<Begin Segment 25>

AI: Well, you had said --

RS: And my blood pressure on my outgoing physical was so high that it was high enough for them to put me in the hospital and not let me rotate back to the States. And I bribed the doctor to change it by giving him certain privileges in the officers' club to lower my blood pressure to the level where I wouldn't have to go to the hospital. And that I would be able to rotate back to the States.

AI: Wow.

RS: And I've always had a blood pressure problem. [Laughs]

AI: Now, I wanted to ask you about, you had mentioned about how that talk with Shiro Kashino had pretty much kept you on this path, from ROTC that led you up to this point where you were in Korea and under these conditions. I'm wondering, at any point, while you were there, did you actually feel that you were doing what, some of the things that Shiro had asked you to do, or envisioned that you would be doing, as an officer, as a Japanese American?

RS: No, not really. I think the big influence got me into it. And so I think as soon as I was committed to be in it, I really didn't think of myself as fulfilling any kind of destiny or that I was doing any kind of community service or anything. If there was any connection to that it might've had, had, it might have something to do with this need to excel. That might have been part of the whole community and not Shiro specifically, or the officer issue separately. But as a tactic to uphold some sort of respectability within that community.

One, one sort of humorous story -- remember I was telling about this girl that I was dating in college that made men out of boys? We had broken up when I left to go to Korea. And we had dated for three years. And it was just over, it was dead. But we didn't formally end it. She came when I went to the airport and she came with me and said goodbyes and everything and promised to write, weekly. And so, when we said our goodbyes and I was in Korea and I started receiving letters from her -- I was also writing with some of my other buddies, exchanging letters. And I got letters from two or three guys saying that I should know that she's seeing a lot of Bruce Lee. And Bruce Lee was always around that last year that, my senior year at Washington, that's when he was at the University of Washington, he was just like a real pain to be around, 'cause he was also always doing these tricks and knocking people over and everything else, which was all very entertaining initially -- but this is before he was a famous movie star. But he was teaching kung fu and, was humiliating our golden glove fighters on a weekly basis in his class, and doing everything one doesn't do if they're a martial artist. He was flaunting it. And he was taking on football players and humiliating 'em. And then all of us people used to play Hearts in the union, and everybody would groan because, here comes Bruce, and showing off. But anyway, so I started getting letters from friends, saying my girlfriend, ex-girlfriend was seeing a lot of Bruce. And you know, I'm eight thousand miles away, I mean, if I weren't, if I was living there, what was I gonna do? You couldn't even hit him with a hammer if his back was turned because he'd sense that and cut you in half before you did that. And so I just thought, I really don't care. And so when I eventually rotated back to the States, one of the first things I did was go over to her house to officially terminate our relationship. And I can honestly say it had nothing to do with Bruce because I think we had both at that point sort of left the relationship and unfortunately didn't officially terminate it before that point. But it was interesting because years later, we did terminate that relationship, but years later I saw her in Chinatown and I asked her, I said, "Were you and Bruce doing a thing while I was in Korea?" And she said, "Well, it's too bad he was impotent." [Laughs] And I just kind of laughed and started thinking about that. [Laughs] I never did get any more clarification on that. He actually married a woman that I went to high school with, Linda (Emery). But anyway, that was just kind of an interesting aside. I actually did a painting about that, with me in full military regalia and her and Bruce getting it on.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.