Densho Digital Archive - Maynard Horiuchi Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Okay, so Maynard, we're here, today is Thursday, November 20, 2008, and we're on the, in Sonoma, at the home of Maynard Cooke Horiuchi. And so, Maynard, I'm going to start, can you tell me where and when you were born?

MH: I was born in Vallejo, California, on August 8, 1925.

TI: So when you were born, were you born in a hospital or a midwife?

MH: I was born in a hospital.

TI: And so let me first, well, let me ask you, so what was your full name given to you at birth?

MH: My full name given to me at birth was supposed to be Mary Louise Cooke, but I looked so much like my father when I was born, that they named me Mary Maynard instead. And since my father called my mother Mary -- although normally she was known as Louise by everyone else, but he called her Mary -- they had to call me Maynard. It was too confusing to have two Marys in the household.

TI: So Maynard, for a woman, is that an unusual name?

MH: Yes.

TI: Did you ever find other women named Maynard?

MH: Indeed, it's very unusual. I was actually, when I was in high school, was assigned to the boys' gyms until they looked at me, and that was that. [Laughs]

TI: That's, that a good story. So let's talk a little bit about your father and your father's side. Can you tell me when your father's side came to the United States, the family?

MH: They came, at least the most ancestral one came on the Mayflower, and his name was William White.

TI: And do you have any sense of how many generations back that was?

MH: Oh, goodness, I'm sorry.

TI: So this would be back in the...

MH: 1620s.

TI: 1620s, so that's... so you can trace your roots all the way back to the Mayflower.

MH: Yes. On that, on that particular line, yes. And also back to an Irish immigrant to the U.S., or what was the U.S., to America at that time, who was, "took the king's shilling," which meant he joined the British army, because he "loved above his station," which means he loved a girl who was socially quite a bit higher than he was. And he, he later started, after serving there in the New York area, he started a community there which was a more liberal community than the Dutch particularly liked. So they really tried to pressure him quite a bit in that community.

TI: And where was this community located?

MH: It was in New York state somewhere. I have the written records about where it was.

TI: And do you know about what time, what year this would be?

MH: Well, this was before the American Revolution, but not too long before. And he, actually, he married the daughter of one of the Dutch settlers in New York City, who was a Bleecker, and Bleecker Street in New York was named after that family.

TI: So I'm curious, was this the same woman that he was in love with when he decided to join?

MH: No, no.

TI: So this was someone else.

MH: That was an Irish lass.

TI: Okay, that's good.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So let's get closer to, to today in terms of, how about your grandfather?

MH: My grandfather, actually, I think he trained as a lawyer, and he later became the mayor of Fort Smith, Arkansas. And then he ran a dairy there in the Fort Smith area also. Now, his, his wife was a Luce, and the Luce family is important in our family because her uncle, I guess it was, was Admiral Luce, who started the Naval War College. And also, I think it was her father who was an Indian agent. He was a lawyer, and this, he was, he went after a trader who was supplying the Indians with liquor, and he went and emptied all the liquor this guy was going to transport into this, into the river. And the man came to his office with a gun to shoot him, and he threw a bowie knife at him and killed him. And was later put on trial for it, but exonerated completely for doing this.

TI: And again, what was the relationship of this --

MH: I think this was my, my grandmother's, my grandmother's uncle, I think.

TI: Okay, so your great grandfather's brother, that'd be the Luce connection?

MH: I guess that, yes, that must have been it, uh-huh.

TI: Okay. So very, very long, colorful family histories.

MH: Yes. And also, my... let's see now, my Great Grandfather Cooke -- no, my Great Grandfather Luce, excuse me. This is my Grandmother Cooke's father, Great Grandfather Luce, was on the, on the Southern side in the Civil War. And at that point, the other family, the family that lived up north, the rest of the Luces up there, ran him out of the Navy -- I mean, ran him out of the family heritage.

TI: Because he was on the Southern side?

MH: Because he was on the Southern side.

TI: And it's interesting when you say that, I mean, the South lost. And why would they run him out?

MH: Because they were against slavery, and he being on the Southern side, they couldn't stand that.

TI: And this was the same great grandfather that they named the college after?

MH: No. That was the great-great uncle.

TI: Got it.

MH: There was no college after Luce. There's a building in the Naval Academy in Annapolis that is named after Admiral Luce.

TI: Okay. And then one more time, so Admiral Luce was, how was Admiral Luce related to you?

MH: He was the great-great-great uncle, I guess, I'm not quite sure where it ties in.

TI: Good, okay. So, again, what I'm just curious about is you have this long lineage. It's almost like in terms of, through your family's lineage, you could trace American history. From the Mayflower, you talked about the Civil War, and then all these great events in American history. And as we'll go through, it goes through World War II also.

MH: Yes, indeed.

TI: So very interesting.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So let's go to your life a little bit more. So you were born in Vallejo, California, in 1925. Tell me about, sort of, your first memories. Where were you when you began to really remember things?

MH: Washington, D.C. My father was on duty there at the Naval Department, and we lived in Chevy Chase, and I was, let's see, that was probably, I was probably three to five years old there, I think. And then my sister Charlotte was born there.

TI: And do you know what influenced your father to, to join the Navy?

MH: It's very interesting. He was, he graduated from college at a very young age, as we've said. And he was going to become a civil engineer, working on the roads in, I guess, Arkansas, which is where he was born. And then I think it was through knowing of my great-great uncle, Admiral Luce, that he became more interested in the Navy. And decided -- and also, my grandmother said that, "You should serve your country and you should go into the Navy." And so through Admiral Luce, he got a commission, I mean, he got whatever it is that you, to go to Annapolis and go to the Naval Academy there.

TI: And you said, though, he graduated very early, I think we said we said earlier, like about sixteen.

MH: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: And then --

MH: He graduated, I think, practically the same year that he entered college, actually. [Laughs]

TI: And so he was a college graduate before he went to Annapolis?

MH: Before he went to Annapolis.

TI: Which is unusual because most people go to Annapolis to get their college...

MH: Yes.

TI: So given that he already had a college degree, what did he do at Annapolis?

MH: Well, you know, he was the usual midshipman. But he, one of the reasons that he was able to get through college so early was because he was a mathematical genius, which, I might say, I inherited in reverse. He... he graduated, I think, it was one or two years after he entered this college, and they made a rule that nobody was ever to do that again, after he graduated.

TI: And so what are some stories or examples of his math aptitude? When you say he was a mathematical genius, did you ever hear any stories that kind of indicated how good he was at math?

MH: I just know that that was his general reputation, and I think also because of the, of the submarine disaster that he was in later, and his ability to calculate the odds and to proceed on that, evinced that. But I know when -- this is jumping forward in my story -- but when we went to Newport when I was, I think, seven years old, I believe, he was going to the Naval War College there. I had not been in school, I was then in first grade, but I was seven years old, and I should have been in second grade. So he tutored me in math at that time, which must have been miserable for him to have to get himself down to that level of math. [Laughs]

TI: And just do addition, subtraction, multiplication tables.

MH: Exactly, yes.

TI: Do you recall any examples when he would teach you, or just growing up, of his ability to calculate things as they --

MH: No, that was the only incident I remember. You know, the, being in a military family, or naval family, is a little bit like the traditional Japanese family in that the father leaves the home for his occupation, and he doesn't come back until late evening, and is there for the night. The mother is taking care of the whole household, she's taking care of the children, she sees to their lives. And of course, the boy of the household is the favored one, and the daughter is not as well-favored. And that's the way the, with the military families. The father, when he's home, he's the law, and you follow whatever he says, and you're obedient to him. And you're not supposed to show too much spark of imagination. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, that is, I've done lots of interviews with Japanese families, and that does sound similar in terms of the deference you would give to the male.

MH: Yes.

TI: The father figure.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Let's go back to your father now. So he, he went through Annapolis, and then what did he do next after that?

MH: Well, they had the usual cruises and then he went into the submarine service.

TI: And this was, like, right after the first World War and that period?

MH: Let's see. He graduated in 1910, and so... yes, he was in the submarine service, and he, actually, during the war, he went over to Britain at one point in the submarine service, I know that.

TI: And we should note that submarines during that time, it was not...

MH: They were primitive instruments.

TI: Exactly. Nothing like we think of today...

MH: Indeed, not. [Laughs]

TI: ...in terms of submarines as this sort of glamorous, high-tech kind of service.

MH: They didn't even have escape hatches.

TI: Well, in fact, I mean, that's some of the things that they were learning. I mean, your, in some ways, your father's generation, they were the guinea pigs. They were the ones would forward the technology to what we see today.

MH: That's true.

TI: So I just wanted to establish, so they were very primitive in terms of, almost experimental in many ways, these submarines.

MH: They were. And getting in the electrical systems, which, that was in its infancy, too, so to speak. At least, not more than a high school level, if there.

TI: So from what you know of your father, so when I think of, of going into something like submarine service, I mean, that's kind of, today, I think of, like, people who like innovation or new things, they tend to be high risk takers in some ways, and they like to go for those new things. Is that, is that how you describe your father?

MH: No, I don't think so. I think he was looking forward to it as an instrument for the Navy in case of war. Because he was, he was always a planner. He always was, he made war plans for the U.S. Navy, I think, throughout his career.

TI: So he saw this as, as a potential tool or weapon that needed to be refined as quickly as possible.

MH: Oh, yes, indeed.

TI: For the betterment of the Navy.

MH: Yes. And also, I think it was -- I don't know exactly what period this was, but he wanted to go into, actually, he wanted to go into the air arm of the Navy, but he was colorblind, and so he wasn't allowed to join that. And that colorblindness, you know, goes from father through... from father to daughter, but she doesn't get it. It then goes down to her son, and my son is colorblind.

TI: Oh, I didn't realize that genetic pattern.

MH: Yes, yes.

TI: Interesting.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So you mentioned submarine service, and there was a fairly well-known incident that involved your father.

MH: Yes.

TI: Can you tell me a little bit about, about that incident?

MH: Well, there was a previous incident, too. He was in command of the submarine, and they were installing these batteries, the batteries which were made by Edison. And my father was not too happy about them, and he was, they were installing them, I don't think he was on the, on the submarine at the time, but they exploded. And one man died, I think, and another was terribly badly injured. And so they were court-martialing my father about this, and went to get testimony from this badly injured man in the hospital who said that it was absolutely my father's, not my father's fault in any way. That was the first one.

The second one was, he was, the S-5 was a submarine that he was taking down the East Coast for a training exercise. And one of the training exercises is to take the submarine down. And when he took the submarine down, as it happened, there was a failure in, I guess, one of the hatches -- I'm not familiar with all this -- with one of the hatches, anyway. And the submarine flooded, and they were, they were on the bottom of the bay, it was, not the ocean, the bay. And, but they had an idea that, my father had the idea that they might be fairly near the surface. And so they started to drill through the submarine, they went to the... well, I can't go into the details of it, but at any rate...

TI: Well, and let me -- and this goes back to when you said your father was really good at math.

MH: Yes.

TI: So I, I read a book about this, and yeah, from the charts, he figured out that, I think the depth was about 160 feet or something, and the submarine was, like, about 200. He, I think, intentionally flooded the, one side of the submarine so it would tilt up, realizing that if he got it to a certain angle, the very tip of the submarine would be above surface --

MH: Correct.

TI: -- at the tide, whatever tide time that was. And he was correct. He did this, which was a very risky maneuver, people didn't know what he was trying to do, but essentially had that sub go right up. And then you're right, then they started drilling holes and that saved --

MH: With a hand drill.

TI: With a hand drill. And the, in reading the book, the part that was interesting was how cool he was under those very trying circumstances, to save not only himself, but all of the men on the submarine. And all of them survived, which was amazing.

MH: Yes, all survived.

TI: It's an incredible story. I just, I was just fascinated.

MH: And the submarine is still down there. It's still down there. [Laughs]

TI: But I've seen pictures --

MH: But no escape hatches in those days.

TI: I've seen pictures of the plate, though, that they actually drilled all the way around for the men to climb out. So that was, that was, again, an incredible story, and I think they had investigations again trying to see if your father had done anything wrong. But every account I've seen was that it was heroic.

MH: Yes. And every man of the crew volunteered to come serve for him again.

TI: That's a good story.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So after, after the S-5, then what did your father do?

MH: Well, I'm, I just, really just know the positions that he held from then on in various places.

TI: Okay, so let's kind of, from there, just touch upon... during this time or around then, your father was married to his first wife.

MH: Yes.

TI: And can you just touch upon that in terms of that connection in terms of who his first wife was?

MH: His first wife was a very lovely, she was a lovely -- I've seen pictures of her -- lovely person. And she came from, I think, I believe a Baltimore family, but I'm not sure about that. Her name was Leslie, and I don't remember right now what her last name was.

TI: Okay. So she tragically died, and then...

MH: Yes. They had two daughters, and, but she died after the birth of the second daughter.

TI: Okay, good. And then, so let's now go back to your story -- or before we go there, so it was your father's second wife that was your mother. Can you, so tell me your mother's name and how the two of them met.

MH: My mother's name was Mary Louise, and her maiden name was Cooper, and then she married someone called McMillan. But by the time my -- and she had two children. But by the time my father met her, she was divorced from her first husband. She was living in Honolulu and working there on the newspapers, I think, the society notes or things like that. And Dad was posted out there, and he met her, she was dating quite a few military and naval officers, I think, and also was, was in the artistic community. There was a painter there at that time who did some very nice land-, seascapes and things like that, that was very interested in my mother. And also, I'm not sure that this was the painter who painted her feet, but her feet were, served... in the post office, they had a mural at the post office, and my mother's feet were the ones that were on it. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's fascinating. By any chance, do you have a print or a photograph of that?

MH: No, this is just a family story.

TI: Someone's going to have to do some research and find that, it must be in the postal archives someplace. That'd be good. Okay, so they, they met, they got married, this was in Hawaii.

MH: This was in Hawaii. My grandmother, in the meantime, had come out to join them. Oh, I might say that my mother's mother was, her parents were English, came from England to, to Canada, and she was born in Canada. And then I don't know how she ended up in Maryland where she met my grandfather, who was of a good Maryland family. And they were, they were married, and he had something to do with the directories, her father, my mother's father. But she, I think she was a rather strict English type, and I gathered that he was a rather jolly type. And so after two children, she divorced him and moved out here to California to, actually, to Oakland, and that's where my mother grew up, in Oakland.

TI: So that was your, your grandmother on your mother's side.

MH: Mother's side, yes.

TI: Boy, it's hard to keep track of all these, these relationships.

MH: Yes. [Laughs]

TI: Okay, so -- and you know what, I never actually asked you this, but what was your father's full name?

MH: Charles Maynard Cooke, Jr.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: And do you know... okay, so from Hawaii, you said you were born in Vallejo, which is California. And then after that, you remember, your first memories were Washington, D.C.

MH: Yes.

TI: So let's go from there. After Washington, D.C., where did you go?

MH: We went by ship through the Panama Canal, and on to Hawaii, to Honolulu, where my dad commanded a submarine squadron.

TI: And so for you, I mean, when I think about your travels and going from Hawaii, or from California to Washington, D.C., going through the Panama Canal, it sounds very glamorous. I mean, when you're growing up, traveling like this... did it feel glamorous? Was it exciting?

MH: No, no. It was just the way of life. I think you're too young to absorb the idea of things being glamorous, yes. Perhaps if you look back you might think so, but it was just the way of life at that time.

TI: So describe, like, as you traveled together as a family, because, tell me about your siblings at this point in terms of...

MH: Age?

TI: ...who the family sort of traveled around with.

MH: Well, when we went to Honolulu... let's see. I was, I was five, so that means that Alex was eighteen. My brother, my brother Alex, my mother's son by her first marriage, started in the Naval Academy, I think, at that point, so he was not traveling with us. My sister Elizabeth, who was... let's see, she was sixteen, was traveling with us. And my sister Charlotte, who was, let's see, she was one year old, I guess, she was traveling with us on the ship. I don't remember if, I don't remember at all whether Dad was on the -- he must have been on the ship, yes, he was on that. It was a commercial, not a naval vessel, not a transport. And when we stopped in California, in Long Beach, I think it was, or Los Angeles, I don't know, and I met my father's mother and father and my aunt there, for the first time, I believe, but I may have met them earlier. And then we sailed on to Honolulu.

TI: And I'm thinking as you're growing up, at a young age, you're meeting all these different people, these families.

MH: These relatives, yes.

TI: Did it all sort of make sense to you, all these different people? Or was it confusing?

MH: No, no, yes. [Laughs]

TI: All these different places. Because I think in terms of most normal childhoods, you're oftentimes in one place, and the people around you are there for a while. I'm just, as I'm listening to you, I'm getting a sense of the transitions over and over again.

MH: Yes. You're used to things being broken up, and you're going on and you don't see those places or people again, and so they're just there behind you, they're no longer with you. And you have to, then you have to build up a new group or society, a new house to live in, a new community to be in, and...

TI: But this probably just seemed normal to you, though. I mean, at this point, this was, this was your life.

MH: Well, it was. It was my life. That was my life.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Okay, so you're in Hawaii, and your dad's commanding a submarine division. Any childhood memories of Hawaii during this tour of duty?

MH: Oh, yes. We lived at a, rather a distance from Honolulu, in Kalihi Valley in a beautiful estate there which was, which had been built by this man, really, for his wife. It was a, there were three buildings there, there was the first, I guess the first one was the ballroom and living room, and then there were two, I forgot what they called them, two open spaces, roofed over, one of which we usually had our breakfast in. And then there was a building which was really the, the bedrooms. And, let's see, it was three or four stories, I've forgotten how tall. And then the other building was the laundry and where the maids and cook lived and all that. And all of this backed onto a hillside, so that there was these, sort of, I don't know, not gangplanks, but whatever it was out to the hillside from the different stories of the house. But the front of the house was right on the stream. The stream came down and there was a waterfall and a pool below, and you could dive from the second story of the house into the pool. And across, from the house, was this walkway, you know, a bridge, just for walking, over to the main road. And this man who built this was a great party giver. So, but people had to drive up the road and park up around that way. And in the back, I think it was a 400 acre estate, something like that, and so if the party was going really well and he wanted people to stay there, he'd pull up the drawbridge on the, on this path, and they couldn't get home. But I believe by the time that we were living there, the drawbridge was no longer being utilized, or it may have been closed down for that matter, although we still had that walkway over the road.

TI: That was a fabulous description. It sounds like a set for a movie.

MH: Yes. I've got pictures of it. It is, it's really quite a place.

TI: So was this common for a Navy officer to be able to live in a place like this?

MH: No. No, indeed.

TI: So how was it that your family was able to live...

MH: This was the Depression, and therefore this man needed to rent out this place at what price he could give. And the housing allowance for my father was sufficient to allow him to rent this place at that time.

TI: Wow. What a wonderful, sort of, memory to be living in this place.

MH: Yes. Oh, yes, I dreamed of that house for years.

TI: And is it still in existence, this house?

MH: Relatives have tried to find it, and they have not been able to.

TI: So my notes indicate that you were in Hawaii during this tour for only about two years?

MH: Oh, yes, normal, normal length of tour was two, alternated between two and three, I think.

TI: So it must have been difficult to leave this one because of the place. I would imagine that was a pretty fabulous place.

MH: Well, you know, I just took it, accepted it, you know. That's the way, that's the pattern that you get into, you just accept, you don't question.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Then after that, I have you going to California.

MH: Oh, yes. Well, what I should have said, also my brother was born there.

TI: Okay, good.

MH: My brother was born in Hawaii.

TI: And this is your brother Charlie?

MH: My brother Charlie. And so then when we -- this is a story. When we came back to the States, my dad was to go to the Naval War College in Newport. We landed in California, and my dad bought a machine, an automobile, and we got as far as... oh dear, I can't remember the name of it, something Mountain in Nevada, and the engine fell out of the machine, out of the automobile.

TI: Literally just dropped out of the, the car?

MH: Yes, so we were stuck in this little hole in this little nothing town.

TI: And so it's the three young, younger children...

MH: Well, yes, there was... no, in the car was my mother and my father. My sister, Elizabeth, who was, let's see, she must have been sixteen at that time. Well, let's see, how old was I?

TI: She's probably more like --

MH: No, she was eighteen at that time.

TI: Eighteen, right.

MH: And my sister Elizabeth, myself, my sister Charlotte, who was the cerebral paralytic, my brother, and a German shepherd dog going across the U.S. at that primitive time for traveling across the U.S. And that, and as I say, the engine fell out of the car, and we were stuck in this place 'til they could import another engine for the car. And then we went on to Chicago where the World's Fair was being held. And it was hot, I tell you. Traveling across the country in an un-air conditioned car with all of that load in the car. It was not comfortable, it was not comfortable.

TI: And as you go, went along, did you stay at, like, motels?

MH: What little places there were, you know. There were sort of primitive motels along the way at that time. I do remember in Chicago we stayed in a hotel. And then we did stay, as we got farther east, I think we stayed a couple of times with friends.

TI: Do you know why your father and mother decided to drive across?

MH: My father always -- I think we drove across... that was the first one, either two or three times, either from west to east, or east to west. Yes, Dad liked to drive across.

TI: Good. Okay, so you now are in Newport, Rhode Island, eventually.

MH: Yes.

TI: And how was that? What was that like?

MH: Oh, that was nice. We had a very nice house there, and I remember it was on a block where there was a, there was a haunted house which was in the woods which was nearby. We were very scared, I think we once went up to the porch and that was about the extent of it, though, there. It was in that house that my dad was tutoring me in math.

TI: In, not the haunted house.

MH: No, not the haunted house, in the house we were living in.

TI: Because you were then about eight? Seven, eight years old?

MH: Seven or eight years old, uh-huh.

<Begin Segment 10>

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.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Now I'm curious. You're, at this point, nine, ten years old.

MH: Eight and nine.

TI: Right, and you're probably becoming more and more aware of other kids around.

MH: No, actually, there, I went to school with the other children, but I was the Commandant's daughter, and I'd also gotten accustomed to a solitary life. And so I never really had, I was not playing with the other children. The only child I played with was my brother Charlie.

TI: So explain that to me. You're the Commandant's daughter...

MH: Therefore I was sort of, you know, not the one that they would associate with.

TI: And the reason being is that...

MH: The rank was too high.

TI: Okay. So even at the, at the children level, there's that consciousness of rank.

MH: Oh, yes.

TI: Who can play... that's interesting.

MH: But you see, I'd already had this pattern of solitary play from Honolulu where we lived, way out in the wilderness, and there were no other children around. And then in Newport, it was a year there, and I didn't get to know anybody, and then here.

TI: Okay, so I didn't realize. I understood the transitory nature of moving around, but you also had this loneliness, or this solitary sort of existence by being the daughter of a high level...

MH: And also I was a, I was a complete bookworm, so I was always reading all the time, and that's a solitary occupation.

TI: Okay. By any chance, when you were in places like Cuba, are you able to be with the locals there in terms of the local Cuban population?

MH: No. The naval base, naval station was completely closed off. The only... actually, the servants we had were not native, they were from Haiti, I think. And there was this, this one man, the one that gave me the pony, he was a, had been a U.S. Navy enlisted man, and when he left the Navy he started in business in Cuba, and had a very prosperous business. And so Dad had dealings with him, and I remember one time we went to visit him at his home, which was on the other side of Guantanamo Bay. And we went to the small village there where he had, on the railroad, which is his railroad, he had this car was on the railroad, the wheels had been put on the rails there. So we traveled up in this car.

TI: So it was a car like an automobile car?

MH: Yeah, automobile. We traveled up in this automobile to his place that he had, this estate that he had there. And the thing that -- and he had, you know, quite a lovely tropical mansion, and in his garden he had peacocks, tame peacocks all over the place. And also, he served peacock. My sister remembers that they, we ate peacock there, and said it was very tough, but I don't remember that.

TI: Boy, again, it's almost like a scene out of a movie. I think of this car on rails, and you drive up there, peacocks...

MH: He took, he took a liking to me, this man. His name was Shorty Osment, and he took a liking to me. So after we went back to the, to the naval base, he sent over this pony for me. And this pony must have been used as a cart horse or something, it had terrible saddle sores on it, it was in terrible condition. No, no... I don't know if you know about horses, but if you use the bridle too hard on them, their mouth gets very hardened and they won't, they won't pay attention to what you tell them to do. And when I first got him, I had to, if I wanted to get on him, I had to ride him bareback because he had to recover from these saddle sores. I adored him. I just, he was the most wonderful horse in the world, as far as I was concerned.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So that helped you pass the time, because then after two more years, you had to move again.

MH: That's, we moved to Long Beach. And here, the parents rented a, which was a very nice house in the suburbs, which had a garden with a, with an ornamental pool, not a swimming pool, and various grounds around it. I know we set up a badminton court in one area. And also a garage with, with quarters over it for servants. So we had a chauffeur there and a cook, I think, who lived there with us. And that was, that was a nice place.

TI: And in Long Beach, what was your father's command in Long Beach?

MH: I think I have that in the record, and I don't...

TI: The, I think I have you down, oh, as the USS Pennsylvania?

MH: Staff officer in that, yes, War Plans, I think. Did I say that?

TI: Right.

MH: Yes.

TI: And it mentioned that during this time, that -- oh, this is the connection to Sonoma during this period.

MH: Yes, that's when my mother came up here to visit the widow of Jack London.

TI: So explain how your mother got to know the widow of Jack London.

MH: She, this was when she was a social reporter out in Honolulu. And Jack and Charmian London came through on his... I don't know what you would call it, vessel. It wasn't quite a yacht, that he was traveling, going to travel the South Seas. And he, he became ill there, was in the hospital, and as a social noter or whatever it was, went to visit him and met them both at that time.

TI: And then she struck up a friendship with them?

MH: And then it continued the friendship. And after Jack died, Charmian would come to visit us, actually. She stayed with us in Virginia, and she stayed with us in Long Beach.

TI: And so, so the widow of Jack London introduced you, or introduced your mother to this, this property in Sonoma?

MH: No, Mother came to visit her, and Mother, I guess, had the idea in her mind of possibly getting a property, and started looking around here. I think it's just incidental that that started.

TI: Well, so what's the story, how did this property come into the family hands? Is that later?

MH: That was, that was when I think this property was up for sale, or was one of the properties around here for sale. And so my mother talked my father into coming up to see it, he agreed, we all came up. And I remember very clearly that visit.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: So this was in the fall of 1937?

MH: Uh-huh, that's right.

TI: So what was Sonoma like back then?

MH: It was a little town. It was just a little town. A little, rural town, is what it was. And, of course, as you know, again, we were living in an isolated place, just as we did in Hawaii and so forth, to come up here to live. But it was very rural at that time. [Laughs]

TI: And what did you think of the idea of living in Sonoma at this point? You were, let's see, thirty-seven, so you were about eleven years old?

MH: Yes. Of course, Mother was giving a great pitch about how wonderful it was going to be to live here, and you'd have all these, you live in the country and you'd have all these beautiful flowers, and we'd have chickens and cows and things like that, so forth and so on. And it was going to be so romantic and beautiful, and nature around us all the time. She pitched a good line on the whole thing.

TI: And so were you excited about Sonoma?

MH: Oh yes, oh yes. I thought it was so beautiful up here. I mean, this property, I thought was so beautiful.

TI: And so after the property was purchased, then you moved here, and your father was still stationed...

MH: No, it was sort of, I don't remember the exact sequence, but Dad was then transferred to duty in Washington, and we had built somewhat here, and I guess we followed after Dad to Washington, D.C. And then we lived in Virginia, the family lived in Virginia, two different houses there, one in Herndon, where I went to a very, very rural school, and then in Fairfax, where I started in the high school at the sophomore level.

TI: So starting high school, again, you're moving, moving, how hard is it to start, like, high school without knowing anyone?

MH: Well, that was my life. I was always going places where I didn't know anybody.

TI: And so did you get pretty good at getting to know people?

MH: No, I don't think so, because I've never been a really social type perhaps, growing out of the way I grew up.

TI: Yeah, I wouldn't know that from our, sort of, connection here. Okay. So this is around 1938, '39, '40, your dad's, again, in Washington, D.C., with the War Plans Division.

MH: War Plans, yes.

TI: Any, sort of, memorable, or memories from that time period, starting high school, or anything that...

MH: Well, I did, that's the first time I really got into a group of girls there in high school, the Fairfax High School. And a very nice bunch of girls. All, I think, all blonde, all Southerners. That drawl, in time, you just talk like this, you know. And as a matter of fact, I picked it up, that accent. Charlie and I were both good at picking up accents, and then I, you know, was living with it for a couple of years. So when I came back out here to Sonoma and went to the high school here, I was just this Southern girl, you know. [Laughs] It was found rather attractive by the boys, I think.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. Because, yeah, so the beginning of 1941, you returned to Sonoma.

MH: We returned to Sonoma.

TI: Well, the family does, but your dad then takes command of the Pennsylvania at this time and goes to Hawaii.

MH: Yes, that's right.

TI: So this is, is this... for a while then, this is really the first time you've been really separated from your father?

MH: No, no, because I think at other posts, he was going to sea occasionally, yes.

TI: So this wasn't unusual, for him to be someplace else.

MH: Or working so hard. We didn't see very much of him, you know. Because he, he was a very hard worker, he would work long hours all the time. I remember in Virginia, when I was in high school, Mother and I would sit and play -- of course, no TV at that time, the most you had was radio. Mother and I would sit and play Chinese checkers night after night, and Dad wasn't there. She didn't have anybody else to be with, so she and I would play Chinese checkers night after night.

TI: Okay, and we'll come back to another Chinese checkers later on.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So beginning of '41, you come back to Sonoma.

MH: Yes.

TI: And I'm going to jump to December 7, 1941. So you're in Sonoma, your father is stationed in Hawaii.

MH: Yes. He's on the USS Pennsylvania as captain of the USS Pennsylvania.

TI: Right, so talk about that. Because my research indicated that the early reports was that the Pennsylvania was initially, they thought, sunk, but it wasn't. And why don't you tell the story.

MH: Well, I'll also tell a little prelude to that which was, as it happened, on December 7th, I was over in Sacramento visiting a cousin of mine. And her mother came in and said that the Japanese had struck Pearl Harbor, and, "You should go home immediately." So she put me on the bus to come back to Sonoma, so I arrived in Sonoma after all this news had gotten out about, about the strike at Pearl Harbor. And then the first reports were that the USS Pennsylvania had been sunk. So we didn't, my mother didn't know how to get the news, and then finally Dad did call. I remember we all just fell to pieces, we were so happy that he was all right.

TI: Well, talk about that time period when you didn't know. So this is, you get back, you hear the news that the Pennsylvania has been sunk. Tell me what thoughts were going through your head.

MH: Well, we were stunned, you know. We were just stunned. I don't remember anything, but what, you know, "What is this?"

TI: And at this point, was the devastation known, kind of, how much...

MH: I don't think so.

TI: And so were you getting, sort of, I guess, not inside information, but additional information about what was going on?

MH: No, only the news broadcasts.

TI: And in that, they mentioned --

MH: And of course, you know, it was all radio at that time, of course.

TI: And so those early news reports had mentioned that the Pennsylvania had been sunk, and I think the reports I saw, all hands lost, too, I think, is part of that, that communication. And so it was just a tense time for you and the rest, just waiting.

MH: Yes, that's right.

TI: And so your, your dad was able to call?

MH: Yes, uh-huh. And then we all, whew, and wept, and were glad.

TI: At this point, what, what contact or what thoughts had you had about Japanese? When you think about, all of a sudden, this country has attacked the United States, at this point you had not traveled that much overseas. And I was wondering, what was your sense about the Japanese and who they were?

MH: Well, this was, this was interesting. Because our time in Hawaii, the Japanese that I saw there were all servants, and that's all I really knew of Japanese. In fact, I don't know that I thought very much about them at all. And then when the Japanese attacked, I can't remember. I can't remember what my reactions were. I don't remember, I mean, as far as the Japanese, I don't remember my reactions.

TI: Was there, in your mind, can you recall, was there like anger or fear? Or what kind of almost visceral reactions or feelings did you have?

MH: I can't remember. I really can't remember.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: So at this point, the United States is at war, and your father is in the middle of it. But you remained in Sonoma.

MH: Yes, we were in Sonoma.

TI: And how was that? With the war going on, knowing your dad's over there. Was life pretty much the same after that in terms of Sonoma, school...

MH: You see, actually, Dad didn't, Dad came home.

TI: Oh, I didn't know that.

MH: And went to, went to Washington and became, you know, and got on Admiral King's, was on Admiral King's staff, and later became his Chief of Staff, War Plans officer and Chief of Staff. So he was out of the war as far as we were concerned. I mean, he was in Washington, D.C.

TI: And so I'm curious, why do you think they, they called your dad back to Washington, D.C.?

MH: Because of his war plans.

TI: So they felt that he'd be more valuable back in D.C., kind of more strategic planning than...

MH: Oh, he was one of the few war plans officers they had. That was not a field that many of the naval officers went into, I don't think. He was well-known from way back, I think further than Guantanamo as war plans.

TI: And so this was war planning not just for the Pacific, but for the European, the whole war.

MH: Yes, for the whole war, every part of the war.

TI: Did you ever talk to your father about that time and the types of things he did?

MH: He talked to my brother, he never talked to me about any of it. Charlie was, was going to be his successor, you know, the boy of the family.

TI: And so he felt more comfortable or more close to --

MH: Oh, no, no. He was training Charlie in a sense, you know, or at least building him towards becoming a naval officer.

TI: And how did that make you feel, that he would choose your brother with all this information? Did that ever bother you?

MH: I wasn't happy about it. I mean, it was strictly a male thing. He sent, he sent, they sent Charlie to a private school, I think, here in California in order to prepare him more for going into the Naval Academy, an expensive private school. And I was sent to Santa Rosa junior college and told that I wasn't going to go on to college any further. Because, as my father said, the brightest women he knew hadn't gone to college.

TI: And...

MH: That was it.

TI: It seems so unfair in this day, to come across a bright, articulate woman, and to realize that those paths weren't really open to them.

MH: Yes, yes. It was, as I say, this accepting, which I learned early in life. I accepted it, I was very unhappy about it, of course. So I was just staying here at home with no future prospects until he had us come out to China.

TI: Okay, so let's, but you finished the Santa Rosa junior college, and this was June, 1944.

MH: Uh-huh.

TI: And you boarded at Santa Rosa.

MH: Yes, that was nice. That was the second time I was around a group of girls that I got to be very close with and had a very happy time with them, yes.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Okay, so we're going to start the second hour, Maynard. And in the first hour, we got you up to, I think you had just finished the Santa Rosa junior college, and we're about to go to China. But before that, during this time period, so we're about 1944, it's during World War II, and we touched upon your father's role as a strategic war planner. And even before the war, I've read some things, and he was noted for almost like... and I actually remember reading this, like almost foretelling the future. That he could anticipate things that would happen.

MH: Yes.

TI: And I wanted you to sort of share, were there other examples? We talked about Guantanamo Bay and how he worked on those amphibious sort of operations. Were there some other things that he did that indicated that he could sort of almost anticipate world events?

MH: Well, I was thinking of the fact that right after World War I, when there were, when they were assigning the tonnage to the different navies of the world, the prominent navies of the world, which they considered at that time as the British, the American, and the Japanese. And they set up a quota of tonnage for those different fleets, it was called the (5:5:3). I can't tell you how much tonnage that was, but...

TI: But it sort of gave you a ratio...

MH: It gave you a ratio for...

TI: The Japanese had the 3, the British and the Americans supposedly had the higher.

MH: Five, five. And of course, the Japanese soon paid no attention to that. But the whole strategic war planning goes into very much nuts and bolts. It's not only looking at the prospect of who was going to attack, but what they are attacking with and where they are going to attack, and what forces they will bring to bear on you, and therefore you must plan for the material and personnel and positions that you need in order to return that attack or... well, I don't think initiate -- we're not supposed to initiate attacks -- but to return the attacks that you're expecting. And this means not on a limited basis, this means on a worldwide basis. Anyone that might be conceived of going to be an enemy for us, and therefore it requires an extreme width of knowledge and, and of intelligence to be able to take this whole picture and break it down into the details that you need to follow in order to get yourself in a position to be able to defend yourself against these forces.

TI: So it's similar, I went to business school, and one of the things that we did as an exercise was called scenario planning. That we would oftentimes do a case study, and in that, we'd say, okay, so based on that, what are the most likely scenarios? And then based on the most likely scenario, we would then go into a detailed kind of planning in terms of, okay, so if this happened, how do we react? It sounds like a very similar thing, that --

MH: No, it goes further than that, because it goes down into looking at all the supplies that you have on hand, the supplies that can be brought to bear if such a thing happened. But what basically do you have in the first place that can get you up to where you need to be if this attack is going to be held? And that is the most practical kind of planning about what do you do, what are your resources, how are you going to, how are you going to handle those resources? What are you going to do to start them up and so forth.

TI: Good. So this is, this is what your father was good at.

MH: Yes.

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: And so when World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, we talked about this earlier, rather than being in the midst of the fighting in the Pacific, they brought him back to Washington, D.C. to help plan.

MH: Well, actually, to build on the plans that he had already drawn up. To take the actions that he had already planned on taking.

TI: And so give me a sense, at what level, who was he working with at this planning level? Who was he dealing with?

MH: He's dealing across a whole board -- one of the things that he was supposed to have done was to, to say how many landing craft we needed, what manufacturer are we going to be dealing with, get a hold of that manufacturer and start putting in the orders for the numbers that we're going to need.

TI: So much beyond just the military, he's talking about the industrial side.

MH: Yes, the whole industrial side.

TI: And in some ways, convincing them to convert over to the military manufacturer.

MH: And of course, all the time -- this isn't just out of the blue -- all that time between the wars, he's been looking at these and revising them as things get revised. The whole submarine buildup, the buildup of the naval air force, and taking into account what the Army will be doing, what the Air Force will be doing, where the Marines fit into this, of course, that's part of the Navy. But it's the whole spectrum. What role does the Navy have in this?

TI: And so when your father would have these plans, who would he report to? I mean, how would his ideas and plans get implemented? Who was he going to?

MH: He reports to the person who was head of the Navy who was Admiral King. But then, they would have to take their plans to the White House in order to get the highest approval of what their plans were.

TI: So was your father a frequent guest of the White House, going there for meetings?

MH: Well, I know that they did go over, yes. And of course, you also, you have to mesh in with the other military, with the Army and with the Air Force. Well, the Air Force was part of the Army then, of course. So you had to mesh in with the Army and its part, the Air Force part in it.

LH: And the naval.

MH: And the naval.

TI: And so tell me a little bit about your father's relationship with Admiral King, the head of the Navy. How closely did the two of them work together?

MH: They worked extremely closely together. As a matter of fact, Admiral King consulted him day and night. They actually took quarters on a ship which was docked in Washington, near Washington, in Washington, D.C., and they lived aboard that and continued to plan, night and day.

TI: That's an amazing story. And it's kind of like, sort of these, in some cases, unsung heroes in the war. Certain people historically have gotten the spotlight, but it's sometimes that, just that level below where all that work is doing, and you just, just don't understand how that was done.

MH: Yes, yes.

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So let's go back to your story. Thank you for sharing that. So where we left off on your story was you were saying, you were just about ready to go to China. Now, why would you go to China? What was bringing you or drawing you to China?

MH: I was not drawn to China at all. I had no desire to go to China. What I wanted to go to was college, but there was no way that I could go to college. There were no funds that I could be supplied with in any way. So my sister Charlotte was left at home here. Actually, she was left in a home for cerebral, you know, for injured people like she's injured. And Charlie and Mother and I went off to China. Dad had established his headquarters there in Tsingtao, and the U.S. Navy was, Western, Pacific Fleet was based in Tsingtao, China. And we went out on what was an unconverted cruise ship, which is not a very pleasant way to travel, I must admit. Although we did have a cabin, the three of us had a cabin.

TI: Were there other families on the, the troop ship?

MH: There were a few, but very few. I mean, this was the first families going out to China after the war had ended. So it was very limited.

TI: And so your dad was stationed at Tsingtao. What was his --

MH: The base of the Navy, the Western Fleet was Tsingtao, China.

TI: And so at this point, he was commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet?

MH: He was in command of the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

TI: And so that's, essentially, all of the Pacific? Is that pretty much...

MH: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: Okay. So at this point, he's in charge.

MH: He's in charge.

TI: Of the Pacific.

MH: Western Pacific, yes.

TI: Okay, so your mother, your brother and you, joined him. And what was that like? What was Tsingtao like?

MH: First I'd like to speak about Shanghai.

TI: Okay.

MH: Because we arrived first in Shanghai. And it was blistering hot and very humid at that time. It was the summertime, and we were staying in one of the hotels along the Bund, very nice hotels along the Bund. And I remember that there was a demonstration against the Chinese Nationalists, and thousands of people, looked out from my hotel window and saw these, these people down below, all demonstrating. It was something I had never seen or never thought of seeing, this powerful demonstration against Chiang Kai-shek there. That's all I remember of that particular thing, but the other thing I remember about Shanghai -- well, I've got a couple of pleasant memories, too. But the other thing I remember about Shanghai, seeing, in this department store window, I saw these... what do you call them? From the U.S., these medical... well, it's what you give blood, what the blood comes in after you've given it, you know.

TI: Right, I'm trying to think...

MH: Well, whatever, on sale in the windows of this department store in Shanghai. And I didn't like that very much.

TI: So that only the people who could afford the supplies would get these critical, life-saving supplies.

MH: Yes, yes. That struck me quite vividly at that time. But as far as... I had never used chopsticks, and we sat down to this very honorable dinner, very formal dinner, you know, and everybody, of course, Dad, you know, he was being feted by everybody who was important. And so this, this captain, naval captain who was sitting next to me taught me how to use chopsticks. [Laughs] And it turned out, he was quite a famous man. He was Captain Miles, who, I think, had been, he might have been in... he might have been there in China, he may have been a Chinese language expert. I've read about him in books some places. But so he's the man who taught me how to use chopsticks. His nickname was Mary. He was known as Captain "Mary" Miles, but I don't know what his real first name was. [Laughs]

TI: Merry in the sense of "happy"?

MH: No, M-A-R-Y.

TI: M-A-R-Y?

MH: Yeah. But I know that he's written up some places.

TI: So that must have been interesting, going to a formal dinner, and just having chopsticks rather than -- you've probably been to the dinners where they've had, like, several forks and spoons and knives and plates, and this was a very different experience for you.

MH: Yes.

TI: I'm curious, when they have a formal dinner like that, was it all Chinese food for your father?

MH: This was all Chinese food. I mean, I went to numerous ones in China, and of course, they had the round tables, you know, I mean, there were several groups of round tables. I don't remember at this one, but I know many afterwards where there were round tables, which was rather awkward for me because I'm left-handed. And when you're sitting in the round table right next to a right-handed man using chopsticks, you get a little, you get a little mixed up with each other unless you're awfully careful. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: And what were your general impressions of Shanghai and China when you think back to those days? Like the food, did you like the food?

MH: Oh, yes, yes. I prefer simpler Chinese food, but, and I was, I was very careful about, if I didn't like anything, I didn't eat it. And of course there was also, "Gan bei," all the time, drinking of the rice wine, which is, all these toasts, "Bottom's up." Of course, they were very small, but they accumulated. And the other thing was to learn to say, "Sui bien," all the time, which meant that, "No more, thank you," or, "Just a little," or something like that.

TI: And in general, were there very many other women at these events?

MH: Yes, there were. In fact, I know when I went to Beijing, there was this woman interpreter, Chinese woman interpreter who, this was a banquet where I think there were four or five round tables. I don't know how many sat at a round table, maybe ten, I would think. And she "gan bei'd" with everybody in the room. She had amazing capacity.

TI: Either that, or she was drinking water or something else. Wow. Earlier you mentioned the demonstrations, thousands. I mean, what kind of impression or what kind of thoughts did you have when you saw all these people going, sort of, protesting against Chiang Kai-shek?

MH: Yes, yes.

TI: Did that kind of raise any...

MH: Well, I must say, I wasn't going right along with my father's thinking on the whole Nationalist movement. Although, but I knew so little at that time. I mean, I was a complete innocent as far as world affairs were concerned.

TI: But your thoughts were all these people are against Chiang Kai-shek, so something must be wrong with what Chiang Kai-shek...

MH: That's correct. And then seeing those kits for sale in the, you know, in the department store.

TI: Yeah, interesting. Okay, so from Shanghai, then you went to go see...

MH: Then we flew up to Tsingtao where Dad's base was, and we lived there. And what had been -- Tsingtao had been developed by the Germans, I believe, and the Germans, of course, during this war, took it over completely. And so the head, the house of the chief Nazi, German, was the house that we took over to live in, with Dad as Commandant.

TI: That's interesting. So during World War II, the Germans had a strong presence in China?

MH: Yes.

TI: I didn't realize that. So, but after the war, the Germans had lost, so they were gone, and so the Americans took over?

MH: Most of them had been deported back to Germany, most of them, yes.

TI: So you got to live in the house of the...

MH: Number one Nazi. And in the dining room, the chandelier was, was a... you know, a swastika.

TI: Okay, in the shape of a swastika.

MH: Yeah, in the shape of a swastika. And then the carpets going up the stairs had swastikas on either side. And my mother said, "Oh, well, you know, they're Indian swastikas." You know, they go the opposite way from the... but, "Oh no, they're Indian swastikas," my mother said. So they remained.

TI: Interesting. Anything else about the architecture of the building that struck you as interesting?

MH: Well, that was mostly, it was built up by the foreigners at Tsingtao, so there were many European structures there. It wasn't Chinese, not like Beijing.

TI: Well, so you're there, and this may be a little different for you, but this, China was at war. It was a civil war at this point.

MH: Yes.

TI: Was there, were you, ever felt like you were in danger when you were in China?

MH: I didn't, no. I know that we heard this firing there, but that wasn't frequent. We went to the beaches and we were safe there in Tsingtao. They were not on, they were not there near, that near to Tsingtao, even though we could hear the firing. We traveled, my mother and I went up to Beijing -- no, excuse me, went with Dad and Charlie, Mother and Dad and Charlie and I went to Beijing, and that was more or less an official visit there. And then my mother and I actually flew up to Mukden, which is in Manchuria, which is a very industrial area, and had been stripped of all of its machines, I think, by the Russians. It was a dreary city. And then we went, traveled also to Nanking to visit the Generalissimo, and then later we went up to his summer headquarters in the hills to the south of Nanking, an area called, city called -- not city, but a place called Kuling.

TI: So describe the role that the United States or the military was playing. Because the war was over, and they were, I mean, World War II was over, and your dad is the Commander of the Seventh Fleet, and now he's traveling, meeting Chiang Kai-shek. What role...

MH: He was in strong support of the Nationalists and was doing everything he could to help them in every way. And the Generalissimo appreciated that.

TI: But when you say that, you didn't have necessarily Americans fighting for the Nationalists.

MH: No, no.

TI: But they were advising...

MH: Advising, yes, exactly.

TI: Supplies, perhaps, and things like that?

MH: Yes, yes.

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: So tell me, Chiang Kai-shek is a very historic figure. What can you tell me about him? What was he like as a person?

MH: Well, we have, I have the story -- well, the visit to Nanking was very brief. We did get up to this beautiful... what do I call it, astronomical... what was it? It was a place where they had all of their equipment for searching the stars and all that. Very long, long ago. I mean, long before the West had those instruments. We did go up there. And Madame gave me a big hat, I remember, which I wore in the pictures that were taken there. And they were very kind and generous to us. And then we were invited up to this residence in Kuling, which was his summer headquarters, which... what we did, we flew to Nanking and then crossed the river there to the southern side, and were taken up in, in sedan chairs, taken up the mountain to Kuling in sedan chairs. And we were being escorted by this Chinese nationalist general who was at least three hundred pounds, I think. And so he required quite a few more coolies on his sedan chair than Charlie or I required on ours. [Laughs] And it just amazed me going up this -- of course, I was, had never wanted to even ride in a rickshaw, because I was very much for the rights of men, and I didn't like, I never thought I'd be going in a sedan chair going up the hill. But as we came to one, came up to one of the... there were various tea places to have tea along the way, little, not inns, but something along the way. We came up to this, and there was this enormous generator there, tremendous size and heavy and all that. And all these coolies who had been carrying it had stopped for a tea break, and then they got back under that generator and were carrying it up the hills. 'Cause there were no, there were no vehicles up there in Kuling. I mean, no, no motorized vehicles in Kuling. So we arrived in Kuling. It was beautiful, it was just like Shangri-la, you came up the mountain, and then you looked over and across this bridge, and then on the other side was this settlement, which had been made by the American missionaries, so it was all Western-style houses, really. That's where they used to go from Shanghai to, in the summertime. And there was a school there for the missionaries, I think John... what's his name, there was one author who wrote quite a bit about this, I have his books about that. He was a missionary's son. And while we were there, the first night we were there, we were invited to General Marshall, to his headquarters because he was the then advisor to the Generalissimo.

TI: So this is the General Marshall of the Marshall Plan, George Marshall?

MH: Yes, yes. And his wife.

TI: And he wasn't necessarily stationed in the Pacific, he was just visiting?

LH: He was (Special Representative of the President to China).

TI: (Special Representative of the President to China), okay. So again, very prominent, along with your father, so your father was...

MH: Yes. And so we went to their house before dinner, which was going to be at the Generalissimo's. And during the course of the conversations there, it turned out that they had taught the Generalissimo how to play Chinese checkers. And Mother immediately said, "Oh, Maynard knows how to play Chinese checkers," and so they decided to try to see if the Generalissimo would play Chinese checkers with me. So we went to dinner and had a very nice dinner, Madame at one end of the table and the Generalissimo at the other. At the end of the dinner, we retired to a little sitting room where they put up this table, and the Generalissimo sat on one side with his military men standing around him, and I sat on the other side in my little Sonoma-made evening dress. And they pulled out the Chinese checkerboard, and it turned out that he only played one corner against the other corner instead of three against three. So the first time that we played, I beat him. So he wanted to play again, so we played again, and I beat him again. And then, well, he wanted another one, so I played him again and beat him again. I think he thought that was enough, and he sort of said, "Han ho," which means "very good," I think, in Chinese. And that was the end of the games. And my mother later said, "Maynard, you were so undiplomatic." But the Generalissimo told Madame to give me a wedding lamp, well, a pair, they were always a pair, a pair of wedding lamps, and showered favors on me. So he obviously had not taken it amiss, at least, he certainly hid it if he did.

And then I remember after that, the next day we went on to a, went on a picnic up in the hills, and it was the most beautiful view of this land south of there, the vast expanse of China south of there. It was, and you know, the browns and the colors of this whole landscape were amazing. But it is... not the greens, you know, there aren't that many greens. But it was overwhelming to view. Well, at that particular picnic, the Generalissimo and Madame were both along, and we went in sedan chairs to the picnic. And Charlie was supposed to vie with this same general that escorted us up there, the very big general, to see how much chicken, you know, chicken that he could eat, how many pieces of chicken he could eat. So Charlie and the General strove with each other, and Charlie beat him. [Laughs] He ate more chicken than the General did.

TI: Wow, so it's just this really engaging, I mean, you guys were really close and doing lots with these, these Chinese leaders of the Nationalist party.

MH: Yes. And what amazed me, you know, for this picnic, of course, they brought out linens, they had white linens, and they served, we didn't eat with the chopsticks that time, we had silver, and glasses, and it was all a very upper class picnic, I must say.

TI: So I'm curious, you mentioned at the very beginning, the protesters against Chiang Kai-shek. After being with him and doing all this, did that change your impressions of the General?

MH: I didn't regard him in that fashion. He was, he was the head of the country, and he was, my father was doing the best he could for him, and he was perfectly amiable to me, and Madame was very gracious to me. And so I didn't take, take it personally that I would stand against him as far as being acquainted and being with him was concerned. But, of course, philosophically, I had another attitude, yes.

TI: Okay, good. So any other stories, Chiang Kai-shek or Madame?

MH: No, I think that's it.

TI: So continue, so how long were you in Tsingtao, and what happened next?

MH: I started work there for, after my twenty-first birthday, I started work there for a unit attached to the Navy. And continued that until I left China in... when did I leave? '47 or '48, '47, I guess.

TI: And then shortly after, I think your father also retired?

MH: Not, not that soon after, I don't think.

TI: So about a year or so afterwards?

MH: '48, Dad retired.

TI: About a year later, he retired.

MH: Yes. But I flew down to Shanghai before I left, and had an interesting time there with this same unit. And, well, just seeing Shanghai was, was quite incredible. You know, there was a vast influx of White Russians in China, and I went to several of the teahouses of the White Russians there. Well, it was, it was a very interesting time, then. And then I flew back to Washington, D.C., and continued work with this, this unit there in Washington, D.C.

LH: Madame corresponded with you, I believe.

MH: Yes. Madame continued to write with, write to me, and she, and she did send me these wedding lamps. And then actually, I was going to be, I was, I was at that time engaged to be married to somebody else long before I met Lucius, and she gave me a beautiful length of white satin to be made into a wedding dress. And that, that wedding did not take place, and I also don't remember what happened to that satin. [Laughs] But she was very kind and continued to be in touch with me.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: So we're starting the second day of interviews with you, Maynard. Today is Friday, November 21, 2008. And where we left off yesterday was right, it was 1947, and you were just leaving China. And, in fact, you showed me this great picture of you, and your dad, leaving China. And you were then, at that point, returning to Washington, D.C. And why don't you tell me, what were you returning to? Why back to D.C.?

MH: I had long desired to leave the family. I was not happy being with the family, so when the chance came up for me to go back and work in this unit at headquarters in Washington, D.C., I gratefully and happily accepted it. Which would be the first time in my life except when I was in junior college here that I would really be on my own.

TI: And your, can you share your unhappiness with the family? Why, was it just wanting to be more independent or was there more to that?

MH: The situation was very difficult with my mother, and I was, I was just not very happy with the whole family situation. My father, of course, was extremely busy, and he sided with my mother. [Laughs] It was not a, at that point, twenty-two, I guess, I really wanted to leave the home.

TI: Okay, so twenty-two, you're in D.C., you have a job, you're living on your own. And what kind of work did you do?

MH: I was, I was learning to be a good editor, an editor of classified reports. And that involves not only putting into good English what, the reports that I received, but it was also evaluating them as far as their relevance in relation to the actual situation, I mean, political situation or military situation. And therefore adding notes which would clarify that aspect of the reports.

TI: It sounds similar, yesterday we talked about sometimes some people have the ability to make connections.

MH: Yes.

TI: And information would come in, it sounds like that's what you were doing. You were oftentimes connecting to other information that was out there.

MH: Yes. Which, which assisted me to evaluate the truth and falsity of the information.

TI: So it sounds like a pretty interesting job.

MH: Very interesting. Very interesting.

TI: And so other than, so you work, and was this a pretty intense assignment? Were you working long hours learning this craft?

MH: Actually, no, I wouldn't say that. I mean, you know, the usual government time. At that time, in the position I was in as just really learning, I normally just put in the usual hours, the government hours, yes. But later on, when I became head of a unit, I did go in on weekends to work.

TI: Well, so it sounds like you're a young woman, twenty-two, and you have a job that is forty hours a week. Which, and you're not living with your family anymore, so that gives you time for other activities. So what was it like growing up, or being a single young woman in D.C.?

MH: Well, I did, I did have a friend at that time I became engaged to and had planned to marry, so we spent a good deal of time together. And, but that, as it happened, fell through later on. And so that was one of the reasons I left for Japan.

TI: Before we do that, during this time period, any other, sort of, events or... in fact, earlier you mentioned having tea at the White House.

MH: Yes. Dad was back and Mother was back there, I don't remember what ceremony it was. But while they were there, because of Dad's position, Mother and I were invited to the White House to have tea with Bess Truman. And Bess Truman was not too pleased by these social events, but she was, she received us, and was, I would say, rather cool about it. But you know, not, not particularly out-coming. And so it was an interesting thing just to get into the White House and to have tea in, I think was the Blue Room, we had tea in. The sense of history that one feels there, yes.

TI: Well, you've been in lots of situations where they probably called for sort of formal arrangements. Was the White House similar to that, or was it even more different than...

MH: No, it was just a pleasant tea in a nice room, very brief, actually. Not very much conversation of any depth.

<Begin Segment 22>

TI: Okay. So you mentioned after I think it's five years in D.C., you then went back, or you went to Japan.

MH: Yes.

TI: And why, why Japan?

MH: I had been, I had always been drawn to Japan. I was very impressed with how Japan had pulled itself out of where it was after the war. And I was also, I think, Life magazine at that time had a bunch of colored pictures on, of the houses, of the interior of houses in Japan. And it appealed to me tremendously, the simplicity of the homes and the beauty of the arrangements. And all the way around, I felt drawn to Japan. So when, I never dreamed that I'd be able to go there, but the opportunity came, I was asked to join one of the units out there in Japan. And so I very gladly accepted, and went off to Japan.

TI: And so tell me what you found when you got to Japan. What was it like?

MH: I landed at Haneda, which was the airport, not this horrible monstrosity that's the airport now, Narita. [Laughs] But landed in Haneda, which was much more friendly a place to land. And as soon as I had landed there, I was met by an associate and driven into Tokyo. I felt as if I had come home. I just felt immediately at home there.

TI: So was this a different feeling, because you had spent quite a bit of time in China, was this a different feeling than when you were in China?

MH: Entirely different. I never felt at home in China.

TI: And so talk about that a little bit, the differences between China and Japan and that feeling, since you lived in both places. Coming in, I'm curious how you would characterize it.

MH: I always felt alien in China. I didn't feel that, that I was associated with it in any way. And I didn't take, I didn't take to it. I loved seeing places like Shanghai and Beijing and going to Nanking and going up the mountains to Kuling, all of those were wonderful for me. But I was more an observer and a visitor than someone at all involved with China.

TI: But then when you went to Japan, it felt very...

MH: Immediately. Immediately at home. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's interesting. That really is.

MH: And I know that one of the first places, well, the only, that first shop I was taken to there was Takumi, which was the folk craft shop in Tokyo. And I had been warned about when you start, when you get to Japan, you're going to buy all kinds of things, that you're eager to buy all these things, and so you should be careful about it. Because about six months later, you'd realize that all the stuff you bought was really rather touristy junk, and you wanted to get the quality material. So I was extremely cautious when I went to Takumi this first time, and I bought a beautiful ceramic vase which I still, I still think qualifies as "quality." [Laughs]

TI: It's probably because you have a good eye, you probably know what quality looks like. So this isn't that much longer after the war. And probably about the time the Occupation is ending or had ended.

MH: Had ended.

TI: What was Japan like just in terms of economically? When you look around, had it recovered quite a bit by then?

MH: Well, there were signs everywhere, you know. When you rode on the train, there were soldiers, soldiers with, without a leg or whatever, and still dressed in white. I was billeted in the Dai Iti Hotel, which was a mixed billet. In other words, it was both men and women there. And it was a fairly short distance from the Imperial Hotel, so I would walk over there and go through the Imperial Hotel and the neighborhood. Also, Takumis wasn't too far from them. But I noticed, I remember particularly I had taken out a phonograph to, for my, all my records that I, the many, many records that I had, classical music. And it wasn't working. So I was trying to find a place to get it repaired, and not too far from the Dai Iti Hotel was this little shop which was an electric shop. And the name of it was Forgive and Forget Swan. And that, to me, was a signal of what the Japanese were, how they were accepting of what had happened to them, and were trying to get past that.

TI: I'm curious, during this time period, were there very many other American women stationed or working or living in Tokyo?

MH: Yes, there was one, there was a women's billet which was called the Old Kaijo, which was strictly for women. And luckily, I was of sufficient rank to get into the one which was mixed men and women.

TI: Well, so explain, so most of the American women in Japan, what kind of roles or jobs did they have?

MH: Well, they had jobs with the military or with the embassy, is what I remember.

TI: And I'm curious, how did the Japanese view or treat American women?

MH: Very politely, very politely. I never... the only rude comments I ever got in Japan were from American soldiers, but nothing, nothing from the Japanese. Always courteous and polite.

TI: Did you have much opportunities during this first tour to interact with Japanese women?

MH: No, not during the first tour.

TI: And why was that? Because it was just Japanese men?

MH: No, because my headquarters were in, the headquarters where I worked, I should say, was Pershing Heights, which was the then military headquarters. And so I went from my billet to the headquarters at Pershing Heights by bus every day, I mean, by military bus, not by... and then back to my billet. So I really didn't get out to, except in shops, get out to see.

<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.

<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So you make your way back to Washington, D.C., and we're now, oh, about 1954 to 1956, '57, it was that time period. And so in D.C., it is just to get more experience, more training?

MH: No, no, I was, become chief of this particular section of the unit I was with.

TI: And is this additional, more editing of classified information?

MH: Oh yes, oh yes. I had a small group of people working for me at that time.

TI: And so it's like you're moving up in the ranks, so the people working for you were kind of like you four or five years ago when you were first starting?

MH: Yes, that's right.

TI: So any memories of that, of that stint in D.C., '54 to '57, that you'd like to share?

MH: I worked very hard, and I did, I did meet a British military attache who taught me quite a bit about classical music, far more than I had known. He was intensely interested in classical music. And he was also a connoisseur of wine and food, but I didn't take up on the wine angle. [Laughs] I never really learned about wine. But that was a pleasant, pleasant interlude there.

TI: So was this a romantic relationship?

MH: Oh, not deeply romantic, no. But very friendly. Oh, the interesting thing about him was when he came to America, he decided he really wanted to know America, so he went all the way across the continent, driving all the way across continent and starting, stopping everywhere along the way. So he wanted to know America in depth. I was very impressed by that.

TI: Especially since you had done it a couple of times, you knew how long and far that was. [Laughs]

MH: Yes, yes. Well, that he would want to know the country instead of just serving there in Washington as a military attache. He wanted to know the country.

TI: No, I respect that. I think that's, that's a good way to get to know any place.

<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So in '57, you are now reassigned back to Tokyo?

MH: Yes.

TI: And so talk about that. How had Tokyo changed in those two, three years?

MH: Well, it, of course, by that time, the Ginza was completely lit up with neon lights, and it was, you know, it was completely, it had advanced so much as far as recovering and starting anew with brand new buildings, and quite a changed atmosphere there. But I was still, felt at home and very happy there, yes.

LH: You lived in a private home.

MH: Yes, I had a private home instead of being billeted somewhere, which was another great comfort.

TI: Well, so, so I'm going to jump to -- because in 1958, you met a man.

MH: I did indeed.

TI: In August of 1958, so talk about that.

MH: Well, it's rather interesting that both of us had heard about each other before we met. I had heard about him in Washington and he had heard about me in Tokyo. Although by the time I met him, he had been transferred to South Korea.

TI: Well, you have to tell me, what had you heard about this man?

MH: I had heard that he had nineteen concubines, I think, which meant he was going around socially with a great number of attractive young women, some of them movie starlets that I knew of. And that he was a fabulous host, he had a Japanese cook who had been in Manchuria and cooked Chinese delicacies. All the way around, he was obviously an interesting person to meet.

TI: And so I'm curious, when you hear that, it sounds like, if someone told me that, it sounds like a playboy.

MH: Yes.

TI: Was that something that intrigued you or what, you strike me as someone that, perhaps, would not be interested in a playboy type.

MH: I just had heard about him. I hadn't thought of him as somebody that I would be dating or anything like that, just that he was this colorful character, which he is. [Laughs] And, but also, I might say that in China, I never dated a Chinese. In Japan, this, the second time, I did have one date with a Korean, but I had never dated Asian people at all. Not avoiding it, but just it had never come about that I did. So this would, so there was no question in my mind about that, but I didn't even think I'd meet him or know him or date him, so it wasn't a question in my mind at all.

TI: So tell me, so you finally meet this person that you had heard about. Describe that first meeting.

MH: I was going to a cocktail party in Tokyo, mainly because they were going to serve shish kabob. Because I had a place down, along with a group of people, I had a, renting a cottage down in -- not a cottage, house down Oiso on the beach. And so I, would I go to the beach this weekend or would I go and have shish kabob? So I decided I would go and have shish kabob. And I walked in the door, and there, seated on this couch with women all around him was this man. I had met him very, very briefly sometime before. This was, this was August, I'd met him briefly in March, I think. And so I remembered his name, which I never do. I don't remember people's names, I'm very bad about that. But I said, "Hi Luke, I didn't know you were here, over here." And he sort of shook off all these ladies and came over to me. And we spent that, rest of the evening together, went from the cocktail party to a nightclub. I never did get my shish kabob.

TI: And so what was it about that, that meeting that interested you about Lucius?

MH: Everything. [Laughs]

TI: Is it the conversation, was it his personality?

MH: No, just immediate, immediate attraction. It was just, just like that. And, of course, he had so many interesting things to tell and say, so much more about, I learned so much more about Japanese cuisine, for instance, because of him. He had the list of all the best restaurants in Tokyo, and took me to a number of them, and knew so much about Japan. All the way around, it was just... but that wasn't it, it was just a tremendous attraction to each other.

TI: Well, you had dated other men.

MH: Oh, yes.

TI: Was this, did this feel different?

MH: Oh yes, oh yes. From the very beginning.

TI: Because I was looking at some of your notes, and so you met Lucius at that cocktail party, the end of August, 1958, in just... August, September, October, within three months, you are engaged.

MH: Well, that was very brief this time in August, because I had promised friends to go down to, actually, to Kobe. I was going to visit friends in Kobe, so Lucius and I, I think, had three or four dates, I'm not quite sure, and then he put me on the train for Kobe. So then, and he went back to Seoul where he was stationed. And so then he started writing letters to me, and I got tons of correspondence from him. [Laughs] And then he came back in November because he was going to be, he came through Tokyo on his way, actually, to Washington because he was going to have temporary duty there. And we started going out, and then he proposed to me then. And then he left for Washington, D.C. But on his way, he stopped in Seattle and met my brother.

TI: Before we go there, so when he proposed to you, was that... what was your reaction? Was that something that you were surprised, or you thought that this might, might happen? Tell me about that.

MH: I certainly hoped it would happen, and I said an immediate, "Yes."

<Begin Segment 26>

TI: Now, during this time period, in those months when you're dating and getting lots of letters, back in, in the '50s, it wasn't that normal to have interracial marriages.

MH: Yes.

TI: So did, how did you think about that? Did you think that was going to be a problem?

MH: I didn't even think about that. Oh, and I didn't say that when we got engaged, it happened my sister Elizabeth was up from Taiwan, and staying in the Imperial Hotel. And so I went around to tell her as soon as we got engaged, and she was very positive about it. We'd taken her out to lunch, I mean, actually, no, I think it was after I told her that we took her out to lunch, and then, then Lucius's sister and her husband were also in Tokyo, and had invited us -- not, invited me, because Lucius was with them -- to their house for a small party with friends, 'cause I'd met her before. And as it turned out, it turned into our engagement party. And we, we went to this, the engagement dinner was at a very prominent House of Tofu, which was, had been a tofu center for, I don't know, probably centuries. And as it turned out, my sister didn't like tofu. [Laughs] But at any rate, that's where our engagement dinner was.

TI: That's a good story. And so you just started talking, that Lucius had to make his way back to Washington, D.C. He was going to stop on the West Coast and see your brother.

MH: Yes. Well, see his family, and then he met my brother, yes.

TI: He met your brother and later your father. And so probably you're getting word that he's going to meet, see your brother, meet your --

MH: I knew he'd meet my brother, and, I mean, of course, I gave him the introduction to my brother. And as it happened, while Lucius was in Seattle, my brother had his engagement party to his, to the woman he later married. And so Lucius was present at that. And then -- pardon me?

LH: Best man.

MH: No, but later best man when you came back through, Darling.

TI: But while this was happening, you're in Japan, and Lucius is meeting your brother and then later...

MH: And telling, my brother was telling my father his impressions of Lucius because I had already written to my parents about it.

TI: So were you a little nervous about, about this time period with, in some ways, Lucius meeting your family without you there.

MH: No, I wasn't at all, but I knew that, I didn't know how they'd take it at all. And as it happened, my mother had been quite ill, so my father was picking up all the mail and bringing it up here to the ranch, which is where they were then. And he opened the letter in which I announced my engagement, and he didn't show it to Mother right away. Because he didn't know what her reaction would be, and she was not that well, and he didn't want to show it to her. But he wrote a very positive thing back to me about it. And then, as I say, then Lucius went to Washington --

TI: Going back to your father, so when he wrote that positive response, what was your reaction? Did that...

MH: Oh, very, I was very happy. I was not proposed, I was not going to break this thing up regardless of the reaction from my family.

TI: But yet it was really nice to have your father be encouraging.

MH: Oh, it was. It was very good. And so --

TI: Now, was this before or after he had met Lucius?

MH: Oh, before. Before he'd met Lucius, because Lucius came back to Seattle and was best man at my brother's wedding, and my father came up to it, my mother was still not well enough to travel up. So he met Lucius at that time, and they both flew down to Sonoma together, and that is when Lucius met my mother. And she met him very guardedly, and introduced him around as a "friend of Maynard's," and that was that. Dad was very positive about it. And then he came back to Japan, and, let's see, that was in, he came back, I think, didn't you come back January 1st or something?

LH: December 31st.

MH: December 31st, and we wanted to get married legally right away. And the first time that the Japanese offices -- well, we were going to get married at the embassy, and then would have to also register our marriage with the Japanese government. And the first time that they, the first day that they opened was January 6th, which was Adult's Day. And we got married on, we got legally married at the embassy and also at the Japanese offices on that day. And then our, our religious marriage was on January 15th, which was Martin Luther King Day, in those days, actually. [Laughs]

TI: Well, actually, that was even before Martin Luther King Day in that it was in the '50s, so later on they...

MH: Yes, later it became that.

TI: So when you celebrate your wedding anniversary, you have all these different dates, January 6th or January 15th...

MH: We celebrate both. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] That's good. So during that -- boy, it's so fast.

MH: Yes, it was.

TI: And a flurry.

<Begin Segment 27>

TI: You met in Tokyo, Lucius', you said brother?

MH: Sister, sister and brother-in-law, yes.

TI: When was the first time you met Lucius' mother, I think? Because his father...

MH: We came home after that tour ended, so that was the first time, yes. But we, well, of course, we had announced to his sister and brother-in-law that we were getting married, and she was concerned about it. They were Catholics, and she was also concerned about Caucasian women who got divorced all the time, and also I wasn't a Catholic.

TI: Now, did this come out before you were married, was there any discussion?

MH: Oh, yes, this was when we went to the house to tell them and she went off into a room with Lucius, and her husband told me of these fears that she had about the marriage.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. So Lucius and his sister went to another room to talk, and the husband was with you, and he was explaining what was going on in the other room?

MH: Yes.

TI: How did that make you feel?

MH: Not too happy, yes. But she did, she did everything for -- I mean, we didn't have a regular reception. We were married in this beautiful church, but we only, as a reception it was only the members of the wedding party. And she had it in her house, and she'd gotten a great big cake and a sword for me to cut it with, and made beautiful arrangements. She was always very good to me. And later, I think she became fond of me.

TI: Well, it's interesting how direct they were. In this kind of situation, it wouldn't have surprised me if no one had, that they felt this way, but no one would have told you really.

MH: Yes, yes.

TI: But for Lucius' brother-in-law to be so direct to say that, "They're in the room talking about you," is very direct. That's interesting. There was another story... oh, you told me yesterday about, was it another family member in Japan? It was, I think, after you were legally married but before your religious ceremony.

MH: Yes, my father's brother, my uncle and his wife, he was also in the Navy, and he, they were retired, but they were taking this trip on a Navy transport, and docked at Yokohama, I guess. And they called, and this was right after the legal ceremony that day. And so we drove down there to visit them on the ship, and told them that we'd gotten legally married that day. And my aunt Ann said, "Well, are you living together?" And we said, "Oh, no, not until the religious ceremony." "Why? That's so foolish of you. You ought to be living together." [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's a good story.

<Begin Segment 28>

TI: So how did your life change now that you're a married woman?

MH: I glowed. Lucius had to go back to Seoul, but before he went, he searched all over Tokyo for a home for us. And I remember that this particular man, who knew him quite well and worked with him, he said, "I never knew that Lucius had such a nesting instinct." [Laughs] And Lucius did find a place for us before he went back, and then he was, he switched over to Tokyo and we were there together. I remember that the agent that was, he was taking him all around town to show him the places that we were going to maybe rent, and Lucius was really driving because he's good at that anyway. But he was driving this guy to find the place, and then finally the man said to him, "Don't push, Mr. Horiuchi!" [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] Oh, that doesn't surprise me for some reason. So I'm curious, from a career standpoint, do things change after you get married? I mean, first you're a single woman, you're on this career path, and now that you get married, your flexibility in terms of probably traveling or being assigned to different places changes. Does that change your career?

MH: Well, eventually, no, it didn't. Because I resigned, I would have been going on, but I resigned when we came back to the States at the end of the tour.

TI: Okay. Well, so in some ways it did, because you left...

MH: I left it, but I left it voluntarily. It wasn't any notion that my career would be stunted in any way.

<Begin Segment 29>

TI: And so what year did you return to the States? This was about how many years after you were married?

MH: '61. 1961.

TI: Because then shortly after, you have a child, in 1962.

MH: In 1962.

TI: And this is a son?

MH: A son, yes.

TI: And so tell me what it's like raising a son. And I guess what I'm looking for is, did you consciously think about how you wanted to raise your son based on how you were raised? I mean, because you had this experience, thinking about your interview, of this very transitory kind of living, of two years here, three years here. And by being the admiral's daughter, kind of a lonely experience, not really being able to play. And so I'm curious, as you became a mother and raised your son, how this all came into play.

MH: Well, you know, you realize that at that time, when we got married, I was thirty-three, and I had not really been around children at all for a long, long time. And I never was really all that good with children, to tell you the truth, although I loved them and so forth. But I wasn't around children to, to bring them up or anything like that. So it was a big experience for me. I didn't quite know how to face the whole thing. But the main thing that I knew was that I wanted to read to the baby and to sing to the baby, and to take the best possible care I could of the baby. And so that's what I tried to do after we had the child. But the main, the important thing that happened, I had learned in, when I was in China, that a distant relative of mine had died. The daughter of Admiral Luce, who I had, we had visited when I was young, visited her in Newport, actually. And she had left a sum of money. She was quite wealthy because her father had sugar interests in Cuba. She'd left a sum of money through her, I think it's her son, to four female members of my family including me, that were single, to help them on our way. And I heard this in China, and I thought, "That's interesting," and I didn't know anything about it. And so Lucius and I came back to the States and we were living in this apartment, and we had the baby. And I was taking the baby to the park one day, and here was this piece of mail in the mailbox there. I took it up to the park and opened it, and it turned out I had inherited, the relation who had the money had died, and I had inherited a substantial sum of money from this bequest. And I looked at it, and I said, "Now we can buy a house." [Laughs] And so went back and told Lucius about it, and he said, "Oh, I'll buy you a car right away." Well, I wasn't -- he had a car, and was going to buy me a car. And so this was all very nice, but I had started looking at the classified section about the houses, where they were and all that, and there was, and I said, "I'd like to buy a house." So we started looking around through this agent, house agent, at houses. And she was very careful -- oh, I'd forgotten this part of the story. Gracious heavens, I have to go back. When we got married, Lucius is the one who told me that there were certain states in which we were not legally married, and we had a list of those states.

TI: Because of the miscegenation laws?

MH: Yes, the miscegenation law. And one of those states was Virginia. So when we came back to Washington...

LH: And Maryland.

MH: No, Maryland wasn't on the list, Darling. Yeah, well, I guess it was in a way. Yes it was, excuse me, and Maryland. And we came back to Washington, but we stayed in a motel in Virginia, and I said, "We're living in sin here," you know. [Laughs] The other... but, you know, it wasn't too long after that that they, the only one that held on to it, I think, was Alabama, still had it on the books all these many years later. But, so we didn't know how this limited our looking for a house was concerned. And as it happened, a friend of ours was a friend with this man who was the State of Maryland, and he looked up the miscegenation law in Maryland, but it was only for, against people of South Asian ancestry.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. South Asian meaning, like...

MH: Filipinos and so forth.

TI: Oh, Filipinos.

MH: Because the Naval Academy was in Annapolis, Maryland, and the Navy had a great number of Filipinos employed as stewards and things. And that's the only key into why that law was there.

TI: How interesting. I never thought that.

MH: Yes. So we knew we could look in Maryland, and we were looking in Maryland. But this house agent told us that there were several places that she wouldn't show us because we wouldn't be accepted there in Maryland.

TI: That you would be accepted, but Lucius wouldn't be accepted.

MH: Yes. And so, but during the course of all of this, I was looking through the papers, and there was this new subdivision that was, was opening outside River Road, on River Road, I mean, called Carderock Springs, and I wanted to go there to see that, because it was modern design. And so we went there and fell in love with this house, and that's the house we bought. But my son Brian, last year or so, got this thing off the internet that Carderock Springs had been voted a historical site. [Laughs] Yes.

TI: So something that was new, that you thought was new...

MH: This was a modern design historically interesting to the national historical record, yes.

TI: Oh, that's funny. I guess it will happen to all of us.

<Begin Segment 30>

TI: Okay, so you're now in this house. Now, your husband's career sort of had him leaving the area.

MH: Yes, he was, that's when Vietnam started, yes.

TI: Well, first the Philippines, I think...

MH: Oh, well, first we went to the Philippines, excuse me, yes. First we went to the Philippines when Brian was three years old. And Brian, so he was three to five then in the Philippines. Neither of us were, Brian nor I, were in very good health there. We both had a miserable time there as far as health was concerned. But...

LH: You might mention the DCM who you knew in China.

MH: Oh, yes. One of the people serving there, the Deputy Chief of Mission in the embassy was, not John Service... Darling, what was his name?

LH: Dick.

MH: Dick Service. Dick Service, who had been in the consulate in Tsingtao. As a matter of fact, he would take me riding out there, horseback riding in Tsingtao, and also loaned me some classical records. And so he was now Deputy Chief of Mission in Manila, and we got to know him. And then the ambassador... tell me again, Lucius.

LH: William McCormick Blair.

MH: William McCormick Blair, Jr. and his wife, Deeda Blair, had a little boy who was just about Brian's age, right, Lucius? And so they occasionally would play together, Brian and William McCormick Blair, and so forth.

TI: But it sounds like it was, because of the health issues, I mean, it wasn't the easiest stay for you and Brian.

MH: It was not. No, I was, I was really sort of restricted to house and to the air conditioning that was in the house. I was not well at all. Bad asthma, very bad asthma and bad reaction to, allergic reaction to the cogon grass that grew everywhere there.

TI: So after two years, you returned back to the States?

MH: We returned home, uh-huh. Came home through Tokyo, so Brian saw Tokyo for the first time. And returned to Washington, D.C. to, well, to our house in Carderock. And then Lucius had, was assigned to...

TI: To Vietnam.

MH: To Vietnam, to Saigon.

TI: Right. And this was in the midst of the Vietnam War, too, '68.

MH: Yes, it was. And I think you picked up quite a bit. And that was, so I was holding down the fort there alone with Brian, while Lucius was...

TI: But this was something that probably was somewhat familiar because of your upbringing, having the father stationed someplace else.

MH: Oh, yes, indeed. Indeed, yes.

TI: And the mother raising the children.

<Begin Segment 31>

TI: Okay, so Maynard, we're going to start up again. And where we left it off before the break was, you're back in Maryland, Lucius is in Vietnam, this is about, during the Vietnam War, and you're raising Brian.

MH: Yes.

TI: And then eventually, Lucius comes back to Maryland. But tell me what it was like in Maryland during this time period.

MH: Well, my health was still not all that good, but I was able to take care of Brian, and he started in this, in school, Carderock school, which was nice because it was a completely new community, of course. It was a new school, a new community all around. And the modern design aspect of it drew a lot of interesting people to that area, too. Someone commented on the fact that there were more Phi Beta Kappas in that area than there were normally in any place. [Laughs] And so... and it was a good school. And they, at one point, they invited me, or they asked me if I would consider becoming the editor of the newsletter for the Carderock school, and I did become the news editor and remained that for three years, which I enjoyed very much, getting back into my editing skill again.

TI: Well, it sounds like, too, it was a great opportunity to put some roots down.

MH: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: Not only for you, but for your son, Brian.

MH: Well, Brian, of course, considers that his prime home, and for years, he would go back there and look at the home after it was sold. He would look and see what it looked like there. And his friends from that era are still his friends today. Many of them, several of them were present at his wedding here. So he's kept his close ties to that area. And the time when Lucius was in Vietnam was sad for Brian. He missed Lucius very much. But he did say, once when Lucius came home, he said, "I used to love Dad more than I loved you, Mom, but now I love you the same." [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] And how old was Brian when he said that?

MH: Well, it was when Lucius came back from Vietnam and he said that, so how old would he have been Lucius?

LH: Probably seven.

TI: When you were in Maryland and again, probably interracial marriages between a Japanese American and a Caucasian was not that common. Did you ever get questions about your last name, Horiuchi

MH: Absolutely not in Carderock, because it was a very savvy community there. They'd traveled, they, and they were, you know... it was quite a cosmopolitan community, including, there were people of other races there. I think one of Brian's best friends was, the father was originally, I mean, at least his family was from where, Lucius? What would it have been?

LH: Who are we talking about?

MH: You know...

LH: Kami?

MH: Hm?

LH: Kami?

MH: Yes.

LH: Iran.

MH: Iran.

LH: He was with the World Bank.

MH: Yes. There were, it was a cosmopolitan community there, there was no question there.

LH: It was an upscale place.

MH: Yes, definitely.

TI: Okay, so very accepting of things. Did Brian ever, did you ever have discussions with Brian about his sort of mixed heritage?

MH: Well, in the sense, yes, in the sense that we told him the family histories, yes. And didn't make a big thing of it to him, you know.

TI: And would he gravitate more towards, when you looked at your family history, more towards your side or Lucius' side? Did he show an interest one way or the other?

MH: I didn't find that, I didn't see that. He was accepting of all, of all the relatives, and of all the background, yes.

TI: So about the time --

MH: Oh, I do remember, excuse me, but this was, this was much earlier when we went to the Philippines. We stopped, well, we did stop in Seattle on our way to the Philippines, and then we, and then we stopped in Honolulu. And Brian said, as he looked at these people on the street, he said, "They all look like Uncle Ed." This was Lucius' brother. [Laughs]

TI: So he was very surprised that there were other people that looked like...

MH: Yeah, there were all these other people who looked like Uncle Ed.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. Well, now he lives in Los Angeles, so he's probably around a lot more. So when he's, when Brian's around sixteen, the family goes to Japan.

MH: Oh, he didn't want to go to Japan. He didn't want to leave all of his ties there. Quite naturally. He was just saying he wasn't going to go, wasn't going to go, up to the last minute. And Lucius was thinking up these various places he could stay, which I just... I, as a Navy Junior, who immediately moved and didn't question it. When we had to move, we moved, and I didn't have any say in it. So I was really taken aback by this attitude. I should have expected it, but I didn't, on Brian's part. And then eventually, he said, at a dinner one night we were having with various friends, he said, "Well, I'm really going to go with you. I love you, and I want to go with you." So he did come, but it was, his feet were dragging all the way.

TI: To the point where you were looking at possible boarding schools for him to stay?

MH: Friends' where he could stay. But he said he would come. And he still dragged his feet all the way in going, and reached Japan and was very snooty about the place. And we went on this train trip from Tokyo to Kobe, and all these flat plains, he just, on the way, on the train, even though -- I don't remember if we saw Fuji that time. But he was still sort of, didn't think much of it. Then we got to Kobe, and Kobe is, of course, it's hilly, it's right between the mountains and the sea, and we were living on the side with the mountains, and this began to reconcile him, I think, a bit.

TI: Just because of the beauty of the area?

MH: Yes. And then he, but he hated the Canadian Academy where he went to school there. It was a, of course, it was an international community school, but it was started by these, I believe, Canadian missionaries. And it was rather stuffy and very, very different from his, the atmosphere of his high school here in the U.S., so he wasn't happy at all. And I didn't learn until years later that he used to skip school and come down the hill from where -- our house was halfway up the hill to the school. He'd come down this hill from the school and go into the Japanese, the Japanese temple that was down there, or he'd travel around. And he came to love Japan just completely, just completely.

TI: That's good.

<Begin Segment 32>

TI: And how was it for you? How had Japan changed in those years that you were away?

MH: Of course, Tokyo was, was even worse as far as the traffic and the noise, you know, everything, from what I remembered. And then Kobe, of course, was entirely different. A quiet town, and an attractive, very attractive town and one where I could move around on the buses and everything like that, and take a train out to, up to Osaka and so forth.

LH: You'd go to Kyoto.

MH: And I went to Kyoto, too.

TI: And it was probably a lot different because the earlier tours of duty, you were more focused on work, more around the military. Here, you're probably a little more in touch with Japanese families, people, women.

MH: Yes, yes.

TI: And so tell me about that. How much interaction did you have with, say, other Japanese women at this point?

MH: Well, the wife of the consul general was the head of a group which was called the Japanese American Women of the Kansai, JAWK. And I'm not a joiner; I didn't join any clubs or anything like that. But the wife of the consul general persuaded me that I should at least come and see this group. And, as a matter of fact, I did become the secretary of the group, and these were all very high-class Japanese ladies. I mean, one was even married to a relative of the emperor. And they were, the others, another one was, the husband was head of the sake company. It was quite a group. And I became very good friends with them. This was the, the Japanese ladies that I got to know because of my joining this group, and made quite the difference in my life.

TI: And in terms of communication, would it be with Japanese or English?

MH: It was English. Yes, it was all in English. They had all learned English, yes.

TI: And how did, when you look at their lives compared to your life, what were some of the differences?

MH: Well, that's difficult to go into. You know, I didn't expect it to be the same as my life. I knew something of what the Japanese home life was, and I tried to appreciate it. I mean, I did appreciate it, the difference with mine, yes. We, and of course, this was also international there. There were, we had other acquaintances there that were of different nationalities. It was quite a diplomatic representation in Kobe, as well as a great deal, number of, great number of businessmen with their wives and families there. So it was a very international community.

TI: Other memories of Japan or Kobe during this time period? Because you were there for about how many years?

MH: We were there for how many years, Lucius?

LH: Six.

MH: Six years.

TI: So quite a long time. So any other highlights?

MH: Oh, we got to travel around. I got to Nara and, of course, Kyoto, but Nara was such a beautiful experience, I've never forgotten that. That's so lovely there. One of the things that impressed me as we got near where the temples were, that there was a stream flowing there with a little bridge, just a small, very small stream with a bridge over it. And the water was clear, which was pretty incredible. And of course, there at Nara is where there are these herds of deer, that you don't dare leave your purse alone, or the deer will get into them to try to get something to eat. [Laughs] But there was one, I went up there originally with one of my Japanese friends from the, from this JAWK, a very lovely person, Setsuko Shindo, who, she took me up there originally. And we went to this temple, and Lucius, tell me... we went to all these temples, but there was a particular one...

LH: Chuguji.

MH: Chuguji where, is that where...

LH: The Miroku Bosatsu.

MH: Where a statue of the Miroku Bosatsu had recently been installed. And it was a small statue, it's a very small statue. I don't think it's any more than that, about that high, is it?

LH: Five feet, six feet.

MH: Five feet high. And it is just, it is so beautiful, and I just was overwhelmed by it. And so when I went back to Kobe and when Brian was visiting -- because by that time he'd come back to the States -- visiting one time, I said we had to go, we had to go see that. And they felt the same way I did, the power of the presence of that statue was incredible. I know that then later, when Lucius and Brian, and one of Brian's friends -- I mean, this is after we'd been here for a number of years -- they went back to Japan, or they went to Japan. And this friend, they took him to this, young fellow, same age as Brian, and he started praying right away. That's the picture of it, right up there. It's such an overwhelming... and it's not big, you know. But it was one of, a very profound experience.

TI: Good.

<Begin Segment 33>

TI: Anything else you want to talk about in Japan before we go, come back to the States?

MH: Oh, there's so much there. I was, during this time, I was quite frequently coming back to the States during the summertime because the humidity there was just too much for me. So Lucius would send me home here to Sonoma, and I would come up here. That's when we decided, during that time in Kobe, that we would build here. 'Cause I'd inherited this property. At first we were going to sell it, and then we decided, no, we'd build. So I was looking for the site to build, and my brother showed me this, the site of this house, I mean, which wasn't, of course, here. Which Dad and my brother had both picked out as a place to build a house.

TI: And when your father and brother picked out this site, did they have a person in mind who would build up here?

MH: I don't know, I don't know.

TI: But they just thought of this as a prime site for a place, which is magnificent. I came up here, and you're on the top of the hill looking out into the valley.

MH: All the way down to San Francisco.

TI: The views are just incredible.

MH: Yes. Well, all the other houses, this is all a family property here, and they're all on the, below where we have... this is the height. But I spent one summer here cutting out all the mesquite in order to get to this. And uncovering a big tree, and uncovering other things here before we built here.

TI: Now, was that enjoyable to you to do that kind of physical labor?

MH: Yes, 'cause it meant to much to me to have a home. Just like when I wanted to buy a home in Maryland, it meant so much to me to have a home that was mine. And Sonoma was, had always been this, as far as I was concerned, the only real home I had from the time that my parents bought here.

TI: So for you, this was really going to be your, your place, your home.

MH: Yes. Our furusato, you know, that's what we call it, which is the "home place."

TI: And so in terms of the architecture, it's interesting, there's a Japanese influence.

MH: Indeed. In Japan, there was an American firm called Charles Tuttle and Company, which published an awful lot of Japanese books in, Japanese books about Japan in English. And one of them was A Japanese Touch for Your Home, which I bought in Kobe, and wanted to incorporate certain elements in my home. And so when I came here and stayed with my sister and I was looking for an architect who would style the house, and she gave me the names of a couple of architects here in Sonoma. And I went to the first one, and I walked into his office building, and in his waiting room was A Japanese Touch for Your Home. [Laughs] And so he became our architect. I didn't look any further. And he went right along with me in styling the house, including my wanting to have the ceilings of wood instead of plaster, and the other elements of a Japanese home that I tried to incorporate in this house.

TI: It is gorgeous, because it's sort of, as I come up here, it's so part of the environment here. It's not unsightly in terms of the lines, it's very much in keeping...

MH: No, I even, I picked out the color outside. He wasn't going along with it, the architect, but I picked it out because of the color of the earth. I wanted the house to blend in with the color of the earth. And when it was accomplished, he agreed with me that that was the right color.

TI: Good, I'm glad I asked about that. So you're now, so Lucius retired, and then was the house done then, or did it...

MH: It was done in 1965.

LH: '85.

MH: Oh, '85, excuse me, '85. There I go again, '65 sticks in my mind for some reason. 1985.

TI: So 1985, so this was before Lucius retired, so when Lucius retired, this house was done.

MH: Yes.

TI: And so you've lived here since then?

MH: Ever since then.

TI: The longest period, I'm thinking back in your life history.

MH: Living in one place, yes.

<Begin Segment 34>

TI: So at this point, Maynard, is there anything else that I've left out? Anything that... we went through your life pretty quickly, in, I think, about, oh, three and half, four hours. And so we were only able to touch on just kind of some of the highlights. And I know I left out so much, but is there anything that you would like to, to add at this point?

MH: I really feel that that's probably... I mean, I would have so much more to say, and I really, I really think that I've, as you say, hit the highlights of my life.

TI: Because you've just lived this incredible life, and there was one thing during a break we talked about that I just wanted to mention, was your singing. Because, and you mentioned it earlier, in how you like to walk early in the morning, and as you walk, you sometimes sing.

MH: Yes.

TI: And talk a little bit about your love for singing.

MH: Well, I've always... my mother was a singer. And as a matter of fact, she supposedly was going to head for a career as a singer, except that she had a series of colds that ruined her voice, supposedly. And her mother was a Christian Scientist, and she, so she wasn't cared for as far as her health was concerned. And so I inherited that voice from her, but also I understand in my father's line there were some singers also. And when I went to the junior college here, for one year there was, one of the courses I took was a man who was teaching music, singing. And he told me, he praised my voice very highly and said that I was one of the best singers he'd ever, ever heard, very proud of me. And I told my mother that I wanted a career as a singer, and she said, "Your health wouldn't permit it. You're not strong enough to ever have that career." So I stopped thinking about that, but I've always sung privately. And the first time that I really -- well, actually, in high school, I had the lead in a little, here in Sonoma, I had the singing lead in a particular little operetta they put on. And then in Tsingtao, they put on an operetta there, yes, some sort of little drama, singing, there, and I sang in that, too. And then, but I didn't really have any other exposure until I came, we came back to Sonoma this last time. Then I started in the chorale, the Sonoma Chorale, singing in the chorale. And I enjoyed that very much. I did that for a couple of years, yes. That's my singing career.

TI: And I'm guessing when Brian was young, you mentioned reading and singing.

MH: Oh, yes.

TI: So did you sing a lot to Brian?

MH: Oh, I did, I did. This rocking chair here, which incidentally, Lucius and I bought in the same folk art store I told you about in Tokyo, that's what I had in Brian's room. And at night I would sing to him and read to him in that rocking chair.

TI: And were they, like, lullabies, or what kind of songs would you sing?

MH: Mostly, to him, lullabies, yes.

TI: Do you still remember them? Are these things that you would hope to sing to your grandchild?

MH: I would like to. Yes, I would like to.

TI: Because just to get up to date, the last time I was here, earlier this year, I think it was right about the time your son was getting married. And so to, I guess, bring full circle, and this visit, I understand that they're expecting.

MH: Yes, that's true.

TI: And so when I mention grandchildren, the hope is in May or so, I think.

MH: Yes, it is.

TI: That you'll have a grandchild. So what song would you sing, do you think, if you had to sing to your, your grandchild? What are some of the songs?

MH: There's one song that Brian particularly liked that I would sing. But it's one that's not a familiar American song. It's one I learned years ago that would not be an American song. So I can't tell you about the words to it... let me see if I can think of the words to it.

TI: Would you be able to sing it now?

MH: I don't know if I've got a voice today. It comes and goes. But it was, "Go to sleep my little baby, close your eyes, my dear, close your eyes." I'd have to sing, I can't do the words without singing it. [Laughs] But it was a beautiful song, and it's the one that he loved the most.

TI: My suggestion is, when you feel really strong with your voice, you should record it.

MH: I would love to.

TI: And you'd have that available to the family.

MH: I would love to do that. But the, I guess the only thing I would possibly be able to do it on is, with our equipment, would be on tape. Just a small tape cassette. I don't think there's any other way I could do it, except that way.

TI: I'll give that some thought. Maybe I'll have some other ideas for you. Well, so, Maynard, this was a delight. I had such a great time, with my time here with you and learning so much.

MH: Well, thank you. You opened up my memories so much, that I'm just practically swamped with them. I could go on talking forever, I'm afraid.

TI: Well, my suggestion is now start writing. If you can find the time, you might want to just start jotting down some of these memories that have bubbled up. Because they are, your story, as I think I mentioned to you, could be a novel or a movie. It's just incredible, all the things that you've seen in your life.

MH: Well, it's been a good life, in spite of the rocky parts, it's been a very good life.

TI: Well, thank you very much.

MH: Thank you.