A Lost Moment in Time: The Humble Fisherman and Typhoon Dinah 1987

By Craig: He had seen the war. Not the recent ones in the middle east, but the big one that engulfed the whole world in the 1940s. He had been a young man then, but when I met him in the spring or summer of 1987 he was no longer young. I was in the Marines, on Okinawa, serving in a Medical Battalion as a combat lineman. My job was to help wire up the camp and tend to the generators that brought power to the much needed medical equipment in the field. I was a lance corporal then and would spend weeks on end in the bush. I lived in a barracks when not in the field, and therefore had ample time for liberty. I would often walk off the base into the town and out into the countryside. I didn't have a car but I did not mind walking. I could walk for miles and it wouldn't bother me. I loved walking...I still do. Sometimes I would walk down to the beach and walk along the shoreline. There were not too many Marines that far out in the country, so I would sometimes get strange looks from the locals, but all in all I did not feel all that uncomfortable. One time I chanced upon a small shack nestled in the dunes off the beach. A patchwork door covered the entrance. There was a small row boat outside of it. It was a fisherman's boat. Whoever lived here was definitely living a humble existence!  As I approached the shack which was half built into a dune like a dugout, a toothless old head peeked through the door and a skinny old man with bronzed skin appearing much like worn leather ambled out into the sunshine. He was wearing a pair of shorts and I doubted if he had worn a shirt in years. I greeted him with a friendly wave not wanting to intimidate him as I was fully aware of the reputation Marines had on the island.
I only knew a few words and phrases of Japanese so I acknowledged him in his native tongue. He spoke only a few words of English, but with sign language and strange gesticulations, coupled with the few words that each of us knew in the others language I was able to understand some of what he said to me during our short conversation. I took it to understand that he had worked on one of the American military bases after the war. He had no family, at least that is what I remember...unless my memory is faulty. It has been over 30 years since our brief conversation. I thought about my native country and the stark contrast between there and here. You would never see a humble fisherman allowed to sink a dugout inside of a sand dune on a beach. The tycoons of the world would lay claim to it and send this toothless survivor out into the streets.

A few months after this encounter with the humble fisherman I found myself on a remote guard post a mile or so from the main camp where our battalion had set up. For a few days word had been floating around the camp that a typhoon was approaching, (Typhoon Dinah) but its exact path had yet to be determined. It was finally concluded that the storm would either brush by the island or hit it head on. The decision was made pretty fast. We were to evacuate by mid morning. I don't recall how it happened, but sometime during the night I was ordered to the guard post which was at a junction of two muddy roads. A temporary gate had been set up to allow vehicles to pass or not depending on who they were. My companion this night was another lance corporal. I knew him only vaguely as one of the Motor-T marines. He was a native of Pakistan. The two of us got along well and were actually fortunate to get this post as it required very little work. It had rained in spurts during the day. Every time there was a downpour I was drenched to the bone, but then the sun would come out in a blaze of heat and dry me off. Another cloud burst and then the sun. It was a pattern that had kept up all day, but by night there wasn't a cloud in the sky and no wind. It was the calm before the storm! Throughout the evening, trucks carrying men and equipment evacuated in orderly fashion. Sometime during the evening we noticed that it had been a long time since we had seen a vehicle and began to wonder if we had been forgotten. At about this time we heard a rumbling of wheels and a truck's headlights appeared much to our relief. It was the commanding officer of the camp and his driver, a colonel whose name I have long since forgotten. He stuck his head out the window and he said.
"You marines need a lift?"
It was a comical scene that would never happen in this day and age. About a year after this in 1988 a young marine lance corporal was forgotten at a remote post in the California desert. By the time that his unit had realized that he was missing they had already returned to their base at Camp Pendleton. A search eventually found his body. He had died of exposure to the elements. A congressional investigation found the Marine Corps to be negligent and the procedures were radically changed to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

After returning to the barracks we prepared for the typhoon the best way that we could. We sealed the windows and tied down everything that had the potential to become a flying missile in the wind. To this day I can still hear the wind howling and whistling thinking that at anytime the roof might blow off. When it was over, there was surprisingly little damage except for some downed trees and power lines. Mercifully Okinawa received only a glancing blow. If it had hit us dead on it could have been catastrophic. Still, there was damage. A few days later I returned to the beach to seek out the old man to see how he fared during the storm. When I arrived at the location that I thought the shack had been located it was not there. At first I believed that I was in the wrong place, but as I walked further along the shore I realized that I was in the right area. The shack had obviously been washed away in the typhoon. There was no sign of his boat, only a well worn and battered oar half buried in the surf. For a while I can remember just standing there thinking about how fragile life was. What had become of the old man? Did he move to a place of safety, or had he been washed away by a wave? It was a surreal moment for me. If he had been washed away who would know about it? Who would care? He was a human being. To this day I often think of this old man. His smiling toothless weather beaten face looking at me as if to say "Don't forget me. I once existed." Sometimes I wonder if he really did exist, or if I just imagined the whole thing during one of my lonely peregrinations around the island those many years ago. Life is tenuous as is the conscious element that comes with it, which at the end of any experience, all that is left are the fragmentary images of a dream.

                                                             Typhoon Dinah 1987