Densho Digital Archive - George Maeda Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 19>

KL: You said you got drafted?

GM: Yes.

KL: You had military service? What were the circumstances of that? What was your work and where were you?

GM: It was during the Korean conflict, or Korean War. And I don't know why, but after eight weeks of basic training, some of us were pulled out and sent to the state of Washington to guard the Hanford Atomic Works. They made the plutonium for the atom (...). So we were in an artillery unit surrounding them, and to this day, I don't know what the ground rules were to be picked. But my good friend, who was in my wedding, that's when I met him. But he wasn't picked and he went to Korea. And he didn't see any action, but I think April was the ceasefire date. And we were... I think we were discharged December, or the year before, 1954. So my military life was sort of uneventful. I didn't leave the country. I guess it was important where we were.

KL: So you said it was artillery. Were you stationed next to an artillery piece, or where were you and what was your...

GM: We had batteries or companies scattered all around. These plants, there were about five plants, and ninety percent of the plants were underground. And only the chimney stuck out from the ground, and they were radioactive, so they only released the smoke when the wind went toward the ocean. But once in a while the wind would reverse and come towards us. Jeep drivers had to use Geiger counters, and we were told, "Don't worry, it's not life threatening," but people were getting toothaches and headaches and everything else. We were actually there to protect the manufacturing, Hanford Atomic Works, I think they may still be in existence, it's pretty famous. They were in Richland, Washington, and there still might be plants there for all I know.

KL: So your life continued intersecting with World War II even later.

GM: Well, we didn't know except that they made plutonium for the atom bombs, but other than that, we didn't know what else was going on.

KL: That's interesting. I used to live kind of near Oak Ridge, and of course you hear about New Mexico, but I don't hear Hanford mentioned all that often, it's interesting.

GM: Yeah, it was... in fact, it might have been a semi-secret location or something.

KL: Oak Ridge was very secret. So your career was in electrical engineering?

GM: Mechanical.

KL: Mechanical.

GM: Yes. I worked, I retired from a company named Aerojet, it was an aerospace company. I taught part-time in the evenings, junior college. And then I had a small consulting company that I had formed myself. Retired in 1994.

KL: What are some other significant milestones or parts of your adult life? I want to mention, if someone were to watch this and just try to get sort of a feel who you are, it's important.

GM: Well, I'm divorced from the mother of my two sons, but one of the saddest moments of my life was when I found out that I was sterile. I couldn't produce kids. Anyway, that was a pretty sad moment in my life. Slowly, with the help of my then wife, who left books around, we decided to adopt kids. So both my sons we got from the Los Angeles County Adoption Bureau. And those two events were probably the most happiest in my life. To this day, they're good kids. I told them when they were, whatever, fourteen, fifteen, if they ever want any help looking up their natural parents, I would help them. And they both answered they only had one set of parents. I get a little choked up talking about it, excuse me. But both good sons, they're fifty years old and forty-six. But that was, you know, the happiest time in my life and the saddest time in my life. I remember every moment of it. When the doctor announced to me that I was impotent... or not the word impotent, but I was sterile, and I don't know. I remember him saying, "Have you thought about artificial insemination?" He says, "Only three people in this world would know, that's you, your wife, and myself." I remember saying, "That's three people too many." I was ready to live the rest of my life childless when we walked out of the office. But within a year we had our first son. One of the proud things that happened in my life, the two other families that saw the way we were raising our kids, they couldn't have kids, so they asked me questions and they both adopted kids from the same Los Angeles County Adoption Bureau. They've grown to be great kids. Well, the one family I don't remember, but the other one I'm still friends with. A lot of families that have adopted children, you don't know until you have one. Then you run into people and say, "Oh, my kids were adopted." "Really? So were mine."

KL: So were three of my cousins.

GM: But you know, you don't go around... I will tell you this one true story, and it was not embarrassing, it was funny. But my oldest son, when he was, I don't know how old, but he was a baby, we always told them, they advised to, "Just tell them, 'You're adopted,' tell 'em, 'You're adopted,' and they'll ask you one day, 'What does adopted mean?'" And my oldest son tugged on this lady behind him, and she looked at him and says, "Hello, Sweetheart." He looked up at her and he says, "I'm adopted." [Laughs] We said, "Okay, Keith, you don't have to tell the world." But that's how they grew up, I don't know how to say it, not ashamed, happy. (...)

KL: What about your sisters? You said that Shizuko went to Chicago, what was the rest of her life like after Manzanar?

GM: Then when we relocated back to Azusa, she came back from Chicago and she worked with my mother in this sewing factory for a few years. And then she met my brother-in-law and married him and they had two children, a daughter and a son. And when she was fifty-eight years old, she contracted a disease called "scleroderma," it's a disease of the skin, and it turns the skin into a, like a rock. And her skin was shaped like this, but she was a battler, she was a fighter, and what nobody realized was it was moving inside her system until it reached her heart. And one night she was uncomfortable after she went to dinner at six o'clock, and eight o'clock she asked my brother-in-law to take her to the hospital, and by ten o'clock she was gone. Have you heard of the scleroderma? I think that's how you pronounce it.

KL: Wallace Stegner is one of my favorite writers, and there's a character in one of his novels that has something that sounds similar.

GM: Yeah. There's no cure for it because it's sort of rare, and I guess they don't put enough funding in to research it. But my father passed away in 1978 and my sister followed him in 1980 when she got it. She was a trouper.