<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So let's go back. So you had the applications for the merchant marines.

RM: That's right.

TI: It was, so that was your plans, and then your, your mother saw that.

RM: Interceded. And she put it this way: "Your sister got married and wouldn't go on." My, our sister was much brighter, quicker, than Roy or I, in school. She, it was a cinch for her, and she worked at Crefts. At, she, she had this job of selling jewelry, and she would bring it home and fix it. She was really good at it. Anyway, she, the minute she got out of high school, she married, just like my mother. And my brother ran off and joined the navy, and my mother was distraught over that. I was probably up on the farm with the Kodlas. And somebody, I don't know who, told me that my brother had enlisted in the navy. They'd read it in the paper, and so I, I thought, "Jeez, he didn't say a word about it, that he was gonna go get in the navy or anything." And so when I got home from the farm, he'd come home from boot camp, and I saw him off on the train.

TI: And that was hard for your mother? Your mother did not want him to --

RM: My mother was really nervous. Roy got into the SeaBees, he was in the landing party at Kwajalein, and she was really nervous. And I had lost an eye when I was thirteen in a blacksmith's shop with, got steel in the eye, and so I wasn't going to be drafted. The merchant marine would take me, I did know Morse code, telegraphy, I figured I could get -- from the Boy Scouts -- I figured I could make use of that in the merchant marine. And so, but anyway, came down to this night, it was a big decision I now know, 'cause we looked back, and she talked me into going to the university for a semester. And I went, and the rest, I guess, is pretty... I had such a great time, and the high school principal was astounded. I, my grades were, I didn't get a four-point the first time out, but I got really high grades. And they apparently reported those grades back, and he told my mother that, "Something really happened to your son." And it was. It was sort of the birth of knowledge. I just couldn't get enough of it. And I, and I worked there as a waiter in a sorority. I think I got ten dollars a month, and board. And did that for four years to get through.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.