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HM: And Hanano, in due course of events, he finally opts out to get out of CIC. I don't know for what reason. But that was his determination. He said, "I don't, I don't feel comfortable with these guys. These guys are all college-trained, they're intellectually above me, and I want to go back to MI." So, he had passing grades through all the courses up until that time. And we're in about the next to the last week of the program, for my class anyway. And his class, they were almost finished. And he goes up and tells the personnel guy, I want out of this organization. So, right at the end, they said, "Well, why don't you stick around for another week and we'll give you a promotion." And he says, "No, I don't want that." So he opted out. So I was kinda left without my buddy. I was kinda getting concerned.

TI: So I would think, yeah, the army would encourage him to stay because of his Japanese language -- would be very valuable for Counterintelligence.

HM: Yeah. But they also knew he was good in Nihongo for the MI.

TI: Right.

[Interruption]

HM: Well anyway, when Hanano left the organization, we had a big party for him because all the hakujin guys really liked him. Hanano was a kind of a party type individual and, and they really thought a lot of him. When Hanano left, subsequently we had our finals for the, that school.

TI Before you get into that, did you ever get a sense of why he decided to leave? I mean you said he said he wasn't cut out for that. He didn't think that he fit the characteristics of the college type. But did he ever really confide in you why, what the reasons were?

HM: Okay. He, he was regular army. We were, we were reservists that were recalled to active duty. But in Hanano's case, he wanted to go back to Nihon. That was his, his primary objective. He wanted also to go back to his home country so he could help the relatives. And he felt that being in CIC he would be hampered by some of these activities, and MI would probably be more flexible to him because that's where he kinda had, had most of his dealings. And the other fact was that the competition was too great. He always used to say, "These guys are all college-trained and they're all smart guys and they got bigger vocabularies than I have." And he felt kind of intimidated by their level of intelligence. So he figured well MI, Military Intelligence would be probably a better area for him to follow. And I don't think he even considered a, a career in the army, but that was another position that he felt that he had to pursue. So, when he makes up his mind, he makes up his mind and that's what he did.

TI: Okay. So go ahead and go back to the final exam you're talking...

HM: Okay. Well, we had, we -- the exam is pretty rigorous, because I think everybody in the class except myself was a, was a college graduate. And I didn't even have a, since I was expelled from high school, I didn't even have a high school diploma. So it was a kind of a chore to get through that finals area. And the next thing that was kind of unnerving was the fact that everybody got assignments. And here I was the only dumb guy again that didn't have an assignment. And they put me in a replacement company and I, I saw everybody leave. I took them down to the train station or down to the airport and I was the master chauffeur for the whole group. But anyway I didn't get my assignment and I was sitting around the replacement company and that's when they put me in the same cadre room as where Ted Kennedy was assigned. And well, in, in his case he had somebody else take his finals for him at Harvard. And they found out because of the handwriting on the finals and they expelled him. And then he got drafted into the army.

TI: So he was expelled from Harvard, got drafted in the army --

HM: And then he was assigned to Counterintelligence Corp., and he flunked out of the course. So --

TI: Did you ever get a chance to talk with him?

HM: No, he never showed up in the cadre room. He had an apartment in Baltimore. We never saw him. And the only time we got into a problem with him is because nobody -- in the cadre room, we had three different bunks in there and under his area, nobody bothered to clean it. So one Saturday morning they, they pull a surprise inspection on us and they were goofing around and here they giga -- gigged the whole cadre room for not having clean floors. It had dust and everything else.

TI: That was because the dust under Ted Kennedy's bed.

HM: Yeah, because nobody has bothered to clean it. Who is this guy Kennedy? All we knew was the fact that on Friday afternoon they would allow this black limousine to come into the area. And this, this was a secured area. And they would pick up this individual. This was after the final roll call on Friday afternoon, and off, off he'd go. And so anyway, after we got the gig, I had a friend up in the adjutant's office and I asked him, "Who the heck is this guy, Kennedy?" And he says, "Well, he's got a PIO stamp on his file, 201 file." I says, "What the heck's a PIO?" Political Influence. And so (I) says, "Who is that guy who picks him up?" And he says, "He's a Congressman from up in New England someplace." [Laughs] And I never met the guy personally during that time phase. But the army regulations at that time was that if you flunked out of one service school, you cannot be reassigned immediately to the, another service school. Well, they just waived it and they sent him down to Camp Gordon, Georgia for military police school. He ends up by the way, up in Alaska at Fort Richardson. That's where he served out his term.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.