<Begin Segment 23>

AI: Well, so then, as far as your graduation from college, that was in 1961 then?

RS: Right.

AI: And I think you mentioned that was in August of '61?

RS: Right.

AI: In commercial design?

RS: Right.

AI: And so then what happens next?

RS: Well, I had to, I had this military service facing me. And so I remember I needed a job until I went into the military service. And I think the military service obligation was in April, if I recall correctly. And so I got a job working as that gardener, again. I think I was working for someone else this time. It was installing sprinkler systems, and did that until that April. And then I was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to my officer's basic training and spent, I believe, two months there.

AI: Tell me about that, about that whole experience. For one thing, being in Fort Sill, in Oklahoma.

RS: Yeah, it was -- one of the most interesting things that happened to me happened the day before I had to check in, and it was the small town of Lawton, Oklahoma. And I actually got to Lawton a day before I had to, so I checked into a motel, instead of checking into the base, because I was a day early. And I was wandering the streets that evening, just sort of checking Lawton out. I mean, it felt strange, Oklahoma, I'd never been there, never been to that part of the country. It was all different for me. And I was walking down the street and this Native American guy, that was obviously intoxicated, came up to me and he asked me if I was Indian. And I didn't answer him. And he said, "You're Kiowa, aren't you?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Come on, let me show you where all the Kiowas drink in this town." And so we walked down to this really sleazy tavern and he introduced me to all of his Kiowa friends, and they were all really drunk, and I don't think they could see that I wasn't Indian. I mean, they knew I wasn't white, so maybe everyone not white looked Indian to them or something. And so after a couple of hours or something I was as drunk as they were. And then I met the chief of the local Kiowa Nation, who came in. So we all sat around there. And there must've been, like, ten of us, and we're all singing songs and everything else. And I was sort of an honorary Kiowa, and the chief invited me to this "festival of the maidens" that they have. And he -- up until recently I had this note that he had written me and I kept for all these years inviting me to this thing with directions on how to get there and everything. And he was trying to tell me that it was like this orgy or something, but I mean, we were all really loaded at that point. And so I drank with them until one by one they started falling out and leaving, going back and everything. And they tried to get me to go back to the res with them, but I said no, I gotta get back, 'cause I have to get up in the morning and check in.

And, so that was one of the more interesting experiences of my, of my two months of basic, because basic training itself was very, very rigorous, and it was class after class on gunnery, and, because I was a second lieutenant in the artillery. And there were two things we had to learn: number one was how to direct fire as a forward observer, and the other one was how to put that information on the guns as a gunnery officer and shoot the guns. And it was difficult. It was extremely difficult, for me. And I had a very hard time in gunnery school. And it wasn't until I actually got into the service that it all came together and then I excelled in it. It was really strange how that happened.

AI: Well, excuse me. When you were in, still at Fort Sill, were you worried that you would make some terrible mistake in artillery that... a mistake that might cause damage or lives?

RS: No, no. Still at that point I, I just sort of blindly thought, "Well, they'll teach me not to make mistakes." As it turns out, we did. But at that point, no, that thought never really entered into my head. And part of it was because I didn't understand the big scope of how this all fit in. There was something missing in the training that I was getting, something that was just totally missing. And so I remember a couple of weeks from graduation we were waiting for our orders as to where we were going after that. And we had choices of where we wanted to go stateside and where we wanted to go internationally. And I said I wanted to go international, but my first choice was go the Caribbeans. My second choice was to go to Europe. My third choice was to go to Alaska, and my fourth choice to go to the Far East, because I knew that everyone going to the Far East was going to Korea. And so that was my last choice. So that's what I had submitted. I got Korea, my last choice. And it was at a time when they used to discriminate as to where they sent people. And I found that out -- I'm getting a little ahead of my time -- but I found that out when I got there and found that the average grade level of education in my unit was four-and-a-half years. So, it was a mostly African American battalion. Most of them never went to grade school, some that did. We had very few that graduated from high school, but the average was four point five.

AI: Grades --

RS: Yeah.

AI: -- of school.

RS: That they had completed. Yeah. And here I was, a non-white, was gunnery officer of this group. And I didn't really realize or put that in perspective until I rotated back to the States and I was put on a general staff, the commanding general of Fort Lewis. And everyone in the office had a Ph.D. And that's where they were loading up. So, being in Korea at a time like that, we had a real discipline problem, a real discipline problem. And there were ways that we were taught to deal with that discipline. And we did it through our first sergeant. And when someone wasn't paying attention or got out of line, we had the first sergeant take that person out the woodshed and smack 'em to get their attention. And this was the only thing that was understood out there. And that's how we ran our whole unit was physically, violence. And it was a continuing, ongoing thing for thirteen months. I assumed that's what the whole army was like and that's how things were done. It wasn't until I rotated back that I realized that we were put in this sort of extreme situation like that, discriminatory situation.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.