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TI: And so after fourteen, fifteen years stationed in Japan, then where did you go? What was next?

KT: I came back here to the States and I was sent to Fort Lewis. The 4th Infantry Division was in Fort Lewis in '58, '59, and I was in the 4th MI Detachment. I was the Order of Battle Specialist.

TI: And so what's that? What kind of role is that?

KT: Order of Battle, Order of Battle Specialist, he studies the officers of the enemy, their tactics, and you're supposed to know everything about the enemy, where their general went to school.

TI: So this is very different than what you did in Japan.

KT: Yeah, yeah. I had a hard time there because I don't know anything about Order of Battle, just briefed me and then I go there and I land in that, so you got to sort of feel your way through that. What do you call, a lot of it, when you fight the enemy, the general might be a quartermaster general or something and he's not a very aggressive individual, so you figure... or if you get a general who's armor, like a tank commander type general --

TI: Then they're gonna be more aggressive.

KT: Yeah, he'd be more offensive minded, and artillery would be the same thing. And that kind of thing, yeah, we'd go out in the field and they capture somebody, then you get the information and then you have to say, well, we got this guy and that guy, this and that, interrogation. So I stayed in Fort Lewis a couple years, and then I was getting pro pay, proficiency pay for Japanese. And they said, "You can't draw proficiency pay because you're not using Japanese in your duty." So I said wow, so I wrote my friend -- he's, it's good to have friends in high places. [Laughs] I wrote my friend -- [Interruption] -- and I said, "Hey, I'm gonna have to go back to Japan 'cause I'm gonna lose my proficiency pay." And he says, "Okay." He says, and then pretty soon I get a thing back and it says, "You're assigned to the U.S. Army Map Service, Far East." So they send me, I go back to Japan, and I go to map research branch, area analysis division, and work on boundaries and stuff like that. [Laughs]

TI: Now, this proficiency pay, how much more is it? Is it quite a bit more?

KT: I was getting about a hundred dollars more.

TI: A month?

KT: Yeah, a month.

TI: It's not that much. It's... [Laughs]

KT: Well yeah, that wasn't that much, but at the pay that time it was quite a bit.

TI: But it's, it was quite a bit. I see.

KT: Then I went back to Japan for four years and retired in 1964, four years at the mapping thing.

TI: So at that point, how many years were you in the military? Was it like twenty years?

KT: Yeah, I got out, 1964 I had twenty years in, so -- little, twenty years and a half about -- so then I retired and I start working at the golf course. [Laughs]

TI: Good. Okay.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.