<Begin Segment 9>

MT: Again, we all have that hanging over us is the, is the World War II, the 442 kind of thing. They sacrificed and died for us, so we have that kind of guilt. I'm sure that played its part. His brother was in the MIS, well, in fact, he was an instructor in the MIS. But we, almost everybody went, just a matter of weeks. I went in first, my best man went in -- after I got married, he was my best man -- and he went in a week later. He went to Germany, luck of the draw, spent his whole service in Germany. I got put in the Fortieth Division, California National Guard, and I thought, oh no, I don't want to go in the National Guard. And we took an interest test in Fort Ord, but I knew enough to game the interest test. They give you a, basically an IQ test, and if you are hundred and ten and above, I think, or something, you could go to Officer Candidate School or something like that, or you could go to -- so anyway, they had an interest test, what you were interested in. And my biggest interest was I was not gonna be a cook, 'cause I don't like cooking, or be a medic, because there was some stigma -- later on proved I was wrong -- being a medic in the service, 'cause they were conscientious objectors. They didn't want to fight. That was not true. They had high casualty rates and they were extremely brave. In fact, one guy eventually got a Medal of Honor. But I had that mistaken notion, so I didn't want to be, so they had a one, two, three, each time they would give you three occupations in one category, one slot, and then you would rate it one, two or three, and so I would always make cooking or medicine three. My problem is when both were in there. To show you how, how I gamed the thing, one of 'em said, would you like to be, cook at a Waldorf-Astoria, a gravedigger, or something else, and I made Waldorf-Astoria number three.

TI: [Laughs] You'd rather be a gravedigger than... okay.

MT: Yeah, right. [Laughs]

TI: They probably do that on purpose to see who was gaming the system too. [Laughs]

MT: Well, anyway, but they had GIs lookin' at this thing so didn't matter. So anyway, went through the thing, when I got through with the thing the examiner corporal said, "Wow, I never saw anybody so negative in cooking and in medicine." I said got it, got it, I did it. So then I get assigned and then we have to, all of us that were all together there, only people that were, that had special services or something, got pulled out, but rest of us all got sent -- oh, and at that time blacks got all pulled out -- we got all sent to Fort Ord, I'm sorry, Camp Cook in the 40th Division. And I, then I found out later why they pulled all the blacks. There was only, there were no blacks except for a singing group that was a special services in the 40th Division, and they were National Guards.

TI: But at this point I thought Truman had gotten rid of the segregated army.

MT: The National Guard was segregated.

TI: So the military was, was integrated, but not --

MT: Yeah, that was national, see. This was the state. And so we went there, but Japanese Americans were not considered, they were desirable, not segregated out, so we go through the process and I thought, when they're getting people they wanted guys that were six foot and two hundred pounds for artillery. I was five eight and a half, weighed a hundred and forty-five pounds. There's no way I can do that. [Coughs] Excuse me. And so then I, so I get assigned to the infantry, which is fine with me, infantry regiment. And then they sent, I go to the 224th Regiment over there. Now they're processing us. The first four names went to Able Company, next four went to Baker, next four went to Charlie, next four Doc. I wonder where I'm gonna be. The last four names were Street, Thompson, Tonai, Vandever, medics. I said, "Sergeant, you made a mistake. I'm not supposed to go to the medics." He says, "Medics." I said, "No, no, look at my 201 file," that's the personnel file. "Look at my 201 file. It says that I'm not supposed to go the medics." "Medics." I said, "No, no, no." He said, "Soldier, you either go to the medics or you can go to the jail." I said, "I'll go to the medics." [Laughs] I entered the medics and eventually I ended up liking it, liking medics.

TI: That's funny. You try to game the system, you actually gamed it, and then it didn't matter. [Laughs]

MT: Didn't matter, 'cause every four names, they divided by four, yeah, it was every four names went to a different company and we ended, I ended up in... because we were filling up the National Guard. The National Guard had all of the choice positions. They took what they wanted, and each company was based upon on where they're located, so our company came out of this area that were mostly either from, they were either people that came from Oklahoma during The Grapes of Wrath, during the Depression, and they settled in a place called Mira Loma, around that area, all in that area. So we had all these people that were from that area. They spoke with an Oklahoma accent. And then we had other, we had others that were not, they were regular, normal Californians, but not everybody was that way. And we had one guy that was a UCLA grad, was a chemistry major, and he ended up being the pharmacist for the company. Because he joined in '48 when I, a lot of my friends were joining, when I was there, because they wanted to escape the draft. So they joined the National Guard. Then when the Korean War started they got --

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.