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TI: Because later on -- and this was sort of, you mentioned a ten-year period with the Grays, you did serve two years in the U.S. army.

CS: Right.

TI: And how did that come about? Were you drafted, or how did you get into the, the army?

CS: Well, it was part of my rebellion against Dr. Gray. [Laughs] I was registered in, with the draft board in Tallahassee, Florida, where the college was, Florida A&M University where Dr. Gray was president. Unknown to me, he had gotten me a deferment. So when I went to the draft board to find out why they had not drafted me, they pulled out the file and said I had a deferment. So I decided to go visit my parents in Lakeland, Florida, and I went to the draft board in Lakeland, and had my records transferred from Tallahassee, and signed a request for voluntary induction. And so I went back to Tallahassee, and I was working in the office, in the president's office at Florida A&M, and Dr. Gray was on a trip. I got my notice to report for induction, and I left a note on his desk that said, "Goodbye, I have gone to the army." [Laughs] And so that's what happened to me in 1945. And so I was drafted, in a sense, but I was drafted under a request for voluntary induction. And so I went into the army and was there, and...

TI: I'm curious; did you ever have a conversation with Dr. Gray about that decision?

CS: Oh, yeah. [Laughs]

TI: And how did that go? I'm just curious, it's such a good story. [Laughs]

CS: Well, it, it actually came when I asked him to provide me a readmission to school in order to get out of the army. And the war was over, and the army came out with a regulation that if you left college to come into the army, and you could get readmitted, you could get an immediate discharge. So I called Dr. Gray and asked him for readmission to Florida A&M University. And he never let me forget it, that even though I had literally run away from him by going into the army in the first place, that when I needed him, I called him to get him to get me out of the army by providing me readmission to college. [Laughs] And so, but my army experience wasn't bad, except that I really wanted to go into the army to engage in hand-to-hand combat with those "terrible Japanese." And the war was over in Europe in May, and the war was over in Japan in August. And I went in the army July 2nd. So here was I in this army with no war. And I, I never had a chance to be a combat person, because I was a court reporter in the army, and I headed a court-martial section in the army. And so the army people discovered that I was a champion shorthand writer, and that I had highly developed clerical skills. I had two years of college at that time, and so I was taken out of a regular unit where they carry rifles and march and do things like that, and was assigned to a headquarters unit where we were glorified clerical people. And I was made the head of a court-martial section within three weeks, and, through a combination of many things. The people who were running them were getting discharged, and they needed somebody with my skills to take over. So at age eighteen, I was a staff sergeant in the army and headed a court-martial section until I was discharged.

TI: Was this your first taste of, of sort of courtroom activities? Or did you see this before? I mean, I guess the question that I'm wondering is, is did this sort of encourage you to later on seek a legal career?

CS: Just the opposite. [Laughs] And the answer to the first question, I had never been in court. And so the army court-martial system, under the old court-martial system was slightly different than it is now. The court-martial system as I now know it is just as good as, or better than the civilian court system, but that's another story. But back in 1945 and 1946, the way court-martials were conducted was entirely different. In order to be, in fact, the head of the office, all you had to do was be an officer, and it didn't make any difference what kind of officer you were. At one time, the officer in charge of the section which I headed was a lawyer, a Harvard-trained lawyer. And that was fun working with him. And then when he was discharged, they assigned a captain to me who came out of a truck driving company. He was semi-illiterate, and I had to do all of his work for him. I would write up everything, and he was perfectly content to do that. But administering the court-martial system, as I did in those days, did not give me a good taste for the legal system. And so when I left the army, I had no intention whatever of going into law as a career, and it was only after I got into law as a career that I realized that there was some connection, maybe subtly, psychological connection, but not direct. And if my only experience had been that, and I had to decide, "Shall I go to law school or shall I not go to law school," I would have said, "No, I will not go to law school," because my experience as a head of a court-martial section did not impress me.

TI: Oh, that's interesting.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.