<Begin Segment 13>

GN: And then we came home, and there was a letter waiting for me saying, "Uncle Sam Wants You."

TI: Now, did that kind of surprise you, or were you kind of waiting for that?

GN: No, it surprised me, sure.

TI: Why did it surprise you? Because you weren't, because you had a green card?

GN: Yeah, I didn't expect to be drafted. So I went in the army for two years. Again, I played basketball in the army, right?

TI: When you say played basketball in the army, meaning on a special team?

GN: They had a league for the area, and so I played, and I guess what happened was, before that, we had an orientation when we first arrived. This is the second training, we went into clerical, typing and things like that, the major was to make a big speech and I was tired, I was falling asleep and he saw me, I got in trouble for sleeping. He said, "You're going to do KP, dishwashing, all the time." Oh, boy. But then I played basketball for them and we won the championship, right, and so he says, "No more KP, you're okay."

TI: Okay, so you were a really good basketball player.

GN: No, I just lucked out.

TI: Well, no, to play on the, this is the base team, right?

GN: Not base team, there's a lot of teams that play for this group.

TI: But you were good enough on that team so he liked you, right?

GN: Yeah. Well, what happened was I played good that day, I stole the ball, passed to my friend, went for a layup, and we won the game, right? So it made me look good. Anyway, that's my experience, basketball. So I finished my school as typist, clerk typist, and then I was finished, then I'm going to be assigned somewhere to go, assigned to army base. Then while I'm there, they put me to work while I'm there as a typist, and they put me with a bunch of WACs, women soldiers, I was the only man in there typing. It's all women typing, I'm typing with all these women. And my boss was my lieutenant, this lady, and she was very nice. She says, "Anytime you want a pass, let me know, you can go home anytime." So every weekend I'll go home.

TI: So where was the base? Where were you typing?

GN: Fort Ord in San Francisco, right? So I get to go home every weekend. Normally you had to ask for a pass and they have to approve, right? But she said, "You want to go home? Go." So it was that easy, people back home said, "Are you in the army or not?" because I'm always home, right? So my army was like a vacation for me. We never shoot rifle, I never shoot rifle that much, maybe once a year to qualify, but I never saw a rifle...

TI: But you were in the army, I guess, in the time where there was no wars, right? It was after the Korean War, before the Vietnam War...

GN: In between.

TI: Right in between.

GN: Yeah, so I lucked out. So that was good, and then again, for the second time, I joined another basketball team there, and this was a bigger deal, And so we played, and then we were supposed to play the championship game on a weekend, but I needed a pass to go home. But the company commander says, "If you play, I'll let you have the next day off, easy." So I said, okay, so again, I played basketball and they gave me a pass. Nobody else got a pass, but I got a pass to go home. So it was great, basketball did a lot for me. [Laughs]

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.