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DN: Well, describe, tell us about your, your service. When did you join?

EH: Well, I went in in 1943. Like I say, another fellow and I, we were both apprentice machinists, and the machinists were so hard to get, and they had trained us to do a lot of these tasks that nobody else knew how to do. And we didn't get called up, we weren't 4-F, and finally, we, the other guy, he worked swing shift, and I worked days, and he would take over my job when he'd come in. And, "We got to go in the service. We got to go in the service." Well, he says, "I want to fly." And I says, "So do I." Well, then, so then we debated back and forth, whether we were gonna go air force or in the navy. And the air force won out. So we had to call in sick one day, 'cause we had to go to Port Orchard and talk to the draft board down there about going in the service. Well, "The shipyard needs you there. You're gonna stay there." Says, "No, we want to go in the service." "Well, the only way you can do that is to sign voluntary induction." And he says, "You don't know where you're gonna go." But it's, we told him we wanted to get in, try to get in as, the cadet program. So they arranged it, and we then took sick leave to go to Seattle and for two days, we took nothing but tests from eight o'clock in the morning until four or five in the afternoon. Two, two days of... whew. And to be eligible, you had to have ninety-six percent or better, so we both got selected, we both left the same time, and I can still hear my mother. I walked from home down to the Eagledale ferry dock, got on the dock there, 'cause they had given us train tickets to go to Fort Lewis, and then on to Buckley Field in Colorado. And -- [laughs] -- I can still hear my mother, when I'm walkin' down the hill, goin': "Oh, they're taking my boy away. They're taking my boy away." [Laughs]

And that was, that was in November, and then I got to come home on a fifteen-day delay of route to go to Hammer Field. And wow, that was really something, because the physical training that you take, you're really exercising. And boy, I was in tip-top shape. And like I was telling my granddaughter, I says, I could pick those guys up and throw 'em around, you know. And... but got back on the train, went down to Hammer Field, turned right around and came back up to Ephrata. And we parked -- well, the nice thing about this is there was I don't know how many of us, and we were all privates, and they didn't have many trains for us, and so they had these old, old railroad cars with special cabins on 'em, rooms. They were the deluxe ones. But they had the old chandeliers hangin' up there. And that's, we had four cars, one was our dining car, and then... I don't know. But here we, we lived the Life of Riley, and the butler or whatever you want to call him, he'd come out with that white towel and wait on us. And here we, were living like kings. And they would hook us onto different trains heading north, and finally we got into Martinez, that's someplace in California, and they hooked us behind a, a group of infantrymen going up to Fort Lawton to be shipped overseas. And they were in this cattle car and we were in this plush deal. Oh... we could get off the train to do anything we wanted, and the officers couldn't even get off of their train, and they were complaining like crazy, 'cause here we were out running around and all these guys hangin' out the windows. [Laughs]

DN: Cussing you out.

EH: Yeah. And then they pulled us in, right in front of the ferry dock, downtown Seattle, and there we stayed for two days. Still living the Life of Riley. [Laughs]

DN: Life of Riley.

EH: And I called my mom, she says, "Where are you at?" I says, "I'm in Seattle." "I thought you went to California." I says, "I'm back up here, I'm goin' to Ephrata." "Well, where's that?" "That's somewheres out in the Columbia basin." So, and that, when I got out to Ephrata and got assigned, when I got my first pass, that's when I got on that bus, and that's where I met the two Koba boys at...

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.