On the island of Okinawa between Kadena and Naha there is (or was) a four-lane each way highway with narrow lanes that we had to traverse on a regular basis. As the U.S. military moved and concentrated to the Kadena facility, we increasingly had to drive back and forth to Kadena Airbase from Naha. This was not a really long drive distance wise but the traffic was really intense. Particularly in the afternoon. Bumper to bumper. Our trucks did not have a/c and Okinawan summers are hot and sticky. I know that I personally did not care for the drive.
One fine hot, sticky afternoon I was traveling toward Naha in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour style traffic in an ugly battleship-gray International deuce-and-a-half [2.5-ton flat bed truck]. In spite of the large side mirrors, you could easily fit two Japanese compacts in each blind spot. The traffic was all moving at perhaps 20 mph. I think that MN3 Gary Riggins was with me on this trip.
Everything was going well until I caught a sudden and fast movement in my peripheral vision. There was the horror of all drivers! A child was running toward a super busy street. The boy was perhaps 7 years old and chasing a beach ball. Being in the third lane in, I had ample reaction time and a good view. The kid hit the sidewalk and pulled up short but the beach ball did not. As the traffic screeched to a halt the ball bounced in front of the first line of cars, rolled across the second lane and lightly rebounded off of a civilian car in the fourth lane.
Having double clutched and downshifted and braked, I slowly started to move forward searching the whole while for the errant ball. As near as I could tell, I should have been able to ease forward and straddle the ball and perhaps it could be rescued. There is a custom that is strange to Westerners known as Hara Kiri. The only explanation that I can find is that the ball had disgraced it self and must now cease to exist and therefore threw it self under the driver’s side dual tires and with a sound resembling a gunshot, departed this world.
Stuck in traffic and unable to do anything to rectify the child’s misfortune, I threw my hands in the air and shouted, “Gomen nasai!” I felt bad but the staff car of officers to my left and behind got great amusement from my predicament. I only hope that this young man is not now a powerful political figure still nursing a grudge against the Gaijin that destroyed his beach ball back in 1976.