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TI: So, Virgil, I'm looking at our time, we have about fifteen more minutes before we have to end. So I want to get us back to the United States and talk about that. So why don't, so the war is over, you finally go back to the United States. Let's start with reuniting with your family. What was that like?

VW: Okay. Well, after that, well, first -- it'll only take a minute, maybe -- but riding the Wasp, we left Southampton on December the 26th, which was day after Christmas, so I missed Christmas. And we ran into a vicious storm. And we heard over the radio from the bridge that the winds were 80 knots. Well, 80 knots is about 92 miles an hour for the wind. And it knocked the flight deck down in the front and so on, and so the captain, when he left, he said, "I'll have you in New York in four days." He was out to beat the Queen Mary record, but it didn't, that didn't last very long. He was told to go around the storm but he didn't, he tried to drill a hole right through that storm. It didn't work. Took us nine days to get home. And you know, when this, when you're gone for twenty months, and you move into New York harbor and you see the piers lined up with people waiting to say hi, and then I saw the Statue of Liberty. I looked up at that lady and I thought, "Hmm." I said, "America is still free." And I looked at her and I saluted her -- this is the honest truth -- I saluted her. And then I thought, "Gee, I can see her with my imagination saying, 'Welcome home, Soldier.'" And so the war was worth fighting for.

So then I hitchhiked home -- oh, the first thing to happen was I got off the ship after five thousand GIs got off with me. And somebody handed me a, the Red Cross handed me a bottle of milk, and I drank that down as I was walking, and then somebody, there was another down there, and I grabbed another and then drank it. That's the first milk I had for twenty months, which was a little unusual. I hitchhiked home, got home, and the first day I was home, I got a call that I could, I had a job flying in Texas if I wanted it. And my grandmother said, "Virgil," she said, "you got home and you're, you're not hurt, don't fly." And so that sentence drilled, it went through my brain, and so I went back. I turned the job down of flying and I went back to college.

TI: Well, that's interesting because you loved, you loved to fly.

VW: I did.

TI: And that a passion, and because your grandmother said, "Don't fly," you agreed with that.

VW: Yeah, she had a lot of influence. [Laughs] And my grandmother being on my mother's side, I guess, and she said, "Don't fly," and I didn't want to disappoint her. And it's turned out, I think, my life has turned out just fine after that.

<End Segment 45> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.