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TI: Okay, so let's continue the story. So at some point around now you actually enlist into the Army Air Corps.

VW: Yes, I did.

TI: So why don't you talk about that.

VW: During the five months that they held my license, I was Virgil Westdale then instead of Virgil Nishimura. And I went to Romulus Field, which was in Detroit area, and I joined up like all the rest of the guys. Held up my right hand and went to the physical and so on and became an Air Corps, Enlisted Reserve Corps in October, that was in October 1942. And so, and then I got my license back, well, let's see, it was five months later, which was between when I joined the Air Corps and November the 20th or something like that. Somewhere in that area I got my license back. And so I went to Bendix Field and told them that I was ready to fly again, so they put me in the next program. And I went under the name "Westdale" then, so all the pilots at the time then, the new ones that came in... the other people who were with me during the, before I got my license taken away, they were all gone on to other programs in the area by then. And so I lost track of them. But...

TI: Okay, so you're back flying, you're back learning, you get your --

VW: Cross-country.

TI: -- you have your pilot license, you got your cross-country, you become instrument trained.

VW: And night flying and then instrument flying, and then commercial. And I took instrument flying at the same time that I was taking commercial flight. I don't see how I did that, really. In fact, my daughter was getting all this stuff together in kind of a little family program, and she said, "Dad, you took the, you took your license, you took your exam for your instrument flight the day, the next day, you took your commercial flight." I said, "No, Cheri, I couldn't have done that. That was impossible." She said, "Dad, that's what you told me." And so I went and pulled my logbooks out of my drawer and started looking through them and she was right. I took my instrument flight (...) exam in one day, and the next day I took my commercial flight exam. And I says, "I still can't believe that I did that, but I did it, 'cause all the logbooks are all witnessed and everything. So it happened. And that, that's how it was done.

TI: And you're doing this all while you had enlisted into the Army Air Corps.

VW: Yeah.

TI: So it was, it was like this, they let you do this extra training while you were there? Okay.

VW: Yeah, they did. And these were rigorous programs. They were really rigorous programs. And instrument flying, I don't know if you know anything about it, but it is not easy, and at that time especially. Because we went on the bare minimum, you couldn't see out at all, and you did everything on instruments and the radio. And I missed the, when I took my final exam -- well, one of the... every now and then they would come and they'd choose a student to fly with, and want to make sure the program was doing the right thing. And one day it was all, horrible day, stratus clouds and there was a lot of wind and rain and things. And I went to the airport thinking, "This is gonna be a rough day." So my instructor came out and he said, "Virgil," he says, "somebody else is gonna ride with you today." And I said, "Oh," I thought it was one of the instructors, which I didn't mind. And he said, "It's a CAA inspector." I said, "No," I said, "why don't they fly with somebody else?" He said, well, he said he looked over the logbooks and he said, "He looked at yours and he said, "You're giving this guy a lot of ones." And that means, ones means perfect. Perfect maneuver. And he says, "And he didn't like the fact that I'd given you so many ones and he wanted to ride with you." And I thought, "Oh, no, this is gonna be a horrible thing." So those inspectors, I don't know if you know anything about, but I'm telling you, they don't say anything to you. They hardly say hello. But this guy, he said, "Well, let's get going." And so we got on the plane and he took off because I couldn't see anything, you know, you're all blind, you're blinded. And so we're up there and he said, "Make some turns," and so on and so forth, and you got to do that all on timing and the banking, and you got to look at the turning bank indicator and all that.

TI: Because when you say "blind," they actually cover the...

VW: Oh, yeah. You can't see anything.

TI: ...the windshield or the...

VW: Can't see anything out at all. You don't fly by contact at all. You have to fly by those instruments that are in front of you. And if you don't believe 'em, you're in trouble. So, and you don't fly by the seat of your pants on this, you know, you go by instruments. And so we went up, and then he says, "Okay," after we did a whole bunch of maneuvers, he said, "Let's go to the airport now." And so now you got to figure out how to get to where you took off. And you haven't seen anything, you don't know where you are, and so you got to find yourself. So by listening to the radio and so on and tying down the beam and making the moves around, you hit the high cone, the high cone is spread out like that, and it's easy to hit the high cone. But when it came to the, to the low cone, it's so narrow down there, and if the plane jerks a little or something like that, you might miss that low cone. And that's exactly what happened to us. And the plane was moving, oh, it was joshing up and down and so on, and I missed the low cone. And I thought, "Oh-oh." So I grabbed the radio really quick and I turned it just so I could barely hear it, and it faded and I knew already I had taken all the memory of the time and where I was and so on, and I started letting down. But I checked that radio one more time, I turned it up where I could just hear it, and it faded, and it's same as it did with the other, faded twice, and I knew that we were past the station. And I had already figured out the time, and the airport was three and a half miles away, and I knew that the, that we were traveling so many miles an hour and so many air speed, the air speed, and I grabbed the... of course, I had already taken the time and so on, and reading all the instruments, and I was letting down at so many feet per minute. And we got to the airport I says, "Over the airport." He says, "Okay, you can look out." I looked out and I was right over the runway.

TI: Wow.

VW: I just, I just, oh, man, I was really happy.

TI: That was pretty impressive.

VW: Yeah. And so we, we landed. He landed, of course, I couldn't, I still couldn't see out very well. And when he landed, do you think that he said anything? Not a thing. He just walked out of there, walked out of the airplane and he was gone for a half hour. And I thought, "My (gosh), what's going on?" And finally my instructor came out, and he held out his and shook my hand and he says, "That was a job well done." And he says, "He gave you one more one than I did." And I thought, "Oh, what a nice thing." It was great.

TI: So after you finished your, your flight training, so now you have a commercial license, what happened next?

VW: Well, I, the next day, of course, I had to go through the commercial flight, which, and that was another thing, that this guy that came, he had a bad reputation. They said he washed people out like nothing, and I thought, "Oh, no." And he name was Unabaker, and he was a big guy, and so he, he was no-nonsense type guy. And we went up and we did all kinds of maneuvers. Then when I went up to three thousand feet, which you're supposed to start your maneuvers at, and he said, "How high are those clouds?" And I looked up and oh, no, we were about a hundred feet from 'em. He said, "How far are you supposed to be?" And I told him, and he said, "Well, what are we doing up here?" And then I thought he was gonna wash me out right away. I took the throttle and dropped it back and started going down. "Wait," he says, "we're up here, let's do some maneuvers first." So we did, and of course, I hit all those maneuvers right on the money, right on the money. And so when we got down, he just walked away again. But about another half hour, my instructor came out and shook hands with me and said, "You did a good job." He says, "You got your commercial license." So I was happy about that, too.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.