Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 1, 1994 TAG: 9403040008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT A. EMERSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Now I realize this may sound insensitive, but perhaps my sensitivities have been dulled. I recently returned from a three-year stint at a refugee camp in the Philippines. The refugees were primarily American-Asian children who were the product of a decade-long ``Tailhook'' in Indochina.
I realize some people may distinguish between the Tailhook events and the Vietnam events. Granted there are some differences. However, when I observe the media's shock at our fine sailors' behavior at Tailhook, I wonder where they've been for the past 40 years. Weren't some of them in Cam Ranh Bay? How could they possibly have missed how Vietnamese women (12 years and up) were drawn into an assortment of comfort activities with total complicity by the military brass and the United States government?
What's even more puzzling is how this behavior was allowed to continue in the Philippines at Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Base up until the end of 1992. That's right. While feminists, politicians and media types were going bonkers about Tailhook, Americans were continuing their state-sponsored debauchery in the military's pleasure palace of the Pacific.
What made it particularly nauseating to me was that this base was only 40 miles or less from my camp, where we were trying to patch up the lives of women who had been drawn into sexual service by the overwhelming dollar of the supposedly enlightened Americans - and the lives of their abandoned kids. I'm sorry, Tailhook's evil isn't in the same galaxy with that.
What was going on at Subic during Tailhook? I'll relay the experience of two of my volunteer coworkers. They yearned for ice cream, so they went through Olongapo City to the gate of Subic hoping to get into the Baskin Robbins on base. They were turned away, because they didn't have embassy ID's (only their camp ID's and passports). As they left, they observed a line of Filipino girls waiting to be selected by sailors in need of a little boom-boom. (I'm told the going rate was $50 for a week of bed, breakfast, etc..) They were amazed at how easy it was for the sailors (despite what the military will tell you) to bring the girls through the gate into the base. Taxpayers? No. Economically exploited prostitutes? Yes, sure, with all haste! Sadly, I observed quite a few of the girls were American-Asian Filipinos, victims of a previous generation of fine young sailors.
Don't get me wrong. I don't blame the young recruits so much as the military brass, U.S. politicians and the U.S. media who did nothing to stop the madness. They stood by while Olongapo City became a modern Sodom with every imaginable type of sex show and exploitation of local girls and children. In light of what they were allowed to do with women overseas, should anyone be surprised by Tailhook?
Who cares about Tailhook? Do something about the thousands of dirty, hungry, uneducated mothers and children left behind by the Navy and its culture of exploitation.
\ Robert A. Emerson of Roanoke is employed by a local health-care provider.
by CNB