The Night My Girlfriend Stabbed Me

The Night my Girlfriend Stabbed Me;

(or the title of my new country song!)

Where:

NAF-Atsugi

Naval Air Facility – Atsugi, Japan around 1988.  NAF Atsugi was (and still is) the Naval base that housed the air wing for the U.S.’s only forward deployed aircraft carrier.  CVW-5.  It’s in the heart of Japan about 50 miles South of Tokyo.  Atsugi is an unusual base, it’s a Joint facility occupied by both the USN and the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.  When the carrier was in port (the USS Midway at that time), the air wing flew off the carrier and took up residence at NAF-Atsugi.  Both Japanese and US military personnel worked together on and off the flight line.  It was my home for three years. 

The Barracks

I lived in one of the barracks off the main road.  Not what you imagine when you think of a military barracks.  It was more like a college dorm.  Three floors of rooms in a U-shaped building.  Each room had a narrow hallway off the entrance.  A large set of full size lockers on the left and a bathroom and sink off the right side of the hallway.  Then it opened up into a square room about 12x12.  Depending on your rank, you had either three, two or just one person per room.

I was an E-5 at the time (equivalent to a sergeant) so I had one other roommate.  But, he’d moved in with his local Japanese girlfriend.  Thus I usually had the room to myself.  As was the case this particular night.

The Bar

The night started off base.  As it usually did, just outside the main gate at the ‘Oz’ bar (just confirmed the name with my shipmate who used to help out there).  If you walked out the main gate and kept straight for about 50 yards, on the right side of the street was small unmarked entrance in the line of buildings.  The entrance had a set of slender steps that lead up to a landing.  On the left side of the landing was a windowless door to a local bar with a sign that read, “No Americans”.   Very welcoming.  To the right of the landing was a glass door that lead into Oz. 

A tiny place.  It was essentially a narrow closet maybe fifteen feet long by six wide.  A small counter ran along the right side with stools and a couple two top tables were on the left.  But at the end, with a view out over the street was another two-top, set along the window.  This was the best spot in the place.   The street the table overlooked lead straight down to the local train station.   Which was about a half mile from the main gate.  The street was lined with cherry trees and due to the train station had a constant flow of cars, bikes and pedestrians.

The bar itself was decorated with plants and travel posters.  Oz had a warm feel to it and was a favorite hang out for our unit.  It was run by a former Geisha from Tokyo (Mako) and her sister (Kotoji).  She’d saved her money working as a Geisha for several decades.  Then came back to her hometown to open her own establishment.  Quite a feat for a single, female mom in 1980’s Japan.  Women were definitely second class citizens.  You saw it everywhere.  Women were nearly invisible entities to be pushed out of the way (literally).

The Night

The night started off with a dinner plate of fried rice and Sapporo beer at the table overlooking the street.  It was a late summer evening with near perfect weather.  There was steady foot traffic to watch while we listened to a mix of American rock on the bar stereo.  The window was open for fresh air. (On an aside – fried rice was different in Japan.  The rice itself was different.  It stuck together but was light at the same time.  It was great and the owner knew how to prepare it correctly.  It was the best fried rice I’ve ever had)

My longtime, Atsugi girlfriend, AKP, was with me.  AKP was a Korean American.  To be exact, a Korean orphan who was taken off the streets of Seoul and adopted by American parents.  She’d joined the Navy out of High School and was trained as a parachute rigger.  She was a top notch rigger who prepped and maintained the air-wing’s survival gear.

She stood all of five feet tall (in shoes) and weighed maybe ninety pounds.  We were quite the contrast and got a lot of stares whenever we walked out in town.  In town, AKP was frequently mistaken for Japanese, which incensed her.  She had a mercurial temper (which she would readily admit) and could be a handful.  To be fair, I knew I could be a pain as well sometimes.

The evening started off with dinner and a couple beers.  Then we made the fatal mistake of switching to sake and limes.  Which were just what the name implies.  A lime drink with a heavy dose of sake.  Ordinarily, I couldn’t stomach sake.  It was served warm.  Had the consistency of watered down syrup and tasted far too much like vodka.  I’d had a bad experience with vodka prior to joining up (a story for another time) and couldn’t even smell the stuff without a gag reflex.

But if you mixed sake with a lime base, you had something completely different.  You couldn’t even taste the sake.  What you got instead was a very smooth, silky tasting lime nectar.  Which is what made them so dangerous.  The sake was potent and you could knock back a couple water glass sized sake-and-limes without realizing how much you’d had.  And that’s exactly what happened.

I can’t even remember the walk back from the bar to the barracks.  My next recollection is of standing in my barracks room with my shirt off along with AKP.  My aircrew survival knife was lying on my desk.  AKP then reached over, took the knife out of the sheath and said, “What would you do if I stabbed you?”  Being three sheets to the wind on sake, I came back with the classic response, “You won’t stab me.  You haven’t got the guts to stab me.”

This is about the dumbest thing you could say.  It’s right up there with, “Yah, go ahead, shoot me.”  AKP then took the knife and placed the tip against the flat of my stomach.  And this knife was a razor.  It was the standard issue, Naval Aircrewman survival knife.  And I’d honed the blade to near mono-molecular sharpness.  But more importantly for me, the tip was basically a needle. 

At this point (no pun intended) a battle of wills ensued.  AKP kept increasing the pressure on the tip while I stood there daring her.  She sunk the tip into my stomach about a quarter of an inch when the realization cut through the alcoholic haze that, “Hey, she’s not going to stop!”  Sanity then stepped in and I slapped the blade out of her hand.  After that, I covered up and defended myself from a flurry of rabbit punches and front snap kicks.  None delivered with any real force.  I think I was laughing at this point which only spurred AKP on.  We then both passed out.

The next morning I woke up and went about business as usual.  I was fortunate.   The tip of the knife was so narrow that, despite sinking in, no real damage had been done.  The wound healed on its own without stitches.  The incident didn’t even affect our relationship!   AKP and I continued dating for at least a year afterwards.

I later lost the knife when I left it in the back of a U-Haul rental van in Florida.  I’d pay a lot to have that knife back.  It got better acquainted with me than most people I’ve known!