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BN: And then were you involved with any of the JA basketball or Boy Scouts, those types of things?

JF: Back then it was the CYC? So I was a part of the Red Sox organization. I was a pitcher during baseball season, and then, of all things, a center during basketball. Because of my tremendous five foot, nine-inch height. [Laughs] I can't understand why they use me at center. Anyway, yeah, I liked playing sports. I also belonged to this YMCA group led by Cedrick Shimo. He was our group leader, and Cedrick was a great coach. He was also the Red Sox baseball coach, so he was a very influential adult in my life besides my two parents and my uncle Harvey and Uncle Nori.

BN: Those two uncles lived nearby?

JF: They moved to the Crenshaw area. My uncle Nori started a family with my cousin Mark and then later Marianne, but they moved to Orange County to Anaheim where I think they were pretty much the only Japanese there. I think the neighbors in the Flippen Drive neighborhood that they lived on, drafted some kind of a letter trying to keep him out. And then he made, I'm sure that only motivated my uncle Nori to move in. [Laughs] But yeah, Nori was a tough guy, real fighter. And then Harvey, the younger brother Harvey, he winds up... he was drafted, as was Nori, right after he got his high school diploma. He went into the army, he was training, I think, as a replacement for the Battle of the Bulge thing, reinforcements there in Europe. He and my wife's father, Tadatoshi Endo, they were on the same unit, and they're together on the Queen Mary when the war ends in early May of '45. So all of them get reassigned to, they call it the GRS, Grave Registration Service. So they're in charge of...

BN: They're on the boat going over?

JF: Over to Europe, yeah. And so they wind up getting transferred to the GRS in Berlin, in occupied Berlin. So they were in charge of retrieving the bodies of the dead, and then separating the personal items and then taking care of the remains and shipping them back from Frankfurt to New York. So, yeah, he stayed there until, I think it was October '46, which is when my uncle Nori, who curiously, my uncle Nori, I don't know why, he was drafted later. And this is where things get kind of mysterious. Because I asked my mom, I can't find service records for Nori, just this one little thing that mentions his dates, service dates, but it doesn't say what branch of the service. And she says, "That's because he was in the CIA." [Laughs] CIA? And I told her, "You mean MIS?" And she said, "No, pretty sure he said the CIA. Now you know, so I have to kill the both of us." [Laughs] Anyway, I have no idea.

BN: There were a fair number of Nisei who were in the predecessor to the CIA, the OSS.

JF: OSS, yeah.

BN: So maybe...

JF: Maybe, who knows? Anyway, I can't find anything about it. I was able to find a bunch of stuff on Uncle Harvey, because I'm trying to finish this book about him. Anyway, Harvey winds up staying in the military because he can't find work once he leaves the Chicago area where he graduated from the University of Chicago at Champaign. He wound up being the only college grad in our family then with a degree in mechanical engineering. And he can't find work in Chicago even though he's got this college degree. At the time, there was a nationwide coal strike going on. So he winds up going to Chicago because his stipend runs out from the GI Bill. And he lives in that one-bedroom unit with the rest of the family and tries to find work in L.A. but it's a no-go for him here or there, too. And he doesn't want to settle, he has too much pride, I guess, and he wants something that's going to challenge him and take advantage of his training and education. So my mom says he saw a poster, and the poster challenged him. And he winds up enlisting as a naval aviator. So he recalls going into the office and meeting the recruiting officer, and the recruiting officer takes one look at him and he asks the question that disqualifies just about ninety percent of the people walking in to be, who want to be a pilot, says you have to have a college degree. And my uncle Harvey says, "Yeah, got that," which surprises the recruiting officer. So he says, "Well, you'll have to pass a physical," that's my uncle Harvey you're talking to. So, of course, he passes with flying colors. Two weeks later, this is late in May 1949, 1950, I can't remember now, I think it's 1950. Yeah, 1950, I'm positive. He is on a train going all the way to Pensacola, Florida, where he's supposed to be in ground school or preflight school, they called it, at Pensacola, Florida. And he winds up becoming the first Japanese American fighter pilot and flies a tour in Korea off the USS Princeton.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.