.
That was Asia. I had been informed of the career-enhancing nature of participation in the Navy’s attempt to monitor the world ocean for activities of interest. The nearest node of that effort one was located in Pearl Harbor, and in an act of benevolence, they granted me orders to the Fleet Ocean Surveillance Information Facility at Makalapa. In the thirty days leave between assignments, I was back in Michigan and with a side trip to Florida, and being anxious to catch up with the cadre who served in the states, got married to an adventurous lady.
The Boys were conceived and born in Hawaii. That enables them to call themselves “Kama’ainas,” or “Children of the Land” in a state that used to be an independent nation. So another asterisk, and there was five years in a modest little house with a lanai that looked directly down Battleship Row. A lucky chance had enabled a follow-on tour at Third Fleet, headquartered then on Ford Island. Taking the ferry to work each morning was a connection to the wreck of USS Arizona, which lies under her white arch just where the Japanese left her.
I think there was a martial trip to Japan, Hong Kong and Korea wedged in there, but nothing that merited a number or an asterisk. So, after nearly a decade out West we decided a trip to the center of the universe might be in order, and 1986 saw a return to Washington, a small house in Fairfax County and what was then called the “Naval Military Personnel Center,” or “NMPC” for short. I think they are back to the more stately term Bureau of Personnel (BUPERS) now. It was interesting work and I am thankful to be one of the few who were privileged to know the middle names of all active duty naval intelligence officers.
Things get a little foggy at that point. There was a lot going on in the world externally and internally with a growing family. 1989 was end-of-tour, and a sea duty assignment was necessary to demonstrate commitment to the enterprise. I thought a Med cruise would make a fair amount of sense, without becoming part of the Norfolk Navy mafia, and so we landed in Orange Park, Florida in suburban Jacksonville. Air Wing Six, of which I was a functionary, was due to deploy in USS Forrestal, en route the European Theater. With Bethesda as a period place of visitation, it was interesting preparation to see the tower where Secretary Forrestal hurled himself to his grave.
There were some interesting developments that followed. The Caribbean was filled with numbers and *s. Cuba, if Guantanamo was part of it, San Juan, Turks and Caicos, the Dominican Republic are the ones I recall, and of course includes Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth of the United States but not quite a state. Grandfather was an early telephone engineer, and his exploits in Panama were worth exploring in person even after President Carter gave away the part we seized for the Canal. So, four more numbers and several asterisks.
Depends on how you count, I suppose. And there were a bunch of numbers coming up as the Soviet Union collapsed. But more of that when we get back to it. Shoot, the difference between 1989 and 1990 was sort of like what we just went through, you know? And we have no idea how many number that is going to generate!
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