A long, long time ago, so long ago I nearly forgot about it, I was a 21 year-old newbie in my last two years of a five-year hitch in the Army, and found myself at Hakata Station, 14th USASA Field Station, Kyushu, Japan.

BEST duty I had ever had, in all my time in the Army!

Well, the Army time-honored tradition of taking the New Guy out on the town and making sure to have some fun with him, was about to play out and my “buddies” decided to take me under their arms and dragged me across the bay (Hakata Bay, aka Hakata Benjo), to a small bar/club/whatever down a long alleyway between two buildings in Fukuoka City. Believe it or not, we walked there from the dock where the ferry took us.

Inside it was as nice as most decent bars in the States, and I was amazed at all the beautiful girls that were in there. They WERE really nice looking, and they all smiled sweetly, and after a drink, they started coming by and saying “Herro,” and such. And they were built much nicer than I thought Oriental women were – bigger in the right places, when up to now I thought all Oriental women had tiny boobs? Ha!

So one of my buddies said, “Hank, why don’t you ask one of the girls to dance, but wait for a slow dance, as they all like to slow dance.” So, the next slow dance that came on, I smiled at this one cute little thing, and she came over and I asked if she would like to dance, and she replied by taking my hand and leading me out onto the floor.
She fit nicely into my arms, and she also pushed nicely into my (ahem), too! She was still smiling, and I guess I was, as well.

Then the bartender put on the record Unchained Melody, by the Righteous Brothers, and she just sort of slammed nicely up against me….. WHOOPSIE!?!???

I stopped dancing. She giggled. Then “she” said, “You did not know?” I said that I did not know. “She” then said, “This He-She bar, and your friends know as they come here and bring friends and we all dance, have good time.” (or something like that)

Meanwhile my buddies were watching and chuckling and laughing, but they could not hear us, and we were across the floor on the other side of the bar room, so they really could not see my face that well, and I said, “Okay, this was fun, now lets play a game with my friends,” and “she” said ok…. And I told “her” what we would do, and “she” giggled and we started to walk back to the bar, both of us smiling, and I grabbed “her” butt and “she” grabbed my..... other side, and we both giggled and sat down and ordered drinks. My buddies were going nuts by now and laughing like crazy, the bartender was smiling, “she” told the bartender something in very fast Japanese, and he laughed out loud, and my buddies just could not stop laughing.

So they had their fun, I had my little joke and told them so, and they all said, “No, we saw you! You were not joking around at all.”

The bartender didn’t help me at all when he pointed at me and said, “No joke! No joke!” and smiled and laughed, and my buddies laughed some more.

The next day was Saturday and on the personal bulletin board in BOTH the day room and at the NCO club, the notes appeared, telling about how Hank, the new guy, discovered true love at the (name of the bar – that everyone knew was a He-She bar, of course) and how I enjoyed dancing and some touchy-feely there, and I could not clear my name, and the more I tried, of course, the more the story got worse for me.

That was my introduction to life in the ASA at Hakata, Japan.

It really was a joke, though. Really.