<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So let's go back to your life. You mentioned that your father died right after military service. Tell me a little bit about your military service. What did you do there?

PT: What?

TI: What was your military service? What did you do?

PT: Well, I think I told you that I was sent to Camp Shelby and went through basic training. But there's something different for me and another guy. He was from Denver, he was not in the camp, and he was interested in going into medical school, too. And both of us took German, and we were pulled out of basic training in the afternoon. And we would study the German maps, and then we'd study German weapons. And that's why I have these German weapons. [Laughs] No, my daughter took it away from me. [Laughs] I don't know what happened to him, but the first sergeant came up to me and says, "Roll them up," and then I was going to be transferred. Then I was transferred to Fort Snelling.

TI: Fort Snelling.

PT: And it wasn't until after the war when they gave me my discharge, at that time, after the discharge, I looked at it and it said "expert on these weapons" and so forth. And then they gave me my IQ test, and I got something like 145.

TI: So 145.

PT: And then I said, "Shit, I'm a genius." [Laughs] Not really. But college material. So I started at the University of Illinois.

TI: I'm curious, going back to when you looked at your record and you see 145 for IQ, does that change you in terms of how you look at yourself?

PT: Me?

TI: Yes. Did you look at that and...

PT: No. I didn't know the meaning of it. Because I already started junior college, and I was able to handle it. But what it did do for me, and much, much later now, is I decided to go to Stanford, and I was very confident that I could handle it. And I did.

TI: So you had a healthy self-esteem, I mean, you knew you were smart, that you could handle a top college.

PT: Well, everything was easy. I'm not a genius, but what happened at my short time at the University of Illinois, in sharp contrast to UC Berkeley, is that there are different styles of writing. They talk about descriptive writing, argumentative writing, and there's about four or five different kinds of writing. Then here at Berkeley they teach you one of the great writers like a British guy who we studied and that's it. [Laughs] There is no "writing lessons," that there are different kinds of writings. And if you want that, you learn it yourself.

TI: So Berkeley was more free-flowing in terms of the writing style versus Illinois, which was more structured.

PT: Yes. So I did okay except for that one class. Basically I'm a 'B' student, not an 'A' student.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.