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TI: So I just want to kind of finish up a little bit, so after you finished...

FM: School?

TI: Yeah, you got your engineering degree, let's talk a little bit about your work life. So what did you do after you graduated?

FM: Well, I got a job with the army arsenal designing rocket launchers. You know... the guys that were in (...) infantry learned to shoot bazookas. This is the kind of stuff that I designed, helped design. I worked there for a couple of years, and I realized that I had a real bad allergy to ragweed that was growing in the Midwest, so I had to leave the area. And the only place that ragweed didn't grow at that time was Pacific Northwest. And so it was, to get a job west of the Cascades. And I know there were probably a lot of other places, but Boeing was a very logical place to come to, and I did get a job with Boeing. I don't know, I know that there were other Niseis that were already working for Boeing, 1952, but I think they started maybe a little bit earlier than that. But prior to that, they could not get a job here even after the war. '46, '47, I think, is about when (...) Boeing finally started to hire guys to work for them in various projects.

(...) I came here in '52, and my first programs that I worked on, well, (...) got into a group that did... it was air conditioning, heat transfer type work, and that's what I did. I worked on the B-52 airplane, and I don't know how many times I would analyze the heat, the temperature of the various compartments in the B-52 and how much air conditioning I needed to do that, or the heating I needed to do that in order to maintain the proper temperatures in the 52. (...) I stayed with that kind of work for five or six years. (...)

TI: B-52, military?

FM: Yeah, it was all military.

TI: Space program?

FM: I did get into the space program later, but I did work in preliminary design, but it was in the flight deck design area.

TI: Right, you mentioned like that human engineering?

FM: Yeah, (...) and so you just kind of lead into that kind of a thing. I was doing air conditioning in the flight deck, and then there was work to be done in the flight deck design (...). And then when that happened, you get into the human factors, the human engineering part of it. And so at the end of 1950s, (...) I was doing work on space design, I mean, you know, this is way, way before we got into space work.

TI: Yeah, so you were really cutting edge, this was all brand new stuff.

FM: It was really, yeah. I was doing it since I was in the flight deck area where people were, I was doing work trying to determine how you were going to sleep in a space station, we did sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom, cooking.

TI: Now was this when you were based in Huntsville?

FM: No, not yet.

TI: Oh, this is still, you're in Seattle?

FM: Still in Seattle. And I worked quite a bit, and we had a program called the... (Dynasear), it was a prelude to the Discovery vehicles that we had going up to the space station.

TI: Okay. And then from there, you spent a few years at Huntsville, Alabama, continuing kind of your work in the space program?

FM: Yeah, same sort of thing. There was a job open in Huntsville, so I said, okay, we will go. Of course, that involved taking the whole family.

TI: And at this point, how many children did you have?

FM: I had three kids, and they were pretty young. The oldest was in junior high, or just beginning junior high. But we did go to Huntsville and spent three years there. And again, working in that same general area of air conditioning sort of thing, and human factors engineering. And then I got into ground support equipment design, and we were... by then, (...) the space program, the Moon Shot program, was well on its way. We had a ground support equipment design and maintenance contract with NASA. Boeing had another... of course, they were primarily the designers and the manufacturers of the first stage of that big rocket.

TI: This is the Apollo?

FM: Yeah. Well, the Apollo was the capsule, (...). And S-1C was the first stage, the big first stage with the five engines, you know. And that was going on. And when I got to Kennedy, I was working in the ground support equipment, the other part of it, not the vehicle, but we had to design and maintain the equipment that supported the launch of that big stage, the Saturn V. I got there to Florida in 1966, and I was able to be there 'til '73.

TI: So you were there, boy, the real heydays.

FM: Exactly, yeah.

TI: Landing on the moon?

FM: Right. We made seventeen launches (...). The first one (...) was an unmanned, but it was a circumnavigating (...) launch. But we had a lot of interesting times there, very good times. Probably the best program that I was ever on.

TI: Well, and I think about your life, I mean, earlier we talked about how your parents were in this small (...) village on the Izu Peninsula and how your life would have been so different if they had decided to stay there, and you were born there rather than in Portland. And then, in some ways, the war changed your trajectory, too, I mean, it made you go to the Midwest and go to college.

FM: Well, I think the war and the consequences of it probably caused me to go to school. I wanted to go to school anyhow...

TI: Because you didn't want to be a farmer you said.

FM: Yeah. I felt from a very, early on, when I was working on the farm helping Dad, that I did not want to become a farmer. And so I think the war (...) and the consequences of it probably had a lot to do with my going to school, getting a job, and I guess I could have done other things, but I became an engineer and this work that I did with the space station, with Boeing... with Boeing I stayed always in the military side of the (...) company, rather than going to commercial. But when I did get to the (...) space station program, I will say that that was probably the most interesting job that I had, and exciting to see the first launch of the thing, although it was unmanned (...). But from there on in, we had people in it and going to the moon. (It was 511 that did the) moon landing, and then we had 513, which had the problem (...). But we were sitting on pins and needles because we were there.

TI: Well, you were part of this team.

FM: Yeah, we started them all. And it was kind of scary to know that these guys were up there in trouble. But Houston was able to bring 'em back.

TI: What an amazing story. So, Frank, we've gone longer than I thought we were, it's two and a half hours, so is there anything else that you wanted to mention?

FM: No, not particularly.

TI: No, but thank you so much. This was, it was just fascinating. I mean, again, the interesting thing about your story is, boy, no one could have predicted your life.

FM: Yeah, the involvement from possibly being a fisherman's kid in Japan in this little town in Japan to what I did, I think.

TI: To helping land a man on the moon.

FM: Oh, yeah. Very good.

TI: Well, thank you so much.

FM: Yeah, okay.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2015 Densho. All Rights Reserved.