<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Well, let's go back to Boeing, and...

HM: Okay.

TI: ...you're working hard there. We're in the '60s. Is there anything else you want to talk about? I want to get to the point where, we started getting to the point where you got involved with the SST program, things like that.

HM: Okay. Before that, bunch of us like Tom Koizumi and even some of the people that were in the wiring group, thought that we should do something in order to, to eliminate some of the discriminatory practices against Asian engineers. And I had worked with a couple of Korean engineers, and this guy happened to be a graduate of Tokyo University. And for a Korean to be able to get into Tokyo University is -- he's got to be in the upper part of the first one percent of the top of the class. This is the criteria they have for Korean people in Japan. So, anyway, he felt that he was being held back. He had a Ph.D., and he just couldn't get up in the promotional ranks. And anyway, Tom Koizumi was a third-level manager at that point. And he was in the business management area. And he felt that we were being exploited relative to our capabilities versus our salary and status within the company. He had access to all kinds of information that none of us in the SPEEA level were entitled to. So he used to share some of that stuff. He used to say, "Here's the breakdown of all the engineering staff. Here's the Asians, and here's the educational levels for each of these age brackets." And the salaries were quite a bit lower than the average of the, all the engineering groups.

So this was, this was almost about the same time that I started having some problems in the organizations I was assigned to. Well, the thing that came out -- well, my brother was assigned to a atomic energy test program that Boeing had a subcontract. And he was into heavy particle physics. And they used to run the, the linear accelerator down the lower level of the development center. Nobody knows about what's happening down there, but they have a real big doughnut-shaped accelerator. And they're running this thing day and night. And they got all these target items in there. And they're trying to figure out the particle functions. Anyway, that was part of the atomic energy test program he was involved with. And they were -- he was going down to Mercury Flats in Nevada on a regular basis. Every time they had a underground test, he'd be down there a week beforehand, and stayed down there --

TI: These are the underground nuclear tests?

HM: Yes. That was being performed during that time. And they were being done maybe once every three weeks or somewhere around that frequency. And so he would go down there and get the data and come back. And he was doing this on a regular basis. Well, he was also building a house down on a hundred, South 160th, and it was a pretty big house. And I used to go out there and try to help him on some of the installations because he had some custom things incorporated into the house. And about the latter part of October he says, "Hey, I'm going to go on another trip very shortly. So they're going to be some custom doors coming. Would you help the installers, tell them how it should be fitted?"

TI: And your brother was in good health and everything was fine?

HM: Oh, everything was fine, yeah. He was in tip-top shape, yeah. So anyway, he goes down to Mercury Flats beginning of November. This is 1966. And I get a call from his wife about 3 o'clock in the morning. And says she got a call saying that George has been killed. So, "Oh, God, what's goin' on here?" So I tried to get into the Boeing system for the emergency department about whether or not there's been a report of his death. And they never heard of anything of that nature. So anyway, I called up the number that she gave me for the person that made the contact in Clark County in Nevada. And he said, "Yeah, they had a accident." They classified all the information. All we know is that it was a fatal accident.

So well, I figured, well, the morning after I went down to the public relations department, and they sent me to the industrial relations department, and finally they gave me the information that he got killed. And so I decided, well, let's, let's help the widow out here. Before he left on that trip in November he had cancelled his will because the will designated the children by name, and he had another child after that. And he said, "Well, I'm going to take care of it during Thanksgiving, the Friday after Thanksgiving because we used to get a day off there." Go to his lawyer's office and change it. So he cancelled the will. And I didn't know that he cancelled it. I thought he was just postponing the revision of it. So when the, this announcement came through the system, the banks froze all his accounts like they normally do.

TI: Right.

HM: And so Amy, the wife, couldn't get any of the funeral arrangements done because they didn't have the money to do it. The bank accounts were frozen and all this kind of problem. So I told her well, let's set up a separate account for his arrangements. So I funded that, that process. And then the Boeing office called her and said that they cannot provide the insurance money because this is a classified accident. It involves the Atomic Energy Commission.

TI: Even though he was working for Boeing?

HM: Yeah. And he had the accident insurance, travel insurance, and he had his own private life insurance. None of the insurance companies would honor their commitment because they could not get a verified death certificate that had the cause of death and the circumstances of the death because they classified this whole thing.

TI: Before we get into that, Henry, too, I just wanted to get how you were feeling. I mean, your brother was incredibly important in your life.

HM: Yeah. Oh, he was the mainstay of my technical knowledge. But oh, no, I was really shaken by this. But anyway, the insurance companies said that they weren't going to pay off on the thing. And then I contacted the other, his private insurance company and said, no, they can't provide the information unless they given all this documents. And so anyway, I took a week off from Boeing, my work. And I was on the SRAM (Missile) program at that time. And I went to the Industrial Relations Department. And I said, "First of all, I need to have the body sent back because we have to arrange for the funeral." And they says, "You got to pay for it." I said, "What are you talking about? You guys send him down on an assignment down there, and you're not going to pay for his body coming back?" He says, "Well, we'll only pay for live passengers coming back." And that was the policy at that time. I didn't know this. This was the policy. Anyway, I got ticked off and I started going up the ladder. And I ended up with the vice president of industrial relations. A guy name Micklewaite. And I told him, "You guys going to start having to implement some of these things. The insurance for one thing. I want his body sent back." And I got pretty demanding. And he says, "No, you got to pay for the body being sent back." Because if they put him in the casket and they put him in lower lobe (of the airplane), they charge you three times the first-class rate. And, also they have to make special accommodations so that thing won't rattle around. And they charge excess for that. But they refused to do it. So I, anyway, I authorized the airline to have it shipped up here. And then I, I got on the -- the newspaper reporters were hounding us at that point because they wanted to know something about him, they were writing an article in the Seattle Times. And I told the reporter that I'm going to have a sit-down strike in this guy, Mickel -- Vice President Micklewaite's, office because he refused to send my brother's body back. And oh, I was really ticked off at that point. So I did have a sit-down strike by myself.

TI: And did the Times write an article about this thing?

HM: No. They couldn't come in the plant, so they couldn't, they couldn't witness any of it. Anyway, the Boeing security guys came, and they picked me up, one on one side and one on the other, and literally picked me up off the ground and took me off the, outside the building. [Laughs] As it turned out they wouldn't do anything. And the insurance companies wouldn't pay off. So they put me in a heck of a predicament because he was trading commodities. And he had a system in his basement that -- he had all this teletype gear and everything else. And they were getting the data over the lease lines. And whenever the price hit this range that he was looking for or whatever he was looking for, it would ring an alarm system, and Amy would call him at work and tell him the Number 6 alarm sounded.

TI: So he would sell or buy based on the --

HM: Yeah. He knew which ones all these things were set for. So he would take the proper action. Anyway, this commodity guy calls Amy up and says, "Hey, there's so many things that are going to mature, and we gotta do something, otherwise he's going get -- "

TI: A ton of soybeans or something.

HM: Yeah. Bushels of all these grains. So I got ahold of him. And he says, "Well, we can't trade this account. We have no authority to trade this account. It either has to be court-established based on instructions that he left." And at that time I didn't know he had had the will vacated. And I said, "Hey, it must be in the will someplace," so I got Amy. And then sure enough, the damn thing was voided as of a certain date. And I called up the broker, and he says, "Well, what do you want us to do?" So I said, "What can we do?" He says, "Well, you could place just the opposite orders, and just cancel them out. And your two orders will just cancel everything out. So you won't -- the only thing you have to pay for is the commissions on all these orders." So I said, "Okay." So I transferred out all my stock accounts that I had, and transferred into the company, and we did, we did it, we matched up the orders and cancelled everything out. But Boeing wouldn't pay for the, they wouldn't do anything for the insurance part of it. So I got attorney, and I told him to pursue the whole thing, and it was on a contingency basis. Well, he ended up with about 20-odd percent of the whole insurance, all the insurance things, because he had to go after each company.

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