The Time-Travel Travel Plan

Me On Yokota Air Base In Japan

Digging through some old photos the other day I took a trip down memory lane.  We are planning to attend a reunion at the end of July for my old USAF outfit from my time stationed in Japan.  They have held these reunions for years but we have not been to one yet.  I have known about them for about three years now.  I put off going because we were too busy.  And I put off going because of the cost.  And I put off going because, well, just because.  Probably the biggest reason to not go was because I hardly remember anyone from that time when I was stationed there during the Vietnam War.  Quite frankly, I thought that if I wanted to go to a reunion with lots of people I hardly know and even if I recognize a face I can’t place the name, I could just go to one of my family reunions (I hope none of my relatives are following me on this blog… oh… wait, they probably wouldn’t remember which one I was either).  But the more I thought about it I started to see that this could be fun even with all the strangers, including some I used to know and work with.

View of the street in front of the barracks where I lived when I arrived at Yokota AB.

I started out getting the emails notifying me about the upcoming reunions and as I continued to receive these email updates I began to think more and more about actually attending.  I checked out the website they created for former members of my old group, 610 MASS (Military Airlift Support Squadron…not a schedule of religious services).  I registered myself on the website.  I “like”d their Facebook page and started seeing updates and photos about various people who served there over the years.  I learned things about 610 MASS that I never knew while I was stationed there.  A few names began coming back to me but when I checked the roster I didn’t see those names.  I submitted the names to the group for research to see if they could be located.  One is a Sioux indian who was our best man at our church wedding in Japan.  Another was a friend who was a witness at our wedding at the American Embassy in Tokyo.  There were a couple other names, some whom we even visited after I was discharged from the Air Force, that came back to me and I sent these all in for search.  None of them have been located yet.

Some Japanese kids I met along the side of the mountain road where I was driving.

When I reviewed some of the names in the roster and their information I found several who worked in the Avionics department where I did and some were there during the years I was there; so I probably knew them back then.  But not hearing any bells ringing I looked over many of the photos that members had posted, some from the days of service at Yokota AB and some more recent.  For some reason, I took very few photos on the base, mostly I shot scenes and sights when I took trips off base.  So it was interesting for me to see so many photos of the planes, the shop buildings, the maintenance trucks for working the flightline for incoming flights, the base club scene, etc.  My on-base photos (at least the ones that survived our house fire) mainly show a few streets, my barracks, some parked motorcycles, etc.  With respect to my on-base activities and experiences, I have a lot more memories than photos so it was great to see other members’ photos to help fill in some gaps for me.

This is how our first house looks more recently.

With time travel you can go back as far as you want. Once when we went back to Wisconsin to visit family we made it a point to drive by our previous houses to see what they look like now. Our first house that we bought was in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.  It was small (I don’t know what the square footage was but it had narrow steep stairs, small bedrooms, and only a partial dirt basement for the furnace and water heater), looking back and remembering those days.  We paid $17,900 in 1972…that won’t even buy a decent set of wheels now.  Whoever bought it and lived in it since we left has greatly increased the size by adding on and also digging out a basement which we never had.  The house we owned in Milwaukee looked very much the same as when we lived there as far as the size, but the colors were all different now.  It was fun to drive by and see other places we used to go when we lived there.

Time travel to Harlan Sanders Cafe in Corbin, KY

Of course, another form of time travel goes back before I was born.  For example, Colonial Williamsburg has representative buildings that you can wander through and people in period clothing that makes you feel like you may have actually gone back in time.  Closer to home (for me anyway) is the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village where you can see Thomas Edison’s actual workshop that was purchased and then moved to join other such historic buildings such as the Wright Brothers’ bicycle shop to create an actual village.  There are people demonstrating crafts of the time periods represented.  There are many antiques in the museum representing not only all forms of transportation but almost every aspect of home life from centuries ago such as common kitchen devices, clothes washers, irons, etc.  We just came back from a road trip to Florida and stopped at the Harlan Sanders Cafe in Corbin, Kentucky, where KFC got its start.  If you use an App such as HistoryHere you can easily find historical sites nearby or along the route you will be traveling.  Time travel to the future may be a little more difficult; perhaps a visit to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.  I’ll have to think about that or maybe you have some thoughts you would like to share.

Reiko at Lake Biwa Near Kyoto on our honeymoon trip

Returning to my opening lines above, after deciding to attend the 610 MASS reunion this year, I looked through some of my surviving photos from my USAF days in Japan, found some I deemed worth sharing, and uploaded them to the member site.  I also sent notes to a couple of members who matched my dates and work area in Japan to see if they remember me and if they plan to also attend the reunion this year.  At this point, it will mostly seem like a gathering of strangers who at one point in their lives shared a common experience of being assigned to Yokota Air Base in Japan.  For me it all worked out very nicely as I learned a lot about Japanese culture and some of the language (I will never lack beer, gyoza, ramen, or pizza). And most importantly I was able to meet Reiko while I was there.

What kind of time travel have you experienced?  Did you make it there and back in one piece?  I hope you didn’t change the past.