<Begin Segment 21>

SY: You worked at Hughes Aircraft for how long?

GN: Fifteen years.

SY: Fifteen years. Long time. And do you, can you talk a little bit about what your experiences at Hughes were like?

GN: Yeah, I think of all the jobs I've had those were the people who were the brightest that I dealt with. Of course there were some that weren't, but as a group I think that that's something that really stands out.

SY: Yeah. They were engineers, all engineers.

GN: Engineers, yeah.

SY: And what specific things did you work on?

GN: It's a missile control system for fighter aircraft, infrared detectors for those fighter aircrafts. Those are the kind of things.

SY: Quite sophisticated, electronic engineering kinds of things. And were you involved in, I mean, because it's sort of a corporate structure, were you involved in the politics there?

GN: Not at my level. For those who had management positions there, I think they did. But Hughes at that time, it wasn't like a corporation. The atmosphere was, well, the way they described it was more like a college atmosphere. Hughes is, Hughes Aircraft is owned by Hughes Medical Institute, which is a nonprofit, and so the whole atmosphere among the employees at that level was just, people enjoyed it.

SY: So you got along pretty much with everyone.

GN: Yeah.

SY: And did you feel any kind of --

GN: What was interesting is that engineers tend to be politically conservative, but where I was working at, half of them were Democrats, liberal Democrats.

SY: Wow. So would you get into political discussions?

GN: Oh yeah, all the time.

SY: All the time. And was there any kind of infighting or, I mean, when you go, when you work in a big company like that sometimes there's...

GN: I'm sure there're some that were kind of all out for themselves, but I found that at least the area where I was at, people tended to respect each other. They may not agree with each other politically, but there was a certain level of respect that they had toward each other.

SY: Was there any kind of, like, racial divide?

GN: I didn't find that over there.

SY: So you have sort of put behind the kinds of racist things that you kind of grew up around, so you felt pretty comfortable at Hughes, then.

GN: Yeah. And I think the fact that there were a lot of JAs and even Chinese engineers tends to help the non-minorities to get to know people of different ethnic groups, and I think that's good. And it's such a highly technical area in that if you're an Asian, and they respect your technical ability.

SY: That's great.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.