Sgt. Mom as a baby airman, Christmas Day, 1976. This was the very first day that my basic training flight were permitted to wear our newly-issued, freshly altered Class-A uniforms. Another member of the flight took this polaroid snapshot, which I sent to my parents in my next letter. 20 years later, when we were sorting out a huge box of pictures, I found it, and took it home to Texas along with some other old family pictures.

Lackland AFB street scene, on the training part of the base. On the right are several of the 1,000-person dorms, each of which housed a training squadron. At the time that I did Basic, there were two squadrons training females - I believe the first dorm visible is the one to which I was assigned. The 1,000-person dorms are still in use. The white tw0-story buildings on the left are WWII-era temporary buildings, put up to replace the tents which were used to house trainees in 1941-1942; those buildings  are now all gone. As I was retiring from the AF, twenty years after I took this picture, the last of the WWII buildings were being demolished.

One of the first things that I bought with my first military paycheck was a camera; one of those relatively inexpensive things with a built-in flash which accepted those little plastic-encased film cartridges. I took pictures of some of my friends in Basic, of Indiana where I went for military broadcaster tech school, and then when I finished up in Japan for my first assignment. A couple of months ago, I was contacted by another military veteran who had been at Misawa at about the same time I was there. He recalled Misawa very fondly - he knew me, since I had been a broadcaster, but I had never met him. He worked on "The Hill" -- the Security Service part of the base. All of Misawa AB is much changed - anyone assigned there now would hardly recognize the place where I lived for four years. And the Air Force also is very much changed, over thirty years. So, I began digging out my old albums and scanning in some of my better pictures. This will turn into a multi-part series, so sit back and enjoy.

Single Air Force personnel at Misawa AB were housed in a series of two-story flat-roofed dorm complexes, each housing about fourty people. The individual rooms were about 10 by 14 feet, although some were smaller still. There were four latrines on each floor - each with a single shower, toilet and three sinks. On the ground floor was a common room, with a large television and a couple of sofas in it. The single building set aside for female enlisted personnel also contained a kitchen -- the only dorm which did. On each floor was a single wall telephone, set into a cubby between two of the bathrooms. The barracks were heated by steam radiators in the winter. There was no central air conditioning. Basic room furniture included a small window fan.

And we made our own fun. The pictures above and below were taken during an impromptu party, when Norah -- one of the residents -- recieved a "Care" package from her brother containing an enormous salami. On a Sunday afternoon, we set out paper plates, crackers and cheese, and began slicing up the salami, offering rounds of it to one and all, in an attempt to eat as much of it as possible. 

"Key-rist, lookit the size of that thing!"

The telephone -- the crossroads of our lives. The list under the plastic page protector is a list of the names of women who lived in the dorm, and their room numbers. The smallest of the rooms was just opposite the phone. Newbies lived in those rooms, until someone else PCSed, and they could move into a larger one. It would amaze you to know how often some guy would call, looking for a particular girl and only know her first name. During my first year, there were three Diannes and four Marys. It was considered good manners to answer the phone, if you were handy -- and then search for the person that the caller wanted. It was also considered unpardonable bad manners to call for social purposes after about 11 PM.

Dianne K, known as 'Kinney'.

Cathy ... there was -- amazingly -- only one Cathy.

Cheryl - she was my next-door neighbor. She worked in the Public Affairs office, owned the most enormous papa-san chair, and loved to date guys who wore flight-suits. We eventually gave her a poster that read "Before you find the handsome prince, you hafta kiss a lot of toads." 

Joanne, AKA Joey ... She worked shifts, either at the base hospital or up at the Hill, which is how I first got to know her, since I was working shifts also. Just about all the single enlisted women at Misawa lived in this dorm. Transmission of all interesting on-base gossip reached a level of efficiency not equaled until the invention of the internet.

Sheila, at home in her broom-closet-sized dorm room. It was about 7 by 10 feet - just large enough for a single bed with three shelves over it,  a military-style metal locker, and a mini-refrigerator. I lived in this very room for a couple of weeks, before inheriting a larger one next door. That was my home for three years. The last year of my time at Misawa, I lived in a tiny apartment off-base. It was quieter - but I missed the barracks and my friends.

The base football field, with game in progress. The games got pretty intense, at times. Two of our Navy-Marine FEN-Misawa staff racked themselves up in minor ways, which left the station temporarily short-staffed. MSgt. Rob, the Fearless Station Manager forbade the guys to play on football teams. The FEN bench was not all that deep.

What we did for a social life ... party all the time. This was one of the more formal ones: the Air Force Ball. That year, Cheryl fixed me up with one of the airmen from her office. Amazingly, her escourt for the Air Force ball was not a flier, but one of her fellow Public Affairs troops.

(To be continued)