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TI: Well, so talk about the marriage proposal. At some point you decided to...

MF: Yeah, I don't remember exactly what we were doing, the first thing. I asked her to marry me, she said no. [Laughs] Which kind of put... she didn't jump at it, you know.

TI: What reaction, or what was her reason to say no?

MF: She didn't tell me, she said no. And I was shocked. But I kept up, kept up, kept up, and finally she said yes. And once she said yes, I said, well, okay, so I'm gonna go. Of course at that time, being in the military, you couldn't just go get married, you had to have permission to get married. And so I went to ask about, what do I have to do to get permission to get married? When I first -- just to regress a little -- when I first went over there, because I was on an isolated tour, it was a one-year tour, and this was coming close to the end of one year, but I had already extended for the year. So I had another year, plus finished my tour and another year after that to go, and the extension had been approved and stuff like that. Two weeks later I was in Manassas, Virginia, I got orders and I was shipped out.

TI: Now was that just because of miscommunication on the Air Force, or was it because when you told them that you were getting married to a Japanese woman, they sent you back to --

MF: They never said. But the fact is, I was doing fine, I come in and I asked them what's the procedure to go get married and stuff like that, and two weeks later I'm in Virginia.

TI: So that seems like more than a coincidence.

MF: To me it does, too, but they wouldn't say. When I first got the orders, I said, "Oh, I've got another thing," They said, "Well, there must be a screwup," but orders were (orders), you've gotta go.

TI: Now did you hear any other stories that were similar to that?

MF: Since then I've heard other people say that they were sent home. In fact, there's a couple of women, I don't remember, a couple local women said that that happened to them.

TI: So based on that, it sounds like the American military did not look really favorably upon these marriages.

MF: I think, looking back, and remember, I'm looking back many, many years and stuff. I think that the military thought we were making a mistake, and they were protecting us from being young and foolish. I don't think it was malicious, I think they thought they were doing the right thing.

TI: So they ship you two weeks later to...

MF: Manassas, Virginia.

TI: Manassas, Virginia. At this point, what did Tsuchino think? I mean, here you proposed...

MF: Well, I told her I'm going to come back and stuff like that, I kind of think maybe she didn't believe me. So what happened is, just to be sure, I said, "Well, I'll write you every day when I'm gone." So I made it a point to write her a letter every day. Even if it was just a few lines, tell her what happened, stuff like that.

TI: Tell me at this point how the two of you communicated. Because I'm assuming she spoke Japanese and you didn't.

MF: Well, she had some, she had some English. She had worked on the base in the mess halls and things, I don't know if she... I think she was no longer working there when I met her, but she did have some English. Not near as good as it is now, but enough that we can communicate. She's good at languages.

TI: So when you wrote, she could read English.

MF: Yeah, I assume so, but it was quite a while before she finally wrote back. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. So you promised that you would write every day, especially when you said earlier that perhaps the military, in similar situations, when you shipped a soldier back to the States, that the Japanese probably saw that and they probably said sometimes they don't come back.

MF: I would think most of the time they would not come back. Just from human nature. And just, at the time, I can remember I was really, really irritated with the military. I was gonna make the military a career, and of course that stopped. And it's just... but as I matured and I've gotten to know things, I just realized that they thought they were doing the right thing.

TI: About how old were you at this point?

MF: Oh, gosh, let's see, when I first met her, I was nineteen.

TI: So looking back, were you this kind of young kid who didn't know what he was getting into?

MF: Well, I didn't believe I didn't know what I was getting into (...), and I think basically our life since then proved I made the right decision. But I would think most of the reason I made the right decision rests with her. Because she's the one that kind of straightened me out.

TI: Well, I guess... so it worked out for you. Did you know that at the time? Did you know that she was going to be the one to... because later on, we'll talk about your life, just really kind of... what's the right word? Kind of empower you in so many different ways. I think of the partnership the two of you developed and how well things went. Did you have an inkling that that was going to happen?

MF: I can't say I did. It's hard to separate what I know and feel now with what I know and felt then. I just basically remember that when I was with her I was feeling good and I was happy, when I wasn't, I wasn't.

TI: But there's something almost... so it's kind of interesting, going back to your training, you said you were good at mathematics and maybe not as well in the languages and things like that. But it's almost like you had an intuitive sense that this was right. It wasn't necessarily...

MF: Oh, I was convinced it was right. [Laughs]

TI: But logically? It was not logically, it was more...

MF: No, I just knew.

TI: Right, no, that's what I meant. So in an intuitive sense it was right, it wasn't like a, kind of, left brain, this makes sense for the following reasons. In many cases, from an analytical, logical place, it didn't make sense in many ways. When you think about... but you felt it was like trusting your other side, your intuitive side.

MF: Yeah, I just basically knew this was the one, but I couldn't, if you could ask me why, I couldn't lay out this, this, this reason, I just basically, this is what I wanted.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.