U.S. Navy 86’d sailor drinking in Japan
The move breaks with a 100-year-old tradition of boozy shore leave
By Meagan Day
What shall we do with a drunken sailor? For the U.S. Navy, the answer has typically been to look the other way. Now, it seems the days of dry-land debauchery may be coming to a close, at least on one base.
After an intoxicated American sailor caused a multi-vehicle crash in Okinawa this weekend, the U.S. Navy has placed a drinking ban on all its 18,600 sailors based in Japan. “Effective immediately, Sailors are prohibited from drinking alcohol, on and off base,” said the fleet commander’s statement. “Additionally, all off-base liberty will be curtailed.”
Shore leave — the free time sailors get to spend on dry land — has long been promoted as a perk of the job. Throughout the 20th century the military’s message was: being a sailor is hard work, but you’re rewarded with complete liberty on solid ground. The Japan drinking ban marks a fundamental change in the way the Navy thinks about the behavior of its personnel off-base. Gone are the days of boozy shore leave with no consequences.
The phenomenon of wanton shore leave — characterized by boozing, brawling and womanizing — dates back to 1914, when the U.S. Navy banned alcohol aboard its ships. Before that, most of the drinking happened at sea.
Since the 18th century, the U.S. Navy had operated by the British rum ration system, which stipulated that all sailors would receive a frankly enormous quantity of hard liquor per day, served from an ornate oak tub emblazoned with the words “The Queen, God Bless Her.”
The U.S. Navy skipped the tub and switched to whiskey, but it was otherwise the same as the British system until after the Civil War, when the government stopped doling out the liquor but permitted sailors to drink from their own stash.
When the Temperance Movement got underway in the US, though, the Navy banned drinking aboard ships altogether. Unimpeded shore leave was offered as a compensation, to keep up morale and keep new recruits coming after the on-deck party was over. Even as prohibition remained the law of the land, sailors were gaining a reputation as hard drinkers ashore. There was even a troubling epidemic of sailor deaths from consuming bootleg spirits.
But the U.S. Navy felt that monitoring behavior on shore leave would result in fewer troops during war-time. In ports the world over, sailors let their hair down with impunity. When they would leave the ship to find a bar closed, they viewed it as “an infringement on the ever-to-be respected doctrine… of sailors’ rights,” and would riot accordingly.
“A sailor’s liberty is but for a day; yet while it lasts it is perfect,” wrote one sailor in his memoir. “He is under no one’s eye, and can do whatever, and go wherever, he pleases.” Typically, doing what they pleased meant that they “steered for the first grog shop” with a “sailor-like” fervor. “Like a wild bird liberated from its cage,” wrote another, “their money flies like chaff,” spent mostly on liquor, but also on prostitutes and gambling.
Many port towns made an industry out of satisfying sailors’ desires and indulging their excesses. But there were conflicts, too. In May of 1945, tensions reached a fever pitch in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Opportunistic merchants in the city had begun to charge sailors steeper rates for drinks, citing disorderly behavior, and the lines and fines had grown untenable for some seamen. On May 8th, the day that the city was set to celebrate Allied victory in WWII, rumors began that miffed sailors planned to give locals “what was coming to them.”
In fear and defiance, locals shuttered every bar and restaurant to deny them alcohol. The thirsty sailors rioted, setting tramcars and police paddy wagons ablaze, smashing shop windows and brawling with locals. Sixty-five thousand quarts of liquor, 8,000 cases of beer and 1,500 cases of wine were looted from closed venues. Three men died — two of alcohol poisoning, one murdered. The next day, a reporter compared the scene to “London after the blitz.”
Permissiveness of sailors’ off-duty abandon has persisted in American Naval culture despite more than a few protests from offended residents of port towns worldwide. Japan, in particular, has been a site of conflict. In 1995, after a startling incident in which a 12-year-old schoolgirl was raped by three servicemen, Japanese civilians began calling for the removal of military bases altogether. As demonstrations there intensified, it became increasingly clear to the military that the conduct of off-duty servicemen constituted a threat to international relations.
Vestiges of sailor slang in contemporary drinking culture are a testament to the intensity of the sailor-alcohol connection. The term “binge drinking” comes from the task of binging on a naval ship, or rinsing the empty liquor cask with water — sailors who desired more than their allotment would drink the rinse-water in hopes that it contained trace amounts of alcohol. Grog was a mixture of rum, water and citrus, meant to satisfy seamen and fight scurvy, hence to be groggy is to be addled by the concoction. Cargo was loaded onto ships through an opening on the ship deck known as a hatch; liquor, too, goes “down the hatch.”
But there’s been an irreversible shift in the military’s thinking. The new alcohol ban in Japan shows that the Navy is no longer willing to turn a blind eye to shore leave rowdiness, and worse. “The alcohol restriction will remain in effect,” read the fleet commander’s statement, until the Navy is “comfortable that all personnel understand the impact of responsible behavior on the U.S.-Japan Alliance and the United States’ ability to provide security and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific.”
The stakes have been readjusted, and the military’s not kidding around. If the Japan prohibition is any indication, it seems shore leave drinking culture is poised to go down the hatch of history.
