Philippine Bars, Girls--and Tight Security--Welcome U.S. Sailors

Ever since three Americans were ambushed and killed outside Clark Air Base east of here, the gates to the giant U.S. naval base at Subic Bay had been closed, and the nearby town of Olongapo quickly began to die.

Bar girls were pawning their jewelry and television sets. Bar owners thought seriously about selling out and moving on. In just one week’s time, local officials said, more than $1 million dollars in business had been lost.

But all that changed Thursday with the arrival of the aircraft carrier Midway and five support ships. For on board the ships were 6,545 Navy men who had been long at sea and had money to spend.

Under an arrangement worked out by Navy authorities and the mayor of Olongapo, the base gates were thrown open at precisely 12:30 p.m., and thousands of sailors, many of them in shorts and T-shirts, ran, jumped and whooped their way up Olongapo’s Magsaysay Boulevard--The Strip, it is called, 90 nightclubs and about 8,500 bar girls.

‘We Love You All!’

“Welcome ashore!” the girls called. “We love you all!”

It was no routine liberty. It underscored the nature of the United States’ relationship with its troubled former territory.

At a time when the government of President Corazon Aquino is sounding increasingly anti-American, and the lives of the thousands of Americans resident here are being threatened, the U.S. Navy showed just how strong the ties have become in the 41 years since the Philippines were given their independence.

Olongapo’s Mayor Ildefonso Arriola, who worked at the 30,000-acre naval base for 28 years before retiring, put it this way: “Let’s face it, the city of Olongapo exists because of the base. Without the base, there would be no such thing as Olongapo.”

Officials at the base, faced with the prospect of dealing with thousands of young and unmarried sailors, feared that base security might be threatened.

“It’s pretty simple, really,” said Tim Lanier, an airman from San Bernardino who was among the first off the Midway and onto the Magsaysay strip. “If they had kept everyone on base, there would no longer be any base. It would have been destroyed under the weight of stir-crazy sailors.”

It was Mayor Arriola who came up with the solution to the problem, at least for the short term. He said in an interview that he had been under tremendous pressure from local businessmen since the base commander, Adm. Thomas Lewin, ordered all U.S. personnel confined to the base or their off-base homes after the three men were killed near Clark Air Base and Communist guerrillas threatened to kill more Americans.

According to Arriola, Olongapo had already lost more than $1 million--the amount American servicemen usually spend here in a week’s time.

“Everyone was crying,” he said. “The girls, the bar owners, the market merchants--you name it. Everyone was going broke. We were in economic crisis. . . . The city was on the verge of defaulting on its electricity bill. So I called Adm. Lewin and told him we’d been under tremendous pressure the last five days. But I told him we have a plan--an elaborate security plan that will work.”

Arriola said he told the admiral that local men had volunteered to work without pay as street marshals, that the bar owners’ association had raised $15,000 to buy walkie-talkie radios, that the city police had been mobilized, and that the businessmen had agreed to seal off side streets leading to the strip.

‘Totally Secure Environment’

“We call it boxing,” Arriola said. “The idea was to create a self-contained and totally secure environment for the sailors--and to do it before the arrival of the Midway.”

According to Arriola and some of the Midway sailors, each of the 5,000 or so Navy men who come into town will spend $100 a day on four days of liberty.

“That’s roughly half a million dollars that we simply cannot live without,” Arriola said.

Less than 24 hours before the ships arrived, Adm. Lewin telephoned Arriola and agreed to the plan. They decided to test the plan, Arriola said, and for six hours Wednesday night the admiral opened the base gates and allowed base personnel to visit the “boxed-in” strip.

The test was deemed an overwhelming success. According to gate guards, 2,505 Americans visited the strip that night. According to Arriola, “the only problem was getting some of these people to leave and get back to the base before the 1:30 a.m. curfew.”

A base spokesman, Cmdr. James Van Sickle, said: “Our test . . . has proved that it can be successful. Nobody’s going to make you an absolute guarantee, but every precaution that can be taken is being taken. And, face it, how long can you stay bottled up anywhere? The overriding consideration was, can we safely allow these people to go out on liberty? If not, then we wouldn’t let them, because, regardless of their frustrations, we’re not going to put people out on the street if it isn’t safe.”

For Mayor Arriola, there was no question that the sailors would be safe. Because of the prosperity the base has brought Olongapo, he said, the city has been largely spared the infiltration by Communist guerrillas that has affected more than a fifth of the Philippines’ 40,000 cities and villages.

“The situation is different in Angeles,” Arriola said, referring to the city outside Clark Air Base where the guerrillas have been active and where the three Americans, two of them U.S. airmen, were killed.

“Besides,” he added, “the way we’ve got the area boxed off now, it is suicidal for anybody who tries to do anything bad or assassinate anybody in town here.”

None of the sailors interviewed as they left the base and headed for the strip expressed any fear for their safety. They said they had heard about the killings at Clark but were sure they were an aberration.

One of the men, Airman Victor (Skip) Rogers of Napa, Calif., was asked if he and his shipmates were so eager to get into town because of the bars and the girls of Olongapo, and he replied:

“The girls and the bars are in every port. Here it’s mainly the price.”

Tim Lanier, the airman from San Bernardino, put in: “That and the atmosphere. Here we’re welcome.”

After the week of gloomy silence, the men were welcome indeed.

Jose Go, manager of the New York Disco, which stands about 100 yards from the base’s main gate, said he had lost about $5,000 while the base was closed.

‘Everyone Is Smiling’

“The girls were all crying,” he said, “not just here but at all the bars. They were asking all the owners for financial assistance, just to keep from going hungry. But now everyone is smiling. We hired more girls for the next four days, just to make sure we’d have enough.”

As the bars came alive with sailors, Mayor Arriola too was smiling. He pointed to a map behind his desk that showed how close the Philippines is to the Soviet Union and the big Soviet naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

“You can say whatever you like about these (U.S.) bases and the negative effect they have on our society,” he said, “but the reality is that we cannot live without them. I’ll stand by these bases no matter what the price--political or otherwise. The minute these bases are gone, I guarantee you, the giant red bear from the north will be on us, and we’ll be gone.”