Singapore tattoos a favorite for sailors

Associated Press

SINGAPORE – Crewmen from a U.S. Navy warship that took part in the first military strikes against Afghanistan are on shore leave in Singapore picking up the traditional souvenir of seafarers – tattoos.

“This is a little trinket from my Singapore trip,” said USS Russell Fire Controlman 2nd Class Scott Bouchard. The 23-year-old sailor from Victorville, Calif., had his name tattooed across his lower back.

Tattoo parlors in the city state are reporting a steady flow of sailors this week from the USS O’Brien – a Spruance-class destroyer that took part in the strikes last month – and from the destroyer USS Russell, also docked in Singapore.

A tattoo at Body Artist Nick Lim’s Exotic Tattoos shop costs anywhere from $27 to $2,740.

Ensign Mark Rice, 24, on leave from the O’Brien, was at the famous Johnny Two Thumbs parlor, where he got his first tattoo.

“My mom would kill me if she knew,” said Rice, from Weddington, N.C.

He chose a Chinese character for his name on his upper right arm. The cost: $44.

The O’Brien, based in Yokosuka, Japan, was part of a flotilla of 40 American and British ships and submarines that launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, gravity bombs and computer-guided bombs from positions in the Arabian Sea on Oct. 7, according to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C.

U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan are aimed at forcing Afghanistan’s Taliban to hand over Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, whom Washington accuses of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The USS Russell, based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, left for a six-month deployment in October, but the Navy has kept its destination secret. The Russell was scheduled for the deployment before the terror attacks.

More than 100 U.S. Navy ships call at Singapore each year. The wealthy Southeast Asian city state recently completed building a new port where U.S. aircraft carriers can dock portside.

Singapore – home to a U.S. Navy logistics unit – has voiced strong support for the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism. The country has strong military and economic ties with the United States.