Is it possible that I flew on Flying Tiger Airlines...
 

...back some time in the 60's--between 1963 and 1965? Somewhere in Asia? I have a vague memory of doing so, but I can't remember exactly where or when.

Although I didn't realize what it was at the time, I flew on the CIA airline, Air America from Tachikawa, Japan, to Chitose, Japan, several times.

I was teaching at Chitose American school, which was very remote--on the northern island of Hokkaido. Some general took pity on us teachers, so he arranged for two of us teachers to go down on a cargo plane to Tachikawa . I can't remember which specific plane it was, but we usually entered through the ramp on the back, though once I recall climbing up a ladder toward the front of the plane. We had "bucket seats," sort of like stretchers hanging from the wall/or whatever one calls the walls of a plane. We may have remained to party at Tachikawa, which was a big base on Honshu. Or we may have gone into Tokyo for the day.

We had to be back at the airbase very early in the morning to catch our flight back on Air America, which looked like a regular passenger plane, with a stewardess who served coffee. I didn't realize it was the CIA airline until about 50 years when I saw Robert Downey as a pilot in the CIA airline, Air America.

"Is it possible that I flew on Flying Tiger Airlines..."

Sure -- they flew with their own planes and charters into the early/mid-80's

Peg, I love your threads like this one. I wish you'd write a book!

Yes, charters. In the late '60s a school friend was a flight attendant for Flying Tiger.

Thanks for the responses. It's all so long ago that I've forgotten a lot. This all happened in 1963/1964.

I do remember going to an art/framing shop in Sapporo with a Hawaiian friend who spoke Japanese. The proprietor of the shop told us that he had been scheduled to be a kamikaze pilot, and that he was scared to death. I think the end of the war stopped the kamikaze attacks and saved him.

Right before I left Hokkaido, I wanted to explore Sapporo a bit and take some pictures. I was strolling along beside a park, when a young man came out and asked if he could walk with me. He looked harmless, and I was never nervous about Japanese men, so I said yes.

So we got to the end of the park and turned around and walked back. The young man asked if his friends could join us, and I said, sure. Two of his friends joined us, and he asked if we could go to a coffee shop, and again I said yes. We went to the coffee shop and sat down in a booth. Pretty soon the original young guy who was sitting next to me got up, and his friend sat down beside me. After a little while, the friend got up and a different young guy sat next to me. I got such a kick out of all these young men taking turns sitting next to me.

With young people, there was always one who spoke the best English, so he took the lead. I think they had learned certain questions and responses, so we often got questions like, "How old are you? and then a variation of the "How old are you?" question, "How old is your mother?"

It was a rarity to see a Caucasian woman in Sapporo, so I was a star attraction. I recall hearing a young child say "Gaijene" (I don't know how to spell the word. It's pronounced "guy gene," and it means "foreigner." I was the only Caucasian in that particular market, so it was obvious I was the gaigene.

The next year, I transferred to Honshu, to Camp Zama, and I did a lot of sight-seeing. It was fascinating.

DS lived in the very small town of Kitami on Hokkaido. It is truly a special place. I visited him twice travelling by train from Tokyo. What an adventure! From Sapporo to Kitami, all the other passengers knew where I was going and at each little stop, they would tell me "no Kitami" and then finally "KITAMI"

It was very possible. One of our neighbors in Tachikawa was a pilot for Air America. He had lots of interesting stories flying through south east Asia.

I spent many days (and too many nights) in the late '70s and '80s enjoying Flying Tiger's "hospitality" at the station they maintained at Cold Bay on the Alaska Peninsula. Tigers used CDB as a crew swap and fueling station; Cold Bay was closer to some of their great circle freight routes between Europe and the US east/midwest and Japan etc. than alternatives including Anchorage. Remember overflying the USSR was verboten.

Tigers had a bunk house (glorified Quonset huts) as well as a cafe and general store there. I was working on the Aleutian Islands quite a lot, and Cold Bay was where I changed planes from big to little to very little for the last part of my flights. Because the weather was usually awful, I spent a lot of days (and nights) waiting for things to become flyable, so was a frequent customer of Tigers' facilities.

My most vivid memory of one of these visits was when I was drinking coffee in the cafe (aka mess hall) with a couple of pilots when the two Filipino cooks blasted through the swinging door into the dining room on a dead run, and out the door at the other end. From the (now empty) kitchen came the sounds of crashing fixtures, pans, and general mayhem, then a brown bear's head, roughly the size of the front of my Volkswagen, came poking through the swinging door. Evidently the bear smelled the bacon and wanted to investigate.

We didn't catch up to the cooks but made it a close thing.

Here's an article about Tigers' Cold Bay station: Cold Bay (flyingtigerline.org)

Gardyloo: Fabulous article!

Come to think of it, I have a Flying Tiger T shirt with the "blood chit" on the back. I'm too fat to wear it right now, but the day will come....Also, I have a wooden carved "Kuma bear" and a plate with a carving of a Kuma bear on it. The Kuma bear was sort of a symbol of the northern island of Hokkaido.

I love reading these stories!!