<Begin Segment 23>

TI: And then at some point, you decided to go public with this, I mean, to, yeah, to publicly tell your side. Was that something that you wanted to do, or was that something more that the lawyers thought you should do?

EW: Both. He, he suggested, and I thought about it, and I felt that it was something that I had to do, not only for myself, but for all the other soldiers out there who felt as I did. For a long time, I was very depressed, and I felt very hopeless and helpless. And it was only when I had taken solace in history, and that there have been others who have came before me, who felt as I did, that it gave me hope and inspiration to go on.

TI: Now, is there a particular person that comes to mind when you said that, in terms of someone that you read about that...

EW: Well, there was a captain named David Wiggins, he was a medical officer during the Persian Gulf War. And that's an entirely different story, but he, he strongly felt that he could not take part in the Persian Gulf War, and asked for conscientious objector status, he was granted it, and then it was taken away, then he was forced to go to Saudi Arabia, he went on a hunger strike and he was force fed. And he, he wanted to -- even though he was a doctor -- he wanted to show that he was there for, not just for military purposes, so he was treating Red Cross victims, and he was also treating the American soldiers, even though he was ordered not to.

TI: And so when you read about Dr. Wiggins' story, what feelings did you feel, feel after reading that?

EW: Well, one, you feel that you're not alone, and two, you feel you can empower yourself, that you still have a choice to do something. I mean, he, before, prior to the invasion, Desert Storm, he stood out and put his hand out in front of the tanks, like Tiananmen Square, and he held up a convoy for hours, that was supposed to go out. And of course, he was court-martialed for that and all kinds of other things. But basically, he was saying that you, you have a choice no matter what. And I told myself that. Yeah, really in life, you're granted one inalienable right, and that is the right to choose, free will. And once you take that away from yourself and you say, "Oh, well, because I'm in the military, or because I wear the uniform or I have a duty to my, to other people or to an institution," you say, "I don't have a choice." But you do, you always have a choice. And no matter what the consequence is, only you can take away that freedom that you have. And when I realized this, I gave myself back that freedom, that choice, and it was, it was an overwhelming feeling.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.