July 14, 1970: My First Money Run to Seoul
	July 5, 1970: A Tour of Bongilcheon
	Return to the Index for 1970

Two weeks ago, I gave you a tour of the interior of Camp Howze, and last week we walked through the nearby town of Bongilcheon. Today, I want to take a look at "The Ville", which is our name for the collection of houses and buildings that has grown up over the years right outside our front gate, and I also want to give you some additional views of Camp Howze.

Note from the present:
I also want to show you, in detail, what Camp Howze looks like at the time this page is being created (2022), and give you some additional information as to what happened to Camp Howze in the years since my tour here.

Today, I am taking some pictures outside Camp Howze proper, and I will also be heading up to my BOQ for some more pictures of the surrounding hills taken from there.

The first thing I did today was to walk out the gate and all the way down the entry road to the highway. Then I crossed the highway out into the rice paddies to take a couple of pictures of the paddies and of some of the local farmers working in them.

This picture looks toward Camp Howze from way out in the rice fields across the road, and you can see most of the camp area here. I live on the top of the hill at right.

These are the rice fields across the road from Camp Howze. This is a classic view. All the farmers help in each other's fields. The rice is about 2 months old, now, and is getting high. There's some corn in the background.

I came back in towards the camp, crossing the highway and walking back towards the camp along the entry road. I am almost to the end of that road, and can now get a detailed view of the camp.

For my first picture, at left, I walked out the gate and down the entry road partway to the highway, just far enough so that I could look back and get most of the portion of Camp Howze that was facing me into a single picture. In this photo, you can see many of the newer buildings at Camp Howze. Most of the yellow, multi-story buildings are enlisted housing. I have been inside one of these buildings, and inside they look very much like college dormitories, with single and double rooms and large shared washrooms.

Many of the quonset hut staff buildings that you saw in my tour a few pages ago are not quite visible in this picture. Generally, though, they are at the right side of this picture but further back, behind the to long buildings (one yellow and one green quonset) that you see towards what appears to be the top of the hill. There is kind of a valley back there in which these staff offices are nestled.

You can just see the Officers' Club, the green building just visible towards the top of the ridge just above that yellow concrete building with the row of high windows. My own BOQ is behind the trees at the top of that hill at the right.

But one thing I want you to notice in this picture are the buildings in the foreground. These are buildings erected and occupied by Koreans. Many of them work at Camp Howze, others may provide services for camp personnel. I know some enlisted personnel who have arranged for these Koreans to do their laundry or provide other services- including, if we can be frank, sex work.

These buildings and houses that are clustered around the entrance to the camp can be found outside any US Military installation of any size in Korea, as all of them employ Korean civilians for various purposes. Many of the houses you see here are owned by those civilian workers.

There is a somewhat darker side evidenced here as well, as you can see in this picture, taken just outside the actual front gate. The Moon Club is a bar run by Koreans and patronized almost exclusively by enlisted soldiers from Camp Howze. Right next to it is an agency that specializes in Korean-American marriages.

Why such an office here? Well, the bar is also the workplace of "Hostesses"- a euphemism for sex workers. While the enlisted men have their own club facility on post, it is, of course, not staffed with women. So the Moon Club is an outlet for many soldiers, and not a few of them end up making their liaisons permanent. I might mention that a few personnel have brought their wives to Korea; almost all of these are field-grade officers and above. But almost all of these wives live in Seoul, and see their husbands on weekends. Occasionally, some of them will come to Camp Howze, and so you will occasionally see someone's wife in the Officers' Club.

Past all of these civilian buildings, one comes to the front gate for Camp Howze. It is manned around the clock- usually by an American serviceman, but sometimes by a senior member of the KATUSA (Korean soldiers in service to the US Army).

Just to the right of the gate, and outside it, is the official sign for the Headquarters, Second Division.

Note from the present:
The rest of my pictures today were taken inside Camp Howze, and we'll get to them in a minute. First, since I have the ability today to do so, I want to show you what is left of Camp Howze- which isn't much.

In the scrollable window at left, I have put an aerial view of the site of the former Camp Howze. When the page loads, the image may be quite small, and so if you click on it with your mouse or finger, it should expand to fit the scrollable window. Begin at the top of the image, and you will see the highway southwest of the camp that goes to Seoul and Bongilcheon.

As you scroll down the image (which has been oriented with southwest at the top for convenience) you will see the Camp Howze Entry Road, which still exists, and the buildings just outside the camp gates. Of course, the buildings that were actually there in 1970 have likely mostly been replaced.

Continuing down, only a few things remain from 1970. The entry gate is still there, but it is now a gate into an area of large homes. I am told that the original blue sign is still present, as is the row of flagpoles along the front wall, but that is about it.

As you scroll down, I have marked the former location of some of the buildings that you saw in my tour of the camp a couple of pages ago; none of these structures, as near as I can tell, still exist, but then it has been over a half-century!

Anyway, you might find the aerial view of the site today to be interesting; I certainly do.

One of the things labeled on the aerial view was a kind of sign that was installed on a hillside right down by the parade ground. That hillside installation doesn't seem to be there anymore, but here is a picture I took of it today:

In that picture above, the soldier is not American, but rather a Korean KATUSA, one of the Koreans who manned the entry gate around the clock. It's not that Camp Howze was in danger of being invaded by North Koreans, but old habits die hard.

Note from the present:
I have another interesting item to include on this page, and I ran across it by chance when I was sleuthing out where, exactly, Camp Howze had been. It was a very interesting article from a Korean newspaper that talked about the Koreans who lived just outside Howze and who worked in the camp itself. It also had a picture of the row of flagpoles, and they looked just as I remembered them. I think you will find the article interesting, and it is in the scrollabe window below. Remember, if the image doesn't fill the window, just click or tap on it to enlarge it:

Almost all the rest of the pictures I took today were from up at our BOQ, but on the way up there I did get a good view of the BOQ itself.

To get the picture at left, I walked around the road that used to run in front of the theatre and chapel and which curved back around in a big circle going through the supply depot and past the chaplain's office. From there, I could look across the small valley in a southerly direction

In the picture at left, you can actually see our BOQ at the very top of the hill, and perhaps this picture, more than any other, will give you an idea of the catbird seat we find ourselves in. (We also get better AFKN radio reception than just about anywhere else in the camp.) The Officers' Club is hidden in the trees below and to the left of our BOQ in the picture.

Before heading over and up the hill to the BOQ, I followed a little path that led up behind the chaplain's office to one of the camp water towers, and I took a picture (albeit a fuzzy one) of the land to north of Camp Howze.

A little while later I was back at the BOQ, and the rest of today's pictures were taken from there. I think I was lucky to live up at the top of the hill because the views were so good. There were many times I just sat our on our back patio when the weather was good, and listened to music or read a book.

How very delicate and pastoral the countryside appears. In reality it conceals a struggle between nature and man- and among men as well. You are looking North along the age-old invasion route.

This view looks generally south towards Seoul

The is a dirt road that runs along the top of the circle of hills that forms the back of Camp Howze. The road is used to fill the water towers and also maintain the fence and guard towers. There is also a helipad up here. For my last two pictures, I walked around that road a ways.

Korea is actually quite beautiful- at least in the early summer when everything is lush and green.

Here is my home for the next year, literally on top of our little world.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	July 14, 1970: My First Money Run to Seoul
	July 5, 1970: A Tour of Bongilcheon
	Return to Index for 1970