The three drunken U.S. Marines who stumbled into my motorbike headlamps were clearly combat-trained, as their agility in shifting from advanced inebriation to performing a nimble leap onto the sidewalk suggested seriously attuned reflexes.
Although I didn't hang around to make small talk as a volley of expletives exploded behind, I did resolve to return to Kin Town the next day to see what the place was really all about. Set beside a huge U.S. base a two-hour ride north from the capital city of Naha, it is surely one of the strangest places on Okinawa.
Opened in 1959, Camp Hansen is more modestly manned these days than during the Vietnam War, when it was the region's busiest U.S. Marine Corps base, serving as a way station for soldiers en route to meet their fates in the jungles, training camps and bars of Southeast Asia. Like all U.S. bases in Okinawa, it is a self-supporting universe complete with a bank, barbershops, cafeterias, a theater, chapels, a dental clinic, a Burger King, a dispensary, an enlisted ranks' club and a bowling alley.