Deployment is a strange experience in many ways, especially at the end. There's a letdown feeling that the mission is ending, where the 'mission' is a set length of time instead of a particular event, and some unspoken wondering if we (the unit) really left it all out on the field, if we could have trained harder, or experienced more, or made a little more of a difference. What exactly did we accomplish in these six summer months away from home, and did we make it worth the absence from family and friends?
I'm speaking of course of a UDP--Marine Corps slang for "Unit Deployment Program"--an institution that rotates units to Japan for six months. A tour to the fight in the middle east, I imagine, is different: the end of a deployment is filled with a desire to turn over the mission, hoping that the replacing unit can take successes and continue them or make up for any failures. The stakes are higher, and so are the passions. I don't know what that's like, I'm afraid.
But I'm two weeks from leaving Japan, and the relentless driving pressure has given way to a sort of limbo. Equipment is packed, and since our new mission is to get ourselves home, we are taking it easy on the aircraft. No more 'dynamic maneuvering' flights, no more concern with our combat-oriented avionics, no more studiously rehearsed tactical briefs or six-hour detailed debriefs. Much of our equipment is packed, and the squadron spaces are stripped down and sterile in accordance with the Marine Corps ethos on material goods instilled in basic training: leave the place better than you found it. All of a sudden, there isn't much to do, and the desire to be home lies heavy in our thoughts.
So we find new distractions. It's an old truism that we work harder during deployment because there aren't the distractions found at home--weekends in San Diego, families, and so on. But really, the hard work on deployment is the distraction: a way to protect against the feeling of separation and powerlessness regarding our loved ones and our homes. The other truism regarding deployment is that "Social drinking during WestPac is chronic alcoholism in the States," which is another form of distraction and really the chief source of bonding during these painful, non-combat deployments to Japan. And so, with nothing really to do at work, we begin to play.
One stereotype of Japan that has run through this deployment is Karaoke. A happy discovery we made this go-round was Club Niagara, a seedy one-room bar within walking distance of the main gate of Iwakuni. The owner is American, though of former military background, and one wonders why spends his life running a Karaoke dive in this small provincial town in southern Japan. It doesn't do to look to close, however--we're all running from something if we're in that bar, and there's a mutual respect to be payed between expatriates who, like Hemingway in Paris, are looking for something to make them feel free. Fortunately for all involved, Club Niagara offers only the relatively anodyne pleasures of beer and American songs for singing, both of which are easily recoverable after a night. I didn't tempt fate and ask for the absinthe, however.
As far as drowning one's sorrows, however, there's nothing quite like anonymous Karaoke. I say, 'anonymous,' because the arrangement of Club Niagara is ingenious: the monitors displaying the lyrics are behind the bar, facing the masses. So when your song comes up, you take the mic and with everyone else in the bar face the televisions. No stage fright, no audience--just you singing with a bunch of friends, even if they're only friends for one night. And whether you're all belting along horribly to "The Winds of Change," or rapping to "Paper Airplanes" (or crooning sadly to something by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which was my poison of choice), you can laugh the hilariously bad Japanese B-Roll of muscular guys on motorcycles, or melancholy lovers looking at lakes, or some other cliched scene set incongruously to the English words on the screen.
And at the end of the night you can brave the security patrols of Marines in the severely professional service uniform, and take the songs into the street, and try to find your way back to base in the dark, narrow, silent Japanese streets. Hopefully you're full of enough friendship and amusement--and beer--to fall asleep when you get into your dormitory.
The nice thing about finishing the deployment in late summer is that there are more things to do on base. For one thing, the nice weather makes nocturnal pursuits such as were just described much more pleasant. For another, the pool is open.
Oh, how we loved the pool. The single guys checking out the female lifeguards, who were mercifully college-age and not still in high school, the diving board cannonball competitions, the unashamed male tanning episodes in preparation to impress loved ones back home. It was the perfect meeting place, the perfect summer hangout, the perfect place to relax. Sometimes, since the days were long and there was precious little work do to, we could sneak over there after getting home from the squadron with a book and our iPod and catch some delicious afternoon rays. The best was when we could hit a workout (also preparation for impressing the loved ones back home), jump in the pool, catch some sun poolside until it closed, then hit our mandatory Friday night O'Club visit.
Now the Friday night visit to the club was a requirement all deployment, and a source of much debate. The junior officers (captains) hated it. The social ones had other plans: trains to Fukuoka or Hiroshima and the hotter nightlife there; the introverted ones simply wanted to go to their rooms, video-chat with their wives, and sleep. There seemed to be little point to go to the club and mingle with the same demoralized and ever-changing crowd of permanent personnel, DOD teachers, and those bad-news wives who were, ah, just a little too flirtatious with us (who were certainly not their husbands). Most of the time we ended up eating cartons of free popcorn, playing endless rounds of shuffleboard, and eventually starting up a game of Crud (a wonderfully violent and complicated game played on a pool table). Sound fun? It mostly wasn't.
But it paid off occasionally. During our time spent at Kadena Air Base, we could assert our collective man-hood against the Crud teams of other units, Marine and especially Air Force. The Air Force, it should be noted, prefers a 'finesse' game of Crud, where we like to dominate physically. Stereotypes, anyone? And, remembering our victories and ignoring our defeats, by the deployment's end the Friday night at a club was more like the senior stroll down a high-school hallway than a chore. Here at the end, we lazily tune up our game in anticipation of our relieving unit (due in several days) and talk about all the ways we're better than they are. Like those high school seniors who have proclaimed all semester that they can't wait to leave, we begin haunting the Club even on nights that aren't Friday, a little reluctant to depart.
Only a little. Because as we turn to hedonism with gusto in these last weeks of deployment, we are looking for distractions to carry us through this piece of limbo. Because what we really want, what I really want, is to get this thing over with and get home. A year and a half ago, I waited sadly to go home to San Diego because while I knew it was better than the wintertime Iwakuni I had just experienced, there was nothing really waiting for me there. My future was in doubt. Now I can finally cut the painful distance between my wife and I, and return to where I belong by her side.
It is a strange unfettered experience, here at the end of deployment, and our doubts at the utility of going to Japan instead of the Middle East gain strength as we belt ballads into microphones and beer bottles, spend an hour perfecting a can-opener, or swagger around the beat-up pool table in a Crud game. But there are no doubts about what's coming--home--and I happily do anything that compresses the time between now and my homecoming.
