The Cuban missle crisis of the East

In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war after American spy planes discovered that the Kremlin had stationed medium-range atomic missiles on the communist island of Cuba in the Caribbean, barely over the horizon from Florida.

 Six months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, a parallel drama had played out on the other side of the world as the U.S. brought near-identical missiles to the ones the Russians stationed on Cuba to another small island — Okinawa.

 However, considering the apocalyptic power at their fingertips, life within the missile sites was terrifyingly mundane. To pass the time, the men studied correspondence classes, played endless rounds of pinochle and compared notes on the shows they'd seen recently on the bases' nightclubs — including a (then) little-known band called The Supremes. The missileers had also been tasked by American manufacturers to field test a new gadget — microwave ovens. Bordne remembers, "They only came with one setting, so meat came out like shoe leather and the mashed potatoes had ice cubes in the middle."

Still in the same seven-member teams from Lowry, the men began the work for which they'd been trained — "to defend the island, protect the institution of democracy and halt the spread of communism," explains Horn with an ironic chuckle.

The men's eight-hour shifts began with a briefing at the missile control center on Kadena Air Base to update them on the day's weather and the current geopolitical climate. Following this, the crews drove to Bolo Point where, upon their arrival, they'd be met by an escort from the previous shift with the latest password. "It was something simple like 'Apple' or '1324' or 'Mary had a little lamb.' But sometimes the escort would get distracted and forget it. That's when they'd send in the guard dogs to see if there was a problem," says Havemann.