<Begin Segment 9>

Male voice: I have a question. I don't know if this... if there's anything to this or not, but since you were in the military when war broke out, how did the military take that? Was there panic, or did you, did you feel that they were on top of the situation? You know, suddenly they were confronted with a big war and they weren't really prepared for it. Did you get a sense of that at all?

TO: No. Well, I found one thing. There's some people who are sympathetic to us, especially I ran across a conscientious objector, and what's that... oh, that...

FK: Quakers?

TO: I can't think of the organization. Anyway... some church. What is that one that comes around door to door?

FK: Seventh Day Adventist?

TO: Yeah, met some of those people and they're real nice. They say, "How are you?" and taking, "How are you doin'?" But those, I never met any who were violent or anything.

FK: Was it, was it kinda scary, though, when people were, would get drunk or drink too much and say those kind of things?

TO: Yeah. Sometime you, you're pretty, had to be really careful. You know, you don't antagonize them. But most of 'em were real good. Well, I kinda enjoyed what I did, you know, in the army. Broadened my horizon a little bit, meet different kind of people. I worked in the -- Vancouver Barracks -- I worked in the Section Eight, they called it. They're... people had mental problem, we used to call them nuthouses. They usually have big guys there because some of the residents, they got pretty, pretty violent. They had mostly big guys so they could handle them. Scary sometime when they get violent, start throwing things around.

FK: So did most of the people that you worked with in the hospital, were they people that were coming out of the war, or...

TO: No. Well, later on, they're people, veterans, come back from Guadalcanal. You know, they come back with hay fever and things like that. I mean, not hay fever, that mosquito...

FK: Malaria.

TO: Malaria, yeah. Well, it was a signal corps training center. So we got lotta of... in those days they didn't have a radio communication. They had to climb poles, string wires, so you get a lot of fractures. People climbing up the poles and breakin' their legs and arms. It's kind of orthopedic type of a hospital there.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.