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For her feature story, “Let’s Roll Play,” Nina Shapiro spent some time

Published 7:00 am Monday, September 24, 2012

In planning the reenactments, Josh Warren combines his experience in theater and his five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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In planning the reenactments, Josh Warren combines his experience in theater and his five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In planning the reenactments, Josh Warren combines his experience in theater and his five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some 20 guys, as young as 12 and as old as 42, have come to a thickly wooded, privately owned parcel of land on Fox Island, just west of Gig Harbor, to pretend they're in the Vietnamese jungle, on a mission to win the hearts and minds of the locals while training them to battle the Vietcong and North Vietnamese.
The Fox Island event, put on by a Tacoma company called Battlesim, is small but intense. The guys, who have paid $40 each, show up in Vietnam-era fatigues, tiger-striped or monochrome olive drab, some with helmets decorated, '60s style, with peace signs.
Battlesim started six years ago with World War II simulations.
Their weapons: BB guns that look so realistic, even police can't tell they're not the real thing.
That resemblance has fueled the popularity of these Airsoft guns, a name given them by the Japanese, who first produced them, presumably because the BBs shot by these guns have a relatively soft impact.
What Airsoft guns lack in ferocity, they make up for in coolness, as gun lovers see it.
They precisely replicate real models, whether current, like the A4 submachine gun used now in Iraq; a historical gun, like the M16 of Vietnam days; or the ever-popular AK-47. So while traditional BB guns were the exclusive domain of kids, grown men take up Airsoft as well, and it's gaining ground on paintball as the way would-be, and even real, soldiers like to shoot at each other.
Critics attack Airsoft as dangerous, but enthusiasts present it as an activity as wholesome as the Boy Scouts.
Either way, it has evolved from a few guys shooting at each other in the woods to, at times, elaborate events that can draw hundreds.

For her feature story, “Let’s Roll Play,” Nina Shapiro spent some time with a group of men, age 12 to 42, participating in a Vietnam War simulation at a private parcel of land on Fox Island. Read her entire story here.Published on July 30, 2008

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