Grounded! Because I said so.

I can remember my Dad saying that to me as a kid!

Today, the US military in Okinawa has grounded via a curfew all service members to their on or off-base homes, and restricts their movement only in transit to and from the various bases there on island. No off base stops along the way. So they can’t go shopping out in town nor spend their money at the literally thousands of businesses that 100% depend on them for their survival. According to Kyodo News reports, the curfew also includes relatives (we call them dependents) and non-military staff. Well what does that mean? We know they don’t mean MLC’s and they can’t mean Japanese citizen’s spouses or not, because we know the US military has no authority over Japanese citizens. So could it mean civilian contractors and civil service GS? I am going to guess they mean yes. Everybody!

Well given the circumstances and the delicate ballet of politics that is occurring there, I would say that in my case, I’d take the hit and voluntarily comply in support of this curfew to help the US Military CO’s down there get a handle on this and help it blow over. After all it is the local populace that is blowing all this out of proportion with the national government adding salt to old wounds from 1995. Remember, all the military can survive just fine without local services. The US personnel down there can do all their shopping on base, cart it all home, lock the doors and wait it out. But can the local business community survive? I think this is more than a simple show compliance with the Japanese Gov to do something. It is a way of showing the local prefecture officials that they can’t use the US military as their whipping boy to get them elected. This curfew in an effect is a boycott that stems the flow of US currency to Yen to the local cash coffers. It will in a small way give them a taste of what things will be like minus the bases there. Add that to the future unemployment of thousands of MLC flooding the unemployment ranks. Oh but some think that Prince hotels, Hilton, Sheraton, and JTB will swoop in to fill the gap because of the pending tourist BOOM that is expected by the ill-believed or conceived notion that Okinawa is a Japanese Hawaii. Ahhh no, sorry! That would be Guam.

It’s a really sad thing what happened to that little girl. Its also sad that her parents didn’t pay more attention to what a 14 year old is doing in the red light with district GoGo bars and strip clubs and a lovely place called Whisper Alley. That is not my idea of a adolescent playground. It’s even sadder that like all politicians, they use this incident as a campaign platform and the public lets them. But even with all this hoopla in the end, nothing will change. Little girls will still be hanging out with adult males in a seedy part of town called Okinawa City and Naha. Yea, we had a problem with dependent kids showing up in off base clubs in Yokosuka, but security and the kids parents put a final and complete stop to that. Maybe the parents and the police in Okinawa need to do the same. A little parenting and civic responsibility on the part of the adults down there is needed.

So I say lets turn up the screws on the locals, by running massive AFEES/NEX sales on base. Kick in the MWR and have a Boycott beer bust in all the clubs on base for the hard working men and women in uniform. Shoot, lets even get Springsteen over to Kadena and have a America Appreciation day by turning all his band’s amplifiers to 10+ (11) BLARRING Born in the U.S.A.