<Begin Segment 47>

VW: And when I, after I graduated from college, I went to work for two corporations is all, throughout my whole career of corporations. I worked for the first one for sixteen years, and nobody there knew I was part Japanese, nor did they know I was in the war, 'cause I never told 'em. Some of 'em did find out that I was a pilot, but I don't know how they found that out, 'cause I never talked about it. And then my last, my last day there was 1966 in March, and I was transferring over, I was leaving and going to another corporation. And that was my last flight. I flew a small plane, and it was so nice being alone, looking around, and seeing all the fields pointing north and south and east and west and so on. And I came in, I thought, "Well, we got a crosswind coming in," so I came in on the runway and dropped the wing and held the top rudder and came in power. And it was so smooth, I landed on one wheel, and it was so smooth I didn't even feel the wheel touch. And it was, it was a great way to end my flying career. That was it. That was the last time I flew, in 1966. But it was wonderful.

TI: And no regrets that you never became like a commercial pilot?

VW: Well, I've had curiosity often, many times, but no regrets, no. Because when I went to, when I went over to AM International, which was the second corporation, I thought that, well... oh, and I continued schooling, by the way, and I picked up another degree after my first degree. And then I went to AM International. And when I worked for Burroughs before I got to AM International, I only had one patent and a copyright, I think I had. But when I went to AM International, I knew that I had a better chance of being able to research and do the things I really wanted to do. And so as it turned out, I developed a... let's see, I developed twenty-four more patents. And so as I look, as I look back, no, I'm just fine. Everything turned out just fine.

TI: Because you were a, you were an excellent, accomplished scientist. You had, by my count, twenty-five patents.

VW: Yes.

TI: You were honored several times in terms of awards for your achievements. So when you think about that, you felt that that was a good life, a good career.

VW: It was, yeah. Yeah, I'm very satisfied with how I, how I turned out. [Laughs]

TI: Well, especially when we talked about it earlier, you barely got through high school. [Laughs]

VW: I know. That's right. And that's what I instill, I like to instill on younger people. That if you have, if you have perseverance, and if you have determination to pull yourself up and rise above all the... maybe you don't have all the gifts that you'd like to have, but if you enhance those gifts by education and by experience and work and perseverance and attitude, attitude means a lot. And as you pull yourself up, you can accomplish things that you would never have dreamed that you could do. And if you would have asked me when I was in high school that I would be an inventor and a pilot and so on, I'd think that there was something wrong with your thoughts. Because I never thought I would ever have... I only wanted to get a, get my diploma from high school when I was in high school. And my sister kept telling me, you know, "If you don't study, you won't get your high school diploma, even." And then when I got that, finally they influenced me. Because there were three sisters and they all had graduated from college and became teachers. And so out of a family of five, with my mother dying when I was thirteen and my dad not being -- in my thoughts -- not a very good father. But as it turned out, I guess he wasn't too bad after all. [Laughs]

TI: Because the kids all --

VW: Making things so hard and difficult for me, but that was okay because I turned out all right, you know. So I have, I don't have bad feelings against my Pop.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.