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TI: So you're there for only about a year, and then, you then go where?

MH: To, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Dad had been appointed as Commandant of the U.S. naval station there.

TI: And tell me about Guantanamo Bay. I mean, I think of, this is 2008, and Guantanamo Bay is...

MH: It's notorious.

TI: It's notorious. But I imagine it was very different.

MH: It was a little, actually, for the naval station there, it was a little backwater. And it was not a plum to have. But my father brought it up from where it had been, it had a series of not, of commandants who, in the Navy, weren't going anywhere. And he brought it up to standard. As a matter of fact he held, he held some naval exercises there. He got hold of a... what kind of boat? Not a gunboat, something similar, and used it to practice landings for his marine contingent, because he had a marine contingent there.

TI: So sort of like an amphibious kind of operation where...

MH: Yes, yes.

TI: ...from sea to land.

MH: Yes, because he was already war planning at that time. He had been planning for war against Japan from, at that time. Not that he was expecting it, but he was planning for it. And matter of fact, war in Europe, too. And so he was already dreaming up the exercises for what would be needed in event of war, as the Navy would have to supply people on either, from the Pacific or the Atlantic, whichever war was going on, the Navy would be completely involved in it.

TI: So this is interesting. So is this like the early planning for, like, the D-Day, Normandy, where they had those amphibious...

MH: Yes, and also for hitting Japan.

TI: In Japan where, again, the men were from ships going to land.

MH: Yes.

TI: And this was, back then, this was kind of the early planning, early experimentation.

MH: Yes, this was '30...

TI: '34.

MH: Yes, '34. Dad had already been starting -- well, he always did, was involved in planning.

TI: Fascinating, okay. So again, two years in Guantanamo.

MH: Oh, I had a lovely life there.

TI: And so tell me about it. What was that like?

MH: Well, we were, we were on a cliff, the naval station and all the regular things of the naval station, the barracks and everything were down level with the, with the bay. But the officers' quarters were up, up this flight of stairs to, on this cliff, and Dad's office is, when you went up the stairs, his offices were the first ones at the landing there. And they played reveille there every night, too. We would hear reveille every night. And then the, the officers' quarters on down this way. And then there was a place where we could swim, so you went down the stairs to this landing. It wasn't a dock, it was a float, I guess, we all went there at noontime to go swimming. And also, I used to clamber up and down the cliff in front of our house, and there were some flat rocks there and I would play down on those rocks. But I, or I'd go swimming.

And then I was given a pony by a person that Dad knew who was in business in Cuba, and I learned to ride. The Marines taught a bunch of us how to ride, and I had my dog -- my horse in the stable. The family all had, Dad had a big horse, Mother had a less big horse, my sister had a polo pony, and I had this little scrub pony, and we would go ride. Well, I went riding by myself, I got just obsessed with cowboys, and would play out all these cowboy dramas there. And they had, at that time, all these pulp magazines, and there were the cowboy magazines, and I actually bought those with my little allowance all the time. And actually wrote to a cowboy pen pal, and he kept writing back to me and sending me dried flowers and poems that he'd written. I wish I still had that, but I don't.

TI: What a great story. Were you able to ride on your own?

MH: Oh yes, oh yes. The naval station itself was enclosed, and so I was quite safe riding out into the hillsides, yes.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.