Jack Remembers -- Letters

I wrote an article about a speed trap in my hometown, and asked if your town had a speed trap like the 12th Street trap in Oak Grove. I was inundated by responses from all over the state. One woman from Centralia wrote about a speed trap a half a mile south of Hallsville. A Lafayette county elected official told me about his daughter who commutes to Warrensburg college getting a ticket on two consecutive Monday mornings on Highway 13 by the Higginsville police. It seems as if the five mile stretch between the town of Higginsville and I-70 is in the city limits of Higginsville. However, everyone who responded said the same thing that was frightening to me, “Don’t use my name”. I guess they were afraid their local police would retaliate.
I also wrote an article about the four Marine Infantrymen who urinated on two dead Taliban soldiers that outraged both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. Two veterans from two different wars responded.
John Madsen from Oak Grove, who I have known since high school days, and his wife Karen, are good Christians, and are active in the United Methodist Church. John, who was in the 185th Combat Engineers Battalion in Korea, said when he heard about the Marines on television, he thought it was just awful. But after reading my article, he thought maybe there wasn’t a lot of difference between that and the fact they had drilled a hole in the skull of a Korean to use as a candle holder to light their tent.
Jerry England, a Viet Nam Veteran from Mountain Grove who reads my articles on the internet, showed me an ear he had cut off a dead Viet Cong he had killed for a souvenir. He carried it in his pocket for a long time, but said he now has it laying on top of his dresser in his bedroom. Needless to say, Jerry is still single.

Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075, www.jackremembers.com, or jackremembers@aol.com

Jack Remembers: Nippon Swap

by Jack Hackley

Toward the end of the Korean War, the First Cavalry Division pulled out of Korea and moved to Japan. The 7^th and 8^th Regiments were stationed in the northern island of Hokkaido. The 5^th Cavalry regiment was stationed at Sendai, the city hit hardest by the earthquake and tsunami.

Japan is 80% mountains, which are uninhabitable. The other 20% is flat land which consists of their cities and rice paddies. There are no farms as we have. The farmers live in the towns and go to their plot of land to work during the day. Consequently, there was no wasted land in the towns. Houses were small, constructed out of bamboo, and heated by a recess in the floor where hot coals were placed instead of a stove or furnace. They might have a four foot wide yard, which was always planted in a turnip-type crop. A city the size of Odessa or Shelbina would contain a couple hundred thousand people.

When a G.I. went overseas back then it was illegal to possess greenbacks. All soldiers were issued a script form of money. Even quarters, dimes, and nickels were paper script. Around Army bases, the Japanese merchants quickly accepted script if the G.I. did not have yen. In the Army, we were paid cash the first day of each month. Three days later, we were all broke.

One of our favorite tricks was to get in a Jeep, head out to a community on the outskirts of the base not frequented by G.I.’s, and try to buy some Nippon beer with a five cent piece of script by convincing the merchant it was a five dollar piece and worth 1,800 yen. We sometimes even got the merchant to give us our change in yen. Someone asked me if I didn’t feel guilty for tricking that Japanese merchant out of a Nippon beer. I replied, “If I had any guilt, I lost it a few years ago when a dealer convinced my wife to pay $24,000 for a Honda Accord.”

Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com

Jack Remembers for 12-31-08

New Year’s Eve, 1954, the Korean War had ended and the First Cavalry Division had pulled out and was stationed up and down the coast of Japan. I was in "Charlie" Company in the Eighth Cavalry Regiment and we had just moved from Hokkaido to a bombed out Japanese airbase 60 miles north of Tokyo. General Doolittle had bombed the base and bomb craters were still visible everywhere. We had a pass and headed out the gate to Boomtown to celebrate New Years. Boomtown consisted of dozens of Cabarets and had sprung up virtually overnight after we had moved to the old airbase.
After a full night of hooping and hollering, and not in good condition, we headed back to camp. The barracks were located a quarter of a mile or more up a slight hill past the gate and in our condition we were going to have a problem negotiating that hill. After going through the gate we noticed two MP jeeps sitting side by side pointed up the hill toward the barracks area. The only mistake we made was not taking both jeeps. Six of us piled in to one of the jeeps and I drove at a high rate of speed to the barracks. I looked back and there the other MP jeep was not far behind with every red light it had on. We jumped out and by best buddy James R. Heard from Coldwater, Kansas said, "Follow me!" He quickly entered the back door of a well lit barracks visible to the MP that belonged to "Baker" Company. We went through the barracks and out the front door and over to "Charlie" Company to our barracks. We all hopped into our bunks with our clothes on. It was quiet and we could clearly hear the MP’s and the First Sergeant of "Baker" Company ordering everyone to fall out into formation. The Sergeant explained to the troops if they didn’t tell the MP’s who had stolen the jeep, they were all going to take a 25 mile march the next morning on New Year’s Day.
Now I was just a low-life dog-face PFC, but had I been "Charlie" Company Commander, I would have given James R. Heard a medal for going beyond the call of duty and leading his drunken buddies quietly through the "Baker" Company barracks.
Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com