<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Now, before you shipped out to Korea, you folks were docked for two nights and three days in San Diego Harbor. What was that like?

RW: Well, let's go back to Camp Pendleton when after tank school we graduated, and then we knew what day we were going, and so the day we were going we packed up all our gear, got our sea bags together, and got on these buses. And then we rode these buses through Oceanside and a lot of people were on the sidewalk with flags waving at us, and that really brought tears to my eyes and really, really choked me up. I just felt so proud to be sittin' in that bus going to a war and those people are waving at us, and hat was the real pride of going to Korea. There's the awe, the spectacle of going to Korea was when we got on the boat in San Diego, docked right there near downtown San Diego, on the piers. We got on the boat and for three days, we were on that boat and we couldn't leave, couldn't phone anybody, but we looked over the side and after we were on the boat we could just see thousands of Marines still gettin' on the boat, loading equipment, trucks, even some tanks, and fresh equipment to go to Korea. And it was just an awesome sight to see all that, especially all these other Marines still getting on the ship. And then the pity for that period was at night we'd be on the boat and we were right near the Padre baseball team field, the old field, and we could hear the cheering and could see the glare of the lights up in the sky, and so we thought, god, they're over there playing baseball, trying to win the game, and they don't give a damn about all of us on this boat goin' to war.

Then the fear came to me the next, the day we were leaving. The boat was pulling out, the Marine band was on the dock and people were, relatives were there -- none of my relatives were there because they didn't believe in coming to watch me go to go to war -- but as we stood in the boat and the boat was getting ready to leave and the Marine band played the Marines' Hymn, they released the moorings off the boat and the boat started to inch away from the dock. And I looked down, I saw that water start swirling away from the dock and gettin' farther away, and boy, the first thought came to my mind is, I said to myself, I said, "Mama, what did I do? Where am I going?" 'Cause that feeling of helplessness, not being able to jump off, go home, or change my mind, there was no changing of your mind. The boat was going and that was it. But that was just a momentary thing. The guy next to me fainted, so it was not, it was not an easy time to be leaving. But on the other hand, I have to tell you that when we came home it was a totally different feeling to see that boat just inch, inch, inch closer to the dock and then bang, it hits the dock there, and that was a feeling of real joy compared to the day we left.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.