I shot my first wild pig on Okinawa in 1957. Assigned to a small, rather independent, Army Security Agency detachment we lived and worked more like the infamous M*A*S*H* unit from television than a supposedly super-secret electronic spy outfit.
Somewhere our unit scrounger, Sid Bucholz, came up with an M2 automatic .30-caliber carbine as opposed to the M1 semi-automatic carbine that was standard field issue.
We never went into the field with the M1s. We would occasionally be assigned an officer who thought we should have an inspection. Then we would have to claim our carbines from the armory that Bucholz kept his eye on and clean them. They were never used for anything else unless we snuck them out for a pig hunt, not particularly sanctioned by either the U.S. Army or our hosts – the Japanese and the Okinawans whom the Japanese claimed.
I’m not sure who all took me on my first wild pig shoot down into the hills and plateaus of southern Okinawa, the last area bitterly defended by the Japanese in the last great battle of World War II. It probably was Ron Stash, Jerry Beingesser and Bucholz aboard our unit jeep that someone had nicknamed Murphy.
Stash had to be the driver. He was always the driver. He was a crazy man at the wheel. Stash knew every back road, abandoned rail bed, and old tank track on the surface of Okinawa.
I was in the passenger seat, windshield folded down, armed with the M2, selector set on automatic. Someone spotted a wild pig. Stash cut across a plateau between two small hills in pursuit, herding the pig with the jeep.
He set me up with a shot of about 25 yards running parallel to the pig. One short burst of automatic fire from the carbine and the pig went head over heels. I was hooked on pig hunting for life.
I’m not sure what we did with that particular pig. Generally we traded anything we didn’t want to the native Okinawans for beer. I do remember eating wild pig on Okinawa cooked by Okinawan friends of Stash and Beingesser at one time or another. So maybe we ate the first one I killed, too.
By Dave Whitney