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HM: When you're in the FAA, you become part of the reserves because they want to protect your priority in not being thrown back into the (active duty) reserves. So you have a regional area control. Like in Anchorage it was very strong because the, the air force and the army were very influential in what was being done in the Anchorage area. So, anyway we were placed under that jurisdiction. Well, I came down for my vacation in 1950. This was --

TI: You came down to Seattle?

HM: No. My normal curricula -- well I used to fly from Anchorage to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and go to Detroit. I used to have a deal with a Pontiac GMC dealer at Pontiac, Michigan. I used to pick up my brand new vehicle there and then I used to do whatever I felt like doing. And this was during the summertime, and then I'd drive back to Seattle and either I drove one of the vehicles back up through the Alcan Highway, or my brother flew down and picked it up and he drove it up. And that was what we did every year because we could have a brand new vehicle we use for one year and we could sell it for more money than what we bought it for the previous year. So we made this a common practice. So I got to Higgins Pontiac GMC five days before the North Koreans came across the border. And I picked up the pickup. And anyway, by the time I got back to Seattle, of course the Korean war was in full progress. And my mother thought that I was gonna be hauled into the Fourth Combat Regiment, the Arctic Warfare Regiment. And these guys stay out all winter. They are self-subsistent guys. I mean they are picked from native Alaskans. They have lived up in Alaska because they're, they're used to the environment and the weather. And you snowshoe up the hills and then you ski down hill. And you got cargo packs. And it's an interesting survival pattern. I went through cold weather, weather survival with training in the Big Delta because I was on the flight status group for FAA. So consequently I, I lived through that environment. It's like sixty degrees below zero, and part of your task is to start up this diesel engine and it's been cold-soaked for three days in that temperature. And in order to start that thing you have to start the gasoline auxiliary engine. In order to start that, you have to get the lubricant into the system and get that thing going. So, it's kind of a step by step pattern. You have to get the lubricant warm, you have to get the gasoline engine warm so you can fill up that thing with fuel and lubricant. You have to get that thing going to start even energizing the, the environment for the diesel engine, and that's been cold-soaked so you have to get lubricant system working again because it's, it's like a piece of Jell-O, that's how hard, or even harder for the lubricant, anyway you gotta get that thing started. So I was used to that cold weather routine so I thought to myself, well gee, I'm going to the Fourth Combat Regiment, that's, that's terrible. I don't wanna... so my mother talked me into --

[Interruption]

TI: So continue the story with the -- your mom was concerned that you were gonna be with the --

HM: Well anyway, she indicated that she heard about these Alaska Fourth Combat Regiment. I don't know who she heard it from. But she said well, I should change my whole registration thing, my military stuff from Anchorage to Seattle. And I, I thought about it for awhile, and I didn't like that idea of transferring because I would lose my deferment sit -- situation with the air force. And even if I was recalled into active duty, the, the air force would have picked me up because I was in the Air Defense Command function, and they would give me a rating. So I, I was really concerned about it. Anyway I went back to Alaska. And then my brother came down for the, the holiday season, and this was holiday season for 1950. And my, my mother talked to him about her worries about me subjected to maybe recall, active duty. Anyway, when my brother came back up to Anchorage he said, "Well, mom's really worried about this thing. So maybe just for her satisfaction you should transfer your thing to the Seattle area." And I did that. One week later, "Right now," they said, "you got activated." [Laughs] Almost immediately.

TI: So your fear that...

HM: Well --

TI: ...if you had stayed you'd get --

HM: This is now in January, late January of 1951, okay. And they said that I'll have to report on, on February 19th.

TI: That's an interesting date. [Laughs]

HM: So I went to the supervisor and I told him, "Well they're gonna reactivate me. I'm on the reserves and I'll be in the army." And he says, "No, we're not gonna allow you to be in the army." And then he started doing all his things that he normally does. And he, then in about the, I think the end of January, he comes to me and says, "Henry, you really screwed yourself. You're in the jurisdiction of the Washington State people. If you were up here we could have, we would have got you off right now, because we have high priority for your type of people. But we'll try to work the problem, but you're gonna have to comply with it." So immediately I said okay, "I'm gonna go get another car in Detroit before I get yanked into the service." So, I took off and we had this crew -- what do you call it -- we used to have a pass that we could fly on most of the big airlines, and "Crew Observer" they used to call us. And the reason why we got that was because we wanted to see how different pilots and crews used ILS and different landing systems and their nav. systems and their communications systems. So we were allowed to fly as a extra crew member.

TI: So they had what, a jump seat in the cockpit?

HM Uh-huh. Yeah. There's usually, either a side of the flight engineer, back of the area there's a kinda flip over seat. So I used to get some free flights once in a while. So anyway, I got a free flight from Anchorage all the way to Minneapolis. And then I had to pay my way from Minneapolis to Detroit. And then I went down and picked up the car. It was a brand new car. And here it is in the beginning of, this is about the first week of February. And so, I wanted to go see some people in Chicago and visit some other people on the way back. So I did that. I visited the Chicago people and outbound from Chicago, and this is the wintertime and we got into a horrendous snowstorm. It was the record snowstorm for about ten years or so. Anyway, I got kinda stalled coming all the way through to the West Coast. And I was going through Wyoming and the, the weather had cleared up for awhile and so I was going about seventy-five miles an hour and I passed a state patrol car. [Laughs] And he flagged me down and he says, "Hey, you're going a little bit too fast." And I said, "Hey, I got to get to Seattle because I'm being reactivated on the reserves." I showed him all the papers and he, he believed me. He says, "Hey you better slow down because there's a storm up front." And so anyway, I thought hell, if I can drive in Alaska, I can drive in this kind of snowstorm any old time. And it, it wasn't true because my brother used to do a lot of things on the, our, our vehicles in Alaska. And he used to put like a, in front of the radiator -- because it used to get so darn cold up there, you don't need all the cooling of the radiator. So in fact you had to keep it a little bit warmer, otherwise the heater wouldn't warm up. It would never get up to right engine temperature for the heater to work. So he used to put masks in front of the, of the radiator. And I didn't do this for this car. And here I'm rolling along and we hit this squall, just like, like in Alaska, the williwaw, except in this case it's heavy particles of snow, not the driving stuff that's coming this way. So I said, "Ah heck, this is nothing." So I drove along and I get the whole front end of my engine compartment packed with ice. Of course no flow. And the car comes to a screeching halt by itself. And I thought to myself, what the heck am I gonna do now? And I was sittin' in the car contemplating. And here comes this state patrol guy, the same guy. [Laughs] And he says to me, "I told you, you gotta, gotta slow down a little bit." And so he called for a towing vehicle and they towed my vehicle and then they let it defrost in this heated garage there in this place. And we, we had lunch together. Because this state patrol guy finally came up to this place and he says, "Yeah, I been looking for you." And so I invited him for lunch and then we had lunch together. And I was telling him I was gonna try to make it to the West Coast by no later than the seventeenth. I got only a couple of days to get things straightened out. And he says, "Well, here's the road you should be taking." And he was very kind in time and consideration. And told me which ones to take and all this kind of stuff. And we got the, the car all defrosted and all the ice melted and everything else. That, that station guy was very friendly to me. I drove through Bend, Oregon back through the other way. The Columbia River Basin was iced up so I came the other route, but I got to Seattle on the seventeenth. So I had about a day and a half to get ready for getting activated.

TI: Well, what was it that made the state patrol officer so nice to you do you think?

HM: Well, because he, you know I had Alaska plates on. I had purchased the plates in -- and during that time period every time I went to buy a new car, I used to get the Alaska plates in Anchorage and bring the plates with me. Because I knew what kind of a car it was and they would, we would send them the other information about the serial numbers of the vehicle after I got down to Detroit. And you know, since we got to know the people in Anchorage pretty well, they were very compliant with our request. So I used to have Alaska plates any time I picked up the vehicle. So that was kind of unusual for him to see a guy from Alaska running around the country. [Laughs]

TI: With a brand new car, so he was probably curious what was going on.

HM: Yeah, a brand new car. Yeah. He didn't know if it was stolen, or what the heck was going on. But he was, he was interested in what was happening you know. How, why did they came, come down from Alaska? What was I doing up there? How come you're getting thrown into the military again? All this kind of junk. So, I did get back in time to report for active duty.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.