The barbed-wire fence in the background separated AF base residents from Japanese civilians. Doug and I were forbidden to go beyond the fence but, in fact, we often crawled through it to play with the Japanese kids and got along quite well with them in spite of our language differences. One day, upon returning we caught our pants in the barbs and were unable to free ourselves. Doug's mother heard our screams, spanked us in full view of the Japanese kids before untangling Doug and marching him off to additional punishment. I was left hanging until my screams alerted my mother who eventually rescued me. I recall that this humiliating experience did nothing to deter our efforts to make allies out of the Japanese.