Feeling Different -- Military Brat Identity

We are Johnson  High Alumni. Our high school friends are everywhere; no where else do we call our high school home, unless it's Johnson. If we haven't seen our high school friends at the last reunion, we are sure to see them at the next. We grew up riding the red or blue line bus to the Tachi or Yokohama. Whether we lived in West Area, the quancets, Johnson Air Station, Washington Heights, North Area or off-base Fussa, Japan was home.

Some of us had the bus rides to Johnson from Yokota as our high school way of life. We found happiness at a high school that provided our education and the opportunity to make long lasting friends in a place very far away from our previous home in the States. We wonder at the feeling we have when we meet these friends and teachers at a Johnson High School reunion, after so many years. The feelings we had growing up in a land with so many cultural differences. Trying to explain a place like Johnson to kids that grew up in the States -- it's impossible. Yes, we had homecomings, Yes we had proms. But did these kids get to go to the Ginza in downtown Tokyo or climb Mt. Fuji. What about our roots? Yep, strong and deep as you would find anywhere. We were nurtured by a Japanese culture, willing to provide us with life long experiences that you can't get from a two week vacation in a far away land.   

Like most of our fellow students, we learned the language enough to communicate and travel to the far reaches of our Service Club tours. Our moms' made us promise not to ride in the 60 Yen cabs, because they were too dangerous. We carried a matchbook with directions to the USO in downtown Tokyo, which allowed us to get from the train station to a familiar landmark by cab. We went to movies with Japanese sub-titles, we saw sumo wrestling and attended the Kabuki Theater. We bought lunch by pointing to plastic food in the window and had a thrill riding the Japanese trains at Rush Hour. These were just a few of the adventures we had as teens in Tokyo.

Being a rolling stone that gathers no moss is true, but we do gain a certain polish, us kids from Johnson. Our travels have taught us to be open;. that not all people think and believe as we do. There is no wrong, just different. We have touched many and allowed their cultures to touch us. As Johnson High Alumni, we have learned to see the many things that make us all the same, which has also taught us to celebrate the difference in others.

Just as there is happiness at the start of our JHS Reunions, so is there sorrow in parting as it nears its end. There is no way to prevent these eventual Good-byes; our tansportation awaits; the Farewells are ineventable and never easy. Yet, even in this state comes the strength to face tomorrow, knowing that another is just a few short years away.

As a JHS Military Brat, we go out with an extending hand and heart, with friendships formed in hours and kept alive through decades, reunion after reunion. We will never know the feeling as a youngster living in one place, but we will have been nurtured by the many bases we called home. As we "Pay it forward" the help that we offer today will be returned.

In the poem by Robert Frost: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by." Our paths may have been separate, as in the poem when we left Johnson High, but we have come out on the otherside of that wood and finally meet again, to find deep inside, we are the same "kids from Johnson."

Hope to see you at the next reunion. 
 

If you have memoribilia from high school and you would like to clean out your storeage bins, closets, cabinets or other places you have chosen to hide away thoses keepsakes from Johnson High, I have just the solutions.  Send it to the American Overseas Schools Historical Society. (AOSHS)  They already have a place set up for all things Johnson High School.

If you want to send your keepsakes, box them up and enclose an inventory list of what you are sending with information about the contents, such as names, dates, and a story, if appropriate about the items you are sending.

ADDRESS:

AOSHS
704 West Douglas Avenue
Wichita KS 67203

email:  Office@AOSHS.ORG  PH:  316.265.6837aoshs.or
webpage:  aoshs.org