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AM: Well, anyway, so that's, that the job that I had. And I had that for about two years, and in 1950, was when the Korean War started. By this time, I had been married to an Air Force officer, and I had the luxury of quitting my job and then volunteering to work for the Tokyo General Army Hospital. Because the wounded were coming in in droves, and they were asking for volunteers who knew anything about medical terminology. So I was immediately assigned to the orthopedic, general who was in charge of orthopedic surgery, and so that's the job that I had.

And again, this is my second experience with the collateral damage in war, and cost to human beings. Now remember, I got there in 194-, December of 1947, and January of 1948 was the two months that I remember. Tokyo was still absolutely leveled, there was nothing, no building, no nothing. The only thing they had was the railroad station -- I don't know how that survived considering that everything else was damaged. They had the General MacArthur's headquarters building, it was the Dai-Ichi building, it was called, it's an insurance company building, that was not destroyed. It was this selective bombing that took place, that saved some buildings but destroyed others. The people who suffered the most were the ordinary people whose homes were just completely decimated, firebombed. So I saw Tokyo in a time, end of '48 -- I mean, end of '47, December of '47 is when I got there, to the early months in January, when there was nothing. I mean, it was just completely leveled, and occasionally you'd see a building still standing, and all I could think of is, "How did they manage to destroy everything but not destroy this building?" Very targeted bombing, obviously. But I saw what it meant... what war means is the loss of human dignity, the right to live safely, the right to be able to find food, have food, lose the right to a safe home, a place to sleep, all of those things are gone. So this is sort of the beginning of my beginning to question war and what that meant. Don't forget, I'm still married to an Air Force officer at this point. But my biggest, my biggest question was, "How can you target human beings who are women and children?" We're not talking about hand-to-hand combat, we're talking about children and women who are, who suffer the most from war. So that sort of began my journey into looking at why I was opposed to war, why I was a pacifist.

I was not a Quaker at that time, I was still a practicing Roman Catholic, and the Roman Catholic Church was obviously in favor of doing things to Asians, who were "bad people." So for me, the, life in Japan at that time was a complicated one. Because on the one hand, I was one of the -- although I looked like everybody else, I was taller than everyone else. So most of the women I was much taller than, sometimes even the men, and I'm only 5'2". For me then to suddenly find myself in a place where people were destitute, and enough that this woman gave me this thing because she was thanking me for some things that I had done for her. It was nothing, I mean, it was just nothing, but she said it was the only thing she could give me that she had. And it was at some cost, when I look -- when I look at this, I think of the woman and I think, "This must have been an incredible parting for her."

<End Segment 22> - Copyright ©2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.