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LG: What was it like coming back to New York state?

TM: Well it was very stressful, it was very hard. And I think it was like, I always equate it to soldiers coming back from the war, I mean, not the fact that we were in a war situation, but when you come back, nobody really wants to hear about what you went through. You can talk to them for about ten minutes and that's about their attention span. There are a few people that are interested, but most not. And coming back, it was so materialistic. People just talked about what they had, what they wanted to get, money, money, money. And I realized while being in the Peace Corps that that necessarily will make you happy, it's the relationships that you develop with others. So it took a year at least, and other friends of mine, we'd call each other and complain about, oh, nobody understands, and it's really hard this and that. So there was an adjustment period, but again, we have reunions, and so we get together. Because there were about, on Saipan, I would say there were about fifty of us, and we got close, we were close, maybe twelve of us were really close. So we have reunions every once in a while, and so when we get together, we'd tell stories all the time. We said, "Did that really happen?"

Because when we were there, we had like seven typhoons, and we had one typhoon that completely leveled the island, and I thought I was going to die. Our house was a concrete house, but it was unfinished. So while we were in that house, the house didn't fall over, but the roof blew off. So the roof went completely, it was completely gone. And I remember my roommate and I went into the bathroom, which didn't work, but had four walls. Went in there, we took our mattresses and put it over our head and so we could look through the mattresses, and because the roof was gone, we could see palm trees, we could see plywood, we could see everything going over us. And then it was the eye, and then everything is completely stopped. So the typhoon was about a hundred and fifty miles an hour, so then it stops and then we kind of came out and thought, "What's going to happen?" We had, one of our friends was with us from the village, and he said, "Okay, we need to go to a better place." So we went to the village shelter, but when we came out of our house, basically the houses were not there anymore. There was just floors, and it looked like a war zone. When we went to the shelter, that wasn't too much better, but there were many people there. And, of course, the typhoon comes back, and he had, on the other side, the elders of the village were standing up against the walls, and the women were all crying and the babies were crying and the water was coming up. And so I thought, "I don't think I'm going to survive this." Fortunately, it passed, and we survived. So every time we get together, former volunteers, we talk about that. "Yes, that really did happen," and, "Yes, this era." But most people will only listen to a little bit of that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.