<Begin Segment 20>

TI: All right, go ahead. Continue the story.

HM: He, so he says okay, so we better check out all insignias. He knew enough about that part, so we go back to Baltimore and we go to one of these service oriented shops and we pick up a unassigned brass for his service area, and major's leaf. So I told him, well, if you're gonna keep it, why don't you, the emblems and all this kind of stuff, why don't you get the gold-plated ones because they don't corrode and they'll be shiny all the time. And he liked that idea so he ordered those, those items. And the following day we brought him back to Fort Meade for the rest of his physical, and a couple of other items that he had to take care of. And then we brought him back to the uniform shop and it fitted very nicely, and put all the insignia items on there and put his cap on, and so anyway, he wanted a photograph taken of him. So, okay, we went down to one of those places down on East Baltimore Street and took his photograph. And then he says, "Well, we better, tomorrow is my separation date so I better put the uniform back," and he put it back in the box that they gave him. He felt that he was obligated to me for running him around all over the place. So I said, "No, forget about it." He says, "I'll tell you what, why don't we hit all the strip joints down on East Baltimore Street?" And so I said, "Hey, I'm driving so I gotta get you back to the post. You're valuable cargo because the adjutant is looking forward to your retirement, separation ceremony." So he had a few drinks at this bar, and the next bar and all over. And then Blaze Starr was the feature attraction at this about the fourth bar that we went to. I don't know if you're familiar with Blaze Starr, but she was the best strip teaser during her era that I, I'm aware of. But he was enthralled with Blaze Starr, so we get this front row, we got this, looked right up at her. And he was really into it. And he got, he got really, he had his fill of alcohol that night. So I bring him back to the, to the BOQ, and he starts on this talking jag. And he has kept all this stuff inside of him for all these years and he needs to have somebody to talk to, and he knows I'm CIC, so he feels kind of free to express himself. So he starts talking and I mean on, and we were there until about two-thirty in the morning he was talking. And he tells me all these different things. And I thought to myself, here's this guy that was probably filing these agent reports all this time and there must be a bunch of guys like him. And he's the guy that was doing this.

TI: Because he shared that he was in the camps during this period?

HM: Yeah. He was in Tule Lake. He identified the areas that he was in. So --

TI: How did he feel about that? Did you get into, did he talk about that?

HM: No, that was his job. That was his assignment. He didn't have any guilt. He didn't have any feelings of undermining his own ethnic group or anything. He -- that was not part of his psychology, I guess. That's why he made such a good agent and he stayed in there for so long. He had a good army retirement at that point. He's retiring as a major.

TI: Well how did you feel?

HM: Well, I didn't know what to think. I just was completely amazed at what was happening, and the way he was talking, and all the things he was telling me. I just, I was just kinda overwhelmed with what should I think about this thing? I didn't even know.

TI: Well it seems like it caught you by surprise, even though you were CIC and had been in there. And your brother had been CIC, the fact that they --

HM: But we had been under a different type of function. We weren't undercover. And some of the people that were in my class, especially the guys that had geology background, like the guy that his name was right next to mine alphabetically, so we used to get called right after each other. But he went up to Alaska. He had a masters in geology. And he was a petroleum expert, and they sent him up there because the, the (petroleum search) operation, that wasn't even evolving at that point. In fact we used to fly over that area in Jack Jefford's -- you know from Umiat coming back down towards Anchorage, when we were trying to hit Moose Pass there. We used to fly over there and he used to say, "Henry, that, that's oil down there. Can you see that stuff? That's oil down there." It would be dark stuff under the ice. I'd say, "Jack, you're drinking too much lately." But everybody knew there was oil down there.

TI: But then what the CIC would do with undercover is they would spot something that will evolve in the future and, and put plants there years --

HM: Well they wanted to know if there was some funny activity going on. There was always the doubt that, like, that right across the Russian and Alaskan border there, there's two islands there, and the people from the Russian side used to have relatives on the US side. And they used to go back and forth. And so that was part of the, the suspicion that was raised that there was too much inter -- interfacing between the Russians, natives and the US natives. And they were all one big family. And so a lot of the original residents of Alaska used to be Russians. Like St. Petersburg was a Russian settlement. It was a Russian -- built up by the Russian Orthodox Church. So there was a lot of Russian influence there and we were in the midst of the Cold War, and the Korean War was going on. So all the things were suspect. So they sent Miller up to Alaska. And at that time they changed army regulations; when we got into CIC they said, "You can only gain one salary. Either you gain the army salary or your undercover salary, but not both." Some of the guys who, were collecting both. So they changed the army regulation at that time. So, but these things were going on at that time. Undercover operations were going on and they were sending people to post-graduate schools. I mean they were getting post-graduate degrees with the army pay.

TI: And that's just to be undercover because they need that history as they went on --

HM: Yeah, well you know the University of Washington used to be regarded as a pink institution at one time. There was a lot of so-called "communist sympathizers" and all that kind of stuff. In fact the dossier files that we used to look at, some of them indicated that they were involved with these so-called "pink" organizations. And that kinda eliminated some of those individuals from be -- getting top secret clearance, or even secret clearance because that was used as a point schedule, affiliations with different groups and all this kind of stuff. So all this thing kind of gelled together. But things that you have done in the past that you might have no recollection of, or have no bearing on your, your loyalty to the United States, might be regarded by the case review officer that's reviewing this stuff as pertaining to your ability to discern loyalty to the United States. So all this stuff kind of comes together in this guy's case. The major's case, he was, he felt that it was his duty to do this job. And that's the kinda guy you want in a operation like that.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.