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MN: You mentioned you were in the Marine Corps reserves. Why did you enlist in the reserves?

RW: Well, first thing, the opportunity came because the Marine Corps had, a recruiting team come to Redlands High School and during an assembly of the school they presented something about the Marine Corps. And of course my friend Bob Madrid and I always talked about wanting to be Marines, so when this recruiting team came to Redlands High School, that was in my senior year, 1948, and that was in May, and so I immediately told 'em, yeah, I want to join, went home, got my mother to sign it. Course I don't think she knows what she was signing, but she signed it and so I joined the reserves in May of 1948. In May of 1950 I received my discharge. I had gone to Camp Pendleton for summer training and things, but I received my discharge in May 1950, two years later. Then, as you know, the Korean War started in June of 1950, so they couldn't call me back. They couldn't activate me as a reserve 'cause I'd already received my discharge.

MN: So when you went into the reserves at that time did Bob Madrid go in with you, or just by yourself?

RW: No, I just went by myself with about four other classmates in the senior class. Turned out that when the Korean War started I think I was the only one that served in the Marines. I think they were discharged so they all just stayed out.

MN: So you had two weeks of reserve training at Camp Pendleton.

RW: Yes.

MN: Was that really tough? I mean, did you get harassed for being a Japanese American?

RW: No. Not at all. Marines never, the Marines themselves didn't look at me as a different race. They looked at me as another Marine, and I made some pretty good friends from there. During that two weeks I made friends with a guy named Bernard Trainer from Bremerton, Washington. We promised each other I'd send him a box of oranges if he sent me a box of apples. He sent me a box of apples from Washington probably within less than a year, four or five months after we got out, but me, I didn't send him anything, probably because at that time I guess when the war started then things started happening real fast for me, so I completely forgot about it. But I have to say that I fulfilled my promise about, about five years ago, maybe five or ten years ago. I found his phone number, called him and actually talked to him and reminded him that I never sent him that box of oranges, so I sent him a box of oranges on the Greyhound bus and be sure and pick it up. So I filled my obligation, what, fifty years later? But I did fulfill my, my promise.

MN: And then, so in two years, in 1950, you were discharged from the reserves and then around this time you got married to Jo Ann Ikeda. And you two were both underage? Why did you rush into marriage?

RW: She wasn't underage because she had just turned eighteen, and girls could marry without permission from their parents after eighteen. Boys had to be twenty-one, and I was still twenty so I had to get my mother's permission. And of course, as my story goes, when Jo Ann died, I went home to see my mother and the first thing she told me, in Japanese, she said, "Yokatta ne," she had let us get married. She was very emotional about that, the fact that she let us get married and that Jo Ann passed away.

MN: Now, once you got married, and before she passed away, did you plan on having a family immediately, before you left for the war?

RW: Well, Jo Ann wanted to have a baby and I was pretty adamant about not wanting her to have a baby. I told her, "I don't want you to have a baby 'cause if I don't come home you won't be able to remarry. You'll be burdened with a child and some guy won't want to marry you with a baby." But then like, I guess the way a woman thinks, she said she wanted a baby for that reason. If I didn't come home she'd still have a part of me. So as far as I know up to that point she was not having a baby, or at least we weren't attempting to have one.

MN: Now, if you chose to, because you had just been discharged from the reserves, could you have stayed out of Korean War?

RW: Yes, I could have stayed out, except there was a draft going on. I decided to join the Marines and when I decided to join she was kind of upset, crying because she didn't want me to go. She didn't want me to go right away. And I said, well, I have to go right away 'cause I don't want to get drafted into the army. The draft was on so the threat of getting drafted in the army was always there, and it was not my choice to not serve in the Korean War. I would have to, if I didn't join the Marines I would get drafted, so after we decided that I would join, she wanted me to wait 'til we got draft notice, I did wait and we got married 'cause that's what she wanted. And then we were married in October of 1950. In November 1950 I got my draft notice. I was working in Los Angeles at the time and when I came back to our little duplex she was at the door crying, and she had the draft notice in her hand, so that was the beginning of the change in my life as far as the Korean War went.

MN: And then you had also called Bob Madrid and invited him to join.

RW: Yeah, I immediately called Bob Madrid, or his nickname was Bat, I immediately called Bat and told him, "Hey, I'm gonna join the Marines. You want to go?" And he said sure, so he got on a bus from Redlands the next morning and came to Los Angeles where I was living at the time, and we went down to the recruiting office and joined that next day. And then we had two weeks, so I moved Jo Ann to Redlands to live with my mother and then we reported to the Marine Corps and that was the start of my Marine career.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.