<Begin Segment 19>

HM: Okay, let's jump to the end of my -- the last week I was in the army. The adjutant calls me up and says, "Hey, you're kind of defunct in the Central Records Facility because they're kinda easing you out of the job there because they got the replacement for you." So, I hadn't really been showing up for the last several days because they didn't need me. So the adjutant says, "Well, if you ain't got anything better to do, I got a bunch of things I need for a favor from you." So he said, "We got a guy coming in here that's been in the army for a long time, but he's never qualified with a weapon. He's never been in a uniform and we want you to get him through the medical thing, examination at Fort Meade Hospital, and we want you to get him into a uniform, we want you to get him to a firing range, and get him, get him all his shots so he'd be qualified to be separated from the army. And at that time, because the Korean War going on, the army regulation stated that you must be qualified with a weapon. You must have a hea -- health examination to determine disabilities and all this kind of junk. You must go out in uniform with the proper rank. So anyway, I thought this was a snap. I had a car, I knew the guys down at Fort Meade. Oh, this will be nothing. I could get it done in a day, that's what I thought. So I go up to the adjutant's office the following morning and here's this guy in civilian clothes. He's a Nikkei. And I talked to him and he says okay, so I told him I had a car and I could transport him to these different places and, are you ready to go. And he says, "Well, I gotta put my stuff into the BOQ." So I bring him down there and dump the stuff and take off. And I says, "Well, the longest lead time item on this thing is your uniform, and what kind of uniform do you want?" So he says, "Well, a standard uniform." So, I said, "Well, what rank did you hold?" He says, "Well they got me classified as a major, but I never wore any uniform." So anyway, we bring him to this uniform shop in East Baltimore Street.

TI: And what were you thinking at this point?

HM: Oh God, I thought...

TI: Here's this Nikkei, he's a major...

HM: Maybe this is one of the guys that's writing some of these reports. You know, that I had looked at. And I thought, well he wasn't a very talkative guy. He was pretty closed-mouthed. So we bring him to the uniform shop, we get him sized up for the thing. And I says, "Hey, what kind of weapon do you fire? I mean what are you familiar with?" I started asking him about these questions and he says, "I don't know anything about weapons." The only thing he's fired was a .22. So I thought this is kind of interesting. Here's this guy, he's a major now, at least he's, in pay he's a major. He doesn't know anything about weapons. Okay, well, we'll first get him into the hospital and start getting him some of the tests. So that was our first stop. And then I call up the range officer and ask him, "Can we qualify this guy with a weapon?" And he says, "Yeah, bring him down, bring him down." So after the part of the examination was over they said, "You have to finish up the other exam because they gotta take some x-rays and all that kind of stuff, so bring him back tomorrow." So sure, okay. So we go down to the firing range and so that was the range that we used to go to just about every other week. And this, the range officer, training officer was an Olympic pistols guy for the Olympic games. And the weapon that we would use was a .38. And my favorite was a .38 with a 6 inch barrel on it, target style. So I, I figured well, anybody could hit a target with a 6 inch barrel weapon. You can't help but hit it. So I told the range officer well, let's, let's use the .38 because the .45 is kind of heavy and it's, it's an automatic and the .38 is a much easier weapon to use and you could fire more accurately. So anyway, that, that's what we assigned him and then we showed him the sequence and range safety requirements. So he says, "Okay, you gotta hit, you gotta hit into this zone here for this score and to get a marksman you have to have this many points on the thing." So anyway, he gets the thing and you can tell he never fired a weapon. He, he had a hard time hittin' the target. And anyway, we go through about four sequences like that. And the range officer calls me over and says, "You know, this guy is gonna have a hard time. He just doesn't have the arm strength to keep that weapon up there and he flexes too much when it recoils." So I, he says, "We can do this thing all afternoon we won't be able to finish him off." So he says, "Why don't you get on the next range to him and you fire at his targets." So I have no problem with that. So, I get to the next range and all of a sudden he becomes a marksman. [Laughs] But anyway, he thought he did real well.

TI: Well, he didn't know that you were, you were shooting the targets for him?

HM: No, no. I was firing a lotta rounds. But anyway, we got him officially qualified, and then --

TI: By the way, how old was this gentleman?

HM: Oh, okay he, he was recruited in 1929 into the -- before it became the Counterintelligence Organization. It was the Army Investigatory Agency or something. They had a different name to it. And he was a student at the University of California and they recruited him.

TI: So when the war broke out he was probably in his early thirties then? So '29 he was probably about twenty...

HM: He was a college kid when he was, in '29 so, let's say he was about twenty-one at 1930, and this is 1953 at that point.

TI: So twenty-three, so he's like forty-three at that point.

HM: Yeah, yeah, and he was up for retirement. And he had been under cover all this time. Never been in a uniform in his entire army life except for this last day, or last two days anyway, and then he had that uniform.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.