Yokohama Microwave Relay - Kizarazu site was unmanned
Online Journal Ray Plumlee Personal Web Site:
"A little rememberance. The first time I went to a Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum was in 1972 on the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California. My then wife and newborn son were awaiting transportation to Yokohama, Japan where I had change of station orders to be stationed at what I thought was a remote Microwave Relay Station and Tandem Telephone swithching center in Kizarazu, Japan. I later found out I was actually going to be working at the Yokohama Microwave Relay and Tandem Switching Station at Negishi Heights, near the Yokohama Grandstand, as the Kizarazu site was unmanned. The Navy manpower people had used it as a slight of hand maneuver to increase manning for the Navy Telecommunications Command in Yokosuka."
"A little rememberance. The first time I went to a Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum was in 1972 on the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, California. My then wife and newborn son were awaiting transportation to Yokohama, Japan where I had change of station orders to be stationed at what I thought was a remote Microwave Relay Station and Tandem Telephone swithching center in Kizarazu, Japan. I later found out I was actually going to be working at the Yokohama Microwave Relay and Tandem Switching Station at Negishi Heights, near the Yokohama Grandstand, as the Kizarazu site was unmanned. The Navy manpower people had used it as a slight of hand maneuver to increase manning for the Navy Telecommunications Command in Yokosuka."
posted by Tomorrows News Today at 9/24/2004 03:50:00 AM
1 Comments:
I was stationed at Negishi Microwave between 1968-70. Steve Lathrope ETN2 was in charge of the site for the first 6 months until a couple of E6 & E7s were assigned who had no experience or training in the FCC17, NEC Radio or tandem switching equipment and were clueless about what the site did. We actually sent people to man Kisarazu on a 2 month basis. The duty there amounted to spending 4 days and 4 nights of 24 hour duty and then you were off for 4 days. It was like a vacation but there was nothing to do as the equipment was very reliable. It was just a microwave relay station with 2GHZ radio to radio relay station w/o any FCC multiplex equipment. I had learned to speak Japanese and learned from a bad experience that Kisarazu was a Yakuza town as was much of the Chiba prefecture at the time. ETN3 James Taylor and I switched the 4 day on/off schedule and were accosted by a Yakuza in a bar there who pointed what looked like a 1911 model 45 at us and demanded money from us. I pretended to not understand what he was saying and only spoke English to him. As he was pointing the pistol at me, a customer walked into the bar and at the same time I saw a policeman outside walking by the Bar through the open door and started yelling for help in Japanese. The policeman came into the bar but the Yakuza had already fled via a back door. That experience was enough to keep me out of the bars in Kisarazu. DR. Terry Swanson ETN2 (most people called me Tiny in case you remember me)
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