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TI: So tell me about the changes. Now that war has started, at school, at home, the work, what changes happened in people's lives in Japan?

JM: People's lives, okay. Like in my case too, after you graduate high school you have to volunteer in the military. They make you volunteer unless you're a handicap, so when I graduated, too, I had to volunteer and I figured that I won't pass, but when I took the test I passed the eleventh, yeah, I was the eleventh people that passed, took the test. But my uncle then, they were very proud because even though I was born in America I passed the test, and then after I passed the test, "Do you want to go to the navy or where?" I says air force, and then they told me air force is a tough place and I says, "I don't care. I'm gonna go to the air force." So I, that's when I went into the --

TI: But so, but why air force? Why'd you decide air force?

JM: To be, that time, the, they were all good looking people dressed up real nice, and if you walk in town, I mean, all the girls would come after you, to be honest with you. [Laughs]

TI: So they were the, kind of the more glamorous...

JM: Glamorous and, yeah, thing like that and so...

TI: Now, did you have any interest or experience in flying?

JM: Before I went, volunteered I had three months' training on a glider, going to school, the high school. That's why when I had glider training in the service, they were all surprised how I flew the glider and everything.

TI: So how did you get gliding, or glider training?

JM: They made you -- well, it was a volunteer, whoever wanted to take three months' training on a glider, that they could go three months, and I wanted to fly, too, so I just took the three months' training. So it was good that time, and then the machinery, too, 'cause I was driving an old Model T Ford when I was eight years old in the field, so all the machines and everything was kind of, kind of coming into my head.

TI: So this is all the way back at Hood River, where you drove on the farm?

JM: Farm, yeah. My mother would crank the car for me and then start it up and just bring the vegetables to the packing shed, from the field to the packing shed and everything.

TI: So at the time that you joined the military you already had all this experience, driving as well as glider.

JM: Oh yeah, I had driving, yeah. But they were surprised and one day this fellow, I was sittin' down during a lunch hour and he comes to me, he was a, our new instructor and he comes to me and says, "Hey, how come you do very good in everything, all the trainings?" And he says, "Where'd you learn all that?" So when he asked me that I says, "Well, I was born in America." Then he pops up and says, "I got a relative in America, too," so we got together, real good close friends.

TI: That's interesting. I just want to kind of establish a date about when you entered the army.

JM: The navy.

TI: The navy. I'm sorry, the navy, and I have around April 1943?

JM: Forty, well I stayed there two and a half years, in the, so yeah I'd be...

TI: Yeah, so about April '43.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.