Life in Oki and after Oki

Dan and I moved to Okinawa in August of 2005, it was busy from the beginning. Dan was constantly training and preparing for deployment. He was sent to mainland Japan many times and even back to the states for months of training. In May of 2006 he was deployed to Afghanistan and was gone until November of 2006, that was a stressful and difficult time I was constantly afraid for him and he had a hard time staying in contact with me and the boys. He called whenever he could and found ways to speak to the boys on their birthdays even when he was far away. When he came home it was back to training on and off the island of Okinawa, he was exhausted and so was I.

Back in the states Dan's Ex had remarried. She married another Marine and after we moved to Okinawa her new husband got out of the military and they moved to New York. She had two more children and she stayed in the Marine Corps Reserves. She was reactivated shortly after getting to New York and work numerous hours leaving all for of her children with her new husband. When Dan would call to talk to the boys he would often meet resistance with his Ex's new husband. It was, to say the least, incredibly difficult to communicate with the boys. We sent gifts for Christmas and birthdays but never knew if they received them.In the summer of 2008 we received a phone call from Dan's Ex, she told us her husband had beaten her and she was in the hospital. She told us that everyone was ok, that he had never hurt the boys and that she was going to leave him. About one month later she called again to say that she was going to try and work it out with her husband, that they were going to counseling and that he was doing better.  We had a bad feeling about it but we had nothing to go off of but her word, and we had no evidence that she was lying to us, just our gut feeling.

Finally the time came for Dan and I to get out of the military. We knew that if we wanted to see the boys or to start a family we would need to leave the military, it was just too hard to try and juggle it all. I was Honorably discharged from the Navy in December of 2008 after serving 6 years and Dan was Honorably discharged from the Marine Corps in February 2009 after serving 10 years. We had a lot of excitement about buying our own home and finally seeing the boys after way too long!