<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So now, you mentioned earlier, you're just getting into it, how you were drafted by the U.S. Army, so tell me how that happened. What were you doing?

JM: I was working, I was helping out this quartermaster place and all of a sudden this fellow comes to me and says, "Hey, you're Jimmie, huh?" I says yeah. He says, "I got a present for you." [Laughs] I said, "A present for me?" He says, "Oh, I got it through your president." I opened it up. It says, says, "You go back to Camp Robertson here and take your training and then you go to Korea." That's what he told me. Boy, I mean, I really fainted that time. And I says, "No, I can't do that." So the general that I was working for was General Dean and I told him. I said, "Look what Truman sent me." He looked at it and he says, "Well, you're one of the Americans, too," says, "Korea's havin' a tough time now. You got to go out there and help our people." Then I says, "I can't do that." And he says, "What's gonna happen to you?" I, then I told that general how I went through, I seen too many dead people in Japan and everything and that I was a pilot in Japan and I can't go out and shoot anybody. He looked at me and says, "Is that true?" I says, "Yes, it is." So he says, "Oh, okay. If it's that case, I'll write to the President," and the secretary took down whatever the general said and sent it to D.C., and when we sent it out he said, "If we don't get an answer three weeks from the D.C. that, you'll be okay. You don't have to go to Korea." So in three weeks I didn't get no answer whatsoever, so I was lucky that I didn't have to take the training. Of course, if I took the training I had the Japanese training already, anyway, but I didn't have to go.

TI: So essentially the general said, if you don't hear back in three weeks then just ignore the order?

JM: Yeah, ignore, because I told the general, I said, "I've seen too many dead people. Hiroshima, everywhere you go, they're all, Japanese people, they're dying or they're burning and everything." So when said that, he looked at me and said, "Is that right?"

TI: Now, the general could have easily taken another path. He could've said, "No, Jimmie, you have to do this." In fact, maybe be angry with you for, for fighting with the Japanese during the war.

JM: Yeah.

TI: But he decided to do this and, and take your side. What, why was he like that with you?

JM: Well, I don't know, but he said, well, that time Korea, Americans, they were way down south, and that time I told the general, I said, "If you people give me a gun," I said, "I can't go out there and shoot the gun and kill anybody." I says, "No, I'd rather die by myself." I says, "No, I can't do that." So he kind of thought about that, too, and when I says, "You see all these Japanese people burning, dead, or hollering, half dead and everything," I said, "I can't go out there and shoot the Koreans." Then he too, I guess, he was a military general, so I guess had a second thought, too.

TI: So you think it was more like he said, "Well, Jimmie's more useful staying where he is, between helping the army there rather than sending him off to Korea where he won't want to fight."

JM: Korea. Yeah, that's it. I would've been a coward over there if I went there. But my brothers went there.

TI: Oh, so your younger brothers...

JM: Well, one of 'em went. The, one of 'em went to, what do you call, was it, no not Lebanon, the other country in, next to Korea over there. Yeah, he went there, too. Got two brothers, they were, my youngest brother, he made a career out of the military. Vietnam, he went to Vietnam three times, but he himself was with the officers, too, so he said he didn't have to go out on the front line. He worked real good with the officers.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.