Photo of Tachikawa Air Force Base gates with the cherry blossoms in bloom 1960.

The main gates of Tachikawa Air Force Base in Japan–where we passed through almost everyday.

As one who was born in a town just a half-hour train ride away, then raised there, then moving into the base later, I think of the inside/outside relationship I had with Japan.  Life on the U.S. military base in Japan was walled off from the locals.  Not wanted there by the Japanese, but was a part of the landscape and culture nevertheless. Tachikawa and then Tachikawa Air Force Base.  In, then Out.  I was that to people.  I was inside and one of them.  Then outside and was one of the other.