<Begin Segment 23>

TI: During this first two-year tour of duty, your father was, although he had retired, was in Taiwan.

MH: Yes.

TI: And you mentioned earlier going to visit him. Can you describe that?

MH: Yes, I went down to visit my father and my mother, and my sister and her husband were also there. And her husband was part of the military advisory group that Dad had. And while we were there, the Generalissimo and Madame invited us all to dinner. So again, we renewed the acquaintance that I had earlier in China, and at that time, the Generalissimo said that he didn't want to see me back in Taiwan until I got married. [Laughs]

TI: Because the last time you saw him, he gave you those wedding gifts.

MH: Madame had given me this beautiful satin to make a wedding dress out of, and then I didn't get married.

TI: Now, describe that relationship. Did you ever continue to stay in touch?

MH: Madame continued to stay in touch with me, yes. I was very touched by that because... I don't know political motives too well, so whether it was because my dad was still so much a part of helping Chiang Kai-shek to stay Taiwan, and with, of course, a futile hope of returning to China. I don't know whether it was that or because she genuinely liked me.

TI: Well, at the end of this two-year tour of duty, you were then to return to Washington, D.C., but you took a different way back to D.C. Talk about that.

MH: After I, during that visit to Taiwan to visit my parents, I met these two young men who were almost near the end of their tour of duty. And so we decided to join forces and go back via Europe. And so I flew to... I've forgotten whether we met in Taiwan or, I guess we must have met in Hong Kong and continued our journey together, yes. Through, we visited Italy and Spain and France and England.

TI: Any, any memories from that trip that stand out?

MH: Yes. I, in Italy I went to Rome and Venice and Florence. I didn't particularly, I wasn't particularly interested in Venice which is probably not proper at all, but I just fell in love with Florence, wonderful place. And then we went to Spain, to Madrid, and I visited the Prado Museum. And the art there was so beautiful that actually, I preferred it to, to the Louvre, which seemed like a cold and distant place compared with the intimacy one got with the paintings in the Prado.

And also, one of the young men had this acquaintance in the, girl in the embassy, and she arranged for us to go out of town to a village to a bullfight. And so we went by train to this bullfight. And as we went along and this train was moving through the countryside, and I can't describe, I mean, I can't tell you why this was, but it was slowing down, and there was water coming from the train itself. I mean, apparently hot water coming off the train -- and I don't know how -- and these women were running out from their hillside cave homes with vessels to capture this water. This gave me such an incredible picture of Spain, you know, it was an arid area where this was happening, and that stuck in my mind. Then we reached the village where the bullfight was taking place, and sitting there watching the bull come out. I don't know what the assistants are called, the matadors, let's call them the matadors, were sticking their darts into the bull. And my escort turned to me and said, "Maynard, you've turned white and you're crying." And I wasn't even conscious of it. And so he took me away from the bullfight, we sat in the train station until the others came after the bullfight was over. [Laughs]

TI: And the, the crying was about what was happening to the bull?

MH: It must have been, yes.

TI: I've never been to one. I wonder how I would react.

MH: Yes.

TI: And so after Spain...

MH: Then we went to Paris, and Paris was, I wasn't all that impressed with it. And then we went to London, of course, I've always been so much interested in the whole British everything, and I'm a great reader of Kipling. Dad had a complete set of Kipling, and I practically grew up on Kipling. And so it was very interesting for me to be in England. I didn't get around too much there, but just London itself, and then it was time to come home, to come back to Washington, D.C.

TI: I'm curious, when you talked about going first to Japan, you felt this affinity to Japan, were there any European countries where you felt a similar affinity?

MH: No. The closest it came to it, well, I felt very, as I say, Florence I loved. I felt fairly close to it in England except there was a separation. Not like, not like Japan, not like just feeling at home, no.

TI: And so I'm curious, when you left Japan, on that first tour, did you think you would eventually return?

MH: The job that I was taking in Washington would eventually lead me to, and I knew that it would possibly lead me back to Japan. I hadn't planned on going back to Japan, but it would possibly lead me back there, yes.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.