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Once I finished Radioman A
School, I was stationed over in the Philippines,
and so I joined the Navy
to see the world, so I'm finally going like
18-hour flight overseas somewhere I never been
before. And it was a real challenging
experience, you know. I experienced some different
cultures, different languages. I think the first
two or three months [I had] culture shock trying
to get used to the people, the language, and
the cultures over there. But it was very rewarding,
though, and after I left--I was stationed there
in 1982, left in 1983.
That's when I first went to my first ship, which
was the U.S.S. Blueridge stationed out of Yukoska,
Japan. And I thought my first duty station was
a culture shock. Well, this is a big culture
shock trying to get adjusted to the languages,
cultures, and else my first time ever being
on a train system, so had to learn how to read
the Japanese writing to determine which train
I should catch to get back and forth to work.
And the Japanese people, they
were very friendly. They were trying to help
you out as you go along and so I said, well,
I guess I'll buy me a book since I'm going to
be over here for three years, try to learn some
of their languages, too. And
I found when I was standing at the train station,
they come-- some Japanese folks come up to you,
try to practice their English on you while I'm
trying to practice my Japanese, which was real
fun and stuff. And I enjoyed it over
there. I had a good time. That was my first
ship. We got to travel to different places around
the world. I've been to several ports up in
Japan. Kuri, Japan. I went over to visit where
they bombed Japan-- over there in Nagasaki,
and we got to go visit a museum. We couldn't
take pictures in there because of the devastation
that happened and stuff. But people over there,
they accepted what happened and they were very
friendly toward us. It was a group tour and
so it was-- they opened their arms up to show
up what happened and everything. After there,
I visit Singapore, a couple of places in Indonesia,
Australia, Korea, Hong Kong and I got my wish.
I got to see a lot of it. I know I wouldn't
have been able to afford that on my own, which
was real nice and so I took a lot of pictures,
bought a lot of different things from each place
that I went to, sent home to my mom. So she
experienced some of the things that I went through
as well, you know, by having pictures and different
artifacts from that country.
I learned a little bit [of
Japanese], just to get by, enough to know, go
in a restaurant and order some food, know my
way around the train system, how to count their
money and everything. It was real nice, though,
and challenging.
It was my first time seeing
where I thought they were driving on the wrong
side of the road. And they said they're not
driving on the wrong side of the road; we are
driving on the wrong side of the road. I said,
okay. And when I first went up there to get
in a taxi, the doors automatically opened and
only reaching for the taxicab and the door hit
me in my leg, and so say, that's the way we
do things. It's automatic doors. And just by
talking with the people, Americans tend to speak
real fast and loud. [When] they're trying to
practice their English with you, you have to
speak real soft to them, real slow so they can
catch on. It's like they're reading lips. And
you go to a restaurant, you order food. You
don't get a fork and so I'm sitting there trying
to use chopsticks. I mean, it was-everybody--
the little kids come over. They look at us and
start laughing because every time we put some
rice or something up to our mouth, it falls
out of there. But it was an experience, though.
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