<Begin Segment 22>

SF: Did you do that partly because of patriotism or wanted to make a contribution to the war effort? I mean --

JF: What was that?

SF: To go through the rigorous training of OCS is probably the hardest way to earn a pair of --

JF: That was just part of, part of the way of getting to be an officer, yeah. A lot of people didn't make it, but then a lot of people did. But that was, that was as strict a control as I've ever been under, I think, other than being in jail. I've never been in jail, but that, I mean, they regulated every bit of time we had until about eight o'clock at night. And about from eight to ten, you were pretty much free to do what you wanted to do, but you were so dammed tired you couldn't do anything. Your level of energy was way down. I mean, I think one, one sign of it was kind of, something that I'll never forget is seeing people, fellow officer candidates, eating these huge chocolate bars, those big size Hershey bars, just eat one of those like you would an ordinary candy bar. Eat the whole damn thing. I mean, that on top of a fair, fairly substantial dinner. [Coughs] Excuse me -- but that, that was common because you were so tired all the time. You needed the energy.

But they, we had, we had two, two what we call tac officers, tactical officers, who were there all the time to make sure we didn't goof up. I mean, inspection after inspection of different kinds, different, different... one of the, one of the craziest things I -- in our senior month I was a platoon lieutenant, and I was in charge of the barracks. And this officer came around to -- this was a captain, he was a big wheel then -- came around to inspect our barracks and everything else, particularly us. And I'll never forget, we, I called barracks to order and got to attention. And he went through, we were going up the stairs to the second floor, and he said, "Mr. Frisino, are all your men wearing garters?" I said, "I think so, Sir. Yes." He said, "Well, let's see." I got upstairs, called everybody to attention. He said, "Let's inspect for garters." So I called everybody to attention. I says, "Left leg, raise." Everybody raises their leg. "Pull up slacks, pull." Everybody pulls up their slacks. "Legs down, let go slacks, feet down." And everybody had garters on. He just kind of looked at me because he thought sure he was going to catch me. That was the craziest thing I think I've done as an officer. But any rate, we proved our point.

But you only needed ten demerits to be flunked out of school, and they were fairly easy to come by. I think I had a total of four, something like that. But if they wanted to, they wanted to get rid of somebody, they could do it in very much of a hurry.

SF: So going through that kind of rigorous training, did you become more patriotic, or well, how did it affect you?

JF: I don't know whether I ever thought of patriotic or not. I don't think so. It's just something else to put up with. I mean, you've been in the army long enough to know -- I was in the army two and a half years at this time -- so I was in there long enough to know that you had to put up with a certain amount of BS in order to get anywhere. And that's, that's the way it was. But you had to be very careful at OCS in everything you said and did. We had this one fellow, first of all, he told you, "We never want to hear the words 'in our old outfit. In our old outfit, we didn't do it this way. We did it this way.' We never want to hear that. We never want to hear any complaints about the officers." "We never..." a whole list of things.

So this guy, who was kind of a talkative character, he was kind of a pain in the butt at times. But any rate, the officer made a statement about, officer teaching us about the M-1 or something, I think it was the M-1 rifle, made a statement about what happens to the M-1 in certain conditions. And this guy raises his hand, and he says, "Wrong, sir." Boy, if you don't think that brought everybody to attention. He says, "In our outfit, we never had a rifle break down because of that reason." And the officer just looked at him and said, "Mr. Benchley" -- whatever the hell his name was -- he says, "First of all, you never tell an officer he's wrong. Second of all, you never refer to what happened in your old outfit. And thirdly, I've got statistics here that show this." And he was gone the next day. It's just that fast. They, they didn't put up with anybody who was screwing around with the system. It was his own, his own ignorance. You never, everybody's head just popped when he said, "You're wrong, sir." I'll never forget that. I mean, it was just so, so stupid on his part to start up something like that.

JB: Almost a conscious decision on his part.

JF: Yeah, yeah. And then we had this cooking, these teachers teaching us about cooking. And all of these fellows, it was, it was kind of a game. They, they were very, very strict at first, 'til they got your attention, and then maybe after three or four days they would ease up a little bit. And this one fellow, this one teacher was particularly strict. And one day he said, "Well," he said, "the best way to cook kidneys is to boil the piss out of them." And everybody, we didn't know whether to laugh or not. And he says, "You can laugh." [Laughs] But I mean, all these, all of these crazy things that, that, made you so absolutely aware of what you were doing. I mean, how quickly you could get into trouble. Because no matter what your rank was -- I was a tech sergeant -- if I'd have failed out, I would have gone back as a private to some outfit. I would've, I'd, you'd lose your rank and the whole schmear, which is something to consider.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.