<Begin Segment 15>

TI: But then eventually the Air Force let you get married.

MF: Well, yeah. As soon as we got down to Okino, we put in the paperwork to get married and stuff like that, and they processed... it took 'em about, oh gosh, almost nine months to process it. They go ahead and they do a background investigation of her, and she also had to go and have her complete health exam and stuff like that. And then what happened is then they gave the approval, and we went ahead and we got married, and we got married at the American consulate, so we had to go, you had to go to the consulate to get married, and we either had to go to Okinawa, which she could not do, so we had to go back up to Fukuoka and we got married at the American consulate in Fukuoka. Then as soon as you got married, being a dependent, then they basically gave her her dependent allowance.

TI: But because of the military regulations, still you were, every night, still going back to the base.

MF: Oh, yeah, after we were married is when the commander, who was captain at the time, he was a temporary commander, he told me that since it was not approved for dependents on the site, that station, therefore as far as they were concerned, I had no dependent.

TI: But there was a story about a chaplain...

MF: Yeah, the Catholic chaplain used go around, come around, and we would have quite a few months before we got approval to marry, because we got married on December 23rd and we put in the paperwork (when) went back there in the last part of March and stuff. And he would come out and we'd go up to church, and she had taken instruction, and we went up to Amami Oshima I guess was the island, and basically she'd gotten baptized in the Catholic church and stuff. But he wouldn't do anything until we got... as far as he was concerned, if we weren't married in the church, we weren't married, because that's the Catholic church's position. And so once we got approval and he came out, we got married in the church up in the chapel up there and stuff. And as far as he's concerned, then we got married.

TI: So this is your wedding, essentially.

MF: Third wedding, yeah. And that was sometime in... let's see, let me get the dates right. That would have been sometime in February of '59.

TI: Well, at least you have lots of anniversaries to celebrate.

MF: Lot to forget, you get in trouble. [Laughs] So the one we recognize is the one, December 23rd, because that's the official one. Of course, it's easy to remember because it's got the paperwork. [Laughs] And so what happened is after we were officially married in the church, in fact, after she was a dependent, I was still coming back for bed check. And he had said that he would -- and I told him about it -- he said he'd talk to the commander and stuff. And he went ahead and talked to the commander and he said, "Well, they said they'll take care of it." Because I have a dependent, she's getting a check, I should, the government recognizes her, I should be able to stay home at night. And they didn't do anything, so when he came back a month later or so, I told them, "Well, nothing's happened," so from what I understand he went and raised hell with the commander, told him if he didn't stop this, he'd go talk to the general in Okinawa. So then they did away with the bed check entirely, so everybody can stay downtown.

TI: Okay, so at nights you could stay with Tsuchino.

MF: Yes.

TI: Boy, just the persistence that the two of you had to be in terms of just being married.

MF: You know, thinking back... thinking back fifty years or so, is it actually was most likely a blessing in disguise because it pushed us closer together. It was basically... we had the two of us against everyone else.

TI: Interesting. So that adversity that you had to face as a couple made you closer.

MF: Closer together. But of course, at the time, I wouldn't have said that. Looking back over half a century or so, yeah, I could see it.

TI: So about this time, your second year is sort of coming to an end, right? Where you have to decide whether or not you were going to stay in the Air Force, re-up for another term or leave.

MF: Well, I had decide to leave because I had so much trouble. You go in for four years, and I went in in January of 1956, which means I would have got out in January of 1960. But at the time we were saving money to come back and stuff like that, Tsuchino's real good at saving money. And so what happened was I extended six months to (get) ahead, so I would have gotten out in June or something of 1960. Well, in May, my father died, so we had to come back on emergency leave and stuff like that. Then, of course, when I was back, once again, my paperwork, they discharged me.

TI: So your father died kind of at this sort of time when you and Tsuchino were saving money, probably planning how, for you to return to the United States with Tsuchino. Were you planning to travel together at that point?

MF: Well, at the time, they would not let us travel together. So the rules had said that you have to have, you have be an E-4 before they would let you (...) travel together, and I was an E-3 because I didn't get any more promotions. Now, they could waive that, but they wouldn't waive it. So we knew that she had to travel by herself and I had to go back (via) the military. So we were saving the money for her fare and stuff like that.

TI: Boy, the military just made things hard all the way through.

MF: Well, it was just being bureaucratic, really. You're dealing with a government agency, right?

TI: Well, it just seemed to insensitive, because here was a woman traveling to the United States for the very first time.

MF: Uh-huh, she did it by herself.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.