Densho Digital Archive - Clyde Taylor Interview (denshovh-tclyde-01-0008)

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RP: Let's talk a little bit about the game itself. You said that you and the rest of your teammates really wanted to go down there and play.

CT: I can't remember anything, anybody, any of us saying we didn't want to go.

RP: Uh-huh.

CT: And know I wanted to go and don't ask me why. I just wanted to go. Because prejudice and stuff, to me, I just didn't have it at the time. I don't know if I have it now or not but I didn't have it then I know. But the townspeople, they didn't, I can't remember them having any one say any one way or the other about it. No big hubbub about it at all. So we went, that's it.

RP: Let's talk about the guys on the team that played in that game. Two guys in particular I wanted you to talk about were Jack Fansler...

CT: Jack Fansler, he came home, this was in '44 right?

RP: Right.

CT: Well he was home then. He wasn't in the service. I don't know if he was wounded or how he came home. I really don't... but he had witnessed some kamikaze pilots and stuff over in the, you know, over in the Pacific. So he was, he had his share of it. '44 seemed like a little soon for him to be home but he was there at the game. And he never had finished high school when he left. A lot of those guys volunteered when they were seventeen, as soon as they could volunteer, and they hadn't finished high school yet. So they came back and spent their extra year or whatever it was to get their diploma. And he was one of those. And that's why... he had never been on our team before that. But he was a big husky guy so he was welcome. [Laughs]

RP: So he's coming back from the theater of war in the Pacific. And, and the next thing he's down at Manzanar playing against Japanese Americans.

CT: Yes I know, I've, that's goin' through my... I never thought about it before, before this all came about. And then I thought about it the last few days, last few weeks... just tryin' to figure out what his thoughts were. But he's sort of a quiet person. He never said. He was a friend, a very good friend of mine, you know, but never came up, never came up.

RP: Never expressed himself about that?

CT: No. And I didn't ask.

RP: Another gentleman was...

CT: Rowland Fansler was his brother.

RP: Right. Rowland was a reserve. And Buddy Lund?

CT: Buddy Lund, he was a, he's in the same grade as I. I don't know how the team got shook up so much because Jack, I don't think had never played with us before. And I don't think Walter Galino did either.

RP: And Walter also, he was, he went to the war too didn't he?

CT: Yes, I believe so.

RP: And then he came back and...

CT: Yes. Uh-huh. His brother did, too, his brother. His brother incidentally used a, they used Saline Valley as a target practice for the bombers there, or the machine guns.

RP: Saline Valley was used?

CT: Yeah, in that area. I don't know where they came from but he used to tell us about how they'd run their, their runs and shoot their whatever they shot, their machine guns at some target. I don't know what they used for a target, probably donkeys or whatever. I have no idea. There was a lot of donkeys there, mules, and they had donkeys, jackasses.

RP: Right, maybe they were trying to get rid of a few of 'em.

CT: Maybe. Who knows?

RP: Peter Daly...

CT: I don't know. I can't, I was trying to place him myself.

RP: Uh-huh.

CT: I don't know.

RP: How about Don Peach?

CT: Yeah, Don Peach, he's a very good friend. He got killed in, in Korea. When the three of us in, three of us, Buddy Lund... no, Rowland Fansler, Eddie Harvey, and myself, we tried to enlist into the service from Big Pine so this was in '49, '48-'49 so we all went to Los Angeles, the three of us went to Los Angeles in the post office. And above the post office was all the recruiting, everything was there. We went down from one office to the other trying to get in. But Rowland was so heavy they wouldn't, they wouldn't take him in the service. So we was all gonna go together. So we didn't. We drove our old car back home and then a little, few months later we decided to try it again. We all went to Reno to try to enlist. So as soon as we got to Reno they signed us up right away. 'Couldn't even go home. We had to mop the floor that night and they sent us to Fort Ord where before we could hardly... next morning. We were in the army then. [Laughs]

RP: Sooner than you expected.

CT: All three of us together. Yeah, and while we was in, while we were signing up they asked what theater we'd like to go to, Europe or Asia. So we said Europe. We had, we didn't know anything about the war then. We couldn't find a job. That's one of the reasons we wanted to go into the service. So, we went through about halfway through basic they came around and wanted to, wanted us to sign, resign our waiver and let us, let them ship us to Asia instead of sending us to Europe. But we were smart enough by chance that we didn't let 'em do that. And we stuck to our guns and they stuck to theirs and all three of us went to Germany in different parts, but we didn't... then the rest, the whole rest of the Fort Ord I think went to Korea.

RP: Korea.

CT: Yeah.