"Boat People" on Okinawa and Green Pheasant at Pizza House

     Having spent all of October thus far blogging about Paraguay in South American,  I am now going to zip across the Pacific Ocean to spend the last three days in Japan.  Sort of a magic carpet ride back to the past, about 8 years before Paraguay!
     From 1979 to 1981 I was assigned to the American Embassy in Tokyo.  At the time, the American Embassy in Tokyo was just about the largest embassy we had in the world, only London was as big, I think!  The embassy had over 800 employees, and Japan in the early 1980s was, although expensive,  an exciting place to be.  For both Jo and me, having been in Japan before, it was like a homecoming, we felt very comfortable.  Then in the early winter of 1981, about seven months before the end of my tour, I got an opportunity to travel all over Japan, something that I would not have been able to do on my own, it would have been just too expensive!
     Shortly after New Year of 1981, embassy Tokyo received word that a Refugee Officer from the newly created Refugee Affairs Office in the State Department was coming to Japan at the invitation of the Japanese government to tour the 20 or so Vietnamese refugee camps that were scattered about Japan!  Up to this point, very few in the embassy were even aware of the fact that there was a refugee camp in Japan, let alone more than 20!  The Washington visitor was to be accompanied by an officer from the Gaimusho (Japanese Foreign Ministry), an officer from the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), and  embassy Tokyo was to provide an officer to accompany them.
     The purpose of the tour was to determine how many of the Vietnamese refugees ("boat people") were eligible for relocation to the U.S.  The criteria for eligibility for relocation to the U.S. was that they had to have worked for the U.S., either with the U.S. government (military or civilian) or a U.S. based or sponsored volunteer agency.  The Gaimusho officer was our host and the Japanese government funded everything, first class, I might add!  The UNHCR officer was to determine if a particular refugee was indeed a political refugee, not an economic refugee simply seeking a better life.  The Japanese were anxious to get rid of the "boat people" that landed on their shores.  They split them up into small groups and scattered them from Hokkaido down to Okinawa, in isolated areas so that they would not be "visible" to the general public.  No camp held more than 100 refugees, some were as small as may be 20 people.  The one in Okinawa was the largest with a bit over 100 people.
     At the time, West Germany and Japan had the most stringent and unreasonable requirements for refugees to qualify for resettlement in their countries.  Both countries required that the refugee who wished to resettle in their country had to be fluent in their language, both spoken and written.  They had to pass a very tough test on the history, culture, and various other topics.  In short, there was no way an average refugee could fulfill such requirements without intensive study for a couple years!  The most lenient countries were U.S., Canada, and Australia.  France was pretty lenient on the requirements as well.  Considering that France was also responsible for the mess in Vietnam, they probably should have been even more lenient!
     My role was somewhat fuzzy.  I suppose I was there to simply show the flag, so to speak, represent the American Embassy.  I had no role in interviewing anyone.  Before my departure, the Deputy Chief of the Mission, a wonderful old school gentleman, took me aside and told me to "enjoy the trip," have a good time at the expense of the Japanese government!  Then he added, "keep an eye on the Refugee Officer, don't let him do something stupid!"  I wasn't too sure what he meant by that.  Anyway, the four of us left Tokyo, first flying north to visit some camps there. Afterwards we visited camps in the central part of Japan and then took the shinkansen (bullet train) south and visited camps in the southern part of Japan.  Our final stop was Okinawa, before we flew back to Tokyo.
     The refugee camp on Okinawa was located on Motobu Peninsula where the Expo was held in 1970.  The refugees were housed in the dormitories that were built for the Expo for the housing of the Expo staff and workers.  For a refugee camp, it was pretty nice.  They were simply living in apartments, no tents or shacks.  Of course, none of the camps in Japan were made of tents and shacks, Japanese would not have considered such housing!  Many of the refugees on Okinawa wanted to resettle in Japan and complained about Japan's unreasonable requirements.
     I listened in on as many interviews that I could, the ones that were conducted by the UNHCR officer, an exceptionally bright and talented young woman.  Some of the stories that I heard were absolutely horrific, especially the experiences of young women when they were captured by South China Sea pirates!  The fact that some of them survived such horrors is a testament to human resilience and strong survival instincts.  One particularly attractive girl told her horror story of how she was forced to become a sex slave of the pirate captain in order to survive!  The pirates had killed all of her family members!  She managed to survive by being his sex slave for something like three months, then escaped one night by slipping overboard.  She floated at sea on an inner tube for three days (she wasn't sure exactly how many days) without food or water, before getting picked up by a Japanese fishing vessel.  That is how she ended up in Japan.  She was all of seventeen!
     Everyone in the group knew that I had lived on Okinawa, so, the night before we left the island they asked if I could take them to some restaurant, something "different."  We had been primarily eating Japanese food, since the Washington visitor insisted on staying in Japanese style hotels only.  The Gaimusho officer was there to accommodate, no doubt with instructions to do whatever was necessary to get Washington to take as many "boat people" as possible, so we stayed in Japanese hotels and ate Japanese meals.  On the final night, everyone, including the Gaimusho officer, was ready for something different, so they all turned to me, the only one in the bunch who had been on Okinawa before.  So, I suggested that we go to the Pizza House and have some pizza, to which everyone agreed immediately.
     Anyone who was on Okinawa anywhere between 1960 and the 1980s will no doubt remember the Pizza House in Oyama, a popular hang out on the weekends for many Kubasaki-ites! When I took my little group to the Pizza House in 1981, it was almost exactly as it was 20 years earlier!  Of course I'd been on Okinawa and in Pizza House in the late 1960s as well, but basically, everything was the same. The only difference was that there was now an American hostess to greet you at the door, no doubt a wife of someone stationed with the military.  Even the menu appeared to be the same, only the prices were now in yen instead of dollars.  As we were leaving, I noticed that by the cash register there was the stuffed green Japanese pheasant, the very same pheasant that was there in the late 1960s! 
     There's a story behind that old stuffed bird!  I shot that pheasant as a kid while hunting in Japan.  It was the first pheasant that I shot so I had it stuffed.  Before I left Okinawa in the early 1960s, I gave that bird to an Okinawan worker who admired it when we were being packed out.  The bird had somehow become infested with some sort of moth-like insects.  I didn't think it was salvageable, so although I hated to part with it, I gave it to the Okinawan worker.  When I returned to Okinawa in 1966, I saw this pheasant in Pizza House.  I asked the owner where he got the bird and he said that he bought it off an Okinawan who worked on a US government installation.  Obviously the man managed to get rid of the insect infestation somehow, probably by simply spraying it with insecticide, something that I suppose I could have done also!  It was quite a surprise to see it then, in the late 1960s, but it was even a bigger surprise to see it in 1981, perhaps a bit shabbier, but still OK!
     So, if any of you were in Pizza House that was located in Oyama between 1960 and the 1980s and noticed a stuffed green pheasant by the cash register, it was mine, and it originally came from Ibaraki-Ken on Honshu where I shot it as a kid in 1956!  I understand that the Pizza House has moved, it is no longer in Oyama, but it is still on Okinawa, and hopefully my pheasant is still there by the cash register.