In the Shelter of Mt. Pinatubo

We were called military brats, and we were the tumbleweeds of America’s might of the ‘50s and ‘60s. As our fathers moved from base to base around the world, so did our families.

While other children dreamed of Santa Claus and toys, I dreamed of having a hometown to package my fleeting childhood. Other than my grandparents’ home in Adams, Mass., which we would visit between duty assignments, there was nothing to grasp and identify with--except for one place in my childhood that would grasp me and influence me the rest of my life: Clark Air Force Base, the Philippine Islands.

It seems ironic that I passed the happiest years of my childhood in a “hometown” that was a plywood and tin-roofed prefabrication of an American town 9,000 miles away from America.

Just as I was sheltered by the graceful, sweeping Mt. Greylock that overlooked my grandparents’ home in Adams, I had my own mountain at Clark, Mt. Pinatubo. The dormant volcano awoke from its 600-year sleep on June 9, my 47th birthday, and all but destroyed the base. Pinatubo, like Mt. Greylock, had been a lasting symbol of my childhood.

My mother, two younger brothers and I traveled from Charleston, S.C., to Manila Bay, where my father, an Air Force master sergeant, was waiting for us. It was Dec. 7, 1953, and I was 9 years old. Clark AFB would be my ninth home.

I didn’t see Mt. Pinatubo until we entered the base through the town of Angeles. As we headed west on the base, I saw the gentle and quiet giant rising from the flat horizon of Pampanga province, its wide twin peaks yawning upward toward the brilliant blue, tropical sky.

Our house was a spacious plywood structure on concrete stilts that stood in small moats of DDT. The tin roof kept the tropical rains out with the sound of a light-footed stampede of gravel. We had three bedrooms and a maid’s room for our young Filipina live-in maid, Virginia. The house had abundant windows with plastic screens instead of glass. There was no air-conditioning, but good circulation was provided by vents along the floor and ceiling. The floors were of mahogany that Virginia would polish on her hands and knees with halved coconut husks.

Virginia was more like a big sister than an employee. I remember the night she was caught sneaking out of our house, and my father brought her back as angrily as if it had been his own daughter.

Part of my own happiness at Clark stemmed from my father’s happiness. He served in the Philippines during World War II and his return to the archipelago was a homecoming that he shared with me.

From Manila to north of Baguio on the island of Luzon I met Filipinos who served beside him, including a doctor who wept when he saw my father again and a Manila businessman who could not get over my father’s coming back to see him after all those years.

My father, a devout Catholic, was also active in the Manila Knights of Columbus and knew several colorful foreign missionaries. I recall a Dutch priest named Father Zegwan who learned to speak English from American GIs. So it was little wonder that he would compliment people he liked as being a “good old SOB”--the Pope included. Then there was the Belgian priest, Father Jose, who told us that Clark AFB--with all its comforts--must be what heaven is like.

To a 9-year-old boy, Clark was indeed heaven. I was the Huckleberry Finn of the tropics. It was as if nature had exploded around us with a new world of insects, snakes, lizards and frogs. There were many areas of Clark that were still rural, with thick tropical growth. Most of these areas were off-limits, but that only enticed 9-year-olds.

My friends and I explored the old Japanese caves and other debris from World War II. There was an old Nissan army truck and shells of Mitsubishi planes scattered in the overgrown vegetation. In our imaginations we re-fought and won the war on the same ground our fathers did.

The dependents’ school at Clark had an enrollment of 870 students from kindergarten to high school. There was a post exchange, commissary, officers’ and NCO clubs, a bowling alley, three chapels, two swimming pools (one for officers and one for enlisted personnel and families), a gym, a hobby shop, a hospital, a library and two theaters.

There was no television. While America was falling in love with “I Love Lucy” and “Father Knows Best,” we had to be content with radio and books--and it was wonderful. It was like being caught in a time warp between the ‘30s and ‘50s. Magazines and newspapers gave us current events while the radio echoed the past adventures of “The Shadow,” “The Whistler” and “The Lone Ranger.”

It was fun playing with homemade toys--blocks of wood for houses and swords made from bamboo strips painted silver. My first Christmas in the Philippines was a primitive one, with no lights or decorations for the tree. We made our own out of walnuts, tin foil and red and green crepe paper. It is one of my warmest Christmas memories.

One day in my room I picked up a toy truck and realized it was just a toy, and had little or no meaning to me. I sensed the approach of childhood’s end, and my new interests were the kind that complicate men’s lives.

Her name was Percy Bulan, the school librarian. She was a beautiful woman in her mid-20s who always wore a light blue Special Services uniform. She had liquid black eyes and long black hair in a tight bun. Her complexion was as rich as Philippine coconut butter.

I was 10. I wore glasses, scuffed-up shoes, a cotton shirt and rolled up dungarees. I saw myself, at 85 pounds, as John Wayne in “The High and the Mighty.” I don’t think Ms. Bulan even noticed my library card when I checked out books--lots of books.

Realizing my romantic ambitions were aimed a little too high, I began developing interest in girls my own age. The first real crush I had was at Clark during our last year there. I thought I was a big shot because I got her to go to a movie with me--John Wayne in “The High and the Mighty.”

My family returned to the U. S. in May, 1955. We lived in Ohio. I was 11 years old and had never heard of Disneyland or Davy Crockett. I would have to get used to the United States.

I could not understand why black people were restricted from riding the same buses with us or using the same bathrooms or drinking fountains. Or why the public schools were all white. I had just spent the happiest years of my childhood with children of many races--Afro-American, Anglo, Asian, American Indian and Filipino. Our fathers worked together while we studied and played together.

In school we studied Philippine history and sang Philippine songs: “Planting rice is never fun, from the morning to the setting sun, cannot stand and cannot sit, cannot rest my weary feet. Oh, planting rice is never fun.”

Two years after Ohio, we moved to Washington, D. C., and two years later to Orlando, Fla., where I graduated from high school and then left home. Meanwhile my parents, with two more children, moved on to a new home in the Canal Zone, after which my father returned to Orlando to retire after 30 years of distinguished service to his country.

After my father’s death I went through his military and personal files and at last discovered where he went when he flew out of Clark--places like French Indochina (later Vietnam), Korea and Formosa (later Taiwan), where men were fighting and dying beneath the wings of the 13th Air Force. In another file I found secretly hidden Father’s Day cards, birthday cards and valentines--many crudely made by his children’s hands and as treasured as his military records, if not more so.

There were qualities we lacked in our military childhoods, but the experience bore fruit in later life. My father didn’t tell me about racial harmony, he showed me when he took me with him to Manila and Baguio to tearfully embrace his Filipino wartime comrades.

Many years later, when I went to Vietnam for the Red Cross and Newsweek magazine, I felt at home among the Vietnamese and felt my ears burn whenever I heard Americans refer to the Vietnamese with racial slurs. Clark AFB was still in me.

I can never go back to Clark. It is under tons of hot ash.

Meteorologists are predicting that its ashes in the atmosphere will bring much needed rain to Southern California in the fall. Just another gift from the mountain.

I suppose if I can’t go back to the mountain it will come to me. And when the first rain comes I will go outside and think of the strains of children of different races singing, “Planting rice is never fun. . . .”