<Begin Segment 16>

HM: And by that time I was getting so bored about the school that I, I kept on volunteering for these different assignments. And so they would -- I volunteered for this one in First Army. So I went up to Fort Jay and doing all kind of funny business of -- well this was the remnants of Sergeant Greenglass's operation. And Greenglass was the courier for the Rosenburgs. And the Rosenburgs were executed for atomic energy --

TI: Right.

HM: The data transfer and all this kind of stuff. But Rosenburg, I mean Greenglass was a sergeant in the army and he was running around in a brand new Cadalliac convertible. And he had a lot of girlfriends, and he got one girlfriend really mad at him and she turned him in. Turned him in because she was mad at him. And she made a whole bunch of allegations. So consequently, everywhere that Greenglass went, we bugged his places to find out what was going on.

TI: So were you one of the foremost experts on bugging for the...

HM: Well --

TI: ...for the CIC at this point?

HM: Well, I was willing to volunteer for these dumb assignments and they, I guess they figured, well, if this, this guy is dumb enough to volunteer, we'll use him. We don't want to use our own people, see. And well, that kind of stopped after I heard about another incident. During the time we were taking this Defense Against Sound Equipment Course, they had couple other courses running along side with us. These were called specialist courses. And one of 'em was in entering systems, how do you enter a place surreptitiously, and how do you get into things like, even safes, how do you get in there? Well, they used to have guys that were, had backgrounds in locksmithing. And during the time we were running the course, it was a concurrent type of situation. They have six guys in this entry class. I got to know all of them fairly well because we used to take our breaks together and used to go to the coffee shop. And he was assigned to Sixth army. And he got -- something was wrong with his entire system. And they were in the Russian, one of these Russian commercial companies, import-export companies, and they got nabbed. They got nabbed by the San Francisco Police Department. And they sent them up for three years in the California State Prison system. And the army denied he was doing anything for the army, which is the normal thing that happens. So anyway, he got convicted and he got thrown into jail. And that stopped all my volunteering work. I just quit right there.

TI: 'Cause you realized that the army would not back you up if you got...

HM: No, no but the normal...

TI: ...caught doing something illegal.

HM: Orders are that -- first of all you shouldn't get caught, but if you did get caught, the army's gonna deny that you had anything to do with them. I mean this is normal standard procedure.

TI: Uh-huh.

HM: So you're at your own risk. But after I heard about that case I said, "Oh, that's it. No more for me."

TI: And the army wouldn't cooperate in the investigation because you would know that he was doing something, he was like an instructor.

HM: Oh, yeah. I knew he was under orders to do that function. But three of 'em got caught. And the surveillance system broke down. I found out about it later because we visited him in the, in the prison. But --

TI: Well, how did he feel about that? The fact that the army didn't support him. Was he surprised?

HM: He was bitter. Yeah, he was bitter. They funded the defense money for his attorneys. That's all they did.

TI: That's amazing.

HM: Yeah.

TI: Okay.

HM: But this is standard procedure. So that stopped my volunteering work. [Laughs] It came to a screeching halt. About that time, they said well, General Gallagher at that time was, he wanted a super-duper detachment. World-wide detachment that had their own airplanes and all this kind of stuff. And this airplane thing really struck a bell with me. And I thought, "Oh, God, he's gonna have his own damn airplanes." And so when I investigated some of his, of this formation of this detachment. And I said they had a provisional detachment commander assigned. So I sought, sought him out through the personnel files, and I went to him and I said, "Hey, here's my background. I could speak enough Japanese to get me in trouble..." And he says, "Yeah, we can use you." And so I got assigned to this so-called 890th group. And nobody talks about that group. Anyway, they had their own organization so they used to send us to all these different assignments.

TI: Was this to do things like to bug? Things like that, to eavesdrop? What was the function of this group?

HM: Yeah, we were formed into different teams.

TI: I see.

HM: One guy on the team was a entry guy, and one guy knew how to bug things...

TI: Right.

HM ...and the other guy knew a lot about photography.

TI: Sounds a little bit like "Mission Impossible." You know that --

HM: It's a very low-key stuff. And so they used to send us to things like -- well, first thing they did was they sent us to maneuvers, army maneuvers to figure out if we could outwit the other side and wipe 'em out and from a counterintelligence standpoint, really screw them up. And that was part of our mission. And we went on some of these assignments. And then they had this deal in Tokyo, so I volunteered for it. And I was told that at the time by the executive officer that when I get through with the assignment I get two weeks free. I be free to do as I feel like. And I wanted to see the guys in, in Japan because they were my former classmates and they were having a grand old time over there. So I said, I volunteered for the deal. So they flew me from Fairfield Susun Airfield, I forgot what the new name is, but that, that was the MATS base, and they flew me priority to Tokyo and we did our job. We get briefed on the job and we did the job and finished it. And we come back and they asked us, "Well, how did everything go?" And said, said, "Well the recording looks okay." And as soon as that happened and the debriefing ended they said, "Well, pack up your stuff we're gonna have you go to Tachikawa." I says, "What are you talking about? I got a two week leave here." The orders were written in such a complex manner that the two weeks starts from the time I return to the United States. Dirty son of a guns. Anyway, they, they put on this on this semi house arrest and hauled all three of us to Tachikawa, and off we go from Tachikawa back to, to Fairfield Susun.

TI: They thought they'd put you under sorta that semi-house arrest because they thought you would take off and just --

HM: Well, they claimed that we were burned. That somebody saw us. That was a bunch of bologna. That was just to get 'em outta the, to get us out of the Tokyo area. But, I was looking forward to the leave. And you couldn't contact any of the people because we're still undercover assignment. Anyway, they bring us back to Fairfield, and then the guy says, "Well, you're free to go. We got orders to clear you. You guys can go out, whatever you want. And you got two weeks on your own time." Oh, that was a dirty stunt. Anyway, I came back up to Seattle and spent the two weeks here and then went back to my assignment back there. Then they had another assignment to Korea, but that, that was an easy one.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.