Free Saving Graces by Elizabeth Edwards

me.
                      

                      
    In the summer of 1960, Dad’s squadron moved to Atsugi Naval Air Station, in the region nearer Tokyo, where my father had been stationed on our first tour in Japan. We were moving to a much larger place, with many more children, but for once the whole squadron, all of VQ-1, nearly my whole class, moved at once. That meant there was not enough housing on the air station at Atsugi for all of the families, so we moved to the large American complex in Yokohama, on the bluffs above the high school. Not knowing any better, going from Iwakuni to Yokohama seemed like moving from a Japanese community to an American one. Sure, in Yokohama we went shopping in the cramped stores on narrow Motomachi Street, and we still rumbled down dirt back roads, my brother shouting “Baseball,
ne
?” the whole way. We took lessons in
sumi
—ink drawing—and
ikebana
—flower arranging. But to us, Yokohama might as well have been America. It had a complex that resembled a strip mall, where the Navy Exchange, a snack bar, the theater, the bowling alley, even places I didn’t need like the package store and the Teen Club, were located all together with a big mall-like parking lot in front. When we weren’t at the Officers’ Club having the best chocolate sundaes made, we were getting hot dogs at the snack bar and walking back to the baseball field behind the package store. Our daily dose of Japan was paying the Japanese vendor in front of the Navy Exchange a hundred yen—then less than thirty cents—to open an oyster we picked from his pail. He would take the chosen oyster, push his wooden-handled knife deep into it, and twist until the shell popped open. If there was a pearl in it, he would hand it to us, tossing the shell into a cotton bag. If there was no pearl, we could reach into the pail and pick out another oyster, but they were cultured, so there was always a pearl.
    When a submarine came into port, many families would travel to Yokosuka just to see it, and we would crowd the second-floor roller rink on the base. We gathered for Yo-Hi football games or bowling league, but by far the best-attended community events were when we had to turn in our MPC. MPC were Military Payment Certificates, pastel paper money about the size of Monopoly money on which there were drawings of regal and beautiful women. We had MPC for every denomination of bill and coin except pennies. Periodically, everyone had to turn in their MPC so that their aqua-colored fifty-cent papers could be exchanged for light green fifty-cent papers. I am sure there must have been some convenient place for soldiers and sailors to convert their MPC, but not for dependents. The windows where we exchanged MPC for yen would have long lines of wives and children on the day of the exchange. The day was always a surprise, and after that date the aqua-colored fifty-cent papers would be worthless. The day was celebrated in our house in the same way it was celebrated in the quarters around us: we turned every pants pocket inside out, emptied every purse, and scrambled through every junk drawer in search of dying MPC. MPC and reconstituted milk were the reminders that despite the roller rink and the movie theater, despite the mall-like parking lot and the football games, this was still Japan.
    It was 1960, and my sixth-grade class ran a mock election for the elementary school between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. One side of the class was assigned to be the campaign staff for each candidate, and as it turned out, I was assigned to campaign for Richard Nixon. Kennedy’s Catholicism was as big an issue to the military—if judged by the letters in the overseas military newspaper,
Stars and Stripes—
as my mother’s Methodism was to Nana. But the usual argument that Kennedy’s allegiance would be to papal decrees instead of the Constitution was not going to win over fourth and fifth graders to Nixon. We