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TI: Well, in your case, going back, so when you were drafted did you have a choice to go to National Guard or --

MT: No. We were now forced to go into National Guard 'cause they want to fill it up 'cause they just had a very small, my guess is twenty-five, thirty percent that they called up for the National Guard. That's all they had, so they had to fill it up. They took all the draftees and a few RAs, or volunteers, and they put 'em in there. And so I just happened to be in that, if I had been one week later I would've gone to Germany, right? If I had been one week earlier I would've gone to some other outfit, but I just happened to be there, so it's all luck of the draw. Now, the National Guards in our company particularly resented us because the captain, the first sergeant, "The guys that are coming in are older than you," 'cause these were young kids, some were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old, and we were, I was the youngest of the group and I was almost twenty-two. So they said, "They're older than you and better educated than you, so if you guys relax they'll take over, so you got to give 'em a hard time."That's what they did.

TI: So these are teenagers essentially giving you guys a hard time.

MT: They all got stripes. The first sergeant's brother above him was mess sergeant, his brother-in-law was a platoon sergeant, and his youngest brother was not in National Guard, found out they're being activated and he joined. It was about September. I don't think it was August, must've been September. August, September he joined, and by the time they were activated, which was in September, he was already a corporal. In those days you had extra, you went in as a recruit, then you became a private automatically three months later, private, then he became PFC, then corporal, so he had gone up three grades in those two months. So that's the kind of family system they had. The doctor, the company commander was a doctor and he was the family, most of his family doctor. The executive officer was their insurance agent. So it was really a family kind of thing. Everybody knew each other. And primarily these young guys joined 'cause then you go into the National Guard, you could drink, you could gamble underage, and they could fool around and then do things. And they got paid.

TI: And so your group was kind of a threat to them.

MT: Yeah, absolutely. And so they were, they were trying to do that. Now this isn't to say we always, that all of, we were given a hard time by everyone. We were not. There were some really persons, guys we really liked. Others, they were fearful of us so they stayed away from us. Then there were others that tried to give us a hard time. But eventually all evened out. And so here we were in Camp Cook to train. Well, the National Guard wasn't trained. The medics are supposed to go to Camp, I'm sorry, Fort Sam Houston in Texas, San Antonio, Texas, to -- no, I think it's El Paso, Texas, around there -- in Texas to get their medical training, and that's what you're supposed to do. But they made an announcement to us, "We're gonna change things now. We'll try an experiment. We're not gonna let you go to Fort, you don't have to go to Fort Sam. We're gonna teach you here and we're gonna see how it works out." We're older, we're wise to the world, and right away I knew, and others knew too, I'm sure, the reason they couldn't do that is they took all the medics and sent them, even the National Guards weren't trained, a lot of them, most of them were untrained, so if they took us and sent us all to Camp Cook, we couldn't even call, have a sick call. They had to keep us. The only way they could do that is by training us there, but they had to give us an excuse why we weren't going to Sam Houston. 'Cause some, there were two guys that were at Sam Houston from National Guard who later came to join us. So we were, guys were drafted who were twenty-four years and eleven months who had not been in the service. If you didn't serve twelve months, I'm sorry, twelve, they were eleven months and, eleven months in the service, in the service, then they got called. They had not -- one year, eleven months, I'm sorry, one year, eleven months -- if you had not, and the rule was if you didn't serve two years you got redrafted again, called in again.

TI: Wow.

MT: So a friend of mine's brother was in with us. He served a little over a year and World War II ended and they said, "You want to get a discharge?" Yeah. Now, he came, and those poor guys had to serve a full two years, not the amount of difference in the two years and the amount they served, but they served two full years.

TI: So, I'm sorry, an additional two years? So they...

MT: Additional two years. Sad, unfair to them.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.