Japan

Despite the recent problems with a few sailors on leave, the Navy plans to keep using the 7th Fleet’s Exceptional Sailor Program, a three-year-old policy that affords lower-ranking sailors more liberty options in return for good behavior.

Sailors from the USS John S. McCain paid a visit last week to Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, where they played a game of hoops with high school students and helped dig out a school for the mentally challenged from more than 6 feet of snow.

Using a whiskey bottle, a business card and some rudimentary carpentry, Lt. Col. Eugene J. McNamara found a way to be remembered.

The fate of Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins — a U.S. soldier believed to have defected by walking across the border into North Korea during a 1965 Demilitarized Zone patrol — could go one of several routes, said lawyers and others observing the case.

The Marines had landed, along with more than 29,000 screaming, yellow-and-white streamer-waving Japanese and American fans, on Monday to take in the annual East vs. West college All-Star football matchup in the 1989 Ricoh-Japan Bowl.

Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy Friday was to confront Indonesian President Sukarno here and "express concern" over Sukarno's relations with the newly-formed Malaysian Federation.