<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Okay, so you're now sent back to the United States, and this isn't a temporary, they sent you back.

MF: No, they transferred, PCS, Permanent Change of Station, yeah.

TI: Permanent Change of Station. So what happens next, you're now in Virginia?

MF: Well, I told my family about it, and this was the thing that kind of surprised me and stuff, is my father thought me marrying her was a good idea, he was all for it. Which is a little surprising considering he fought in the battle of Okinawa, you know. And my mother didn't think it was a good idea.

TI: Well, go back to your dad. Why did he think it was a good idea?

MF: I don't know. He never said or talked about it. I think basically he may have thought I needed someone to straighten me out, but he thought it was a good idea. And I don't know if he ever set foot in Japan, so I don't know how much contact he'd had with the Japanese people. Maybe just thought I needed somebody, a woman to go ahead and keep me straight and stuff, whatever it was. But my mother didn't think it was a good idea, my grandmother, of course, told me not to do it. But when she was told about it, she was more upset about them doing something wrong to her grandson than the fact that I was disobeying what she wanted me to do. So from what I've been told... now, my grandmother, she was very politically connected. She was the president of the Democratic Women's Club of Queens, New York, and for many years she was really into the local politics.

So I've been told she got on the phone and called the office of Jacob Javits, which was the senator from New York, and he was a Republican, she's a Democrat. And told what was happening, she basically told them, "You're not going to do this to my (grandson)." So I was in Manassas, Virginia, and stuff, and I get a command, I guess, or thing to go ahead and report to this person in the Pentagon. So I report to this colonel in the Pentagon, I can remember walking in and stuff, and I go up to his office and stuff and you have to salute and stuff like this. He tells me, he's reading, and he scoots back and stuff. And he says, "Forrester, according to the paperwork in front of me, you're still in Japan." [Laughs] So he says, "Well, we'll send you back." And he said, "But we can't send you to Japan," because of some Air Force regulation, such and such, you have to be out of the country for so many years or so many period of time and stuff. I said him, "Colonel, that doesn't do me any good," because he knew why and we talked about things. I says, "My fiance can't come to Okinawa because -- " he said he'd send me to Okinawa -- because Okinawa wasn't part of Japan at the time and no Japanese could go there. And he says, "Well, we've got a site that's a Japanese island that's part of this Okinawa command, Okino Erabu Shima, and we'll send you there." So they sent me there. So basically I was able to bring her there.

TI: So it was your influence of your family that...

MF: It was my grandmother that got me back.

TI: But according to the memoir, it was your mother who actually kind of did the, a lot of the calls initially.

MF: No, it was my grandmother.

TI: It was your grandmother?

MF: I don't know who called my grandmother, but my grandmother was the one who contacted them.

TI: Grandmother, okay, so your grandmother.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.