The Voices of Crissy Field

Ceremony at Crissy Field

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-1766

Crissy field had many uses. Beginning as a marsh the Ohlone used seasonally, to being part of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, an Army avaiation field that was instrumental in a lot of flying firsts, to finally a National Park site. But, these stories are the individual stories of those who were here.

Learn more about Crissy Field

 

Aviators and Civilians at Crissy Field

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 32485

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"Of course when he ended up at Crissy, why he was very interested and was allowed to take the members of the officers’ families or the enlisted men -I mean families or any of the children--up in airplanes if they wanted to go. So, as we can tell from the newspaper clipping that I found, we all took advantage of it that wanted to do it and I had my first ride on my grandmother's lap"- Dora Devol Brett

 

• Dora Devol Brett

  
  

  An Interview with Dora Devol Brett about her recollections Crissy field and the early Army Air Corp in the 1921 through 1924 where she lived as a child.

  Date created:

  03/11/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Haller: My name is Steven Haller and I’m the Historian for Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is March 9^th, 1992, at 2pm and I am here at building 102 at the Presidio of San Francisco with Mrs. Dora DeVol Brett who lived at Crissy Field from 1921 to 1924. I want to thank you for making the effort to be with us here today, Dora.

  Dora: Its My pleasure

  Haller: Now, we are making this tape for the National Park Service and plan on using it for research and for education about the history of the presidio and I understand that the National Park Service has your permission to make the tape and to retain all the literary and property rights to this interview for the purposes I just mentioned. Is that Correct?  

  Dora: Yes. 

  Haller: Thank You.

  Haller: "I'd like to ask you about your family background.  In particular because I know that you're from a family that has a long and distinguished career of military service. So, could you describe your family a little bit for us?

  Dora:  "Well, I was born in Washington, D.C. to George Howard Brett and Mary Devol Brett in December 28, 1916 and I lived all of my life until I was married, in the service.            Army Air Corps.      My father was in the Army Air Corps. And I'm here because of my affiliation.  My dad was stationed at Crissy Field and from 1921 to 1924 and I was a child of sixish, five, six to whatever - eight and remember some of those days and I thought [it] would be of interest to your project here.  

  Haller: "Well it certainly is, as I might go on to say that your father was not only stationed here but he was the first commander of the post.  Now, your family background contains some other San Francisco associations, doesn't it.?"

  Dora: "Yes. it does."

  Haller: "Could you tell us a 1ittle bit about your grandfather?"

  Dora: "In World War I when my father was overseas in Paris, and I was approximately one to two years old along in there. maybe two, two and a half, I'd kind of forgotten, my grandfather who retired as General Caroll A. Devol, Major General from the Army Quartermaster Corps and my grandmother Dora Scott Devol were stationed at Fort Mason. So, my mother and I came out and stayed with them (for whatever time it was, I don't know of course for sure, and I have no way of checking) at Fort Mason. So, my grandfather as a quartermaster in the Quartermaster Corps had been involved in Fort Mason off and on for years. From 1906 at the earthquake of which I know, and then in latter years of which we have, we found out about. So of course, my interest is also there." 

  Haller:  "So for a short period of time you actually lived somewhere on Fort Mason. 11

  Dora: '' In the quarters that grandfather and grandmother had at the time. We stayed with them, my mother and I."

  Haller:  "And this was when George Brett, your father, went overseas?  Is that correct?"                                                 

  Dora: "Yes, to Paris, during World [War I]."

  Haller:  "Do you remember much about your grandfather?"

  Dora: "Oh, I remember him very well because grandmother and grandfather settled in Menlo Park on the corner of Santa Cruz and Lemon and when Dad was stationed here at Crissy, why I would go down to visit them quite often. I was the oldest grandchild. I now then had a sister when we were here at Crissy and then my brother Devol Brett was born in Letterman General Hospital here at the Presidio. So, I remember going back and forth in his touring car, down to Menlo. They would come up and get me to have me for a visit, which I'm sure pleased my mother and father very much to get rid of me for a while.  And what I remember about Crissy was that we had the Arnold children lived here then and the Greene, Carl Greene’s children and other fiends and we lived up on the officers’ row and we had a very' very fun Life, just enjoying the fresh air and the surroundings and everything else. But the most exciting part was when my father always was interested in getting people interested in airplanes, which were very new in those days.  He started his training at the Coronado in the Signal Corps and my mother and father were married March the first, 1916 and he was stationed there at that time, taking his flight training.  And then, of course when he ended up at Crissy, why he was very interested and was allowed to take the members of the officers’ families or the enlisted men -I mean families or any of the children--up in airplanes if they wanted to go. So, as we can tell from the newspaper clipping that I found, we all took advantage of it that wanted to do it and I had my first ride on my grandmother's lap. I think it must have been in about, I forget the date on that newspaper clipping.

  Haller:  "I don't recall for sure, but we can check in the collection that you're to donate."

  Dora:  "Yeah and over San Francisco Bay in a D.H. [De Havilland]"

  Haller: "Can you describe that? Can you remember it well enough to describe the feelings."

  Dora: "Well I have to confess to you now, which I have not done before. I am sorry to say, I threw up all over her.  But she loved me dearly anyway and took it in stride. That was my first and last time of doing that, though, in an airplane. And then Dad took me up after then, several times. And he was always interested in my interest in flying and would always give me any opportunity to go up in an airplane from then on as long as he was able to in the Air Corps."

  Haller: "You said you flew the first time in your grandmother's lap so assumedly you were in the rear seat or the observer's seat because it must have been a skilled pilot flying."

  Dora:  "Oh. yes."

  Haller: "When you flew with your father, did you sit in the observer's seat all by yourself then?"

  Dora: '' I was usually with somebody because I was small. It would probably be on somebody's lap or with somebody.                   Because I was too small to sit on the seat and see anything.                      And those were open cockpits as you know. So, I was usually on somebody's lap. And I don't recall exactly what, but I know I went up more than once because my dad told me that I would go up whenever he'd let me go."

  Haller: "Well these were sort of early and adventuresome days for aviation. I know that people at large at that time were agog at the wonders of aviation."

  Dora:  "Very."

  Haller:  "Being a child who'd been up in a plane must have put you in some pretty good social standing with your peers."  

  Dora: [laughs! "Well, I was one of the few children who enjoyed it as much as I did. But my father was a remarkable man because, when he loved something, he wanted his children to learn anything and everything that they could about all sports. We were shown, given an opportunity to anything in the sports world throughout our lives that he could give us. And also, he loved to fly and he loved to ride horses so those were the two things he offered to us. And I was being the oldest actually took more advantage of it than my sister. My sister didn't care that much about it.  And my brother was six years younger than I so he was down the chain a bit by the time he came along. But he, and he was sickly for quite a few years. So [ was the one and [ was bolder and enjoyed it and I adored my father and I'd follow him ai1ywhere. But he had such enthusiasm, and he would make everything so wonderful that you couldn't help but want to do it."

  Haller: “Did you get down to the flight line, to the airfield, to the business end of the operation very often, or only on these very special occasions?"

  Dora: "No, we were only allowed down on that part of Crissy Field with our parents or with someone comparable. In other words, if another father wanted to take two children, why maybe I’d go along. But we were always; we were never allowed down there without because it was too--that was business, and we weren't allowed there. "

  Haller: "No, that makes good sense." Dora: "Yes."

  Haller: " You Mentioned some of the other children that you associated with. These are all families that made something of a mark in Air Corps and Aviation history. We remarked before, over lunch I think, just how small the early Air Corps was and how that gave everyone a chance to be special there.”

  Dora: "And you never went to a Air Corps post, which was an army post of course, without knowing somebody in those days because it was so small. And then you knew people from the other parts of the service too. But when we were here at Crissy of course

  General Arnold was here as a major also. And as you told me, he had a different position with... Hap Arnold.  But his children were good friends and that's where I first knew them and Bruce [Arnold] in latter years, he worked for my husband, General Bernard A. Shriever, who had the missile, beginning of the missile business. In 54, from 54 on, we moved to Santa Monica and Bruce worked for General Shriever there in that command for many years."

  Haller:  "And this is Bruce Arnold."

  Dora: "Bruce Arnold.  And he was my very good friend.  He was wonderful.  He died about a couple of years ago. And I knew the oldest son, Hank Well, I knew all of the children and then, of course, I knew the family well because when I was married to my husband, why, my family were stationed in Panama at the time, my mother and father. So, I was married in General Arnold's house in Washington, D.C. He gave me away. Because my husband, Benny, as I will call him now, was up with Northwest Airlines. He was out of the service for a year. It was reserve and we were married the beginning of '38, and he was trying to get back in the Air Corps, which he loved. And we were married, so he couldn't come to Panama for a wedding, so I came up and we were married in General Arnold's house in the beginning of '38. In other words, we continued the friendship throughout the years. And Carl Green was also stationed here. And his three children, Sally, Peggy, and Bill. I still am seeing Sally and Peggy. Bill, unfortunately, lost his life in Korea. He was in the Air Corps.    And both Sally and Sally was married to Air Force. But Peggy married a field artillery man. But we were a close-knit group and I guess. Those were the three that I kept the most touch with throughout the years, those two families."

   Haller: "You remind me of the story you told me the last time we met when we were looking over your photograph album and there were the children playing on the stoops of the officers' homes along Lincoln Boulevard.  You showed me all the three or four Arnold children and they were all dressed identically. Do you remember that?"

  Dora:  "Yes. in sort of sailor suits."

  Haller:  "Sailor suits."

  Dora:  "Yes, uh huh."

  Haller: "Didn't you say that that was a trademark; that Mrs. Arnold liked to dress her children that way?''

  Dora: I don't remember that as well, but I remember that the Arnolds, either he or she had an outside income, which, in the service, if anyone had an outside income, was always very apparent.   And l wore Lois Arnold's hand-me-down clothes for years 'til I was about thirteen years old.  I had no feel about it. All I cared about is if the dress had pants to match the dress, cause in those days we wore bloomers over our underpants to match the dresses because then I could climb trees and do anything I wanted to, and my mother wouldn't fuss at me. And that's the truth. And so, but Mrs. Arnold very kindly sent her [clothes] because. she was just enough older than I. She was two or three years older than I was. And so, they were very gratefully received because we had very little money in those days. We had very little furniture in the house. But it didn't bother us. It was no problem. We never worried about it. We were very happy, and our fathers had plenty of time in those days and our mothers to pay attention to us."

  Haller:  "What do you think was special about childhood on that military post?"

  Dora: "I guess, well not ever having lived off, I don't know. And I had, of course I visited my grandmother and grandfather at Menlo [Park] and they had a lot of property there and I had the freedom to run around there.  I had the freedom.  And now that I'm into children, and grandchildren particularly, that are young, why, that freedom, I now realize was wonderful.  We had our restrictions, I say, we had to stay within the boundary of the quarters up there and we weren't allowed to just go back in the... out in the... where it wasn't... just helter skelter, but then we didn't want to.  We didn't particularly need to. And remember we were only, what, probably from nine on down to toddlers. I think the oldest was Lois Arnold and she was, if I was six, she was three years older than I so she would be nine. you see. So, we were in the ages where staying home was more or less... and of course when...  I don't think I went to school when I was here.  I was below school age."

  Haller:  "I was about to ask."

  Dora: '"Cause my first recollection of school was at Wright-Patterson where we went to from here."

  Haller:  "How about."

  Dora:  "I don't remember school here."

  Haller: "How about playing with the other children. I imagine it was mostly officers then who were family men at that time? Is that correct?"

  Dora: "Yes.      You must remember that in those days the sergeants could get married, but your enlisted man could not. Very seldom.  And there was a reason for that. And I think, frankly, that they should go back to it now. Because when they were young and coming up in their enlisted ranks and then when they got to be a sergeant, they then finally had the money to support a family and usually had quarters on the base, too. But before that they lived in barracks and there was no money. They did not make enough money to support a family. And it says to itself because today our enlisted men are on food stamps because they can't afford to support a family. They still can't. And yet they won't crack down on them and not allow them to be married until they grow up. Because your enlisted man is usually very young. I don't know if you want that in this or not."

  Haller:  "No, no, actually I'm interested in... "

  Dora:  "That's why you have your barracks here that have so many men in it, you see. They lived in the barracks, and they were well treated.  And they didn't feel the pinch. Because they were in there.  I'm sure that there wasn't one that was over twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirtyish. And also, men in those days were very interested in what they were doing, and they also knew that if they wanted to get to have a family that they assumed the responsibilities of a family.  And then when they got to be sergeants and then my father would usually talk to them and make sure that they were not in debt. And he did the same thing with first lieutenants. First lieutenants were not allowed to be married without, or second lieutenants, without the permission of the commanding officers. And the reason for that was to make sure that the man had enough money, was not in debt, and had, if he was a pilot, he had to have enough life insurance. And my father required ten thousand dollars, which in the twenties, cause you see that was where everyone had money, but the military were poor because food was so expensive and everything was expensive. Not that it was a hardship to us. It was not. But he demanded that any... and that demand was in even when Curtis LeMay came to him in Selfridge Field and wanted permission to be married.  And even though he was marrying a woman with money, which he did, he had to show that he had ten thousand dollars life insurance for his widow, for his wife, so if she became a widow at least she would have something. Because no one should have had to assume that responsibility, that was his responsibility."

  Haller:  "Well you touch upon an interesting subject which is, I guess, the responsibility that a good officer would feel towards his subordinates, officers, and enlisted personnel.  And it  sounds like your father took a pretty active role in that regard."                                                                                            

  Dora: "He always took Well, remember I showed you the picture and told you about when I was at Fort Ethan Allen and in the cavalry and he got that group of his... what do call it in the Army, in the cavalry when you have a... troop!... his troop. And he took his troop and he worked with them for days and days and weeks and weeks and got them so that when they went into Madison Square Garden, they were the tops. And was a great, great compliment to him in those days. And that showed his leadership of men and his caring of men, that be could work with men.  And he worked with enlisted men. I mean his troop was enlisted men. But to get them up to speed-so they would take pride in belonging to a troop that did... came in and gave demonstrations of riding... like to music and going into twos and threes and performing in a sort of a pattern that people would enjoy marching in a wonderful manner, getting all   the horses to move at the right time. That takes great skill and a lot of hard work, cause he had me doing it at Fort Leavenworth for years and I was a very good rider.    And we had a Girl Scout troop and I got to be. The front person because he would work with me every afternoon, day in and day out after school, and help me. And that's what he had all the way which he gave to his children as well as to the men. And he also was a man who was always concerned with morale. Well morale at Crissy would be his... is where he cared and where he would take care of anything he could that would make life better.    And yet he required responsibility from his men to their job, to their life and to their fellow man."

  Haller: "Just parenthetically, I wanted to clarify that when you were talking about staging the exhibitions of riding skill, this would be the cavalry troop from the Second Cavalry which came down... "

  Dora:  "Fort Ethan Allen."

  Haller: “. in Vermont to Madison Square Garden.  Correct?"

  Dora: "and performed."

  Haller:  "Yeah, very interesting."

  Dora: "And I don't know if they were in competition or not. I can't understand. But I know that he was tops in it, that his troop won the best at Fort Ethan Allen in competition with the other troops that were their cause there were quite a few there. And, as I say, but he never had any compunction to work and work and work and go over and over and he had the patience, and he was a wonderful teacher as well as a leader. 

  Haller: "What got him out of the cavalry and into flying. Do you have any insight as to why he got interested in flying?"  

  Dora: "Well. he heard and read about it. And at the time he met my mother at Fort Ethan Allen and decided at the age of thirty that that's the woman he wanted to marry.  And she was about twenty-two at the time. I guess he was twenty-nine. He always said a man shouldn't get married until he's thirty, but he only did that because that's when he got married. But anyway, and so he found out about it and looked into it and he was just intrigued. So he talked it over with my mother and said he would like to do it and she encouraged him, so he went and started his training and then after he'd been in training for, I can't remember the exact time, how long it took, why they were married while he was still in training there, but she backed him all the way and she took an interest in it. And she would go up with him when it was allowed, too. She never had any fear of it. She was not as. she was a quiet, gentle person so she didn't tackle it like I did because, I always wanted to learn to fly but I never had the money for it. And unfortunately, when World War II came along, I was married and had two children. My husband went off to war and didn't do badly in the war at all. And if I hadn't been married, I could have had lessons and flown during World War II with the women. And I would have."

  Haller:  "Sounds like you would have been great."

  Dora:  "I would have enjoyed it.  1 really did.  But it's something.  My brother was a fighter pilot. my dad was a fighter pilot and you either. you have that sort of wanting to be. I don't know what it is.  It was like riding a horse. It was so exciting when I'd get in that ring and face those jumps. But I never had a really good horse. They were usually the government horses at Fort Leavenworth. But it was a challenge to see how well I could make them perform. And with my father's help, cause he worked with me, so I could.

  Haller: "You mentioned riding, I think, in Menlo Park, but you were probably too young to have done anything at the Presidio? Did you ride at the Presidio?"

  Dora: "No. no, no. I never rode here, nor there. No, it was always on a Army post where they had field artillery and cavalry horses. And even some air... now at Langley Field when we were there. In·'28 they had horses for some unknown reason, which I can't remember. But I know that daddy started me riding. That's where he started me riding was at Langley. And then we went to Fort Leavenworth. And Leavenworth was a huge Army post and they had classes every Saturday and Sunday for the children. The girls in ·one riding ring and at the other end of the post, cause it was huge, it's a huge, huge old Army post, why the boys had it. And the boys never did as well as the girls for some unknown reason, in the horses. They just didn't have whatever it was. They didn't have the interest is what I meant.  Not that they couldn't be good riders.  But and then I was only ten when we went to Fort Leavenworth. I forget. The time goes by. Yeah, yeah, I was about eleven. And I really took to it.  But besides the lessons, my father would work with me, too, after.  'Cause he was a student and he had. after school he had time off, you see."

  Haller: "While you were at the Presidio near Crissy Field, were there other sort of spectacular events or particular memories that you can share with us?"

  Dora: "Well. when anybody of rank came to town, and I can remember when General [Mason M.] Patrick came, and, oh, golly, that was very, very important.  And we would be... we could come. they would bring us down to the flight line or we would come if you wanted to.       And I would get in on anything. And it was always fun to see them. And then, what was the other one? 'Cause I horrified my father because I asked him about his teeth. And unfortunately, he had false teeth. And I said to him "Do you take your take your teeth out like father does in the morning?" and I was always doing something embarrassing."

  Haller:  "To a senior officer during an inspection?"

  Dora: "He was either the assistant chief or whatever. I could get myself into more trouble. But when General Patrick came and then when Lowell Smith came through and the flight around the world and that was the most exciting thing."

  Haller:  "You said that you saw ... "

  Dora:  "[Lt. Lester J.] Maitland was one of them.  Maitland was one of that group."

  Haller:  "That’s right.  Maitland... "

  Dora: "And they, he and my dad and l saw more of them socially 'cause the Maitland’s were good friends of my family."

  Haller:  "So, did you recall the events of the Around-the-World-Flight?"

  Dora: "No.  I just remember they came, and I got to meet them and ... down on the flight line and it was so exciting. And everybody was there and welcoming them and everything."

  Haller:  "'Yes. apparently, there was quite a crowd."

  Dora: "Oh. yeah.  Oh, it was just...well, imagine, flying around the world?  In those airplanes?"

  Haller:  "It was the first time it had been successfully done."

  Dora: "Yeah. It's incredible. It was just like I was at the... at the Air Space Museum over Christmas and I looked at the Spirit of St. Louis again. And knowing Charles Lindbergh personally, it means even more to me. And I was showing a couple of my grandchildren. I said "Look at that plane and just think. He flew and he couldn't even see out of it. The whole thing was just mind boggling and exciting."

  Haller: "Well I just think the images that I see and the vision that I have of these men, people, getting up in these open bi-planes and just expanding rapidly the capabilities of aviation during those years."

  Dora: "Imagine, just going around the world in those and being up there and looking at all the strange country or else going over the ocean. To me going over the ocean because as we know, go down in the ocean and you can never be found.  Ever.  Like Amelia Earhart. Whatever happened to her? But even so, it's worth taking a chance. And they were full of that, and they wanted to do it so it was wonderful. Just think how early on that was to do that."

  Haller:  "Sure well, it was less than twenty years from the time of the first flight."

  Dora: "I know, I know, it's incredible.  And the planes in those days were so flimsy. And they didn't know all the air dynamics that they know now or knew several years thereafter. Einstein's theory or no, Johnny von Karman, no, von Karman, Dr. von Karman who did the.... whatever airlift and everything or air flow or something

  Haller: Do you have any sort of personal memories of things that happened while you were in the Presidio.

  Dora: One thing might be…. [Recording ends Abruptly]                                                            

 

Plane at Crissy

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35263

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"It was getting late in the day. Crissy is not the best place to come into at night if you are not familiar with it, obviously. So, that was the last word we had. Then my dispatcher called me later in the evening and said, You better get down here" - Iva Young

 

• Iva Young

  
  

  Interview with Iva Young discussing various experiences in the military between 1964 and 1968.

  Date created:

  02/15/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Haller:                 (001) [My name is] Stephen Haller, Park Historian for Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and I am here at the Maritime Museum Library in Fort Mason on June 14, 1995, with Iva Young. Iva is retired First Sergeant in the United States Army, and was the Flight Operations Sergeant at Crissy Army Airfield from 1964 to 1968. We are taping this interview for the archives of Golden Gate National Recreation Area; and Iva, I understand that I have your permission to make this recording, and for the National Park Service to retain all literary property rights to this recording. Is that correct?

  Young:                (006) That's correct, Steve.

  Haller:                 (009) Well, thanks very much for being here today. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Why don't we start out by telling a little bit about yourself and your family background and youth. Can you do that for us?

  Young:                (012) Sure. Uh, I was born and raised on a farm back in Wisconsin, and come from a background of farm families. My great -my great -my grandparents as it were came from Germany and settled in the homesite which was our homesite for years and years and years. I went to high school in my home town, small community, one high school class, consisted of eight girls and one boy. If you think that wasn't an interesting class!

  Haller:                 (016) I can well imagine! [Laughter]

  Young:                (018) [Laughter] Anyway, finished high school. I worked for a few years, and I had decided right after I got out of school that I was interested in going into the Army. 'Course, going to high school during the World War II days, and my folks always made sure that the kids were up to date on the news and this type of thing - I guess that makes me a news junkie to this day - but I was always interested in this. However, in that day and age, women had to be 21 to get in the service, so I had to wait 2-1/2 years.

  Haller:                 (025) So, what day and age was that when you joined the Army?

  Young:                (026) So, I was 21, in '50 -early on in '50.

  Haller:                 (026) 1950.

  Young:                (027) And, uh, joined up, didn't have to have the permission of anybody, I'm a legal citizen now, I can do what I want ... But anyway, I joined up, went to Fort Lee, Virginia, which was at that time the basic training assignment, and took my basic training. Stayed there for a while on an assignment; went to Fort Meade, Maryland. I always have been interested in transportation, that's been another factor in my whole career. So, I got in the motor pool, drove - everywhere -loved every minute of it, worked my way up through the ranks in the motor pool. Then I went overseas to France, to Orleans, and got into Transportation and Movements, movements of personnel and supplies and all that kind of good stuff. It was a very interesting tour. My first time out of the country, and it was quite an experience to go to France. Coming from a German background, this was … this was an eye-opener. It was a good duty. Left there, came back to the States, to New York. I was stationed in Brooklyn Army Terminal, right in the heart of New York. And meantime, I had re-enlisted twice. Stayed in New York, worked at the Brooklyn Army Terminal for quite a length of time, and then I spent a short tour as an Army representative in the Air Force at McGuire Air Force Base. I was there about a year. I then went back overseas to Stuttgart, Germany. More Transportation. There I picked up another rank and I was an NCO in the Movements and Control Office in Stuttgart, for the – Southern German Command. Again, a very interesting tour. I loved to go there, and I go back every once in a while when I have a chance. Left Germany, and come out to the Presidio. Initially, I was assigned to the XVth Corps, which at that time was - oh, like the Reserve, oversight of the Reserve Command. I got here and there were some changes made in assignments.

  Haller:                 (056) So you got to the Presidio in 1964?

  Young:                (057) Yes. I got to the Presidio in 1964.

  Haller:                 (057) How do you feel that your service career was influenced by the fact that you were a woman? How did that affect it?

  Young:                (059) As far as my duties?

  Haller:                 (060) Were you limited? Did you feel limited in your assignments? Did you feel …

  Young:                (061) I didn't feel limited in assignment, because I was doing every place I ever went I was always doing what I wanted to do. There were many more restrictions on women in the service at that point in time, even up until the ... oh my goodness, even into the '70s there were still restrictions. It's pretty lenient now, there are only just a few MOSs or activities that women cannot serve in, mainly combat, and even that's beginning to ease off.

  Haller:                 (068) Uh huh. Now, "MOS" is "Military Occupation Specialty"?

  Young:                (069) Military Occupational Specialty. So, as far as being a woman in the service after World War II, there were still a lot of women there; and in fact, during the Korean build up and just before I retired, there was - the Women's service - Women's Army Corps service, that is - was good sized.

  Haller:                 (074) Were the outfits that you were in, these transportation outfits, integrated in terms of the sexes then?

  Young:                (076) I always was with a mixed unit. The billeting was always separate. It wasn't until just a few years ago that they made billeting co-ed. We were always billeted separately. For example, when I was in Germany, the women were quartered with the ... well, I think it was the 75th Station Hospital when I was first there. And probably had one of the finest buildings built in the United States Army for our billets. It was fantastic. That made the whole assignment for me. It was beautiful. An 11-story building, looked out over the city of Stuttgart. It was pretty nice. We were just attached there; I was not in the Hospital, per se, I was just attached there for billeting, because women had to be billeted together, they couldn't be billeted separately, or co-ed. So, that would be the main factor. Otherwise, all of the units were always together, man and woman. I worked almost always with men, and as I went up through the ranks, I had men working for me - some fantastic guys. I worked for some fantastic guys.

  Haller:                 (091) Did you feel ... it sounds like ... you feel that your career and the work that you were able to do was just judged on the basis of merit? Is that a correct assumption?

  Young:                (094) That's right. That's right. You also have to remember - I'm not exactly the ... what do I want to call it -The - "Queen-of-the- Army" - not exactly. – I’m a little bit on the rough side, being a farm kid; I know how to work and I know how to take command and I know how to give command. Like I said, a person can make or break their own, but for myself, I never had any problems.

  Haller:                 (099) It sounds like you were able to fit right in, and you were really cut out for it.

  Young:                (101) It was my life. I loved it. I really did. It isn’t everybody who can do it. But I enjoyed it.

  Haller:                 (102) How did you get into the aviation branch? And tell me, what kind of Military Occupational Specialty was that?

  Young:                (104) Well, I can't give you the numbers any more, because I can't remember them ...

  Haller:                 (105) That's not ...

  Young:                (105) ...and they've changed a lot since then, but Army Aviation which -not to confuse it with Air Force - Army Aviation was in fact a rather small complex and a small part of the United States Army at that point in time, and then later built up as Korea became big; and Vietnam, of course - that was the thing, Vietnam. The jobs involved here were operations; training; maintenance, of course. Here at the Presidio, we did all our own maintenance except for upper echelon maintenance. It was all done right here on site. Traffic Control Dispatch, administrative - there always has to be administrative help somewhere - somebody has to do the typing.

  Haller:                 (116) Was Army Aviation considered a separate corps - arm of the service - or was it part of the Transportation corps?

  Young:                (117) Initially, it was integrated in other parts of the Army, and I can't recall exactly how it went now ... at one time, it was part of Artillery, as I recall, and Transportation, and then Aviation became its own separate entity. And this was particularly good for the officers, because this put them in a branch, and they didn't have to contend - or they didn't have to compete - with other branches. As far as the enlisted, it was helpful, too, because we now had special MOS's that earmarked us as being aviation trained.

  Haller:                 (126) And now, that had been the case during the time period when you were at Crissy Field. So, how did you come to be assigned to Crissy Field? Was that just one of the mysteries of the Army bureaucracy?

  Young:                (128) No, that was one of the few times when I probably maneuvered a little bit on my own. I was here at the Presidio in Transportation – worked right here, just down the street from where you are there, for a long time. I was excess, surplus to the Transportation office and I had decided, “Ah, I gotta get out of this.” Our office was right there at the end of the runway. I used to sit there at lunch time and watch the airplanes and helicopters. So I put in for Flight Operations training. And got it. Which was probably one of the very few times I got what I really wanted. Went to Fort Rucker, which was the center of Army Aviation, did my training, and came back. And when I got back here to the Presidio, which was Post Presidio at that time, there was an opening in Sixth Army Aviation Flight Detachment and I walked right into it. Bingo. Just like that. Great.

  Haller:                 (143) Was it normal to be assigned to stateside duties after a tour of duty in Germany?

  Young:                (144) Oh, yeah.

  Haller:                 (144) Or a couple of tours ...

  Young:                (145) As a general rule, once you are overseas--as a general rule now--you usually come stateside.

  Haller:                 (147) So that's how you ended up at the Presidio ...

  Young:                (147) I ended up at the Presidio on a normal assignment with a different corps, and then was later transferred over to the Post itself, and then I was excess, and that's when I said, "No, I gotta do something different," and that's how I got here.

  Haller:                 (150) What was Operations training? What did it cover?

  Young:                (150) Dispatching. Dispatching of aircraft, handling of records, radio communications…oh, maintaining equipment. Records and dispatching of aircraft, maintaining records of aircraft is a full-time job. Depending on the operation, somebody has to be there all the time, you see. You had to be on your toes. You had to work with the maintenance people. I stayed in Operations then for some time, and then a position opened up with the Flight Detachment for Flight Simulator Training. I put in for it – got it! Went back to Fort Rucker – that was a long session. That was a long, rough session, but good fun – enjoyable. Difficult, but enjoyable. I came back out here to Presidio – I was still assigned – still assigned to Flight Detachment. Came right back out here. And then we got back into the Flight Simulator Trainer. We had a blue box here for a long, long time that they didn’t use very much. They didn’t have anybody to use it.

  Haller:                 (168 )What's the blue box?

  Young:                (169) The Link Trainer. I started doing some training – refresher training… and then there was… Well, there’s always a problem with personnel in the United States Army – I don’t care where they are. One day, you’ll have 15 people – 15 too many people, and the next day you’ll have 10 – you’re short 10. And this is what happened over in Operations. All of a sudden the Flight Operations sergeant and one of the dispatchers was gone -nobody was corning in, and I was back over in Operations, and then kinda fluctuated between the two positions. And then I got one of my own dispatchers and got him off to school. He came back to Training, and I stayed right there in Operations.

  Haller:                 (181) Now, the trainer, this Link Trainer was in Building 639? The Flight Operations building?

  Young:                (182) Well, the building was ... the little building behind the hangar. It’s still there. I know it’s still there. It was attached to the hangar.

  Haller:                 (184) In the same building as the Operations?

  Young:                (185) No, it was the hangar.

  Haller:                 (185) Oh, attached to the hangar. Okay…

  Young:                (185) It was a little building in the back ...

  Haller:                 (186) It's called Building 641.

  Young:                (187) I can't remember the numbers now. Yeah, it was numbered a separate building, I know that; but it was attached to the hangar, you could go through the hangar. That's where it was.

  Haller:                 (189 ) And the hangar we're talking about now, just for the sake of clarity, is the one near the Operations building, and near the Flight Tower, correct? [ ed note: reference to "hangar" is to Building 640]

  Young:                (192) The tower was on the east end, the Flight Operations and the Company building was the low, one­story building that went toward the hangar. The hangar set just a little bit off - offset a little bit from the Operations, and behind that was this attached building, that you're calling 641 ... which is where this Link Trainer was.

  Haller:                 (198) What does the Link come from in your training? Is that someone's name?

  Young:                (199) That's the manufacturer. And I ... what's the word I want to use? The gentleman who developed this particular system - this is long, long, long before there was electronics as we know it in this day and age; most of it was mechanical. It was a real neat little outfit to work with. I enjoyed working with it.

  Haller:                 (204) Now, this is essentially a flight simulator ...

  Young:                (205) A flight simulator.

  Haller:                 (205) Okay. So, the point is to familiarize someone with what it's like to be behind the controls of an aircraft before they actually leave the ground?

  Young:                (208) Well, it's used in training, in aviation flight training and basic flight training. But also bear in mind that the new ones now are just like airplanes in this day and age -they're just exactly like an airplane. That wasn't quite that way. You had to use a little imagination. But what we used it for here at Crissy was continuous training for people that instrument train. Remember, the aviators here are all trained -most of them have combat, most of them have been to 'Nam, and many of them had been through the War – through World War II. So, flying was nothing. They could fly the livin’ dickens out of just about anything they were qualified to fly. But, there were times when you needed refresher this or a new system was being worked on, or we were setting up a new approach in an area and we'd crank it in and say, "Well, let's try it out." They didn't fly instruments all the time -although there was instrument flying getting out of here most of the time. So, if you don’t fly that much, you tend to get a little rusty. The basis for it was just to keep people fresh.

  Haller:                 (228) Basically, it's a compart ... it's like the cockpit of an aircraft, correct?

  Young:                (229) The Link was, like I said, it took a little imagination, but you got the basic feel. The Link could be used either open -the top could be open, and you could just watch the instruments you're working with, the instruments in front of you -the Link had a joystick -control stick -it didn't have a wheel to control it. Then, for real, honest-to-goodness instrument work, it had a sliding top on it. You could close it up and you're encased in there, just as if you were in the clouds. And now, from there on in you go fly, and watching it down here was what we used to call the "bug" -a little electrical unit that was attached to the simulator and sat on a table about the size of this desk -this is a standard size desk we're looking at -and it had a glass top, another glass top, with maps of different areas, or you could slide maps under it. And you would take the aviator into the cockpit and say, "Okay, we're gonna go from point here to point there, and I'm gonna give you some instruction as you go along." And then I'd close the top, and they're in the clouds. And away we'd go.

  Haller:                 (248) And they maneuvered it using the joystick …

  Young:                (249) They maneuvered it by the instruments they were looking at, and I'm watching; or I'm giving instructions. I acted as a controller, for example.

  Haller:                 (250) ... and you're getting a read-out on this ...

  Young:                (251) ... and I'm watching the read-out as they do it.

  Haller:                 (252) ... got it ...

  Young:                (252) ... enjoyable - I enjoyed it.

  Haller:                 (252) Were you ever trained to fly? Did you ever fly?

  Young:                (253) I flew ... I had a private license at one time, but I have an eye condition which, as I got older, got worse. Women were not authorized to fly military aircraft at that point. That's just in the last - what? - ten years, twelve years maybe. So, there was no way, although there were times when ... I took the stick a few times. [Laughter]

  Haller:                 (260) Did you?

  Young:                (260) Oh, yeah. And so, we weren’t allowed to fly military airplanes of any kind. It was a no-no.

  Haller:                 (263) You talked about some of the typical things you were trained to do, and I assume that translates then over into those were the typical duties that you performed at Crissy Field?

  Young:                (267) Hmm hmm .

  Haller:                 (267) Maintenance, records of aircraft ...

  Young:                (268) Flight Operations.

  Haller:                 (268) To me that means you'd be up there in the control tower?

  Young:                (270) Uh, could be. I was a trained controller – not at that time. I had my certificate later.

  Haller:                 (272) So, Operations is not the same as flight controller ...

  Young:                (272) Not necessarily the same ... There's two - break it down this way: We had a tower and we had controllers most of the time. We were strictly a VFR tower; that is, there was no giving instructions for instrument flight weather ... that ... we couldn't do that, because we just didn't have the facilities; particularly, when you're sitting down here in the middle of San Francisco, looking out over the Bay, with the Bridge behind you - you gotta do what we called "VFR" - "visual flight readings." It was just there to ... it wasn't just there ... it was there to give advice, to assist and observe and watch aircraft come and depart, departing and returning. Now, that could also be handled without a control tower. You can handle that downstairs on the lower level in the Operations. The dispatchers were all trained to ... to give advice, give aircraft advisories, give aviation advisories - the winds, what's the weather today? What's it look like? Any traffic in the area? Etc., etc., etc. We could do that without seeing the aircraft. This is what they call an "advisory." And we did that many, many times. Because the tower was not always open twenty-four hours a day--we never had that many people. So, we used to call it our own control tower down below. We had a window that would swing out so you looked out at the runway ... [Laughter] So, that was the part of Operations that has to be manned, as a general rule, 24 hours a day, depending upon how much activity you have. Another function was scheduling flights. Flight Detachment was there as a support - that's what it is. It supports-­or did--it supports ... the commands in this area. That includes all the facilities on the Presidio, which were tenants. The Sixth Army, of course, was the major command, and that's what the Flight Detachment was, it was the Sixth Army Flight Detachment at that time. And, so, scheduling was a big thing. We had a scheduling board up there on the wall that was ... probably, let's see if I can remember now - ten feet long and about four or five feet high where we kept all our flights scheduled. What it amounts to is, here's a mission that somebody wants to go to Timbuktu, we've got to determine what type of aircraft we need -how many passengers there’s gonna be determines the aircraft or the cargo ... Who do I have who can fly this? Am I going to have this aircraft ready to go ... That's why we had to coordinate with maintenance very closely. That was a big factor, a big part of the job. Another big part of the job was maintaining records, aviator's records. They didn't maintain their own. They aren't--the operations crew maintain their flight records and that could get kind of detailed, The Army's changed their systems a lot, but most of it was working with forms covering certain phases of flying - the visual flying, instrument flying, maintenance, co-pilot, pilot, their positions in the aircraft, and it was recorded with a stubby pencil. It was an everyday job.

  Haller:                 (330) Describe the kinds of missions that were typical at Crissy Field, or any unusually interesting ones, for that matter.

  Young:                (333) Well, the main mission, of course, was support to the General Commander.

  Haller:                 (335) Who would be doing what?

  Young:                (335) Who would be going anywhere in the Sixth Army area, or wherever else the Commander would require him to be. That was our main function, was to take the Commander and his staff wherever they wanted to go, wherever they needed to go ... The mission was also to support other functions. Most of these were passengers ... we did mostly passenger trips. We carried some cargo. We supported EOD, in which ... uh yeah ... bomb disposal came here, was here at Sixth Army, here at the Presidio ...

  Haller:                 (347) "EOD" is "Emergency Ordinance Disposal"?

  Young:                (348) “Emergency Ordinance Disposal”. That was a rather interesting function. And this was in the days before there was so much fuss about movement of arms and weapons across the country. A lot of the weapons were moved across the country by train. And when you ... railroads, when the trains would be up in the mountains, the EODs of the various areas ... for example, there's one here in Presidio; there'd be one in Fort Lewis; there'd be one in Fort Carson; and various and sundry places. They would be on alert during the movement of this particular train or load or whatever it might be. We were then on alert to have available a certain aircraft and two pilots always had to be ready to go. And we had to pull out a couple of times and make some flights to some outlying areas up in the mountains and at certain airports, wherever they had the trouble. Nothing serious thank goodness, nothing blew up, but it's scary when you get that call in the middle of the night saying, "Okay, let's go -hey, guys, let's go!" So that meant that we always had to have a dispatcher available; maintenance had to be available; two pilots had to be available -that was minimum.

  Haller:                 (374) And, obviously, aircraft ...

  Young:                (376) Aircraft always had to be ready. And the airplane would depend upon what particular area you were going into, what fuel you had to carry with you. They would know that. Sometimes we had to go out with two, depending on how much equipment they had to carry with them.

  Haller:                 (380) At one point you discussed that, as the Vietnam conflict began to build up, that Crissy Field was used more and more for trans-shipment of wounded from Travis Air Force Base to Letterman Hospital. Can you talk a little bit about that?

  Young:                (387) That's right! That was a big mission. Heartbreaking mission sometimes, but very rewarding. The wounded coming out of Vietnam -very briefly, would need to come through Japan through Honolulu, or through Hawaii, and then fly ... and then they'd be flown into an area nearest their homes, generally, depending on their wounds, of course. The flights would go into Travis - the Air Force flights, Medivac flights -would go into Travis, and then for patients coming down to Letterman, depending on the condition of the patient -we didn't move all of them. But if it's a patient that needed to be here quickly, or could not stand that long trip in an ambulance or a bus, or whatever, then we would fly up and get 'em. We started out initially with an Otter, which is a single engine, heavy airplane made by DeHavilland – big ol’ Otter. And it could carry slings – it was big enough that we could put slings in there – slings…uh, what do I want to call ‘em?

  Haller:                 (411) Stretchers?

  Young:                (412) Stretchers! We'd sling hangers ... uh, string stretchers in there. Uh, we used that one for quite a while. As I can recall, we probably used that Otter every part of the year, and that was the only plane that could ... the only we had at that time that could take stretchers. It was kind of neat -the crew chief on that plane, he took care of that like a ... like a little baby. This was a fixed-wing plane, now, a tail­-dragger, a fixed-wing. And he even took the little hubs on the front wheel and the two rear and painted them white and put red crosses on 'em. That was kind of neat, seeing that thing rolling up. People knew what that was, too, when they saw that rascal flying along. That caught everybody's attention.

  Haller:                 (428) There's a picture of an Otter in the photo collection that you donated, so I remember it well.

  Young:                (430) Um hmm, um hmm ... And that might be "Quad-deuce" -that was the one tail number that I remember. That tail number was -I forget the first number, I think it was five. Two-two-two-two. We used to call it "Quad­deuce" -that's what we called it, I recall ... [Laughter]

  Haller:                 (435) Great. Great.

  Young:                (436) But that was the one that we used for Medivac. But then, as time went on, helicopters became available, the 'Nam thing was standing down to a sense ... New helicopters were corning into the system, so the Flight Detachment -the Executive Flight Detachment in D.C., the Pentagon -got H-34's that had been used there, and they were being ... those aircraft were being replaced by the Hueys. The Hueys were then corning into the system. So, the H-34's was being moved out into the field and lo and behold we got one, that first one that came out here, specifically for that purpose, to transport patients and stretchers, particularly who were on stretchers, on the H-34's. That was what we used. I used to ... one little gimmick here -one little thing that used to bother me sometimes -I never mentioned this to any of the patients, and I talked to several of the patients after they got home, but I can imagine this Otter ... I can imagine this wounded GI lying on a stretcher, he’s just arrived at Travis in, usually a jet, with all kinds of service – nurses and all this good stuff. And they wheel him off that jet and take him over here to this little ol', single-engine Otter -you know, that must be -that must have been a shock! [Laughter.) I was always afraid to ask them if that was a fact. But, that had to be a shock. But we always got 'em here!

  Haller:                 (471) What other effects did the Vietnam conflict have on you or your colleagues, or the soldiers that you knew in your operations? How did it go in those years?

  Young:                (477) Well, I suppose you think ... now, you think about what's happened as far as the Vietnam veterans are concerned, sort of the bad rap many of them are getting. Some of the guys coming back were ... were a little uh -I don't know what the word I want to use is ... First of all, some of them were a little apprehensive coming back from a combat zone into an environment where there were women. Some of the guys were working for me. Some of the fellahs didn't seem to mind at all. The aviators, of course, they had a mission when they were over there -and some interesting stories come back with these guys ... One of the warrant officers I worked with there, W-4, lives up here in Petaluma now. He was shot down twice that I know of. And ended up with a broken back, and nobody knew it for a long, long time, until he got back here in the States. Pretty bad shape, tough guy, real sweet. Big ol' teddy bear, but he thought he was tough. Oh, the guys talk amongst themselves, of course. When they got back here, the younger ones had a little bit of the culture shock, simply because when they got back here they didn't have Hueys. We didn't have Hueys in Flight Detachment for a long, long time.

  End of Side One

  Young:                (001 )But the Hueys were earmarked for combat unit training, like Benning, and Bliss and places like that, and of course, for Vietnam. So, most of the younger aviators ... [tape turned over]

  Haller:                 (004) ... and the young veterans corning back home to something of a culture shock, from coming from what I guess you call "hot" aircraft to some of the antiques?

  Young:                (007) Little bit older ones that we had here.

  Haller:                 (007) So what were the ... what aircraft were highly thought of? What did you like to fly? What were the typical aircraft, I guess? What did you like to fly? What were the dogs?

  Young:                (010) Well, I don't know as any of them were really "dogs" -a dog in an aircraft is like a dog in a car. There's a certain model somewhere along the line that will always be a dog, I don't care what ... its brothers and sisters can all sit beside it and be great, and there will be one in that bunch; it always happens. But, during Vietnam, 'course the Huey came to be used that was the ultimate, at that time, for the Army. Then the Chinook, the twin-engine rotor, not "Shakey" but the Chinook H-47 was rather sophisticated -at its time, it was sophisticated as far as Army aircraft was concerned. These are helicopters ... of course, the intent all along, basically, was that the Army was to stay with helicopters -that was to be the mission -pick up troops, transport troops, move troops, Medivacs and supplies. The fixed-wing part of the Army, that's how Army aviation started out of course, was with fixed­wing. The little “bird dog”, which was used as an observe during World War II, over in Europe.

  Haller:                 (026) What was before the bird dog?

  Young:                (026) The 0-1 ... uh, for the life of me, I can't think of the name ... Piper made one. There was two or three of them ...

  Haller:                 (029) [Unintelligible]

  Young:                (029) ... it's a little tandem two-seater, a pilot and a passenger. Tandem, single-engine, little guy, lots of windows on the side, used for observation.

  Haller:                 (031) Which is what the "O" was for ...

  Young:                (031) Yeah. Then the Army picked up several of the U- 6's--the Beaver--which, again, is another DeHavilland, smaller than the Otter, same principal idea, but just smaller. A good cargo plane. I liked them. I liked the Beaver. I got some bootleg time with them. It was good -well, small and pokey -but it was a good airplane. DeHavilland makes a good airplane.

  Haller:                 (037) That's sort of an interesting connection for me, because the classic airplane of the early years at Crissy Field was also a DeHavilland, it was the DH-4 ...

  Young:                (039) Oh, yes.

  Haller:                 (039) I remember your saying that in the later years of Crissy Army Airfield, the DeHavilland was pretty typical and highly thought of, also.

  Young:                (041) DeHavilland - the Army also bought from DeHavilland the Caribou, which was the big, twin-engine cargo plane that now the Air Force has, those that are left. A good-sized plane – that was the one that had a big, sloping tail on it. Cargo plane. Had a drop ramp.

  Haller:                 (044) That type was never used at Crissy Field, was it?

  Young:                (045) We didn't have 'em - they weren't assigned to us, but there was quite a story to this - to the Caribou, if we have time to go into that.

  Haller:                 (046) No, tell me the story.

  Young:                In the - '65 or '66 - I think it was '65, there was, in the winter, there were some terrible, terrible floods up north, in Ukiah, Eureka, Fortuna, and up in that area. Those people were just inundated with terrible storms. And so, Sixth Army Flight Detachment was tasked to get up there and help. And, again, all we had at that point was observation helicopters - we did have observation helicopters, not the OH-6 ..• I'm losing my train of thought here ... Anyway, we didn't have helicopters to use for heavy lift or transport or anything more than one passenger, so we were using fixed- wing. The Otter was used extensively for that. We also had Beeches, U-8s, went back and forth ... bearing in mind that the U-8, the Beech twin-engine, always had to have a pretty fair runway. It was not a rough use airplane. We used the Otter a lot. I can remember when one of our captains that flew in somewhere in the Fortuna area in the Otter, ol' Quad­Deuce, and put that rascal down in a canyon where there was a family, a handicapped family, were down in this canyon and couldn't get out. The roads were out, all the bridges were washed out, the mud was sliding, and he put that Otter in there, picked this family up, and flew it out of there. And people might not have believed it, but I saw the dirt and mud and sticks sticking out of the end of the wings when he come back with it, so, he did. (Unintelligible] ... that's quite a trip. But, meantime, we had a mission to get as much supplies and this type of thing up there as we could possibly get - help to get supplies - the Caribou is twin-engine, heavy lift, fixed-wing, as I was just mentioning, was in the system at that time, and it was ... most of them were on the East Coast, I think, Benning, or someplace out in there, so the Army tasked whatever facility that was to fly two Caribou out here and support us - help the Sixth Army support the mission up in the north. We knew the Caribou were coming in this particular day, they were coming across the south, and we had gotten word that they were going to stay overnight up in Fort Ord. It was getting late in the day. Crissy is not the best place to come into at night if you are not familiar with it, obviously. So, that was the last word we had. Then my dispatcher called me later in the evening and said, "You better get down here, this one Caribou wants to fly in." So, I went down, and sure enough, he was over at Oakland -they landed in Oakland. I said, "No, you stay right there, and I'll send a car over for you." We had billets already set up for 'em here at Presidio. "No, no," he says, "I'll bring it in -I've been there before." And I -yeah, I remembered -sort of remembered him then. His name had jolted me earlier, and I said, "I should know this guy." But I didn't at the time. Well, anyway, who am I to tell him he can't -tell him it was unsafe? It really wasn't unsafe, if he followed instructions. To make a long story short, he took off from Oakland. Oakland called us and said, "He's on his way." Right. We picked him up by radio -my dispatcher talked to him, told him exactly what he wanted him to do, where he wanted him to go and turn so that he'd come down and see Crissy. All the lights were on. Also, remember, Crissy sits right here alongside the Bay, right? And it also runs parallel to the highway, the viaduct, the overpass ...

  Haller:                 (098) That's right.

  Young:                (099) Well, my dispatcher was doing his usual hanging out the window, looking for this Caribou. There's no way we're going to miss seeing this Caribou -he's big. It's got big, double lights which we didn't have on any of our planes. Finally, the dispatcher turns to me and says, "Sarge, I can't see him." "Well, ask him where he is." And he says, "I'm lined up with the runway."

  Haller:                 (104) Oh, no.

  Young:                (105) I started to take the mike, and I said, "No, you tell him just go around. I want him to go out over the Bridge and come on around so we can see him." Well, he did -he listened -it suddenly dawned on him -I think he realized, "Hey, hey, I'm over the highway and not lined up with the runway." That scared the tar out of me.

  Haller:                 (109) So ...

  Young:                (109) So I was shaky for about an hour after that one.

  Haller:                 (110) So, this guy was trying to land on Doyle Drive!

  Young:                (110) Yeah, he was going to do 􀀩 Doyle Drive pancake right there!

  Haller:                 (111) That's some story!

  Young:                (112) Oh, yeah, that had both - my dispatcher was a real sharp guy, but he was really shook up over that. Anyway, we got the plane out and got him over the Bridge, and got him turned around so we could see him, so we could watch him as he turned. And I did know him - he had been there before. But my boss wasn't too happy the next day. He was not too happy. Yes, Caribous went out of there on a regular - a Caribou can do a lot. A Caribou is like a C-5. If you've ever watched a C-5 land on a short field - it's unbelievable. But a Caribou can - you can equate it in that sense. People couldn't believe that big Caribou sitting out there on the runway.

  Haller:                 (121) Hm hm. Do you remember the designation of the Caribou?

  Young:                (122) Caribou was CD-7, I believe. CD-7? Or was that the Air Force version of it? I know it was CD-7 at one time or another.

  Haller:                 (124) That's fair enough.

  Young:                (125) The Air Force changed a lot of the designations when they took over [unintelligible].

  Haller:                 (126) Just trying to get it - nothing cross­referenced ...

  Young:                [Unintelligible]

  Haller:                 (127) Do you recall any other particularly memorable incidents that happened at Crissy Field?

  Young:                (128) Oh, yeah, there was a lot of 'em.

  Haller:                 (128) Well, tell me some of 'em.

  Young:                (129) If we had a bunch of people sitting here, you'd hear stories that wouldn't quit. The old war stories, army stories. One of them I have never forgotten was, our executive officer at the time, a major, and a real sweet guy. Used to live up here where I live now - they've- moved since I have … But, a good aviator, and this one morning - one of the other missions that we had, one of the other units that we supported, was the veterinary office. They're the people that go out and inspect farms, because the Army buys meat, chickens, butter ...

  Haller:                 (137) Okay ...

  Young:                (137) ... you know, all that good stuff, at various farms all around the country. So, one of our missions was to take some of the veterinary guys to these hidden towns where we'd go up and land and somebody would meet 'em, they'd go out and inspect the farm and come back - they'd probably spend a day inspecting different places. Anyway, that's what this mission was this particular day. And, it was a single pilot job that day. It was beautiful weather, one of those rare, rare, rare days when you could see the Farallons forever -you know, from almost off the Bridge. So, anyway, they're getting ready to go and the veterinarian came and got on board, the tower was open, so I wasn't paying attention -none of us was paying attention to the aircraft -that's the tower's job to get 'em out of there. All of a sudden, the tower called downstairs and said -gave the aircraft number, and I forget what it was now -said, "The airplane just went under the Bridge." I said, "You got to be kidding!" I got off my mike, "What are you talking about?" He said, "He just flew under the Bridge!" I said, “All right. Keep an eye on him. Look through our binoculars and make sure you’re watching him to make sure if he comes up.” We don’t know where he is. Once he got under the Bridge we had no idea where he was, because we couldn’t see him. And there was no radio contact at all. I went and got the boss right away. He came back. It was the XO, I don't think he was the CO at the time, ... stood there a few minutes, and the tower said, "I see him." And they were starting to climb, and now they were out beyond the - the headlands out there. So, he was going to Fortuna or someplace up in that area, so he was going to go out there and make a right turn and go north. So he did. Still no communications. Wouldn't answer the phone. Wouldn't answer the mikes, wouldn't answer the radio. So the Old Man says, "Get me an airplane and a pilot, right now." So we did. We got an airplane ready in a couple or three shakes, got another pilot, and the Old Man and this other pilot got on and away he went - swoosh -headed for Fortuna. And they never did catch up with him. When they landed, they found the airplane there, and the major got in the other airplane, and one of the other guys brought the Flight back. He didn’t fly for a while. That was forbidden. That was absolutely forbidden. First of all, it was against FAA regulations. But the major told him some months later - in fact, he was an ROTC instructor here in San Francisco for a long time - he's a native. And I saw him one day, here in the city, and he said, "That was an urge that I had and I was gonna do it, come hell or high water, and I did." He retired. I don't know whether it affected his ratings or not. He retired ... it was enough to get everybody excited, I'll tell you that!

  Haller:                 (180) So, he did it just for the thrill of going under the Bridge.

  Young:                (180) Basically, that's what he did, yeah. Even helicopters, as far as the Army was concerned, the Sixth Army had put out that helicopters will not go under that Bridge. They will not go under it. We had the Navy - used to come up here a lot from San Diego to do their little R and R in the reserves, come up here in their helicopters, and they'd land here and stay overnight.

  Haller:                 (186) They would?

  Young:                (186) RON "Remain Overnight," that sort of thing. They used to do that on a regular basis. Tell them, say, "No1 no." "Well, what are you gonna do about it?" Say, "That's not FAA regulations." Helicopters ca1!'t fly underneath there. But, the Navy - these Navy guys would take off and they'd get all in formation, get a big formation out here in the middle of the Bay, and all of a sudden, yeeoow - heading back to San Diego.

  Haller:                 (192) Well, they still do it when a carrier comes in, they'll still fly under the Bridge sometimes.

  Young:                (192) I know that. Yeah.

  Haller:                 (195) So, how about memorable characters of Crissy Field? Any particular people stand in your mind besides the good major there?

  Young:                (197) Well, I don't know. Most of the time there were only three or four women there. I had a couple of dispatchers. We had an administrative clerk named Katy. But, I don't know, it was a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun. I don't recall anybody in particular. There was that major's incident - it wasn't related to a character, it was just something he wanted to do.

  Haller:                 (205) Yeah.

  Young:                (205) And he did. The Sixth Army commander would go on flight missions. He flew all the time, along with all the Sixth Army officers up at the headquarters. He had friends up in the north country, Washington. Used to get a big kick out of it -he'd be up there for two or three days on an inspection trip and then he'd come back in the fall of the year, with about six, eight, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty boxes of fresh apples. That used to be fun.

  Haller:                 (215) That's great!

  Young:                (216) Yeah, he'd load up the back end, bring it back. I was off one time with a trip, we brought a truckload of apples down [unintelligible]. Great, great fun. Oh, we had another little incident that hit the news and it was an interesting news factor -Lear, John Lear -I think it's John Lear -the elderly gentleman that developed -developed and built the Lear jet, he's since died some years back, but his son was also in business with him and files, One weekend, we had an air show here at Crissy, I don't remember now what year it was. But anyway, we had an air show -lot of antique aircraft came in, other Army aircraft came in. We had a real nice attendance that day. It was one of those days when the fog rolls in just to the Bridge - covers the Bridge -but the field was clear. Rest of the base was clear. Anyway -and by the way, communications were [unintelligible] direct contact with Bay approach [unintelligible] also Oakland. During the air show, of course, the field was closed. No plane activity at all, it was a static type display. Got a call from Oakland to say that we had an emergency out over the ocean -there was a Cessna 310, which is a twin-engine, somewhat similar to the U8 the Army had. A civilian Cessna 310 had lost an engine, some distance out. It was fully loaded and was a ferry flight. One pilot was carrying this plane to Honolulu or Japan or someplace, and lost an engine. It was full of fuel – it was a flying bomb – and they’re trying to get him back to San Francisco. He’s on his way back to San Francisco. The Coast Guard had gone out to meet him already, and were already starting to come in. So, Oakland was calling us, "How's the weather there?" They were going to try to bring this plane in for a - if necessary -to land him on the ocean. On the Ocean highway out there on the ocean side -at that time -it was ...

  Haller:                 (256) The Great Highway ...

  Young:                (250) Yeah, the Great Highway. At that time, it didn't have a lot of the obstacles on it that they have now. That's what they were planning on doing, but the fog was there. The fog was bad. "Crissy, what's your field like?" I said, "Well, we're clear. The Bridge is covered -I can't see the deck, but I know that it's clear on me." He said, "You got an air show." I said, "Yeah." He said, "How soon can you clear the people off the runway?" I said, "We can do that -that's no problem. Be prepared -why not?" So, we called the guys in, got 'em all briefed as to what they had to do. "If I hit the siren out here, you just take the trucks and go up and down the runway and get these people away as far as you can, 'cause this guy is gonna try to land." Turned out, this was young Bill -Bill Lear is the name -turned out, this was young Bill, the old man's son. And, so now we turned the radios on and now we're listening, we can monitor this thing. And they're getting closer, and they're getting closer and they're getting closer. He's right down on the water, he's flying just above the waves, he's hanging on with that single engine. And all of a sudden, under the Bridge comes the Coast Guard helicopter, and H-series. That guy was honking that helicopter so bad, so fast, that it was almost on its nose -he was going just as fast as he could go to keep ahead of the Cessna. And right behind that – right behind the helicopter comes the Cessna. He’s still skimming right along the water. He’s still running, so they said, “Okay, we’re gonna try to get him to Hamilton. The problem is making that long, loopy turn – and they had to get him over another bridge. So, they made it. They got him home. No sweat. Of course we didn't have to clear the field or anything, but it was an interesting afternoon. Very interesting. We went up to look at that airplane the next day up at Hamilton, and it was setting there with a big hole through one engine nacelle the jug went through. Oil all over the place. And salt! You could just walk up and peel the salt off the body, that's how close to the water he was.

  Haller:                 (286) You referred to the helicopter coming in under the Bridge and "harding" it?

  Young:                (287) Honking - honking it.

  Haller:                 (288) What does that mean?

  Young:                (288) Well, he had it full power – as much power as he could possibly put on that plane. As a result, it has a tendency to keep the nose down, on that particular model.

  Haller:                 (291) I see.

  Young:                (291) That's a phrase you use. Full on power.

  Haller:                 (293) You think you could walk us through a typical flight cycle? I mean, what would happen when a flight -when you have a flight scheduled and then - how would that go? Would you roll something out of the hangar, or would they be lined up on the flight line and just walk us through that process.

  Young:                (297) Well, first you get the schedule. "Can we do this? Do we have the capability?" "Yes." Fine. Now, what is the purpose of the mission? I'm sorry -you have a mission -what is the mission? How many people? Is it cargo? Where are we going? Who's involved? How many codes? Codes ... codes is something I haven't mentioned yet. The VIP types were coded. Codes 3, 4, 5, 6 and on up. Or the other way around, depending on their rank. That was the first -the first decision: "Can we handle this mission?" "Yes, we can handle this mission." Okay, now we have to set the schedule -"What aircraft do we have? What kind of an aircraft do we need? Is it going to be available?” Okay. It’s available. The flight leaves tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock, set it up on the board. “Who’s due to go on a flight like this?” Depends on how far it is, whether it’s overnight. “Who’s qualified? Who do we have there?” Somebody might be on leave; somebody might be sick with the flu or something; somebody might be on a mission, not even around; so, pick out the pilots. Call Maintenance, "We need this aircraft so-and-so, can it be ready?" "Yep. It'll be ready." Now, Maintenance gets to work to make sure that aircraft is ready to leave at 8 o'clock the next morning. At 6:30 or so, the maintenance people are there, take the aircraft, pull it out, put it over right across the highway -remember, it had to go across the highway from the hangar ...

  Haller:                 (325) That's Mason Street.

  Young:                (325) It had to go across the highway. Pull it out there and get it ready, get it all ready to go.

  Haller:                 (327) Pulled it out?

  Young:                (328) Had to be pulled out.

  Haller:                 (328) By …?

  Young:                (328) By tug ...

  Haller:                 (329) Tractors?

  Young:                (329) Tractors ... Tugs …

  Haller:                 (329) Tug ...

  Young:                You're ready to go. Dispatcher's ready. Now, pilots come in. It's their job now to preflight the aircraft, make sure it's ready. They do the final preflight. They have to file the flight plan, and where it's gonna go. They have to determine the weather; what route they can take; what route will FAA say you can have; and so on and so forth. They drew the flight plan. Fill it out and get all the different information. And they'd come back to the dispatcher and give him - or her - the flight plan, and they prepared to get ready to go. Dispatcher's job, now, if it's an IFR flight, the dispatcher's job, now, is to go to - in this case, not to Flight Service, but to the Departure Center, and say, give all the pertinent information that's needed so that FAA can build a hole for that plane to get into ...

  Haller:                 (347) What's an "IFR" flight?

  Young:                (348) Instrument Flight Rules [unintelligible] Weather Rules ... Or, if it's necessary to do an IFR flight. A lot of times, with high codes, ranking individuals, they will fly on Instrument Rules, regardless of what the weather is, 'cause that's positive control of air traffic. Fly visual, you can fly any of the airways you want, as long as you're observing and watching. You're on your own .. The flight is followed by a Flight Service Station, where it's flagged, but it's not always under positive control. And that's about it ...

  Haller:                 (359) Now, the aircraft at this point is where? The flight line is sort of across Mason Street.

  Young:                (361) Setting right at the gate. The gate - you probably never have seen the gate ...

  Haller:                 (363) Well, the gate's along the fence, but it's not the same fence, I think, that was there. Across Mason Street from the ... the Operations ...

  Young:                (365) Operations. You know where that unloading ramp is?

  Haller:                 (367) Yes.

  Young:                (367) Okay, it was just to the left of there.

  Haller:                 (368) Got it. Great.

  Young:                (368) And the airplane would be sitting right there.

  Haller:                 (369) And you refer to that as the "flight line"?

  Young:                (370) That's the flight line.

  Haller:                 (370) Which is just the area where the aircraft are ... Okay.

  Young:                (372) Most of the aircraft were kept out there all the time. Were tied down out there. We didn't have room in the hangar.

  Haller:                 (374) For what?

  Young:                (375) The VIP aircraft were usually kept in the hangar. Or, if there was a lot of maintenance going on, sometimes even those aircraft had to be tied down outside. We just didn't have room.

  Haller:                 (377) I've come across information that the Reserves used a different hangar down at the - the 200 Series. Is that correct?

  Young:                (380) There was a building down there. Used to be an old Forest station. And it was big enough - had hangars - hangars! - had bays in it, where we used to put trucks in there. And the Reserves had a couple of helicopters -for the life of me, I can't remember what they were ... and they had them in there, or they had them tied down on the outside. Yeah, that was a Reserve and, I think 15th Corps had aircraft down there, too. When 15th Corps was ...

  Haller:                 (390) But that was basically the hangar and the office area for their outfit ...

  Young:                (392) Uh hmm. That was their whole operation, their whole aviation operation was right there in that building …

  Haller:                 (393) But they, of course, used you - your officer of communications ...

  Young:                (394) Communications. They used our communications, they filed flight plans through us and …

  Haller:                 (397) Controls ...

  Young:                (397) We did their controls before taking off ...

  Haller:                 (397) Got it. Okay, so the plane takes off … the plane leaves the flight line and, what, taxis …

  Young:                (400) Taxis down, gets ready ...

  Haller:                 (402) ... down to the east end ...

  Young:                (401) Well, whichever end ...

  Haller:                 (402) Whichever one ... depending on ...

  Young:                (402) ... depending on when ... 99% of the time it was on the east end, because you were going to take off over the Bridge.

  Haller:                 (403) Okay. That’s fine …

  Young:                (404) Not over the Bridge, but south of the Bridge. That's another story.

  Haller:                 (406) Okay, you can tell that, too ...

  Young:                [Laughs] Now, the next step, of course, is the pilot is gonna be there -he comes back on the radio to dispatch and says "I'm ready to go." Dispatch, in the meantime, has gotten back in contact with Departure and says, "Yeah, we're ready to go." Departure says that they say okay. Departure will come back and give them either the same flight plan they just filed -will transmit that same flight plan as filed -and/or they will give them any changes that Flight Services -that uh, Departure -wants.

  Haller:                 (416) Departure is ...

  Young:                (417) In Oakland.

  Haller:                 (417) In Oakland. Oh, I see ...

  Young:                (418) Now, that could be done either with a dispatcher or our tower. Our tower does nothing any different than our dispatchers. They are just there to give advisories and to watch, and so on and so forth. We cannot put an airplane up in the air simply because, firstly, there's no flight plan. Especially ... you've got to be controlled by the whole half of this whole United States ...

  Haller:                 (426) Got it. Okay.

  Young:                (427) So, anyway, they get the flight plan, the dispatcher and/or the tower - controller - transmits back to the pilot your flight plan, and you're ready to go. Pilot says, "I got it." Puts the coals to it and takes off. As soon as he's off the ground and clear, Dispatch calls or the tower calls back to Oakland and says, "Flight so-and-so is off at - whatever time it was.”

  Haller:                 (435) Now, in the early days of Crissy Field, the planes would get airborne and they'd make a right and they'd jerk over the Coast Guard Station. But by this point, you just sort of pulled back on the stick or the yoke, is that correct? And you'd sort of head straight over the hills?

  Young:                (441) There was a certain spot ... there was a certain spot between the houses up there on the hill and the south tower.

  Haller:                 (443) Got it.

  Young:                (443) And that changed later ... Some mornings ... There's all kinds of extenuating circumstances here that you can spend hours talking about ...

  Haller:                 (446) Sure.

  Young:                (446) That changed somewhat later because we had an incident that could have been very, very serious. There was a twin-engine U-8 taking off one morning on a flight - I don't remember what it was about or anything - of all days, it was April Fool's Day that morning. The flight took off across to the west, made its usual offturn between the house and the Bridge, and was gone - went on its mission.

  Haller:                 (456) So ... basically, you went right over the toll plaza.

  Young:                (457) Toll plaza - right.

  Haller:                 (457) Okay.

  Young:                (458) A few seconds later, a car comes screaming into the Dispatch window there - the door - and a gentleman jumps out of the car, runs in all huffing and puffing and out of breath, "That airplane just took off and it dropped a wheel - or something!" [Unintelligible] I said, “Contact him and see if they’re okay and if everything’s all right.” “Yeah, we’re fine.” “Anything drop that you know of?” “No.” I asked them to come back, turn around and come back here. So I questioned this guy. At first, I thought it was a big April Fool's joke, 'cause as I say, it was April Fool's Day, and I started to doubt him. And I turned around and looked at -my boss was there -one of the warrant officers was right there at that same time, you know, and he and I looked at one another, and he said, "Bring him back. Get him to fly over and let's see what's going on." So, we got on the phone right away and called the tower -called the toll booth. Sergeant's headquarters out there at the toll booth, you know where the sergeant's are, where the observation ...

  Haller:                 (483) Yes ...

  Young:                (484) They didn't know of anything, but somebody came in as they -one of my guys was talking to the booth people -and said, "Something fell off that airplane!" Well, okay, the plane comes back; called Maintenance right away and the Maintenance sergeant came over and the Maintenance officer came over. Plane comes back around, we had him do a low fly and gear up and gear down, two or three times. And then they turned inside the Bridge. By this time, we didn't know what the hell was going on. Nothing wrong with the gear, but the Maintenance NCO was a very good friend of mine, took our binoculars and went out on the runaway, ran over by the Bay, and stood there and watched him and he comes back and says, "Augmenter tubes are gone." Augmenter tubes are exhaust tubes about this big, and about this long -for the sake of the tape, it's about two feet long maybe, and maybe B, 10 or 12 inches at its widest point, it tapers. It’s off the exhaust. And it was gone, it was missing. It was up there somewhere. So, right away, they sent – we sent two of our vehicles up there with all the troops we could get. Get up there and start looking. And of course, we worked at the mike; but the officers went up there right away and started coordinating with these people. We found it, over there, you know, in that embankment [unintelligible] ...

  End of Recording

 

Crissy field from the military intelligence learning center. c1941

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA-2744

---

"My family, Japanese Americans in Oakland, were ordered to go to Tanforan. And the orders came out in March. Colonel Weckerling assured us that school would remain at the Presidio of San Francisco until the first class had graduated. That 11 the instructors would be protected from the relocation." - Shigeya Kihara

 

• Shigeya Kihara

  
  

  Shigeya Kihara discusses being a civilian instructor at the Forth Army Intelligence school during World War II and the living with the repercussions of Executive Order 9066 as one of the only Japanese Americans left in the Bay Area.

  Date created:

  03/19/2024

  Audio Transcript

  My name is Steve Haller I’m here in Monterey California at the home of Mr. Shigeya Kihara who was an instructor in the first class of the military intelligence service language school at the Presidio of San Francisco in 1941 and 42 thank you for having me here today Mr. Kihara. We plan on using this tape for the Presidio oral history project and expect to use it for research and education about the history of the Presidio. I understand that the National Park Service has your permission to retain all literary and property rights to this interview and make this tape for the purposes I just mentioned, is that correct.

  Shigeya: That’s correct.

  Steve Haller: Now we just were... discussing the availability of records that have to do with the M.I.S.L.S. [Military Intelligence Service Language School]. Could we talk about that again?"

  Shigeya: "When Joe Harrington, the author of Yankee Samurai, began his work gathering materials and testimony for writing his Yankee Samurai, he went to the Navy archives in Washington D.C. to look into the possibilities of finding records of the hundreds of MIS men who served with each of the Marine Divisions in the Pacific campaign.  And he was told that since MIS men were borrowed from the Army that they were not true Marines and seamen, records of their service were not maintained.  And Joe Harrington was terribly disappointed, and this is one reason why he adopted the format of his book. He made it a personal narrative type of history and included the names of as many MIS men as he could possibly do in his book. And for this he's been criticized for writing nothing but a telephone directory.

  At any rate, this month, January 1994 I got a telephone call from Mannie Goldberg who is a graduate of MIS and led three MIS teams in the Battle of Iwo Jima. Many of his MIS men went into the caves on Iwo Jima and he is proud of the fact that his men came out with over seven hundred Japanese, saving their lives and explaining to these soldiers that to die for the emperor was a good thing, but they could be of more help and service to the rebuilding of Japan. That sort of thing."

  Haller: "That's interesting that someone's memory should go back to saving lives rather than taking lives in the War. I just had the pleasure of speaking with Colonel Thomas Sakamoto, uh, just two days ago, and one of the things he mentions that the MIS'ers felt proud of (something that didn't happen to him personally) but he also recalled an incident where a MIS graduate was very instrumental in saving a lot of lives on Saipan.

  Shigeya: "Yeah. The technology, if you want to call it the technology, a means of fighting war, was cave flushing in World War II. Uh, and a young man by the name of Hoichi Kubo in Saipan is credited with starting the worst of these things. He stripped himself practically naked, left his sidearms, and had himself lowered into a cave in Saipan. And he rescued about fifty men and women, Japanese men and women, plus soldiers."

  Haller: "That's right. Saipan, being Japanese territory, was one of the first areas where the battle rolled over a large number of Japanese civilians as well as military. Isn't that right?"

  Shigeya: "Yes. A large number. And when the invasion started the rumor was that the United States soldiers would kill all Japanese soldiers, men and women. Many women and civilians, women carrying their babies or children, jumped off the cliffs by the thousands to assure death, preferring to commit suicide rather than be killed by the United States soldiers."

  Haller: "Yeah. I remember reading about that and thinking how sad the part of history that it was. I should go back and say, you mentioned one thing about Harrington's book and I understand that you were a research assistant on that? Is that correct? [Haller repeats question]."

  Shigeya: "Yeah. A committee was set up with Professor Roger Daniels, a noted historian and an authority on Japanese­ American internment. This was in the early 1970's. A contract was signed between Professor Daniels and MIS Northern California to have a proven writer, historian, do our story. But things did not gel well and along the way Professor Daniels had a heart attack. So that contract was negated and then MIS people began to look for other potential historians to write our story.  James Mitchener was approached. Barbara Tuchman, John Toland among others. But these writers, with well-known books, were not interested in doing a book that would have very little audience appeal in the United States.  Their readers numbered in the millions and like James Mitchener.

  [Haller: "It's good to try though."]

  Finally, Joe Harrington was contacted and then in January of 1977 we began working on finding as many of the six thousand graduates of MIS as possible and setting up interviews all over the United States and in Hawaii and even in Japan for Joe Harrington to interview people, to gather materials, photographs, tape recordings, etc. as basic material for the writing of this book."

  Haller: "You mentioned that one of the reasons for relying heavily on interviews was the lack of official documentation about the subject. But I do want to add that I think it's also one of the great strengths of the books, because it makes it very personal and lively, and it also relates it very well to the human aspect of military history."

  Shigeya: [Further discussion about this book. Yankee Samurai was published in 1979 and received a few small reviews. There were numerous responses from MIS men themselves.  As he had served as a research assistant, Kihara himself received a lot of criticism for the quality of the book. MIS people wanted a more rigorously academic treatment of the subject. Harrington was angry about the Navy's destruction of MIS records. Even in the Division histories there is little mention of their role. Kihara explains once again why Harrington thus wrote the kind of book he did. Still to this day many MIS people are critical of the book. There is a movement afoot by Hawaiian MIS graduates to have an official Department of Army authorized history of the group. A historian has received a research grant to write this more formal history.) [Ed. note: As of Fall 1994 Dr. James McNaughton of the Defense Language Institute is working on this study.)

  Haller: "That would be great if it comes to pass; I hope it does. I imagine that some of the same motivations that led the Navy to destroy the records pertained, although perhaps in lesser degree, to Army units. Because MIS'ers in that case were attached and were not an integral part of the fighting forces. Do you think that's true?"

  Shigeya: "I doubt that very much. Because in the Army they were attached as intelligence personnel. And they were attached to mostly divisions and armies and they performed a very valuable service. Their assignments as language detachments, to the different divisions, regiments and armies would surely be a matter of record. Actually, just the digging of that information and writing that they were attached and so forth is not that important. The important factor is the extent to which they were utilized at different levels. For instance, in the invasion of Okinawa, MIS language teams, and their leaders, were called in to advise the division commanders prior to invasion because our MIS men who invaded Okinawa, consisted of people who had grown up in Okinawa.  And they knew the people, they knew the layout of the land, and they could provide very important information to the division commanders, prior undertaking their amphibious landings.  And incidentally, two brothers who participated as intelligence people ---I forget the name of the division, I think it was the 27th--­ Takejirc and his younger brother Warren Higa are still living in Hawaii. And they did a lot of cave flushing and they are credited with an enormous number of people who they were able to surrender from their caves. That sort of information is of human interest plus military historical importance in describing or telling the true history of the MIS in World War II."

  Haller: "That's very true. That's very true. Perhaps we could go back a little bit and sort of steer the conversation around to your particular involvement in MIS and your first-hand involvement. And maybe to do that we ought to get a little background on what, on your family background and history. Maybe we could start, go back to that subject."

  Shigeya:   "Well, my father was born in the 4th year of Meiji, which is 1872. And he was born in an impoverished section of Japan in the upper hills of Hiroshima.  And at the age of eighteen he signed a contract to work on sugar plantations on Maui and he came over to Lahaina, Maui at the age of eighteen, eighteen which places him in Hawaii around 1890. Then he probably served out the two terms, three-year contracts. Two three-year contracts as a sugar plantation laborer in Maui then he came to San Francisco. And, uh, the enterprise that he started was not very successful and he decided he'd try farming. And he moved to Suisun in California and went into farming.  But he was not successful.  And I was born there, and I grew up, went to school in a small town called Dixon which is now very close to u.c. Davis. Then my father failed in farming, so he started a small grocery store in Dixon and he failed in that. Then he decided he'd come back to the Bay Area and packed up our belongings in our old Ford truck and we crossed the Carquinez [Straights] on the old ferry and came to Oakland. And he started a restaurant on 7th Street in Oakland and there was a diphtheria epidemic in Oakland at that time and my sister caught that diphtheria and the health department closed up the restaurant and so my father had to give that up. Then he started gardening. This is what he did for many years.

  At that time in California the prejudice towards Japanese was very strong. The State of California has a history of having been one of the most discriminatory and prejudiced states in the whole history of the fifty states of the United States. One example, in the late lBOO's the Chinese and Japanese people were prohibited from becoming naturalized by law. And so my parents could never become naturalized and then when my father came to San Francisco when he suffered assaults by Caucasians. In 1905 there was a San Francisco School Board incident and then in 1913, I believe, an anti-Asian Land Law passed by the legislature against Japanese nationals purchasing land primarily for agricultural purposes. Then in 1920 there was an Anti-Alien Lease Law preventing Japanese from leasing land for agricultural purposes. Then in 1924 the United States Congress passed the Exclusion Act [Immigration Act of 1924] preventing the immigration of Japanese to the United States.

  So, all during my growing years I heard about these different actions. Then on a personal basis, people in the California valleys running into signs saying 'Japs, Keep out!' That sort of thing. Then when I started school at Lincoln Grammar School in Oakland, I studied at that Lincoln Elementary School for six years in segregated classes.

  Chinese and Japanese students were in one class. Then Caucasians who attended Lincoln Grammar School had their own first grade, second grade. And I didn't have a Caucasian classmate until I was in 7th grade.

  Then in 1929 there was the Great Depression, conditions everywhere, United States, Japan, the whole world were bad. And college graduates, Caucasian graduates were in employment-seeking lines everywhere. Twenty-five million people in the United States were unemployed. And the situation regarding Japanese Americans for finishing their educations and getting jobs was dismal. And I went to college under these circumstances. Along the way my father developed gangrene in his large intestines, and he had to stop work for three years. I had to quit college and support the family for three years until he was able to get back to work again. Finally, I went to u.c. Berkeley, finished my work in Political Science and looked for a job. And no jobs anywhere.  And so I decided to go back to college and get a higher degree, it might come in handy.  So I went back to the University of California and got an M.A. in International Relations. Incidentally, in those days, there was no tuition at the University of California.  All you had to do was pay $25 a semester to register which gave you hospital privileges and other minimal rights. And I worked each summer in the fruit ranches in California up and down the hills of Vacaville, along the Delta, Sacramento River, down in Modesto and other places and earned a couple of hundred bucks and went back to school. All I had to do really was make $25 for tuition and buy second-hand books for, oh about $10-15 dollars for a whole semester of study. Buy a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes and a shirt and I was ready to go for a whole semester.  So, I'm grateful to the State of California and the opportunity of having, been able to go to college for minimal expenses.  Now, there's talk about the costs of a college education running up to $100,000 a year. In those days there was no tuition, and I got an education.

  But anyway, because there were absolutely no economic opportunities for anybody in those years, 1938, 1939, 1940, my father, he was an ardent Japanese nationalist, hated the prejudice and discrimination that he received in the United States. Japanese people are very proud. Their highest values are honor, loyalty, justice which are transmitted down from the parents, down to us Japanese Americans. And I believe the motivation of Japanese Americans to fight for America and do what they did, both in Europe and in the Pacific stems from Japanese values rather than American values. In public school we learned about freedom, liberty, justice and equality but when the War started Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 and it was a total violation of our civil rights, the principles of the constitution.  And at this juncture in Japanese American history, I believe that we reverted to the teachings that we received from our parents: honor, pride, dignity. Don't bring shame on your family, your people, that sort of thing.

  So, going back to my attempts to find work after graduation and after getting my master’s at u.c. Berkeley, ... I said there's no jobs for anybody, no opportunity. The only thing that we could do was to do gardening, or to work in the produce markets or work in art goods shops along Grant Avenue in San Francisco. And even if you could get a job, you'd be lucky to get a job that would pay fifty dollars a month.  So, my father said, 'Why don't you go to Japan and see if you can learn enough Japanese and with your English education find a job with say Domei the Japanese press organization. Go into the foreign office or in the consular service, utilize your English, plus any Japanese you might be able to learn and find a career in Japan.  So, I said,'Ok.

  Haller:    "Had you much exposure previously to Japanese culture in your home?"

  Shigeya: "Absolutely."

  Haller:    "You had?"

  Shigeya: "Yes. Neither my father nor my mother ever learned sufficient English to read the newspapers or books. 

  End of Tape 1, Side l

  Shigeya: "Of course it was kitchen-type Japanese. Get up, have your breakfast. Do this, do that. Don't do this, don't do that. That sort of thing. And I remember my mother teaching me the alphabet; she could do that. So, I learned the alphabet, to read and write the alphabet at home when I was about two and half or three years old I guess.

  Then at the same time she taught me how to read and write rudimentary Japanese, the hiragana and the kana which are syllabaries of the Japanese language. Then she told me stories of the forty-seven Ponin, the disgrace of the Lord of Ako and how he was forced to commit suicide for violating rules of behavior in Tokyo. And the clan and the country of Ako was abolished. And his followers disbanded and met in secret for one year and took revenge one year later. And killed the person that caused this disgrace of the Lord of Ako.

  And the story of the soga, brothers, stories of General Nogi and stories of Admiral Togo and that sort of thing. Then my father was active in community affairs, and he was instrumental in setting up Japanese language schools in Oakland. And so from the time I started first grade in grammar school, after each day in public school, I went to Japanese language schools. Then, all through my elementary school days and high school days I went to Japanese language school. But the type of Japanese language I received was more or less along traditional Japanese language teaching as was conducted in Japan.  And it proceeded from simple stories in elementary and high school textbooks, and it proceeded on to literary type. And the vocabulary, the grammatical constructions, the different sentences and the themes of the different stories in the Japanese language textbooks were not scientifically developed. And I could read Japanese high school texts about different subjects that were of no practical use whatsoever in everyday life!

  I couldn't read a Japanese newspaper. And I couldn't discuss economics, politics, international relations at an adult level. And so, I decided that this is not getting me anywhere. I'm not going to get too far with this type of education so at the University of California I had a friend; his name was Masayoshi Morino who was good in Japanese. And I used to have lunch with him every day at the college and discuss everything from everyday weather to international relations and everything. And I told him about my problem with learning sufficient Japanese to be able to read and write on adult subjects. And he said, 'Well, why don't you write a letter or composition every day and let me look at it and then I'll make corrections and then you can see how that works.  So, I did that. When I went to Japan in 1940 I-"

   Haller: "Excuse me, I didn't mean to interrupt but when you did go to Japan, that was after your university education?"

  Shigeya: "Yeah."

  Haller: "Got it."

  Shigeya: "I finished my work for my master's in December 1939 and then I looked for work... this is in the depth of the Depression, and nobody had any work. And so, I helped in the family grocery store (at 1000 Wood Street in Oakland] after graduating from the graduate school at the University of California. Then in September of 1940 I tell my father, 'Ok, there's not much doing in America at this time. There's no work for anybody. I'll go to Japan and see if I can learn enough Japanese to work for a Japanese firm."

  Haller: "And what was it like for you in Japan?"

  Shigeya: "That is another story.

  Haller: "We have lots of tape.

  Shigeya: "Pardon me?"

  Haller: "[Slight chuckle] We have lots of tape.

  Shigeya:"[Pause] When I landed in Japan in, I believe it was early October 1940, I had to go through customs. And I'd intended, I'd promised my father that I'd stay in Japan for two years. So, I had brought different things with me: books, typewriter, things that I felt that I would need for a two-year stay. And when I went through customs at Yokohama the Japanese customs people had a list of book titles and one book I had was Inside Asia by John Gunther. And they opened it to a certain page and with a razor they just out all mention of John Gunther's experiences and comments on Japan. And I said to myself, 'What is this? What kind of a country am I coming to?'

  And then when I got permanent residence at a boarding house in Tokyo, all people living in Japan are required to report to what is known as a local police office. And I went there and this small bureaucrat, seedy-looking guy in a seedy­ looking suit, looked me over, looked at my papers and told me, 'Huh. You're a son of an emigrant, aren't you?' And I said, 'Yes, I am.' But that turned me off!"

  Haller:  "He had a condescending tone?"

  Shigeya: "Absolutely! Then other experiences like that turned me off. And I said to myself if I'm destined to be an object of prejudice, discrimination, and ridicule in life in the United States or in the country of my parents, Japan, I would prefer to receive prejudice and be discriminated against in the United States rather than to receive prejudice and discrimination from my own people in Japan. And so, my mind began to switch in that way. Of course, I don't believe from the very beginning that I had really ever decided that I would remain in Japan."

  Haller: "Did you have family there...?"

  Shigeya: "I had distant relatives way up in Hiroshima. And they were poor. And my father had not really maintained letter correspondence with them ever since he came to Hawaii as a young man. So even though I did visit Hiroshima I didn't have any addresses, names, and I didn't take the time to go up into the Hiroshima hills to look up my uncles and aunts and so forth. Then this individual that I mentioned, who helped me study Japanese, Masayoshi Morino, born and raised in Alameda, California, graduate of U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Political Science at u.c. Berkeley, was in Toyko and I roomed with him at the same boarding house in Tokyo.

  He got a job with the foreign office, in the information office of the foreign office in Tokyo and as the conditions, the relations between the United States got from bad to worse I would go to the foreign office, the information office with him, Morino, and I had access to different English publications, newspapers, magazines and so forth.

  And I was able to look at the situation in Japan and in Asia and in Europe from a viewpoint that was closed to normal Japanese people, because the Japanese newspapers, even the English-editions of the Japanese newspapers were all slanted towards Japan, and anti-United States and anti-England. The different restrictions that were being placed on Japanese­ American trade in July of 1941, as an example, because Japanese armies marched from China into French Indochina, the United States abrogated the commerce and trade treaty signed by Townsend Harris, way back in, I believe, in 1958 (sic]. The United States abrogated that treaty and forbid the sale of scrap steel to Japan, forbid the sale of oil and that sort of thing. I had a better picture of what was happening than the average Japanese citizen and I said to myself, I better get out of here before War breaks out and I get conscripted into the Japanese army and spend a lifetime marching all over China.

  And so, I wrote my parents, and I said the situation in Japan is bad. The common people are donating metal, pots and pans and different things, to the army to use to manufacture guns and that sort of thing. And my mother wrote back and said Papa says that if you come back to the United States before you stay two years as you promised you will have no home in the United States. I said, ok, and I sold my typewriter, shoes, overcoats, things like that and bought a third-class ticket on the Tatsuta Maru of the Japanese shipping line, the main line from Japan to the United States and started to come home. And got past Hawaii, ok, then approached the coast of California and there were many many people who were fleeing Japan at that time, Nisei like myself. And then Caucasians who had escaped the wars in Europe through (Russia and Manchuria]

  (End of master tape]. 

  Haller: "...go ahead, why don't you pick it up (the story]?"

  Shigeya: "And we all celebrated, we're going to hit San Francisco and we'll be free of the troubles of Japan. Then the next morning we got up and the sun was on the wrong side of the boat! In the middle of the night, the captain of the Tatsuta Maru in communication by radio with Japan had received instructions that the ship was to turn back. There was a million dollars’ worth of raw silk in the hold of the Tatsuta Maru. And because the trade agreement treaty between United States and Japan had been abrogated there was a strong possibility that the ship and its cargo would be impounded in San Francisco. So, in the middle of the night, the ship had turned around and was going back to Japan. So, we formed a committee and went up to the captain and we asked for a rowboat so that we could be placed in rowboats, and we'd take our chances reaching San Francisco. The answer was 'No.' In the meantime, we saw Matson Liners sailing in an opposite direction. We argued that if the captain would radio the Captain of the Matson that we could be lowered into rowboats and we could be transferred. 'No way, can't do that.' At any rate, for one week, we cruised up and down the California coastline, turning back, turning in. Finally, the ship sailed into San Francisco harbor and docked. And at that time my brother and my future wife Aya were at the dock and my brother said, 'Papa wants you to come home. You're not kicked out of the family.' (Laughs]

  I said, 'Ok' and I came home."

  Haller: "That must have been then what July or August you're talking about, 1941?

  Shigeya: "Yeah, it was late July I believe or early August of 1941. Then the newspapers were full of the progress of the war in Europe and in Poland in France, and the fall of France and that sort of thing. Then stories of how Japan was marching through French Indochina and taking city after city. And you could just sense that something was going to happen in the relations between the United States and the war in Europe and the different things that were happening in the Far East.

  Then in September 1941

  [tape is again paused]

  I received a call from the office of Professor Florence Walne who was chairperson of the Oriental Department at the University of California. I had taken a couple of courses in Japanese from Professor Walne, undergraduate course and even a graduate course, and the information was that the United States Army was looking for Japanese language instructors. Lieutenant Colonel Weckerling G-2 at the Fourth Army, Presidio of San Francisco, [brief interruption as Mrs.Kihara asks if the two men need more coffee]. Anyway, I said, 'I have received no training in Japanese in Japan in a Japanese high school or university. I'm not qualified to teach Japanese!' But she insisted that I go. 'Just go and get an interview and see what happens.' And so I went, to meet, Lt. Colonel Weckerling, G-2 at the Fourth Army. And Professor Walne had sent the colonel a very fine letter of reference. And I talked to the colonel for about a half hour. He didn't test me in my Japanese, he just depended on the very laudatory letter of reference that Professor Walne had written to him. And he said, 'Fine, you'll hear from me in a week.'"

  Haller:    "Was this conversation held at the Presidio then?"

  Shigeya: "Yes. At the office of the colonel, second story, Fourth Army Headquarters. And within a week I got a letter saying that the United States Army would like to offer you a position as instructor of Japanese at such-n-such salary; I believe it was $175 a month. And I will inform you when you are to report to work.  And I got this information on the 1st of October,"

  Haller:    "This is your first real job out of college then?"

  Shigeya: "Yes. And I might say at the University of California alone there were at least 100 Kibei-type Japanese Americans who knew ten times more Japanese than I did. But all the rumors, the stories going around in the Japanese communities, in the California, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, were that the army was looking for Japanese language instructors in order to serve as spies for the United States Army against individuals in the Japanese communities. And the Kibei were absolutely reluctant to apply for a job; none of them, very few of them would apply."

  Haller: "So how did that affect your decision?"

  Shigeya: "So, the Army was desperate: they were going to start a school and then they needed instructors, and the qualified individuals were not applying. And so, they appealed to the University of California and Professor Walne got in touch with me and then I got there. And fortunately, Colonel Weckerling did not test me. If he had pulled out a Japanese military textbook and asked me to read and translate, I wouldn't have been able to do it! Uh, at any rate, on October the 1st, 1941, I reported to Colonel Weckerling. Went upstairs to the second floor, the headquarters building at the 4th Army, Presidio of San Francisco and he said, 'Come with me, we'll go downstairs, and we'll meet the rest of the staff, the teaching staff. And we went downstairs to a basement room of the 4th Army, absolutely bare, not even a table, a chair, or anything. Just an old-fashioned orange crate made of wood with two compartments. And on top of the orange crate there was a set of textbooks, and dictionaries, and so-called Naganuma readers developed by Professor Naganuma for use in training of United States Army and Navy assistant attaches at the embassy in Tokyo. This type of language training had been conducted for years by the United States government as a consequence of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, when the Boxers imprisoned or surrounded the foreign legation in Peking and the United States and the various countries---France, England and so forth---had to come to the rescue of the legation. And Japan participated in this. Ever since that international incident in China the United States felt that it was necessary to train American military personnel in the Chinese and the Japanese languages. And among the prominent who graduated as Japanese language students in Tokyo were General John Pershing, General Strong (later G-2 for the early years of President Roosevelt's administration) and General Maxwell Taylor."

  Haller: "That's right, I do recall that. And then among other people that served in Japan as attaches in the embassy (am I correct?) that both Kai Rasmussen and John Weckerling?"

  Shigeya:   "Right. And so, these former assistant attaches in the Tokyo, independent of at that time there was Carl Dusenbury, Rufus Bratton and also a guy by the name of Moore. Then there was a person by the name of Pettigrew. There were at least four who were attached to the general staff of the army in the Pentagon. And naturally, they got reports constantly from people in Japan and who had graduated from these courses and were stationed here and there.  And Captain Kai Rasmussen, had finished the school in Tokyo and he was commander of the coast artillery at Fort Scott. And he was very very persistent in demanding that a school for military personnel in the Japanese language be established in order to be able to conduct intelligence against the Japanese. No one knows what efforts these four former Japanese language military attaches went through to get through their chief and the Chief of Staff of the Army and get permission to start a Japanese Language School.

  This is one of the subjects that would be, subject of intensive study by a person who wanted to write a story on the MIS.

  But, at that time, in the United States, the whole country was in disarray. Economic conditions were bad, the army, the military forces were way down. The populace was isolationist, and the attitude was Hitler wants to take over Europe, let him. It's none of our business. If Japan wants to take over Asia, let them. It's none of our business.

  And of course, you know the history of that period. Roosevelt felt that to let England be defeated would really be a tremendous… Uh [blow to democracy in the world].

  End 0f Tape 1.

  Tape 2, Side 1

  Shigeya:"...even the future of the United States. And he felt the same way about developments in Japan. And slowly but surely, he was able to get lend, lease, loan decrepit American destroyers to England and yet the American military was not strongly for intervention in Europe and United states, I mean in Asia. So, I can imagine the struggle that Dusenbury, Moore, Bratton and Pettigrew must have had to get their boss to push the General Staff to approve the establishment of a Japanese language school. In the two-hundred-year period of the United States military there had never been a foreign language intelligence school ever established.  Uh, and the idea of using Japanese Americans as students [sic] for this language school was just simply unthinkable! The sentiment in the whole country was that a 'Jap is a Jap!' You're born a Japanese and you're a Japanese. Japanese Americans can't be trusted was the attitude.  And Rasmussen got TDY [temporary duty] orders from the Pentagon to travel up and down the training camps in the United States. There were about three thousand Japanese Americans in training as a result of the December 1940 draft of American citizens into the military.

  And Colonel Rasmussen, I can still see his face, and I can hear him talk. He was born in Norway, a Dane, in Denmark. His English was very strongly accented by Danish speech.

  And in all my years, forty years of contact with him, I never heard him talk Japanese."

  Haller: "Ohh. I'm just wondering, did he speak Japanese with a Danish accent? [laughs]"

  Shigeya: "I'm afraid he couldn't speak too well. But anyway, he insisted on setting up a school. And he got TOY orders from the Pentagon in the Army to go up and down the coast. And he personally interviewed over three thousand Nisei and Kibei in training, different places. And to his dismay, he found that only about three percent of Japanese­ Americans were sufficiently knowledgeable in the Japanese language to perform military intelligence, in the language. And he later reported that only about ten percent of Japanese Americans were capable of being quickly trained to bring them up to intelligence level capabilities. In his travels he interviewed PFC John Aiso at (stops to think] at Camp Haan in Riverside and he pinpointed John Aiso to become the Chief Instructor. And he also pinpointed PFC Arthur Kaneko to become instructor. At any rate, Colonel Weckerling brought me downstairs to this empty room and we went through the process of introducing ourselves."

  Haller: "These four staff members were there...?"

  Shigeya:"Aiso, Akira Oshida, Art Kaneko and myself. Then on this empty orange crate there were seven Naganuma readers. There were Japanese to English dictionary, English to Japanese dictionary, a dictionary of naval terminology, a Chinese character Kanji dictionary, a huge book, that thick. Then Cresswell's military terminology dictionary. Cresswell was a graduate of the Tokyo school and he had written a dictionary of military terminology from Japanese to English and from English to Japanese. It was a tremendous help in our efforts to create text materials for the teaching of our students. Then there was a copy of Sakusen Yomurei which is a book on Japanese training manual."

  Haller:  "A military training manual?"

  Shigeya: "A Japanese army military training manual. Sakusen Yomurei, a 'Manual of Operations' you might say. And there was a book called oyo Senjutsu, which means applied tactics. Then there was a United States training manual. The title I believe was Japanese military forces and it explained in English with photographs and sketches and so forth the organization of the Japanese army and the organization of the Japanese navy. And it had a section on the Japanese air force. And that was it.

  And after the introductions were finished Colonel Weckerling said, 'Ok, let's pack these books in my car and we'll go down to your school. And I guess it was John Aiso and Art Kaneko and then Akira Oshida followed in my car, and we left the manicured green lawn, tree-lined streets, or the Presidio proper. And then we went toward the Bay, crossed some railroad lines, and there was this huge empty area. And Alcatraz in the distance there, Mount Tampalpais in the distance there. The [Golden Gate Bridge] to the left. The area is or was completely different from what it is today with all kinds of buildings and roads and fences and so forth that you see in the Presidio of San Francisco today. There was nothing' there. Just this one abandoned, empty unpainted crusty-looking corrugated tin building. And the colonel drove up there, and [we] followed him and he opened the door. And uh there was a Sergeant Peterson, a tall lanky regular army sergeant there and a Warrant Officer Schneider. These were to be the administrative staff of the new school. And then there were a couple of carpenters banging around, creating classrooms along the north side of the airplane hangar, creating an office for the commander of the school, of the executive office of the school. Then one, two, three classrooms. Then toward the rear of the building they were creating a sort of a living space for the anticipated sixty students, triple deck bunks, I mean beds and so forth.

  And we walked in there, there wasn't a table there wasn't a desk but there were two empty United States Army cots, sleeping cots, with nothing on them, just bare springs. And that was it.11

  Haller: "That was it? Two bare cots!"

  Shigeya: "Two bare cots, a couple of carpenters banging around and our administrative staff, Sergeant Peterson and Warrant Officer Schneider. Then Weckerling said, 'This is your new school.' He said, 'In two weeks’ time, the date was the 15th of October 1941, in two weeks’ time sixty students will report for Japanese language intelligence training.' And he said, 'Be prepared with sufficient textbooks, teaching materials, course of instruction, a curriculum, everything, to start your training. And this is the first time in two hundred years in American military history that a foreign language instructional course was to be established in any language.... I have never seen or heard of any letter from the Pentagon, or anything written by Colonel Weckerling or Captain Rasmussen describing what the objectives of the course would be, what the courses should consist of, reading, writing, Kanji, interpretation, grammar, geography, whatever. I've never seen anything.

  The Colonel, 'in two weeks’ time sixty students will report, be ready to start instruction.' And then he turned on his heel and left. Got in his car and went back to his office. And neither John Aiso or Aki Oshida or Private Kaneko nor I had had any kind of training as teachers, had never taught Japanese as a language to anybody. We just stood there and looked at each other for a couple of minutes and then John Aiso took charge.

  He was a mature person, graduate of Brown University, Harvard Law School. He had taken courses in Japanese law at Chuo University in Tokyo. And had been a chief legal officer for the British Tobacco Company in Mukden, Manchuria. I believe it was in 1940 that he became sick, I believe it was with hepatitis or something like that, and he wrote to his family and said, 'I'm sick, I'm not able to work. I don't know how long I'm going to be sick.' Explained his condition and his mother wrote back and insisted that he come back to the United States to recover. But he wouldn't. So, his mother, I never met her, but John described her to me, she was a small woman, she bought steamship tickets in Los Angeles and sailed across the Pacific. Went to Japan and from Japan to Manchuria and walked into John's hospital room and said, 'You're corning home with me.' And she brought him back. As soon as he got back and recovered from his illness he got caught in the draft. And when he was drafted and reported after basic training to camp Haan, the Lieutenant Sergeant looked him over and said, 'Huh! Another goddamn lawyer! Just exactly what we need.' And put him into the motor pool. And k.p. duty and that sort of thing. And there he was interviewed by Captain Kai Rasmussen and pegged to be the Chief Instructor."

  Well, he reported to the 4th Army one or two days before I met him on the 15th of October. Many years later John Aiso told me, I reported to Colonel Weckerling and the colonel told me I want you to become the Chief Instructor for the school. And John Aiso said, 'I respectfully decline this offer since my one-year service in the draft is about up, I'm getting on in my years, I want to get married, and I want to start my law service in Los Angeles. And he said that the colonel got up from his chair, came around to where John was standing at attention, and the colonel put his right arm on John's shoulder and said, 'John, your country needs you.' John said, 'How could I say no to that?'

  It was really a cultural shock for John. He had suffered indignities, prejudice, discrimination, all through his life, as all of us did, Japanese Americans in California. He was elected student body President of Le Conte Junior High School in Hollywood. The parents, the parent-teacher association called emergency meetings and put pressure on the Principal to cancel student body activities in the school, temporarily, until John graduated. And so the principal called John in and said, 'The school, the parent­ teachers association has decided that there shall be no more student meetings and offices for the junior high school.' So, he was deprived of that opportunity.

  Then in high school, in the senior year, the Los Angeles Times, I believe, and the American Legion sponsored debating contests with the final contest to be held in Washington

  D.C. And John won, and the American Legion didn't want a 'Jap' to be a member of the California delegation to participate in a national contest. And so, they put pressure on John, and they told him, you’re going to be valedictorian of your graduating class, you are an honored and respected person at the high school here. But they, the authorities ... (chuckles) want a Caucasian to speak for Hollywood High School. And so, John was sent to Washington to coach the individual who was to be the speaker. And it was there in Washington D.C. that John had an opportunity to meet with the Japanese ambassador from Japan. His name was Matsudaira. And he met Matsudaira who arranged for John to be accepted at Brown as a student, Brown University. And he finished at Brown with the highest honors, and then he went to Harvard Law School.

  Well anyway, John had gone through life with these bitter, bitter experiences, prejudice. And nobody had ever referred to the United States as 'John's country.' When Colonel Weckerkling said, 'John, your country needs you,' John told me, 'What could I do? I had to say, yes sir.' And so, he became Chief Instructor. He's a brilliant person. I believe he was the greatest Nisei who ever lived and served his community in the United States.

  We had no experience, there were no models, there were no guidelines for the establishment of a Japanese Language Intelligence School. Nobody had any idea what to do. This is to be a first time, a rare and unique opportunity to create a school, to establish a school, to serve the United States Army. And the burden was on John's shoulder. It was his job to make or break and it could easily have been broken.

  So, we all looked at the instruction materials and from that day, second day, third day, during that two weeks’ time of preparation, he ordered Sergeant Peterson and Warrant Officer Schneider, 'Go out on the post anywhere, everywhere and scrounge desks, chairs, whatever. Find an office that's capable of running off stencils. In those days, duplication by stencils was the only means of reproducing materials.

  And he said, 'Get a bunch of stencils and a stylus and if you can scrounge a mimeograph machine for the office, get one, because we are going to have to do a lot of internal duplication. Fifty, sixty copies, maybe seventy copies of materials for use as instruction materials. And see if you can get some money from Colonel Weckerling so that I could go to the University of California bookstore and buy up dictionaries, grammars, whatever. Then to go to Stanford University and buy up all the supplies that they have. And then go to downtown San Francisco, there's a book shop in San Francisco called Goshado that sold Japanese books, dictionaries and stuff like that.' And so we went to these three locations and bought up everything they had.

  Then ... Aiso ordered Mr. Schneider to find printers in downtown San Francisco who'd be able to duplicate the Naganuma readers in one hundred copies. And find out from Colonel Weckerling who might be able to help you to get contracts signed between the printers and the Army for doing this job. And make sure the textbooks are delivered as quickly as possible because the instructors have to study them in order to be able to teach, and sixty students are arriving in ten days.

  And we got a jeep assigned to the office and I remember driving through the streets of San Francisco and going to the Japanese bookstore to buy books, to go to the printer who signed the contract to reprint the books and to bind them and so forth. Then using the United States Army training manual on Japanese military forces using the Sakusen Yomurei and Cresswell's dictionary of Japanese military technology, we began to organize a course in military Japanese.

  Aki Oshida had a good clear handwriting, so his job was to cut stencils for all materials. The organization of the Japanese army, starting from the general staff to the way the Japanese army was organized in divisions throughout the country, then terminology from division to regiments, battalions, companies, all that terminology. Then the equipment of the Japanese army, the howitzers, the mortars, machine guns, light machine guns, rifles, carbines, and so forth. The tanks, the whole works. Then the Navy, the organization of the Navy, the nomenclature of the aircraft carriers, the battle cruisers and destroyers and so forth and all the Navy equipment, from the torpedos to submarines to depth charges and that sort of thing. And the Air Force: the Japanese Air Force at that time was still in the process of development as was the United States. And the production of the big bombers and zero fighters and that sort of thing was still in process of being done. So, whatever materials we could get our hands on, we began to write the military terminology part of the course.

  Then we had to decide on what the daily program of instruction should be. And it was decided that we'd start with the readers, two hours of the readers every morning from eight until ten. Reading, because different from English, the Japanese language consists of characters and at that time it was decided that the sixty students who would report in would be classified into section one, section two and section three. Section one, they're almost all Kibei: they knew more Japanese than the instructors did.  But it was expected that we would take them through the readers.

  We figured that they could do readers one, two, three in about one week. Then they go on to the more difficult texts. But the problem was not so much their Japanese but their ability to translate from Japanese into English, that's the problem with Kibei. They're good in Japanese but they're not so good in English.

  So, we decided that we'd have readers, reading and writing and translation for two hours. And then since Chinese characters are so basic and so important to Japanese, that would be the third hour. One hour of Kanji. Quizzes, tests would be given every day on the Kanji assignment for the day. And for the top section, that meant about at least fifty or sixty kanji a day. Then there would be a two hour interval for lunch, the instructors to keep up their office work and preparation of examinations and so forth. And at one o'clock there would be translation from English into Japanese and the materials for that had to be developed for each of the three instructors for the three classes. Akira Oshida was a graduate of Meiji University in Tokyo; he was good in English and good in Japanese and so he was [?]  in section one

  And then since Art Kaneko declined to become an instructor, Colonel Weckerling hired Mr. Tetsuo Imagawa. He was selling liquor in the valleys, a graduate of the University of California in economics but no job. He was a salesman for a liquor company. He came on and became the Chief Instructor for the second class, section 2. Then I, being the weakest in Japanese, was given Section 3. And the instruction materials for each of the classes, the examinations had to be prepared by the principal instructors. So, at one o'clock to two o'clock, the subject was English to Japanese translation, using the materials taught in the first few hours of the morning. The instructors would prepare, and hand write the materials for use at that class.

   Then at 2 o'clock conversation, and Thursdays there'd the third hour in there would be a class in Japanese interpretation. Then on Tuesdays and be instruction in Japanese grammar. Then the afternoon, from three to four, it was the readers again. next day's-

   The teachers [took their classes to the] lesson, do the reading, explain the Chinese characters and explain the grammatical constructions, the use of phrases, clauses and so forth in the standard Japanese sentence. And uh prepare the students so that in the compulsory evening study, two hours from seven to nine each night, the students wouldn't have to go through dictionaries, other references in order to be well prepared for the next day's lessons. The teacher would just hand carry them through. Then they would read and read so that they [practically managed the reading and translations.]

  Haller: "So Mr. Kihara, we were talking on the last tape about the beginnings of the Intelligence School at the Presidio, and maybe we can begin to talk again about those first days."

  Shigeya: "Well, under John Aiso's guidance we whipped out a course of study. And then made the contracts for the printing of the Naganuma readers in one hundred copies and then for the military aspect of our training, John Aiso and the faculty met every morning at eleven o'clock to continue the development of the materials. We took basically the United States manual on Japanese military forces and then translated that into Japanese using Cresswell's military dictionary, the two Japanese training manuals that were provided by Captain Rassmussen and this we did on a daily basis, just keeping one step ahead of the students as the material was presented to our students. Then the course of study consisted of six hours of classroom each day, plus two hours of supervised instruction from seven to nine in the evenings and four hours of examinations on Saturdays. The instructors of the school were all civilians, and nobody bothered to tell us about civil service regulations, that the normal working hour for the civil service was forty hours a week. But in our ignorance, we said, 'Yes sir, yes sir,' and reported for supervised evening study.  Each of the instructors came in twice a week, two nights a week, with the exception of Wednesday. And then we came in to conduct examinations for three hours on Saturday mornings.

  And on November 1st school started. By that time a Major Joseph Dickey, also a recent graduate of the Tokyo Army Attache School came in as an executive officer stationed right there at the Crissy Field school building with Jorgensen and Schneider as Administrative Assistants. We welcomed sixty students, fifty-eight Nisei plus two Caucasian men who had some previous knowledge of Japanese. And we started instruction. It was a day-to-day struggle of keeping one step ahead of our students and providing the mimeographed materials, preparing English to Japanese translation materials each day for our students and then preparing examinations on Saturdays. It was a tremendous learning experience for all of us because none of us had any experience, had no guidelines, no methodology, no materials that we could refer to, to organize and conduct school. Course Colonel Weckerling and Captain Rasmussen stopped by practically every day, sometimes twice a day to see how things were going. And as John Aiso submitted his plans, his course of instruction, Weckerling approved or disapproved, suggested changes, almost on a daily basis."

  Haller: "Now, during this time Weckerling continued to function as G-2 for 4th Army so he had a variety of other duties besides supervising-"

  Shigeya: "Yes. He was a G-2 for the 4th Army. So with things getting hot in the Pacific area, I imagine his duties were quite involved there but he had a special mission from the Pentagon to organize and establish the school. So, he dropped by the office practically every day, twice a day, to see how things were going, to assure that there would be sixty copies of everything necessary for the training of our students. Sufficient copies of the Naganuma readers, sufficient copies of Japanese to English and English to Japanese dictionaries and that sort of thing.

  And the school started. And we developed a routine, and pretty soon we found out that a number of our original students were not capable of keeping up with the course.

  And so one by one these slower students were dismissed and sent back to infantry training. Of the sixty, I think, forty-five graduated.

  Then on December 7th, a Sunday, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. on Monday, December the 8th, Colonel Weckerling and Major Dickey assembled the class, the school. Of course, everybody knew about it but the question was, Would there be any change in the operation of the school? It was brought to our attention that the school that had been established to meet a possible contingency was now a vital factor in the operation of the War. That students that had been studying for five weeks in the hopes that war would not break out now were faced with the reality that upon graduation they would be sent out to fight in fronts, to perform intelligence and we realized that our work was of vital importance to the United States. And we got down to work.

  And other materials were introduced into the course of study. New courses had to be developed. Soon after Pearl Harbor, by ones and by twos ROTC students from different universities who were in the reserves form the University of California, University of Washington, all the universities in the Midwest and the East began to come in. And more instructors were needed. So, one by one new teachers were employed. Certain instructors were given specialties to handle. For instance, Tadashi Yamada was given the job of creating a Japanese geography course, the geography of Japan. The economic structure of the different prefectures in Japan, the climate, the topography and so forth for possible and eventual use by United States occupation forces in Japan."

  Haller:    "Was that a part of the curriculum while you were at Crissy Field?

  Shigeya: "Yea.

  Haller:    "It was. Ok."

  Shigeya: “These changes occurred after the War started. After the War started new officer students started to come in, had to employ new instructors. At that time, we employed Paul Tekawa and Tom Tanimoto who were newspaper reporters for Japanese newspapers in San Francisco. We employed Tadashi Yamada from the Guadalupe area. We employed Toshio Tsukahira, a graduate of UCLA in Japanese history. All of these people were educated in the United States and in Japan and were qualified instructors. And when the United States went on a war footing against Japan, then additional courses were introduced into the curriculum: geography for one, interrogation of POW's was introduced. Then since we would be handling captured documents, a course in sosho or grass writing was introduced. All Japanese soldiers maintain personal diaries and they write their daily page in the diaries in their own individual handwriting, not using strictly type like characters but broken down, what they call grass writing. And it's a special skill, a special art you might say, and it's taught in the Japanese high school and colleges. So that when our men went out off to the front and they got a hold of these personal diaries, they would be able to read them and translate them. So, a course in sosho was introduced. Incidentally, a principal text that we used for this course was a textbook on sosho written by General Strong, was also an assistant military attaché Japanese language student in Tokyo.

  And so, over the years, during and after their four-year courses of study, some of these military attaches created study materials that were very important to teaching Japanese at MIS.

  Then, in January of 1942, the selective service reclassified all Japanese Americans in the draft. They changed the classification of all Nisei from 1-A to 4-C. 4-C means 'enemy aliens.' And, in effect, the further drafting of Nisei Japanese Americans into the MIS was just, cut off."

  Haller: "What is curious is that it was later reversed if I recall my history."

  Shigeya: "Yea. Uh-hmm. I believe it was around this time that Colonel Pettigrew of that original Pentagon group in intelligence, formulated the idea of forming a Japanese American combat division. But along the way, after a survey was made, all the potential volunteers for this Nisei division, it was determined that the number of Nisei was insufficient. In nineteen forty-two, the average age of Japanese Americans was eighteen years old. In other words, very very young. And the total population of Japanese Americans in Hawaii and in the mainland were only about 260,000. That's a total: Nisei, men and women, and young men eligible for military service. So, it was cut down from division to regiment.

  And then on February 19th, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066.

  Haller: "How did that affect you personally?"

  Shigeya: "Uh, total confusion and disaster! There were fifty-eight students, plus by now, seven instructors and we would be individually affected by the internment. We were all residing and working on the Pacific coast. And the order read, 'All Japanese Americans, with no exceptions will be forced into the internment camps.' As the days and weeks passed relocation orders were issued and pasted on store windows, telephone poles, in all the Japanese communities up and down the coast. And one by one different communities, starting with Bainbridge [Island] up in the Northwest, began to receive orders to move to assembly centers and then eventually to the ten relocation centers.

  My family, Japanese Americans in Oakland, were ordered to go to Tanforan. And the orders came out in March. Colonel Weckerling assured us that school would remain at the Presidio of San Francisco until the first class had graduated. That 11 the instructors would be protected from the relocation. My family, father and mother and brothers and sisters, and my wife's family, all prepared to move, getting rid of automobiles, refrigerators, business equipment... washers, dryers, presses, inventories in stores, farm equipment, tractors, everything. And it was total chaos.

  We were lucky to get ten cents on the dollar for everything that we had to get rid of, because each individual going into the assembly centers and the relocation camps could only carry, could only bring what they could carry. One suitcase or one duffle bag or whatever they want to put in their packages. Nothing else. And I had a small grocery store run by my parents, my brothers, and we found that a Chinese person who would buy our business; it wasn't much of a business, maybe about forty to fifty thousand dollars total business income during the year. But I forget what we exactly sold our business for but the sale of the truck, all the equipment in the store, and our inventory. I think we sold it for a thousand bucks or something like that. Then our parents moved out and were placed in horse stall apartments in Tanforan. And one time and one-time only Colonel Weckerling got orders cut for my wife and myself to visit our families at Tanforan.

  And by that time Captain Rasmussen was ordered by the War Department to find a new location for the school which he did. He traveled throughout the West and Midwest and dropped into see Governor Harold Stassen, governor of Minnesota in st. Paul and the Governor listened to Rasmussen and said, 'You've come to the right place. I personally guarantee that your students, your school will be welcome in Minnesota.'

  And there was an abandoned old folks home at a place called Camp Savage, twenty-five miles south of Minneapolis. 'And I'll rent it to the Army for a dollar a year.' And then he said, 'I will call the Chambers of Commerce of Minneapolis, st. Paul, I'll have newspaper publishers and editors, the different lawyers, and the power structure in the Twin Cities and I will ask them to cooperate completely, to assure that the school will be welcome in Minnesota.' Then on the outskirts of Minneapolis, there was Fort Snelling, an old Indian fort that could provide administrative support for the new school, MISLS at Camp Savage. A commissary, a hospital, a transportation [department] and the use of trucks and so forth. And the facilities all over the State and Fort Snelling were made available to MISLS. And it created a situation whereby as soon as the first class graduated from Crissy Field, there could be a one-month interval between graduation time and for the training cadre of ten students and the civilian instructors could move to Minnesota and start the new school there.

  The whole operation, the internment of all our families, the instructors and their students, nobody was permitted to go on leave to assist their families to close up farms, businesses or whatever was permitted."

  Haller:    "It was not permitted you say?"

  Shigeya: "It was not permitted. And we found out that we were going to go to Minnesota and already all Japanese­ Americans in California, Oregon and Washington and Alaska [were] in assembly camps. And they were getting ready to transfer them to the permanent relocation camps. So the Army decided that the civilian instructors who would be driving from California to Minneapolis, Minnesota, would need protection. And so, each of the instructors was given an Army escort. All the ROTC students started to come in after Pearl Harbor, were not in the first class and they were not ready for intelligence duty in the War. And so John Aiso and his wife, myself and my wife were escorted by Captain Eugene Wright who drove in their car, Mrs. Wright and little Jerry.

  So, a caravan of two cars drove from San Francisco to Reno to Ogden to Yellowstone then through the Dakotas then down to Minnesota and the Wrights really looked after us. At a certain restaurant, I believe it was in Fargo, North Dakota, some people in a restaurant where we had our dinner kept on staring at us. And Mrs. Wright got very angry, and she went up to them and shouted practically to them, 'What are you looking at? Well, my husband is an officer in the United States Army and John Aiso and I and our wives are working for the United States government. They're working for the United States. What's your problem?' And that sort of thing.

  And then another amazing, well not amazing but interesting thing happened to another group. There were two Chinese ROTC students who came into the program at Crissy Field.

  One was Robert Pang from Hawaii, another was Won Loy Chan who graduated from Stanford, and they came to the school, and they were escorts for about four instructors. And they were at a restaurant in Pocatello, Idaho. And it was reported that that there was a party of Japanese travelling with two officers in American uniform. And the sheriff came and didn't question the Japanese instructors, but they questioned the two Chinese officers in American uniform, and they said 'Are you bona fide American officers? Let's see your papers?' So, Chan and Pang showed them their identification and travel orders and the sheriff said, 'We're going to have to verify this.' And so they telephoned the Presidio of San Francisco. They were assured that Chan and Pang were bona fide American military officers and that they were escorting Japanese American instructors from San Francisco to Minnesota. And so, they were released. And that's been a subject of lots of laughter: Japanese­ Americans in Idaho were at that time very suspect. But the instructors were not questioned but the officers were [chuckles].

  Anyway, we got to Minnesota and Camp Savage. This place in June was a sea of waving grass. It was a summer home for youths and then it was also a home for homeless men, but the camp had been closed for some time. And one of the operations at camp savage was [as a] manufacturer of mattresses, something productive to do for the homeless men. And in this big warehouse there were hoboes living there and there were cockroaches and fleas and lice, filthy. So, our ten best-"

  End of Tape 2

  Tape 3,

  Shigeya: "enlisted men were ordered to clean out the place, drag all the mattresses out, put them in a big pile, pour kerosene on them and burn them. And then fumigate the mattress factory which later became the faculty office at Camp Savage. The faculty grew at Camp Savage by leaps and bounds. Each successive class was larger than the proceeding one. So we started with sixty students at the Presidio of San Francisco. By the time school closed in 1946 at Fort Snelling, there were about two thousand students and about 165 to 170 instructors.

  So, we took over Camp Savage and the enlisted instructors had to clean out the warehouse and cut the grass, clean out the classrooms and make offices. And on the first of June, 1942, about two hundred and fifty students reported in.

  These were students on the original list prepared by Colonel Rasmussen in 1941. And also added volunteers for the school from the different assembly centers and relocation centers."

  Haller: "Since you continued at the Language School until at least May, the Language School at Crissy Field rather... and the evacuation began in February, you must-"

  Shigeya: "The executive order-"

  Haller:  "The executive order was issued-"

  Shigeya: "Was signed on the 17^th of February, then they had to set up administrative centers for conducting the relocation. And the first movement of Japanese Americans into assembly centers happened in Bainbridge up in (Washington]. Then followed by Terminal Island in Los Angeles. And these began to occur during the months of March and continued until the entire Pacific Coast was evacuated of Japanese."

  Haller: "Well what I was driving at was that you and your wife must have been among the last Japanese Americans still [in the Bay Area]."

  Shigeya:" In March, April and May, when I left for work from Oakland and left my wife behind, she was the only Japanese American, really Japanese American in all of (the East Bay]. And over in San Francisco where ... Mrs. John Iso and Mrs.

  Yamada and other people, they were the only Japanese­ Americans, free Japanese Americans in San Francisco there. And uh-"

  Haller: "How did ... you get to work at that time?"

  Shigeya: "Oh, I had an automobile and I drove each day. And my parents, my family moved out sometime in March and the new Chinese owners came into run the grocery business, but arrangements were made so that my wife and I could continue to live upstairs in the residential part of the store until we moved out around the beginning of May. And uh by that time we knew that we were going to move to Minnesota and arrangements were made for that including escort services by Army officers. And the movement of our household goods was (accomplished]. The transfer company came and took everything, and we borrowed a mattress from the new Chinese owners of the grocery store, and we slept on that for about a month until we were ready to move.

  So, it was a hectic period. on night duty at the Presidio, quite often there would be air raids. There was a tremendous air of hysteria and confusion, and the 4th Army was changed from the 4th Army to Western Defense Command. And there were rumors of Japanese submarines that were lurking off the coast and that there were Japanese aircraft off the coast, that would raid the large cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Practically every other night there would be an air alert and then there'd be a complete blackout in San Francisco. And everybody would put up blankets on their windows and put on their lights inside and do whatever they had to do.

  And at the Presidio, until the 'all clear' signal went off, I had to stay with my students until about eleven or twelve o'clock at certain times! Then the 'all clear' signal would be given and then I'd drive home across the bridge. And at the bridge, on both sides of the bridge there were areas with signs 'All Oriental people stop to receive authority or permission to cross the bridge.' And so Filipinos, Chinese, Japanese were all forced to stop and show their i.d. papers. Chinese people had a 'I am a Chinese' on their windshields and everything but they were stopped anyway. And then I had my 4th Army pass, so I had no problems at all.

  In fact, one night, late at night driving home from San Francisco, was late, and all of a sudden I heard a patrol officer sounding a siren. And we were chased, about six or seven cars, and then we were all forced to stop in a convenient position, as soon as we got off the bridge. And the officer came and he [was) writing tickets for different cars and he came to me and said, 'Can I see your identification?' So, I pulled out my 4th Army pass and he stepped backwards one step and he saluted, and 'Yes sir!

  You may proceed!' [Laughs] stuff like that."

  "So, our students at the Presidio on the weekends, Saturday afternoons and Sundays, they were in the habit of going into downtown [San Francisco) to eat Japanese food, Chinese food, visit the YMCA and look up friends and so forth. So, when the Japanese all moved out they had no place to go. And they were not permitted to leave San Francisco at all. They were restricted, a curfew was applied, all Japanese­ Americans could not leave their house, be on the streets after dark and that sort of thing. And the security at the Presidio was increased. And Mr. Tekawa and Mr. Tanimoto who lived in downtown San Francisco used to leave the Presidio by a different gate, a gate different from the Main Gate on, I guess, it's Lombard Street or something like that. They left from another exit and went over the hill to J-Town where they had apartments. And Tanimoto and Tekawa drove from the school over to this gate where there was a sentry there, young kid, young draftee private or something, and he saw these two Japanese in a car, leaving the Presidio and he was nervous, and he drew his 45. [He said] 'Leave the car!' [Kihara chuckles] And he said, 'Keep your hands up! Use one hand to reach into your coat, get your i.d., put them on the ground, step back three or four steps. Then with a shaky hand he went and picked up the i.d. and recognized that they were bonafide employees of the Army and he finally calmed down. 'Ok, you can pick up your passes and you can leave.' And Tanimoto and Tekawa said, 'Boy, I was sure we were gonna get shot!' [Kihara laughs)" 

  Haller: "It sounds like a frightening experience    what kinds of relationships did you have with the students was it... strictly a student to instructor relationship or did you get to

  Shigeya: "Oh, it was a very very close, very friendly [relationship]. I was not qualified to be teaching Japanese. I could teach the lower classes because I knew a little bit more than they did but I would keep up every day. But on evening study, supervision, I had to go through all of the classes, from the top to the bottom, both at Crissy Field and at Fort Snelling. But the students in the upper classes who knew much much more Japanese than I, never tried to embarrass me by asking me, for instance, using their textbooks or teaching materials and asking me a question about this or that. And there were many many things that I was ignorant about, regarding the Japanese language and whenever I didn't know the answer I'd tell my students, 'I don't know the answer to this but I'll tell you tomorrow.

  I'll go back to the faculty room and get the answer from my colleagues and I'll have the answer for you the next day.' And I never had any problems whatsoever from my students. They were very respectful. And as an instructor and as all instructors they felt a very personal relationship with the, our students. And the students responded terrifically.

  The course of study was not easy. It was tough. And the instructors made it tough because it was our job to prepare students for intelligence duty in War. So the regular hours available to the students for study were insufficient.

  After supervised evening study from seven to nine each evening, the students kept on studying. Then at 11 o'clock, all the lights throughout the Fort, at Camp Savage and later on at Fort Snelling, were turned off. And all students were supposed to go to bed. But they had to keep on with their studies. So, many many students would take their textbooks and their notes and go down into the latrine and sit on the toilets and study there. And as the c.q.'s [charge of quarters] and other people who made the rounds came by, they were ordered to go back to their beds, around one or two o'clock in the morning. Then in the mornings, when the soldiers were awakened, they had to wash up and shave and so forth, there are stories of students with Kanji cards and everything, placed it on the mirrors while they washed and shaved, studying that.

  Then there are stories of students who were in a six months course at Camp Savage who never left the camp. They studied day and night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday to keep up with the course. The course of study was hard, and there was a rotation of students up and down. At the peak of the language training program there must have been, let me see, about (pauses to think] forty at least, forty or fifty classes in operation. And then the classes were large, thirty students to a class. And the students who couldn't keep up with their classes were dropped down to a lower section and then eventually many of them were washed out, dismissed from the school for lack of aptitude. And then the better students were promoted up, there was a constant shift all the time.

  John Aiso was a very strict administrator. He had little direct contact with the students in the classes. And he administered the program under the direction of Colonel Rassmussen who got his orders from the Pentagon-"

  Shigeya:"...and the program, as it was administered from the Pentagon, was full of pressure. The value of our graduates was determined, verified soon after the first graduates went out into the field. A certain number went to the Alaska Defense Command, and they did intelligence, especially during the Battle of Attu in 1943.  Then our first graduates were assigned to different places in the South Pacific command. At first the different commanders, in a state of confusion themselves, didn't know what to do with the Japanese Americans. And this was in May, June of 1942 before there were really any battles going on.  So, among our better students, like Minamato, he was driving a car for a commanding officer on Tahiti. And another case, Minamoto, one of the better graduates was driving jeeps somewhere in the South Pacific. And one of our early Caucasian graduates, Colonel, excuse me, Major John Burden, who was born and raised in Japan and was good in Japanese, was in New Caledonia.

  And the Battle of Guadalcanal started in August of 1942 and Admiral Halsey, in his tours in the South Pacific, and conducting the Guadalcanal campaign, met John Burden and told John Burden, the Marines and the 25th Division on Guadalcanal are screaming for Japanese intelligence personnel. And John Burden said, 'Well, there are about ten graduates of MIS here in, on New Caledonia, and in Tahiti and Fijis and wherever. They've been trained to do intelligence.  So, the Admiral told John Burden, 'Use my plane, fly to these different places and round up MIS graduates and get them to Guadalcanal."

  Haller: "Really! I didn't realize it took the personal intervention of Admiral Halsey to get the MIS graduates into the field."

  Shigeya: "Well Halsey's story is a very interesting one. There's a story that he said the only way to take care of the problem in Japan is to kill all the Japanese when we beat them in the War and stuff like that. But then he had with him, on his flagship, a graduate of MIS who did intelligence work for him. And he responded to demands from General Collins, 25th Division, and he ordered Major John Burden to use his plane to fly to Tahiti and other places in the South Pacific to round up a team and they reported to General Collins of the 25th Division in, I believe, it was October of 1942 and they performed intelligence very very well.

  And John Burden personally interrogated POW's. His men translated documents. There are a number of these people still living.  I met John Burden, who was an honored guest at a MIS fiftieth anniversary in Hawaii in July.  And members of his team were still there. And it was Major Burden who reported directly to the Pentagon regarding the loyalty and the military value of MIS graduates. And he was ordered from Guadalcanal campaign to report to the Pentagon and verified the fact that the Nisei were loyal to the United States and that they were very very important in military intelligence. And that led the way for other teams to be sent to the Guadalcanal campaign, Bougainville, Vella La Vella.

  And from another command in the Southwest command, McArthur's command, one of our other Caucasian graduates in the first class, Major Swift, established ATIS, the Allied Translator and Interpretations Service in Brisbane and they began to gather people like Gary Kadani, Steve Yamamoto and so forth and Phil Ishio. And these people were in the vanguard of the New Guinea campaign. So that they fought, I believe, with the 32nd Division and they handled POW's.

  There's an interesting story of one MIS man who served in New Guinea. He handled POW's and invariably the Nisei were very understanding and sympathetic and helpful regarding the treatment of POW's. After all, they're the same race: in cases they were fighting against their own brothers and their cousins and so forth. So, on New Guinea, Spady Koyama befriended a Japanese POW. Later on, during the occupation of Japan, this POW had been freed, contacted Spady and said, 'I want to thank you for taking care of my needs in the POW camp in New Guinea.' He said, 'I have a son of a relative of mine who I'm going to send to you to Tokyo to be your personal servant.' And Spady said, 'Ah naw, naw, naw!

  There's no need for that.' But their contact was maintained over a period of fifty years. And one of the individuals involved became a member of the Diet in Japan. And two years ago the people involved in all of this visited Spady in [stops to think] in Spokane, Washington, and then brought armfuls of gifts and everything like that. There was all kinds of human interest stories surrounding the association of MIS people with Japanese POW's and people that they ran into in Japan."

   Haller: "That's an interesting story. I wanted to ask you how you must have been, around this time, by the time the first MIS'ers were used in combat, you would have been at Camp Savage. And how did you get feedback about the accomplishments of [the graduates)?"

  Shigeya: "In a number of ways."

  Haller: "And how did you incorporate that into the syllabus?"

  Shigeya: "Well, like I received, exchanged personal letters with Captain Wright, all through the War. And even after the War, we'd even get together once in a while."

  Haller: "Captain Wright was a fella who was in the field in New Guinea? Is that right?"

  Shigeya: "No, he came in as a ROTC officer in December of 1941, and he escorted John Aiso and myself to Camp Savage. [Haller: "Oh, oh I see."] And then he graduated there.

  And then upon graduation in December of 1942 he was assigned to the Americal Division in New Caledonia. Then from the Americal Division he got transferred to the 45th Division, I believe, Guadal Canal and Bougainville-"

  Haller:  43rd probably, but yeah."

  Shigeya: "And then all during that time that he was overseas and serving in the South Pacific we exchanged letters, V Mail letters. Other instructors corresponded with their students to a certain extent. Then one instructor, a very dedicated and skillful instructor, Mr. Yutaka Munakata, was given responsibility over what is known as the 'translation pool' at Camp Savage and Fort Snelling. And this was a pool of all graduates of the regular course and while waiting for orders from the Pentagon to proceed to the Front they were under Mr. Munakata's supervision and he trained them in the translation of documents, captured stuff coming back from the fronts and so forth. And many many students got to know Mr. Munakata very well because it was on a daily basis, and it was a matter of individual students talking constantly with Mr. Munakata to verify the accuracy of the translations and so forth.

  And so, a lot of correspondence, I believe it was a file of about ten, twelve inches or letters was kept by Mr.

  Munakata. And at one time he sent them to John Aiso in Los Angeles as a possible source of information for writing a history of the MIS. Then when Joe Harrington was given the job I wrote to John Aiso and asked that these letters be released to Joe Harrington for, during research for the writing of Yankee Samurai which he did. And so, Mr. Munakata's file of personal letters from the War Front from India, from you name-it, everywhere, were a big source of information for the writing of the MIS story, Yankee Samurai. The letters are now in the [Japanese American] National Historical Society archives.

  At any rate, correspondence on a personal basis in many cases, words clipped out by censors indicating the location of, that is what is cropped out. In other cases, they were erased on with black grease paint and so forth. And then individuals like John Burden personally received directions from the Pentagon to go to Washington to report the work of MIS graduates. Then, there were after-action reports, a summary of battles that was submitted through the Divisions back to the Pentagon. Then-

  Shigeya:"...two MIS captured materials and guns, I think there's one right in front of Weckerling Hall now, a gun used on Attu. And uniforms, rifles, things like that."

  Haller: "How did that feedback effect, how did the curriculum change, or did it because of that feedback?"

  Shigeya:"...these letters advised John Aiso on placing emphasis on certain things. For instance, more kanji, more sosho-"

  Haller: "More-"

  Shigeya: "Grass writing."

  Haller:  "Grass writing."

  Shigeya: "And then one very important bit of information from the War Fronts was the procedure or the techniques of the psychology of interrogating POW's. Uh, the Pentagon, in consultation with the British War Office, felt that Japanese soldiers and German soldiers, presented a problem in interrogation. That you had to be rough on them. If you treated these POWs with kindness and with courtesy that they would just take it as a sign of weakness. And would lie and would not answer and would not cooperate. And so, the original method of instruction or techniques used for POW interrogation was brutality. And even using physical force and beatings.

  So, in the original POW interrogation courses at MIS certain ground rules were established. Then the teachers would assume the role of captured POW's. Then the students in Turn, or in teams would interrogate the teachers. And the students just loved it. They could scream and holler at the instructors and say 'You damn fool, you're lying and that's not true. And if you don't answer correctly, I'll hit you and stuff like that.'

  But then we got word from the Front that this technique was not working, that the Japanese POW responded to kindness.

  That if you looked after the personal needs of the POW a beaten, sickly weak POW, gave him a cigarette, asked if he needed aspirin, some kind of medication. Asked, what is the latest word you hear from your family. Is your family in Japan. Ok. Things like that. It would turn the POW completely around. He would relax and the interrogators would say, 'We are your friends. You are a POW but don't be ashamed of it. We're not going to brutalize you, we're not going to torture you. Just talk freely, answer our questions.'

  In the Japanese Army the procedure of just giving your name, rank and serial number didn't operate. There was no restrictions on saying anything. And once you got into the confidence of the POW's they would talk, give you all kinds of information. In fact, a number of POW's who knew so much were flown from Australia to the United States and just weeks and weeks of interrogation to tell what they knew about the order of battle, the Japanese forces. The factories that manufactured munitions or guns or whatever in their hometowns in Japan. All kinds of all kinds of interesting information from many many POW's and the way to get it was to use courtesy, kindness, a cigarette, some extra goodies from the PX's and whatever.

  And so that was a major change in the type of instruction we gave our students. It was tough, brutal rubber clubs and so forth type of technique in the beginning. But when we got word from the Front that that wouldn't (work], that you must be courteous, look after the personal matters of the POW's, give him a cigarette and give him medicine and so forth.

  Then the rest was easy.

  So, on an official and unofficial basis the school, the instructors kept in touch with a number of students and got feedback on what type of courses, what type of instruction was valuable. What the techniques should be utilized for different subjects and things like that. So, it was a continuous process of communicating back and forth to keep the instruction up-to-date, useful and of value for intelligence purposes."

  Haller: "Hmmm. Very interesting. Do you have any insight into why the Japanese seemed so oblivious to the potential for intelligence leaks, provided by their diary keeping?"

    Shigeya: "Well a, the-"

  Haller: I can understand given the nature of the Code of Bushido why they would not have received indoctrination in the talking as a prisoner."

  Shigeya: "I think the answer is a historical one. In ancient times, in wars in Japan, wars ended brutally. The enemy was just wiped out."

  Haller: "But wiped-out enemies may not be able to, subject to interrogation but they can still have their diaries read."

  Shigeya: "Well, again, the modern wars of Japan were first with China. And the attitude of the Japanese toward the Chinese was that one Japanese Samurai was worth ten Chinese soldiers. And you capture a Chinese soldier, the heck with treating him as a POW under certain rules. Like for instance in 1896 there wasn't a Geneva Convention yet. So, in modern warfare the first one being the Sino-Japanese War of 1896, there's no such thing as POW's and interrogation. They captured a Chinese they just cut off his head and left the body on the battlefield.

  Then the next experience of war between Japan and the outside world was the Boxer Rebellion. In this instance, again the enemy was Chinese, and the question of POW interrogation, that sort of thing didn't arise.

  Then the next experience was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905. And this was a brutal war. Uh [stops to collect thoughts) the Russians [were] already suffering internal rebellions in Moscow and so forth. And then the long long distance from Moscow to Vladivostok and down Manchuria to the War Front. The logistics were horrendous, and they only had a single line railway system. And communication back to Russia, with internal problems and Moscow was such that modern warfare, consideration of POW's and that sort of thing didn't exist. And insofar as the Japanese were concerned it was their first experience against a first­ class modern nation. And the battle of Mukden, as an example, between Admiral Togo in the Japan Sea and then the experiences of General Nogi in Manchuria, they were just brutal wars. Brutal wars. And there's no, no consideration of how to interrogate their prisoners or anything like that. So, if you go to war, if you're wounded or you die, or get captured, commit suicide and die. There's no such thing as name, rank and serial number.

  In World War I Japan joined the Allies and fought in China against the Germans in Shangtung and providing assistance to the Allies in Europe. But not very great participation in modern warfare and in the problem of interrogation. And in the meantime the Geneva Convention was signed and rules and regulations regarding handling of POW's, the amount of information we should give regarding POW's was developed.

  But the Japanese army never concerned itself with that problem. They told their people that you go to war for Japan, you die for your emperor. It's a disgrace to be captured, it's a disgrace to become a prisoner of war. And if you should ever find yourself in a position like that, commit suicide and die. That was the advice.

  And then the traditional Japanese attitude regarding language was that the Japanese language is so foreign and so difficult for Caucasians to learn and understand that there is no need to be concerned about that. Of course they developed their codes and ciphers. They sent all their diplomatic messages in code and many of their directions from the general staff to the divisions fighting all over the Pacific were in code. But in many instances, by radio transmission they just broadcast in spoken Japanese.  So they never, they rightfully determined--- oh I don't know if they determined or not--- they didn't restrict their military personnel from writing their thoughts and the condition and the morale and the supply status of the forces out in the different fronts. They just figured the Allies would capture documents, military orders, and they wouldn't be able to read and translate them so what's the problem?

  So that was their attitude.

  And the people in the Pentagon who pushed and pushed to organize this school understood that. They knew in 1941; it is said that the Pentagon conducted a survey, a national survey, in the military services and in the colleges of the United States to pinpoint potential Japanese intelligence personnel. And they found about two dozen. That was it.

  And you can't conduct a war against a powerful enemy like Japan using only two dozen military intelligence operators. And so Japanese Americans, the Nisei, were the only source. And Weckerling and Captain Rasmussen and other people who had associations with Nisei in Tokyo and after coming back from language duty in different places had confidence that the Nisei would be loyal to the United States and would be able to conduct military intelligence.

  And uh, it was a calculated risk. The military in general, the President of the United States, didn't trust the Japanese. Governor Olson of the State of California, the Governor of Idaho made a statement after Pearl Harbor that the Japs live like rats, they live like rats, and they breed like rats and they live like rats, a public statement. That was the contempt and the regard of these leaders in the American communities everywhere and the columnists and the newspapers in the media in Los Angeles. The newspaper editorials and the articles that they wrote after Pearl Harbor and until the communication was effected was unbelievable. The hysteria, the hatred and the prejudice that they demonstrated.

   So, Rufus Bratton, Carlisle Dusenbury, Moses Pettigrew and Moore and Weckerling and Rasmussen and Dickey and the other people who believed in the Nisei and trusted them stick their necks out to take this risk, against the general opposition towards Japanese Americans is a story in itself."

  Haller: "Sure is.... although you participated very personally in these events it's also been a half a century since that time, so there's quite a bit of perspective.

  Obviously, you've done a lot of thinking about this in your time.  And I wonder what you think the, I guess, the greatest significance of the MIS school in those days is for us now. What that significance is for us now."

  Shigeya: "Well, the American society as a whole is racist, even today. And there are elements in American society, in government and in the media, and in the public who publicly state that the internment of Japanese Americans was the right thing to do. Some people have taken the reverse argument and say, Well the internment was really done for the protection of Japanese Americans. And the answer to that is if that is the case why were the machine guns on the watchtowers of Manzanar pointed inward and not pointed outward? The condition of Japanese Americans and the Japanese Japanese in the United States in 1941 was not a happy one. The effects of the Depression affected the total economy, the government, and the policies of the United States government, it was a very very difficult time. And the future of Japanese Americans when the War started out was not a happy or optimistic thing. It was a period of crisis, of suffering, all kinds of problems. A hundred and twelve thousand Japanese Americans dislocated for four years in camps like that.

  And then during the war the 442 was formed and they broke all records for courage and valor in Europe, the most highly decorated unit in military history of the United States.

  The MIS story is largely untold, unknown. In the words of General Charles Willoughby, the MIS Language personnel shortened the War by two years at a savings of thousands and thousands of American casualties.

  But that's not the only part of the MIS story. MacArthur went on to occupy Japan and he conducted the most benevolent and enlightened occupation in the history of civilization.

  And being a student of history, the patriot that he was, his experiences with his father in China and Japan during his growing days, he understood that when the war ended that Russia would soon become the principal enemy, antagonist of the United States. And he deliberately set out to quickly reconstruct Japan, establish democracy there, and create a strong ally, a defense for the United States vis-a-vis Russia.... And he did that in an almost unbelievable manner.

  He's criticized for all kinds of things, but this is his contribution to American history. He preserved, built-up, reconstructed Japan to become a powerful ally of the United States. And he, MacArthur, could not have accomplished this without the help of thousands and thousands of the MIS graduates. The MIS graduates looked Japanese, in many instances they were as Japanese as they were Americans, and they spoke the language, they understood the psychology of the people, and they could communicate with prime ministers, with the government officials, with the merchants and the farmers on a personal basis. They could use Japanese etiquette, standing up and saying [repeats various greetings in Japanese) and so forth. They could establish immediate rapport with the Japanese population at all levels.

  And there were a handful of people who engaged in the Black Market and profited and cheated the Japanese and the American government out of this and that and made fortunes out of their stay in Japan, but the bulk of the MIS people in Japan formed lifelong friendships with the Japanese people. And every aspect of the occupation from government to justice to police to demilitarization, the writing of the constitution, the infrastructure, the railroads, restarting utilities, the labor movement, women's suffrage, education. And, at the local government, the MIS graduates were everywhere working together with MacArthur and the Japanese people to enable the successful occupation.

  Even as late as spring 1993 NHK, the Japanese National Broadcasting System, put on a two-hour documentary telling the story of how MIS CIC operators, in civilian clothes, infiltrated the Collllllunist thrust, worked in the Japanese labor unions, the warehouse workers, the railroad unions and the teachers’ unions to prevent the takeover of the Japanese working force by the labor unions. And as late as spring 1993 the comment from NHK people and the general listening public in Japan was that the Communization of Japan was prevented by the Japanese intelligence personnel.

  And it's a largely untold story. Joe Harrington gathered materials for telling the story of MIS participation in the occupation of Japan and the files, feet and feet and feet of files, are there at National Japanese American Historical Society. But no one has evidenced enough interest to go through them, file the materials and develop a true story.

  But the fact that Japan, for fifty years has been an ideological ally of the United States, is an open and democratic society and has participated in many many ways including the role of the Japanese self-defense forces to maintain a strong position in the event of breakout from North Korea, even today. And the possibilities of Russian activities in China: for fifty years the development of the reconstruction of Japan, the rebuilding of the Japanese economy so that Japan is an economic superpower, in many cases conflicting with the United States, but that's beside the point. The fact is that Japan is a powerful ally in many many ways of the United States in that vital part of the world.

  The story has never been told of the role of MIS graduates in this development. If Joe Harrington had not died, he probably would have been able to produce a pretty good story on that aspect. And then, it's been fifty years since World War II, and the service of MIS men and the 442 in the Second World War, but the Japanese were deprived of their civil rights, their constitutional rights, protected in the 14th Amendment of due process, equal protections of the laws, was violated by President Roosevelt. And various efforts were made throughout the years to ask the United States government for an apology to provide some kind of compensation, to indicate to Japanese Americans that this wrong was committed in 1942. But the Nisei are very Japanese in this aspect: they will act, they will perform and do their duty as prescribed by Japanese concepts of bushido and loyalty. But when the event is over, they don't like to talk about it. And the Nisei were very reluctant to talk about the relocation. They feel that a, a personal sense of shame that somehow, something that they did or said led to this thing even though, on a legal basis, it was entirely wrong.

  So, the Nisei grew up, they had to come back from the War, come back from the relocation centers to start life over, completely. Their homes, their farms, their businesses, everything was taken away from them, in the War and there was no time to start any kind of actions asking the United States government to apologize, to declare that the internment was illegal, was wrong. When the soldiers came back from Japan and from Europe into California towns, there were signs in towns in California and Washington, 'No Japs Wanted. No dogs wanted. Stay out!' And local people, the teamster’s union in Washington refused to let Japanese sell their flowers and their produce in the wholesale markets in Seattle. They had all kinds of discrimination. A 442-hero veteran came back to Auburn, his house was burned down, his warehouses were burned down, the perpetrators of the crime were captured-

  End of Tape 3

  Tape 4, Side 1

  Shigeya: "About seventy or eighty incidents of this type up and down the coast here of discrimination against returning Japanese and veterans. So, the veterans came back, they had to go to school, finish their college educations and get married, raise their children, start their business and lives all over again. It was, there was no time, and the Nisei didn't want to discuss the incident of the internment. The expression is made, 'We were raped! Who wants to talk about being raped!'"

  End of Tape 4

  End of formal interview

 

Aerial of Crissy Field c1964

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35263

---

"Crissy was a lot longer when it was first established and the airplanes for the most part, were pretty short takeoff and landing airplane. DC4 was their main airplane and then later the 047, which I've flown. Another very nice, easy airplane that takes off short and lands slow. And so, Crissy was pretty well adapted to the kind of flying they were doing then" -Wy Spalding

 

• Edward Wyman Spalding

  
  

  Wy Spalding discusses his time at Crissy Field from 1955 to 1964.

  Date created:

  04/01/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Part 1

  Brett Banky:       It's February 12th, 1994. This is Brett [Banky 00:00:08]. I'm going to be interviewing Wy Spalding who was a pilot at Crissy Field and find out some of his stories.

                Okay. Wy, first thing I'd like to ask you is by interviewing you and taping you, do I have your permission to do this interview with you?

  Wy Spalding:     [00:00:30] Yes, of course you do.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. First of all, could you tell me your full name?

  Wy Spalding:     My full name is Edward Wyman Spalding.

  Brett Banky:       And could you spell your last name?

  Wy Spalding:     S-P-A-L-D-I-N-G. Sporting goods family.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. What was your rank while you were here on the Presidio?

  Wy Spalding: [00:01:00]               My first contact with the Presidio as an employee here was as a civilian in civil service at the post motor pool, which is now the location of the Commissary down there at Crissy field. And I was hired on by Pat Patterson, who was the personnel officer for the post hiring at the time. And my immediate boss was Rick [DeVilla 00:01:19], who was a former Philippine scout and a captain in the United States Army. At that time, I was a major in the United States Air Force Reserve because with the Unification Act in '47, my commission had been changed over from an army commission to air force reserve.

                And I spent about a year down there as a GS-5 chief of driver testing, reorganizing the driver testing for the post. I gave out about 2,000 driver's licenses in that time. And we did a work over of the people as they came in, so they actually got training as well as testing. I had two very wonderful assistants, Sergeant Buckner, big, hefty fella who repainted the whole thing and helped me construct some of the new arrangement that we had. And SP-3 Ernie [Polson 00:02:21], who was a veteran of Vietnam and had some amazing experiences there. Had actually captured a Soviet tank that the North Koreans had used.

                It was down there, of course, that I saw airplanes taking off landing outside my window and I began to talk about, "Hey, I can do that," because I had put in about 1,950 hours during World War II in the Air Corps, or US Army Air Forces. Had been a test pilot, a safety and an aircraft accident investigating officer at Hammer Field as well as a bomber pilot.

  Brett Banky:       What year was this?

  Wy Spalding: [00:03:30]               This was the year 1955. I had been a teacher and it was during the McCarthy era, and we were required in some school districts to take the loyalty oath. And I had spent some of my schooling in Europe, both in Hitler's Germany and in Mussolini's Italy, and I was aware of how dangerous it was to get on paper with an oath. If they found in any way that you might have left something out of a statement, you could be found culpable, perhaps feloniously culpable, and spend time in jail. I felt that the oath that I had taken to be an officer in the United States Air Force Reserve should have been sufficient and best not to take another one. So I quit teaching and looked around for other jobs. And this is what I found.

                GS-5 didn't pay very much in those days, something like four or $5,000 a year and I was trying to raise a family. I was offered a promotion as an assistant administrative officer in the transportation office of the 6th Army Headquarters at GS-7. It eventually went up to GS-9. It was while I was there that the talk that I was doing about, "Hey, I can fly those things down there," got to the right ears. A Major [Bussy 00:04:46], a Black officer, got interested and said, "Well, why don't you just switch into the army again? Drop your commission in the air force reserve and we'll give you an army commission and put you on flying status."

                That happened in 1958 and by the spring of 1959, I was on flight status and was attached to the flight detachment at Crissy Field, the 6th Army Flight Detachment eventually for flight training. Interesting, my first flying was not in an army airplane at all under the [inaudible 00:05:30] of the army reserve program. There was an instructor named George Wilber, was an old guy, came over from Oakland in a Cessna 180. It was an old cabin airplane, and it was civilian airplane. And the idea was the way to get me trained was to give me an instrument course that was being given by the civilian contractor, so that my first takeoff from Crissy field was under the hood.

                I couldn't see out the cockpit at all. I hadn't flown for about 10 or 15 years and here I was in this airplane, revving it up and starting a takeoff without being able to see anything but the artificial horizon, the altimeter, the air speed indicator and the other instruments on the panel. Of course, George, wasn't going to let me crack up and kill him too. By the way, George was a grandfather at the time, so this was really a grandfather clause flying that I'm doing here. But here I was flying blind out of Crissy Field. After we'd had a number of training sessions, George said, "By the way, I've never let you land this thing. You think you can do it?" And I said, "I don't know, let's try."

                We went over to the other side of the bay and landed over there at a little airfield, and I got kind of used to that. And it wasn't until that summer that I finally got into a Bird Dog, the L-19 as it was called at that time. And I got checked out by a young officer down Hunter Liggett... And this isn't bragging, but I'm kind of proud of this. When we got out of the airplane, he turned to me and he said, "You know, that's the best flight I've ever been given by a reservist." And so, I felt like, well, maybe I'm back on track again.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. You were flying then in '58?

  Wy Spalding:     [00:07:30] From '58 until '64, the end of '64. Actually, New Year's Eve was my last flight.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. And what was your rank at that time then? You said a major?

  Wy Spalding: [00:08:00] Well, I was given a majority in the army reserve system, and when I went first of all to helicopter school at Camp Walters in Mineral Wells, Texas, in October 1960, I went through the program there and then they suggested that I continue and get some of the training I needed as a transportation officer, which was my affiliation in the army. I went from there to Fort Eustis in Virginia and took what they called AAMOC, which was the Army Air Maintenance Officers Corp Course. I passed that.

                While I was there, by the way, one of my fellow students, a Lieutenant Colonel said, "How many people in this group here have not been checked out in the Beaver?" Which is the next airplane up from the Bird Dog, and a bunch of hands went up. He said, "Well, I'm going to change that. We're going to check some of you guys out on the Beaver." They went to a practice field. We went over there to a practice field called West Point, believe it or not. I'm a West Point officer in the Beaver and checked us out. And so I started flying another army airplane, the Beaver, which I got quite a bit of time on subsequently and some interesting experiences.

                Then I stayed over and took the ATOC course, the Army Transportation Officers Course before I came back here. In the meantime, the job that I had at 6th Army Headquarters, I had relinquished to take a supposed promotion at [Mitman 00:09:32] the Military Traffic Management Agency over at Oakland Army Terminal, a defense transportation unit. And my boss there apparently didn't like me too well or something. He abolished my job while I was gone. And so, when I came back, I found myself working as a coder on the docks at a GS-6 rating, no lost pay, but here I was back down the ladder again.

                And I began to see the light that maybe in the civil service, I wasn't going to advance to the rank where I thought I would be. But because I was now thoroughly or well trained as a transportation officer, I was qualified for a promotion. I became Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve. And it is such a nice rank that I've kept it all these years ever since, been over 30 years now. I'm proud of being the same rank that Paul Revere had, and some other people.

  Brett Banky:       [inaudible 00:10:30] Okay. Do you remember your serial number MOS back then?

  Wy Spalding:     Yes. I can remember all of them. 39043439.

  Brett Banky:       What, what, what?

  Wy Spalding:     That's the infantry. 0727790. That's the air core officer's serial number I had. And now my serial number's the same as my social security number, 554142516.

  Brett Banky:       [00:11:00] Okay. And your MOS?

  Wy Spalding:     That's more difficult.

  Brett Banky:       There were more [inaudible 00:11:05] then weren't there?

  Wy Spalding: [00:11:30] Yeah, actually I worked myself up during the war years, during World War II when I was flying for the army, and mostly here in California. Seems to me I was a 2101 bomber pilot. Then I went up to 2102 to an operation officer, and then something like a 2202 commanding officer, because at the end of the war, I commanded the wing that I was operating in. And here, I just can't remember. I'd have to look at my 759, which is the flying hours record that... I have all that in my file at home.

  Brett Banky:       [00:12:00] Okay. That might be something we'd like to borrow to copy to put in the records too-

  Wy Spalding:     Sure.

  Brett Banky:       ... and anything specific to Crissy Field like that. We don't have anything like that at all.

  Wy Spalding:     Well, I was listed as an army air maintenance officer. That was my MOS.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. All right. And what were the total years that you actually served on the Presidio then?

  Wy Spalding: [00:13:00] Well, from about October 1955, until I think it was around September 1960. And then when I was at Mitman I kept training with the flight detachment here until the last day of 1964. And then for about seven years, I was in reserve status but with the 15th Corp. I spent some time down at Camp Roberts as a liaison officer down there one summer. And then in 19... When was it, about 1963 actually at one time, I was appointed temporarily the 6th army aviation officer and worked down out of the office there in building 35 before Colonel Jim Lee came in and took over permanently.

  Brett Banky:       [00:13:30] Okay. Now you said that you didn't think you would get where you wanted in the civil service, and you came to work for the military. Why did you end up actually at the Presidio itself, do you know? Did you request that? You just signed it?

  Wy Spalding: [00:14:00]               Well, it was the most normal thing to do. It was the closest military installation. I was living in North Beach in this corner of San Francisco, about a 10-minute ride to the Presidio, and subsequently Crissy Field. My school that I taught at for 20 years, A.P. Giannini out here in the Sunset District, I always came through the Presidio on my way home and went through on the way out to school. I used to wear black boots so that when school was over, I could stop off here at Crissy Field and throw on my coveralls and have my hat in there so I could look like an officer, go out to the airplane, fly for a couple of hours before I go home for supper. It was a very convenient arrangement.

                And while I was working here, it was convenient too. I could put my uniform on, hop in a Bird Dog, fly down to Fort Ord or go up Stockton or Park or someplace where we had business and park the airplane, get out, put on my blouse and advise the people, " Look, I'm a reserve officer and I'm not here in the capacity of an officer. I'm a GS-9 from the transportation office, but I'm wearing this because I needed to get the transportation here quickly and so I flew myself out here, and it was a good system. Worked out fine.

  Brett Banky:       Want to go back even before this and ask you, why did you ever become a pilot to begin with?

  Wy Spalding: [00:16:00] Well, there's some of us that are a little bit crazy, I guess. We believe that if you don't fly, you ain't worth... And there's a four-letter word I won't use on the tape. And that's a thing that apparently stung me very early on. There were three members of my family that had flown in World War I. One of them was an instructor for the Navy, Royal Weatherald, whom my Aunt Rose divorced about the time before I ever met him. I never saw him. Then there was, well, the main one was my Uncle Albert Spalding, was a world class violinist and famous, wonderful man. And he was with LaGuardia in Italy for a good part of the end of World War I, and also had been at the headquarters of the air service in Paris before that.

                I had these people around who had been flyers. My Uncle Ted, by the way, Ted Wyman, who later became assistant to Juan Trippe, the founder of Pan American Airways, had also been a navy flyer. That's the three of them there. And as a kid I used to sit around read stories about battle races and war races and those little pulp magazines about flying, so I made up my mind that's something I want to do. I had a flight, my first time in the air was at Newark Airport about 1928 or nine, and I remember the field being all dirt. And I think it was a Curtiss Robin, but I'm not sure. It was a little cabin airplane.

                We went up and flew around the field about 10 minutes and came back and landed, and I was surprised how noisy it was. I thought flying it'd be a buzzing, but no, it was rattling and noising like crazy. The next time I got into the air was at Thunderbird Field where I started my flight training.

  Brett Banky:       Where's that at?

  Wy Spalding: [00:18:00] Well, it's right near a little town called Glendale, which is Northwest of Phoenix. And this was Thunderbird No. 1, which was a wonderfully elite place. I went up there right after Pearl Harbor to start flying and they didn't have a uniform for me, so I started wearing my infantry uniform. And at that time, they had hazing in the air corps and, of course, I was a target. The upperclassmen all would jump on me because I looked strange. I was wearing the infantry blue and my cap and my uniform didn't look like theirs at all. And you weren't supposed to crack a smile when you're being hazed, but I spent a lot of time laughing and they found they just couldn't handle it. I mean, I could handle anything they could take.

                It was really wonderful. My first flight with my instructor was a very famous old pilot named C.M. Downs. And we went up and he showed me how to fly straight level, how to bank and turn, how to glide and climb, and after a while we had these [goss ports 00:18:52] where he could talk to me, but I couldn't talk back. I could nod my head. He was in the front cockpit, and I was behind with my goggles and helmet on. And he said in the goss port, he said, "It is kind of boring, isn't it? Do you mind if I do some of my own things?" And I nodded my head with a big smile.

                And the next thing everything turned loose, the sky was down there, and the earth was here, and everything was swirling around. And after a few moments we were straight and level again. And he looked... He had a little mirror, he looked up in the mirror and I was grinning. He said, "How's that?" I gave him a big nod again. When we got on the ground, I said, "Hey, what do you call that that you did up there?" And he said, "Well, I don't rightly know how to call it." He used to tell me that the way you keep the airplane straight and level, you watch the whole horizon... That's the way he talked, and "They don't rightly know how to call that. I guess you could call it a vertical/horizontal spin."

                You know, I've tried to do that since then and it takes a real good airplane, like the Stearman, to do it right. In the [Satabrio 00:20:04], which I flew aerobatics in for a number of years until recently, I couldn't quite get it as neat and as clean as he did it, but I know how.

  Brett Banky:       You enlisted right after the attack at Pearl Harbor then?

  Wy Spalding:     Before.

  Brett Banky:       Yeah. Before?

  Wy Spalding: [00:21:00] Yeah. Yeah. I signed up for air training in September 1941. And as soon as the draft officer in Berkeley, which was my residence at the time, found out about it, he called me in and he said, "Are you doing anything?" And I said, "No. As a matter of fact, I'm not working right now." And he said, "Well, we desperately need people in the army. Our draft quotas here are very difficult to fill because Berkeley is a town of little old ladies. Would you let us draft you?" And then I said a few things to him, one of them I said, "I'm not so sure that I want to be in the army shooting people because I can't shoot animals. I gave that up long ago. I hunted for a little while and it just turned my stomach. I decided I didn't like to do that. And if I had to hold a rifle and shoot someone-"

                And he said, "Well, think about it this way." He said, "If the other fellow has a rifle and he's got it pointed at you, and you've got a rifle, isn't it the guy who pulls the trigger first who survives?" And I said, " Yeah, I guess that's right." And right away I had a visual image in my mind of a soldier I had seen in Munich some years before when I was traveling as a schoolboy. He was an SS, one of the elite Hitler guys dressed in this black uniform with a stout helmet over his head and he was guarding the tomb of a German unknown soldier in a kind of alogia there, a place where... And it was dark, but I could see his eyes looking in my direction and that fella wanted to kill me; I could tell by the way he looked at me. And I realized he didn't have any respect for me or my life and what I learned about Nazism at the time.

                When the draft officer said this, I had this picture, "Well, yeah, I could shoot him." And I would, if I had to. That's how I got into the infantry training down at Camp Roberts. And from there, right after Pearl Harbor, the whole battalion was put on a train and sent down to Camp [Pon 00:22:44], which is on the south border of March Field. There were tent platforms down there and nothing else, but piles of tents and stuff alongside. We got in there 4 o'clock in the morning and they said, "Well, fellas, any of you know how to cook?" And three fellas step forward and, "You are the cooks then." And they sent them into the... I almost used the navy term the galley, because I've been in the navy too. And they got us some scrambled eggs and toast. And then we went up and pitched our tents. And I was there about three days, and somebody came running down, "Hey, Spalding, they got orders for you up at headquarters. You better clear out here."

                I picked up my stuff and went up there and they had me clear the post in one day and I was on a train to Phoenix that night. They really needed pilots then. The same situation was true here at Crissy Field. When I switched from the air force reserve into the army reserve, there was such a shortage of what we call army aviators, the pilots who fly the airplanes, that they were picking up people wherever they could. And that's one of the ways I got in.

  Brett Banky:       [00:24:00] When that happened, when the air force was created, but the army then still had pilots, then they were trying to get a lot of the pilots to change over then to this new air force?

  Wy Spalding: [00:24:30] This is a thing that I don't think the people in Washington even didn't understand what they said when they said this was a Unification Act. Actually, it was a separation act. It separated the fish from the foul. Now, in the number of airplanes that I've flown, I have a list there as you know, and I flew liaison airplanes, as well as the bigger, more powerful airplanes. Well, there was a kind of pilot called a liaison pilot who wore different wings from us guys who flew the more powerful airplanes. There was a little L in the shield instead of the United States standard shield emblem. And I had one of those pilots under me at Fresno when I was the acting operations officer there. Sergeant [Shaffer 00:25:10] had an L5, which he flew regularly there.

                Well, I flew the L5 too. I had him tell me how it worked, and I climbed in and took off and flew it. And I flew the L3 and the L6 there too. So, I flew the little, what we call puddle jumpers, while I was in the army air forces. But very few of the other pilots did. And it was those pilots that mainly stayed with the army because they were the observation plane pilots. Some of the people stayed but most of them went on to the air force because that was where we'll say real pilots went, right?

  Brett Banky:       That's what I was going to ask. Why was the air force created, and what did these pilots think about it transferring to it?

  Wy Spalding: [00:26:00] Well, it was natural for me because at the time when we were... We didn't even think of ourselves really as regular army people, we were air corps people. We had a specialty that the other guys couldn't do. Some of us, I think were pretty arrogant about it. I know that a lot of young men that became pilots became pretty insufferable because they thought they were such hot stuff. We used to call them HPs, hot pilots. And that was not my style, partly because I had been infantry and partly because I had been also in the naval reserve and had trained on a destroyer, on a cruise, in the Caribbean.

                I felt always very comfortable with enlisted men. I felt very comfortable with any kind of specialty that anybody had. And I found that a lot of times the people that were on my crew were so essential to my life that I really owed my life to them all the time. There was a Sergeant [Brunson 00:27:03] that took care of my A-25, the Helldiver I flew a lot when I was in Fresno. And he used to like to ride with me. And I loved that because that meant he had faith in not only in me as a pilot, but also in the airplane, which he had to keep in running order.

  Brett Banky: [00:27:30]  Now, there's a picture of you that you have standing in front of one of your planes in World War II. I'd like to put in with the records of this tape, what kind of plane was that?

  Wy Spalding:     I'll get a copy of that. And I think you'll notice when you see the airplane that the cowl was off of the right engine. It was a B-25 C Model, I think, which I was flying as the A flight commander in 48 Bomb Squadron and 41st Bomb Group Medium in Fresno.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. And what year was that picture taken?

  Wy Spalding:     [00:28:00] 1943, about I would think probably about May or June.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. Before we come back to Crissy Field are there anything else that you want to share or about your being a pilot up to when you started flying here and keep it within the time limit, we have?

  Wy Spalding: [00:28:30] I think what we should say very quickly is there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots. Now, I've taken some chances and I've made some mistakes and I'm here by the grace of God, I really am, because there are times when I could have lost it. Fortunately, I never did. I think, in my close to 3,000 hours, I've damaged maybe four or five airplanes and one helicopter, but never seriously. And no damage to any of the crews or people who're riding along with me or to myself.

  Brett Banky:       [00:29:00] All right. Back to the Presidio. In what capacity did you serve actually as a pilot then on the Presidio?

  Wy Spalding: [00:29:30] Well, I was kind of like the standby fellow who could do the weekend work or the night work when the other guys wanted to go home and have dinner with their wives. And so I did this whenever I could, but of course, being a teacher, a good part of the time that I was flying out of Crissy, I had problems, especially at night during the week, because I had papers to correct and work to study up so that I could stay ahead of my students in the classroom.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. When you were here with the 6th Flight Detachment, what kind of various flights or duties did you have?

  Wy Spalding: [00:30:00]               Actually, flying the airplane and it was the airplane for quite a while there. As I said, I had the L-19 that was all. We had one L-19 522, and I used to call that my airplane. What I do was sometimes they had parts to get, they needed parts for their maintenance over at Sharp Army Depot, and I'd fly over there and fly over to Stockton, up to Sacramento. At one time, there was a mission I had to... Would it be Port Hueneme or Point Mugu, Betty, the airfield? Isn't that Hueneme? Port Hueneme. I went down, that's quite a long flight from here down the other side of Oxnard in Southern California.

                And I took a Bird Dog down there with some radioactive stuff that they needed in the hospital down there that Letterman wanted to ship down there right away. And I was the only person around to do it, so I flew it down there. It was interesting coming back too. It was always interesting flying one of these observation planes into an operational base someplace, navy or army, wherever it was, because I was like a flea on the back of a wart hog. And it was on that particular flight when I took off, I took a direct route up over the coast, and up over Big Sur there was a big forest fire going that day. Well, it was nighttime when I was coming back, and I suddenly found myself flying through clouds of smoke which were coming in the cockpit, and it was making breathing a little difficult; made visibility absolutely nil.

                The L-19 was not an instrument airplane. I had a needle and ball and my air speed and altimeter, and that's all I was flying with for about 40, 45 minutes. I knew from my maps, from my charts, that I had enough altitude, but if anything went wrong, I was just in the soup. It was bad. I'd probably have headed out to sea because it had been maybe a little safer than landing in the mountains that I was covering there. But that was a bit scary.

  Brett Banky:       Well, your flight pattern, would that have taken you down over the Central Valley or the coastline?

  Wy Spalding:     Well, I could have gone on the Central Valley route but that would've been out of the way. The direct route is down over the coast and going straight down here towards Hueneme, it was over the Big Sur area. Santa Susanna Mountains? I think so. Yeah. I'm turning to Betty because she knows California better than I do because she's born here.

                Well, there were other times in the Bird Dog when I had some funny experiences. One time and this is the only time that I've ever had a problem with the crewing of the airplanes by the enlisted men in the workforce. Apparently, someone had overfilled my engine with oil. Now, it checked out pretty well at the end of the runway, so I started off the runway and I got pretty well down. It was too late to abort, or I'd have had to flip it over to stop it. And so, I just managed to stagger off the runway, head up over those barracks that we're thinking of taking out there at the end and about 50 feet over the water of the bay I did a very slow turn and came back around and landed.

                And when I taxied up and parked the airplane again, we got the cowling off and looked inside and the oil was just bubbling out of the filler cap. It had been overfilled and I don't know how much power I was able to get, but it was just barely enough to get that airplane in the air and keep it there. But the rest of the time, it was just wonderful. It was a nice airplane, and it was fun to fly.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. You mentioned to me before that one of your duties was it the air safety officer for this area?

  Wy Spalding: [00:35:00] Well, air safety was what I was doing down at Camp Roberts when the reserve units came down there. We had one little accident there. A fella tried to demonstrate a max takeoff, that's giving it full power and pulling up as high and as short as he could. And it was a very hot day and he just didn't have thick enough air to do that, so the airplane dropped out from under him and squashed into the ground and nosed up, and it didn't hurt him. I think it shook him up some but. But I was told by a Colonel that was the officer in command from 15th Corp, and he ranked me, of course, one rank being a full Colonel. He was a funny little guy.

  And he had left word with another Lieutenant Colonel that was down there with me, whose name I'll leave out of this. And this Lieutenant Colonel said, "The Colonel said you can't go down there." That was to the auxiliary field where this thing happened. And I said, " I'm sorry, that's my job. This is what I'm here to do. And if a Colonel said, I shouldn't do it, he somehow must have made a mistake, or you didn't hear him right." He said, "Oh yes I did." And I said, "Well, it comes down to this then. What is your date of rank?" I asked this fellow. Now that's real waving a red flag. He didn't like that at all. But of course, I had been a Lieutenant Colonel a good deal longer than he had even at that time. And so, I went out there and I checked over the airplane and it seemed to me that there was a possibility that he had his carburetor heat on when he took off. That would've cut down his power still more.

  And there are funny little errors that are sometimes made like that in a cockpit by well experienced, really good, experienced pilots. But it just happens that the head does a funny little glitch, but there was no way of proving it that that was so. I just noted it and I saw a situation so that if it were necessary for me to do the investigation, I could write it up. As it turned out, the active arming people came down and did the investigation. But it made some trouble with me with my superiors there.

  Brett Banky:       What kind of training did you receive while you were actually at Crissy Field to fly, and did you use a trainer or were you in various types of planes?

  Wy Spalding: [00:37:00] Well, there was the Link Trainer, which I wanted to mention too, because some people don't know that we had a thing in the army about 1959 or 60, called the Dear John letters, and a very good friend of mine up here at the transportation office, Dick Davis, Lieutenant Colonel, was one of the reserve officers on active duty at that office who got the Dear John letter. And he was offered the opportunity to take up... I think he was a Tech Sergeant he was offered in enlisted status, so he was to finish out his 20 years so that he could retire with a pension, and he did. And here was Dick, brilliant, brilliant fella, very interested in radios. He always had a little radio he was tinkering with when he wasn't busy at his desk and and building T-37 here.

  Dick worked the Link Trainer down there for a while. And I did some practice instrument flying with Dick. Then there was another fella, and I don't remember his name, but let's say his name was Goldsby. Actually, that was another man that I knew back east, but it was something like that. And this young man was very conscientious, and I put in a lot of hours under the hood in that little building next to the ready room, the little building down there, flight building headquarters. In this funny little thing, it's a little blue thing with little yellow wings on it and it's run by vacuum. And the famous Link who invented a lot of stuff for the air, designed this thing. And we get in that, and you put the hood over and start flying. It's got instruments up there.

  And then there's a little thing, I think they call it a crab, that runs on a chart on the desk and the fellow who's helping you, sitting there, enlisted man, he can talk to you on your phone and tell you what you're doing or tell you what you're not doing. Most of the time you just have to do it by guess, and by gosh, and by the chart that you have in your lap. And a thing happened with Goldsby. Somehow or rather the active army officers, one or the other, who was the leader at the time... I think it was Ben Collins who was a Captain when I first knew him, later became a Lieutenant Colonel when I last knew him.  But Captain Collins, I think, didn't like him and tried to get him court marshaled and transferred out. And since I thought Goldsby was a good man, and because I've always stood up for enlisted men, I went up to the hearing and I made statements which were in his favor. And I think this is one of the things that got me in trouble with the headquarters when they finally grounded me, was partly because I had stood up for enlisted men in this way. It turned out that Goldsby was transferred but he was not broken. They didn't take his rank away from him, the stripes, and that... Actually Ben Collins, I think, was a little more trouble than he was up the top side.

  Brett Banky:       [00:40:30] Okay. How much time would you have put in on the trainer or how often?

  Wy Spalding:     I have between 200 and 300 hours of link time?

  Brett Banky:       Was that average?

  Wy Spalding: [00:41:00] No. I've put in more link time than anybody else I think that I know.I always figured that this was not only the economical way to learn how to fly instruments, but also the safest way because you can't very well kill yourself flying Link Training. And it turned out this was one of the bones of contention when I was grounded that I had not renewed my instrument rating with the army. I had been an instrument examiner before that, but I just felt that I didn't want to be put in the position of a superior officer giving me an order that I had to fly in instrument conditions when I thought it was unsafe. Now, according to tradition, the pilot can say no, but according to actual facts and the real world, if you tell a superior officer, you won't do what he orders you to, he can get you court marshaled, or he can ruin your career in other ways.

   I think I'll put on record a thing that I knew when I was flying out of Crissy, and it's important I think that people realize that there are human beings doing this work and that some of them are good guys and some are bad guys. And some of the bad guys get pretty good rank by doing whatever they do probably a little better than anybody else. But sometimes they can make some terrible mistakes. There was a General [Frichie 00:42:09] who was the Commanding General of the Fort Ord, and he was supposed to meet an undersecretary of the army up here at the Presidio one afternoon. It was bad weather. His pilot was an ex-Marine. And I say this because I know that Marines are top discipline, perhaps even more so than some of us in the army and the air force, possibly even the navy. And they cracked up. Everybody in the aircraft were killed. They were killed by the pilot trying to thread the needle in a little cleft in the Berkeley Hills. As he came through it, he ran into a water tower. Now, he didn't have to be under the clouds at that point. If he had known this bay area as I know it, having flown here for all these years, he would've known that the most likely and best place to let down was over there what we call a Richmond Hole.    

  Because of the factories and stuff in Richmond, the heat rising makes a hole in the fog and so the cloud deck, and you can let down in there and then you can fly just over the water on the deck and come over to Crissy Field and land safely. But this fellow didn't do that. General Frichie had a reputation of telling his pilots what he wanted them to do, and this had to be an example of that. And it really bothers me that the airfield at Fort Ord is named for General Frichie.

  Brett Banky:       He was in the plane, General Fritchie?

  Wy Spalding: [00:44:00] Yeah. He didn't get to see the undersecretary, because I think probably his own fault. He got that airplane and all the people in it splattered. There've been other occasions like that, being an old accident investigator and a former commanding officer and all that, you see things happening and say, "Oh gosh, I wish I'd been there." There were a bunch of flying bananas, the H-21, that were supposed to go up to Fort Lewis from Fort Ord, and they had gotten up as far as Redding and they took off one morning into some bad weather over the Siskiyous, and they came down all over the landscape.

  There were a number of lives lost and all the aircraft were destroyed. And that was a case where I, "Oh gosh, I wish I'd been there." Because I would have told those guys, "Hold it, hold it." There was a sign on the inside of the ready room that at Crissy, which I loved. It said, right over the door as you're going out to get your airplane, it is far, far better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground. Good philosophy.

  Brett Banky:       It is. This side of the tape is going to end momentarily. So, I'm going to watch for that. Let's go onto the next question. You've already, I think probably mostly answered this, but what were your duties when you were on the Presidio and actually when you were on it or even when you were off of it in your military service capacity?

  Wy Spalding: [00:45:30] Well, since my military service was reserve, I was a member of the 6th Army Mobilization Group, a reserve unit which was an augmentation group in case of emergency for the headquarters of 6th Army. At first, I was simply a transportation officer and later I became the designee for the army aviation officer. In case he were killed or in case he needed augmentation in his office, I would be his support. And that was why I was shifted into that seat when it was vacant here for a few months in 1963. That meant a meeting a month. I sometimes organized some of the training. I got a group to go up to Travis Air Force Base, our group, the mobilization group, to take in some lectures and see the base and know some of the other military installations in this area was the purpose of that training session.

  Brett Banky: Any other duties you can remember and thought of?

  Wy Spalding: [00:47:00] Well, if we have time, I'd like to tell how I arranged that one. I flew up there in a Bird Dog. Travis has something like 20,000-foot runways and there were two C-5's shooting landings that day. And I could see them doing their base leg over Sacramento and coming on in, and I called the tower and I said, "Tower, this is Army 522. I observe your pattern here. It's left hand. And I also observed that if I follow the No. 1 airplane in the pattern right now, I will run out of gas. Would you let me come in at 500 feet and land according to my own style of pattern?" And they said, "Oh sure, Army 522."

  Part 2

  Wy Spalding:      The tower guys could see me coming straight at them and about at their level because I was letting down all this [inaudible 00:00:11]. Then I made a quick turn and sat down three point and rolled maybe a hundred feet. And when I turned and set my brakes and looked up the tower, they were all doubled up and laughing.

  Brett Banky:       [00:00:30] That's great. Okay. Let's move on to the next question. What kind of equipment did you use and what kind of planes did you fly at Crissy?

  Wy Spalding: [00:01:00] The Bird Dog I've just talked about. The Beaver was an interesting airplane. It's a De Haviland design, that's a Canadian group, and the airplane had put in a lot of service as bush pilot flying up in Canada and Alaska before the army adopted it. It's a wonderful short takeoff and landing airplane and seats about five people comfortably. Has a 450-horsepower engine and it bounces like crazy if you're not careful setting it down. I think I will tell this on Ben Collins. When I had checked out on this airplane back east, he felt that he had to check me out again, out here on the west coast, whether the air was different out here or not, I don't know. But anyway, Ben wanted to see if I could fly this thing. So he went over to Napa and he got into the pattern and came in for a landing and bounced at about 10 or 15 feet in the air. And I made a terrible mistake.

                I had this sense of humor that I can't keep down and this big mouth that I should keep shut, but I turned to Ben, and I said, "is that the way you want me to do it Ben?" After all I ranked him, but he did not like that. So, then he did another one. It was a pretty good one. And then I did one, it was a good one and we went home, and he was satisfied that I could fly the Beaver. I had an interesting flight in the Beaver, couple of interesting flights in the Beaver, actually. One of them was taking the parachute club over to camp parks and dropping them out so that they could skydive. And after, oh, I don't know, I guess I'd taken two or three or four trips up to drop them, I found that the engine wasn't checking out right. And so, I told the fellows as they'd gotten in already, I said, "sorry, guys, you're going to have to get out. I can't get you up to altitude in this airplane. But I think I can take off from here. I'll head for home now."

                And they'd come in a bus anyway, so they were going to go back by the bus. And I flew the Beaver back to Crissy. Wasn't working too good. I came in and landed it and I found out the next day that I'd lost a jug. One of my cylinders wasn't operating at all. What was it? Seven, I guess six of my cylinders were still there, so I had enough power. And it wasn't thrashing itself to death, but I just didn't get any power out of that other one, they had to replace the cylinder. Then there was another time, I was delighted when they asked me to do this because I had done coastal patrol in 1942 with Lockheed Hudsons out of Naval Air Station Alameda. And I was to go over there and get a briefing from some Navy flyers and then just fly up the central valley aways and back, so that they could track me in, I think it's an airplane called an A1.

                It's a big, propeller driven attack airplane. And they were testing out, I think it was called a red eye equipment. This was a night heat seeking visual thing. And so, I flew out there and this fellow was in back of me. I could see him some of the time, the rest of the time I couldn't see him. We came in back over Naval Air Station; I was going to land and see how things went. And in my exuberance of having been flying with some active people, and we were flying formation on the way back, I was leading him. So, I peeled off like I used to. I pulled the wheel back and turned it over like this, and I had never tried this in a Beaver before. It was at night over this Navy station, and I darn near pulled the wings off of that airplane. It just went whap, like that, because it had so much power of lift in those wings.

                My headset came off, some of the other stuff fell off, but apparently didn't do any damage. This was one of the times I had an enlisted man with me that testified against me when I was getting grounded. And he said he didn't think that I knew how to fly the airplane. Well, the trouble was, I knew how to fly fighters and bars. And that was one of the times when I lucked out. The airplane was another time, in a Beaver, right over Sausalito over here, I hit an air pocket and it was much stronger than that. It's a wonder the wings didn't come off from that. It's amazing what the air will do. A perfectly nice, clear day, few little clouds around, but right over Sausalito, just whap.

  Brett Banky:       Well, that's interesting. Let's follow up on that topic then. The weather and the flight conditions around Crissy Field, what were they like? What was the average in way and what unusual things had happened?

  Wy Spalding: [00:06:00] When you give the first briefing, the early briefing on the Crissy walks about how General Arnold chose that field, and I always think, when I tell him how difficult it was afterwards, am I really respecting General Arnold's good judgment as I should? You got to remember that, and you do, that Crissy was a lot longer when it was first established and the airplanes for the most part, were pretty short takeoff and landing airplane. DC4 was their main airplane and then later the 047, which I've flown. Another very nice, easy airplane that takes off short and lands slow. And so Crissy was pretty well adapted to the kind of flying they were doing then. But the flying after World War II, the Bird Dog was small, the Beaver was short takeoff and landing, but then we added the Beach Barron. A Beach Barron is a nice little airplane but it's twin engine and it takes a lot more runway to both land and take off than either of those other two. And I flew in that a lot as co-pilot with the guys when they had to have one with them.

                And we just barely skimmed the top of the trees, usually taking off to the Southwest in the picture I'm looking at on the wall right now. And you can see Doyle Drive coming up here. We would go through a notch, which you can just see between the trees there, where Lincoln comes up there through the Lincoln notch. And then we would be taking our wheels up after takeoff, and our wheels were fully retracted we'd almost roll on the toll plaza here, on the roofs. We were that close to the ground as we came off, noisy too. I'm sure that we scared the heck out of some of the people that were driving along there, but that was the way we had to do it. And it was tough, in all the time that I know, and I believe in the previous time and the years afterwards, I've talked to some people who operated, flew out of there, never bent an airplane. So I take great deal of pride in being one of the people who put in about five years without hurting an airplane out of this field.

                The problem being chiefly, wind and cloud cover. The winds can be very strong, and they get very gusty and very turbulent over this little patch of ground that we call Crissy Field. The main turbulence is the wind coming in the Golden Gate, which then eddies in circular pattern over the field as it pours into the bay area. And then there's a notch right here, there's wind coming through the notch, directly down the runway and that's breaking like waves into the turbulence of the eddy that comes in from the bay. And then occasionally there's another bunch of wind that comes in from the south. If you watch the windsock, you'll see this thing switching from this side to that side, dropping and then lifting up and then shuttering like this because the wind is so strong, then dropping a little bit. And that's the typical air that exists over Crissy Field on about 50 or 60% of all of our days. Then there's the fog. And the fog can really be difficult. Usually comes in at the end of the day.

                You'll see a horsetail, we call it, coming in over the bridge and swirling around over there towards Richmond during the afternoon. And then all of a sudden it starts to pour up over Fort Scott and down on to Crissy Field. Well, many times I'd come in late in the afternoon and I would be able to get under that layer of fog over the marina green, it would be about a hundred feet off the ground, and I'd be letting down with a fog right over the canopy all the way until I could touch down on Crissy. Now, if you're going to have to go around, if you make a mistake and go around, you're going to have to go right up into the fog. And there's the Golden Gate Bridge with its towers in your way. You don't want to run into those. Then there's something else too. If it rains, Crissy was a swamp originally, and so big puddles. That can be very troublesome, both on takeoff and landing. So, I was in a tough field operate out of.

  Brett Banky:       I wonder, what conditions were you not allowed to fly? There's storms coming regularly in the wintertime, there's sometimes extra thick fog in the summer.

  Wy Spalding: [00:11:00] When the field was underwater you couldn't fly. The rest of the time, most of the pilots were instrument qualified and they would just take right on off, up into the fog. If the fog was right down on ground level, which was very seldom, then you might not be able to take off because you have to have at least a half mile visibility with most people's instrument qualification.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. The current windsock down there is in front of Harmon Hall out where the old field was. Was there one or more windsocks when you were flying and where were they?

  Wy Spalding:      [00:11:30] I don't remember that. Now we're talking about Crissy, let me tell you something else, and I'll show you this little chart that I've got here. There's some buildings that aren't there anymore. And this was one of the difficult things. Most of our landings are made toward the Southwest on runway 24. So there used to be barracks right up practically to the edge of the field-

  Brett Banky:       The east end to the field?

  Wy Spalding: [00:12:00] Yeah, the east end of the field. And I'd have to [inaudible 00:11:55] and roll my wheels on the Barrack roof in order to get low enough. But the wind is coming up this way and it would hit the end of the barracks and go straight up and force you, what you call balloon, in your airplane. Now, if you set your nose down, you're going to pick up air speed. Extra air speed is going to make you glide farther. So, if you want to get in, you may have to slip the airplane sideways down like this to get back down the runway to have plenty of runway so that you don't run out of runway before you come to a stop. And then over here, alongside of the very end of the east end of the field, there was a funny little hangar building, I never know what it was used for. I never found out.

                But it had pilots’ wings made out of wood, about three or four feet wide, stuck up over the door. And the army tore that down, oh, several years ago. That's been gone a long time. Then there was a little building over here where the trail marker is on the north side of the east end. And that was the helicopter hanger. We had some H23's there that I flew. And there was just room to put one of them in this little part here and then there was a little office space in here where the crews could sit and have coffee or do whatever they had to do with paperwork and stuff.

  Brett Banky:       That was on the water side of the air strip.

  Wy Spalding:      On the water side of the air strip, yeah. Now that's been gone a number of years too. But that stayed a lot longer than either the barracks here or this little building here. That must have been quite an old one. It was a little shack kind of thing, but I don't remember seeing it in any of our early pictures.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. And the radio tower, where was that located?

  Wy Spalding: [00:14:30] Well, now our control tower was right about here, just a little bit beyond the middle of the field and close to where those, are they fuel tanks that are in there now? And then there was a motor pool, started right there. And that whole complex has been torn down too. By the way, there was a pretty good size, it looked like a hangar, that we were using for our motor pool maintenance work in those days. Because this hangar now that's being used for the motor pool is our maintenance hangar for the six-army flight detachment. That's over in here.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. Further to the west.

  Wy Spalding:      Yeah. Farther to the west.

  Brett Banky:       All right. Totally different type of question. When you were serving here as a pilot, where did you live on the base or off?

  Wy Spalding: [00:15:00]               Well, I was serving as a reservist you remember, and so I came in from the outside. I was a civilian with the second job, let's say, of being a part-time army officer and aviator. I lived on Chestnut Street in North Beach between Powell and Mason Street. And the little home there of several apartments or flats, owned by the Demato family. The Dematos are Sicilians who are great fishermen. And Frank is still running his father's fishing boat, the Leonilda, out of fisherman's war. Because I spoke some Italian, she was able to take me in, she didn't speak English. And I was very pleased to be with my Italian people again, as I had for many years before.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. A repeat question, but how long were you here at the Presidio?

  Wy Spalding: [00:16:00] The first time I can remember coming to the Presidio was in 1944. My former bombardier, Eddie Phisinger, who had been an arranger with Gus Arnheim and one other big band, before the war, went out as the bombardier officer, the 48-bomb squadron, when they left me behind as being surplus to their needs and went into the mid Pacific in the seventh air force and fought the Japanese out there. Eddie, because he wanted to get home in a hurry to his lovely wife Patty, ranked another bombardier officer out of a job in the lead airplane on the second mission. And they were, at that time, trying to fly on the deck coming in at low level, to bomb and [inaudible 00:16:56] the Japanese position. And I think it was Milly, but I'm not sure, it might have been Macon Island.

                The Japanese did what was a sensible thing to do, they just ducked down and kept themselves safe while 75-millimeter cannons fired at them of the B25G's coming in and waited until the bombs burst and then jumped up and fired at the formation retreating away and shot the heck out of them. Part of the airplane hit Eddie in the left arm, wounded in there and part of the shell that was fired at them, hit his left leg and took off the lower part of it. So, he came home right away, as soon as they could patch him up with a little stay in the general hospital in Hawaii. And so here he was in San Francisco, back from the war and it was Easter. So, I got some eggs and colored them up and I got my B25 and flew up here and went down the wards that are no longer there, behind the old Letterman hospital, wood buildings. And I found Eddie and he was asleep. So, I thought, "shall I wake him up? Oh sure, what the heck."

                I shook his shoulder, and he woke up and I thought I was going to cheer him up with the eggs and everything. He cheered me up. It was the most wonderful thing. He was so happy to be home and alive and he was going to see Patty pretty soon and everything. And he told me he had never been a drinking man before and apparently the nurses in Hawaii had smuggled some whiskey in and everybody got pretty well smashed, and he was in a wheelchair and he was playing choo-choo up and down the aisles of the ward. This was my favorite fella and buddy in the old days in World War II.

  Brett Banky:       Can you remember your last flight out of Crissy Field, when it was?

  Wy Spalding: [00:19:30] Yeah, it was an interesting one. There had been very heavy rains in December of 1964 and the Eel River had gone over its banks and caused a lot of trouble up north. And the army was helping with relief work up there. So, I flew in in an Otter, that's a heavier airplane than the Beaver, up to Milnerville, which was a place where they were directing all this rescue work. I saw one of my friends up there and he was flying a Huey up and down the river, picking people up that were stranded, no food, no water, no heat, no nothing. And he told me the weather up there was so darn rough that he lost his cookies. He puked and he had to get out in the aircraft when he flipped the people in it and it just shook him up completely.

                Unusual for a fellow who's a pilot to do that and then also to admit that he'd done it, but it was just awful rough flying up there. I remember a little woman coming into the place where they were running the rescue. And all that she had in the world was in little shoebox. That was her total possessions. She was wearing little low sneakers and they were soaking wet because she'd had to wade out to the chopper to get there and everything. It was really, really sad.

  Brett Banky:       So, what were you doing flying out there?

  Wy Spalding: [00:21:00]               Well, they had a Bird Dog that they wanted brought back that had been working in this thing. I don't know if it was 522 or not, but anyway, it was in Ukiah. So, they dropped me off in Ukiah and put me in a Bird Dog and they hadn't let me have an airplane for several months. Ben had just refused to let me fly. And this is why I didn't make my semi-annual minimums that six months and why I had to be put through a flying evaluation board. But in any case, I flew the Bird Dog back. This was New Year's Eve, December 31st. And it was growing dark.

                And Ben met me and said, "well, if you need more time, you can take this airplane up and fly." And I said, "Ben, it doesn't have enough fuel to fly anymore. I've exhausted all the fuel. And I don't want to ask these enlisted men to stay here on New Year's Eve and wait for me to come in after a couple of hours of flying time, that'll spoil their evening. I'd rather take my chances with the flying evaluation board." And so, I left the airplane left field, and that was the last time I flew out into Crissy.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. What was the Presidio like then versus today? How has it changed?

  Wy Spalding: [00:22:30] One of the things that catches my eye is a change in uniform. We used to wear class A uniform all the time in the Presidio. And now they're wearing BTUs everywhere. It looks to me like a bunch of hunters out looking for game and it really looks strange to me. I guess, because I'm old army, I think of army as being a little spit and Polish. Not that I was ever great on that, but I always kept up my appearance and felt that was what you'd just do because you had standards, because you had a feeling of respect for the uniform and for your job.

  Brett Banky:       Mm-hmm. Okay. What unit were you in and how many men served here in your flight detachment?

  Wy Spalding: [00:23:30]               My unit was the six-army mobilization group, so that I was attached to or detached to the flight detachment for training. They were criticized by the way, when I went through my first flying evaluation board, for not giving me enough training. And I just never demanded it, but they never offered it either. So that was my unit. It caused a little trouble for me because it was not a TONE, what we call an active army group that had the right to draw weapons and other equipment. So, then I got my flying helmet and my other gear that I flew in, although by regulation, I was supposed to wear it when I flew. I got it from some nice guys down at Fort Ord that were about to go overseas to Vietnam. And they said Hey, come on down, help yourself. Everything that we have will go on reporter survey when we get over there because we're in combat.

                So that's how I got it. The flight detachment was an activity that was under the command of the army aviation officer in the same way that in the motor pool, we had a VIP motor section, that a Sergeant Cook, was a good friend of mine, Master Sergeant Cook, interesting person. He would be in charge of enlisted men that would drive the generals or any VIP's that came from the airport or wherever they had to go downtown for business or whatever. So, the flight detachment was, in a way, a flying motor pool for the commanding general here.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. How many planes and how many men were assigned here when you were here?

  Wy Spalding: [00:25:30] I never bothered to look at the roster. I would say there were generally about half a dozen to a dozen pilots, depending upon their availability. And they never stayed for very long because there was such a need for them, and Vietnam was getting warmed up about that time. The enlisted manly the mechanics, I suppose there must have been about two dozen or three dozen of them. Because there was one Bird Dog, there were two or three Beavers, there were about... Well, most of the time when I first started, there was only one or two of what we called the L23 at that time, which later became the U8, the Beach Barron and then they had a queen and eventually a king air. And now they have an even bigger beach that they fly out of Hamilton Field. Because the army left Crissy deactivated in 1974 in July and they've been at Hamilton Field ever since.

  Brett Banky:       Did any of the officers, the pilots, live in what are called the pilot's houses right along Lincoln Boulevard above there?

  Wy Spalding:      I don't know.

  Brett Banky:       Any of the listed men live in that three story, the bigger building that's down there, the Berry?

  Wy Spalding: [00:27:30] No, because that had become the reserve headquarters for the 15th core. And so, it was full of offices and stuff and that's where I used to go and see my records when they had them there. When they transferred my records, as they did about 1962, I think, they transferred them to St. Louis, to the army reserve center there, that really made trouble for me because I couldn't check on my records anymore. They were too far away. And I couldn't afford telephone calls to the people.

  Brett Banky:       Where were the planes kept? Were they in hangers or were they tethered outside the ground?

  Wy Spalding: [00:28:00] They were mostly tied down in the parking area, just inside the fence, the concrete area which was off to the side of a macadam flight strip and was on the land side of the strip. Except for the helicopters that were usually over here by this little building over here at the east end of the field. Now we have the heliport over here and I don't know when they activated that. I don't remember using that before. I remember taking off from the east end of the field in a chopper when I operated choppers for a little bit here.

  Brett Banky: [00:28:30]  Okay. When large storms came up, I've seen a picture of buses actually parked right around some of the smaller planes. Did you ever see anything like that? Big windstorms when you came up?

  Wy Spalding:      Good idea. Yeah.

  Brett Banky:       We do have a photo showing that-

  Wy Spalding:      Be a good idea to get some rope and tie the airplanes through the buses.

  Brett Banky:       But were you aware of any or what big storms came up, that they would do anything like that?

  Wy Spalding:      No, I never got into that.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. What was your social life here? Did you enjoy the officers club or other facilities here?

  Wy Spalding: [00:29:00] Not a whole lot. There were times when there were things that happened. I one time fix up the officer's club as a... The entrance was to be like the rear end of a caboose, a freight train. And this is when I was working in the office, down at the transportation officer's office. And I went down to Southern Pacific yards down in South City and they gave me anything I wanted. So I got a bunch of the rails and the lamps and stuff like that and reconstructed this thing. So the national defense transportation association, NDTA, were having a convention here. There were truckers and railroad people and airline people, air freight people, that were all shipping stuff for the army. And the army was the main shipper for the Navy and the air force too at that time. So I did that up there.

                But I didn't use the officers club very much because I was too busy with my school teaching. I think this is a mistake too, in army career. If I had played my cards differently, I would've learned to play golf much earlier and played golf with a commanding general and some of the other people and drunk with the guys at the officer’s club and gone to the dances. My then wife was not at all interested in any of this sort of thing. So that was part of it. I was a family man and I stayed home. And some of the other aviators were like that too. But it's not a way to get ahead in any organization and the army is just like a corporation or anything else, it's run by people.

  Brett Banky:       Were there any special events you remember happening at Crissy Field?

  Wy Spalding: [00:31:00] Oh yeah. And I hope that we can do this again too. We had a [foreign language 00:30:51] of automobiles down there one time. We closed the field and had all these marvelous old automobiles. And there were so many from the clubs around here that they took all the parade ground too. And they had some of these beautiful old Marmons and Duesenbergs and things, all over the place. It was great.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. I read in early days like the 1920s, that a Christmas Santa Claus would fly on a plane and get out of Crissy Field and the kids got to meet him. Anything like that ever happen around Christmas here.

  Wy Spalding:  [00:31:30]              No. Well, I don't know. Maybe. But I was having Christmas at home. And like I say, I wasn't socializing very much with the guys. We flew together but that was about it for me.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. Were there any special air events that took place here? Any special planes that flew in?

  Wy Spalding:      No. It was unusual that we would see anything but our own airplanes in here.

  Brett Banky:       Mm-hmm. Okay. What was your average workday or hours like when you were here then at the field? What was the routine you would go through to check in and get your plane ready and take off?

  Wy Spalding:      [00:32:00] I didn't spend much time in the ready room, all I had to do was file a flight plan. So, if I was going cross country I would file a flight plan and the Sergeant behind the desk would file it for me with ACT and I'd walk out the airplane and go. And when I came back, I'd put my coveralls and helmet and stuff in the locker and go home.

  Brett Banky:       [00:32:30] You told me once about flying a helicopter and landing it over the Marin Headlands. Did you tell me that story?

  Wy Spalding: [00:33:00] Oh yes. Chopper flying. Somebody once said that flying a Hiller, that's a chopper we had, it's a two or three place little helicopter, was like a monkey on a string. You have to be in control all the time because the thing would get away from you. Well, I hadn't been flying the helicopter very much. I'd just come out of school and then I grounded them for six months then I flew a few hours at Crissy, at Falker Field, at Fort Eustis in Virginia, and busted one there. And then I came back here. And it was either the first day or the second day that I'd gotten into a chopper here at Crissy Field, the Sergeant came out and helped me start it. And I was pretty rusty on this thing. So, I was just doing pattern, flying around, pretending to come down to a hover and then taking off again. And the tower called me and said, there's a Colonel up at Fort Scott that would like to go up out to one of the Nike sites out here. Could you take him? I said, sure.

                So, he'll be waiting for you, coming out of his office up in the parade ground at Fort Scott. So, I flew up to Fort Scott and did an approach and came down to a hover and looked all around, there was nobody in sight. So, I hovered around a little bit more and a little bit more. All this is flying and its familiarization, you might say and so on. Nice grass up there, very pretty field. And then finally nobody came so I sat her down and let the rotor blade idle for about five or 10 minutes and nothing happened. All of a sudden, I saw this man coming way over the far side of the Prairie ground. So, I revved it up, got up to a hover and it's called taxing, but it's actually hovering, over to where he was and sat down again. And it was my Colonel, all right. So, I opened the door and let him in. I had unstrapped myself to help him into the helicopter and got him strapped in and got everything going.

                And I, for a moment, forgot one of the things that I should do, which is to strap myself into the chopper. Advanced the throttle and took off. "Where do you want to go Colonel? Top of Mount Tamalpais. Mount Tam. Oh, Mount Tamalpais. Now I had been aware of an accident that had taken place over at Angel Island. A chopper just like this had gone over there and was coming back and hit a seagull and went in and the pilot was lost. The passenger managed to get out of the chopper and survive, but the pilot and the helicopter disappeared through the Golden Gate. And it's out there in the sand somewhere, about 200 feet deep. But anyway, that went through my head, and I thought, wait a minute, I'm going up to the top of a mountain and there's all this stuff in between. Oh, maybe I better tie myself into this thing. So, I was right over the Golden Gate, and I put the cyclic between my knees so it wouldn't flop around too much, and I grabbed my belt and put it in.

                Of course, when I did that, the chopper was on air, and it did this monkey on string thing. And I saw the Colonel pass me a look and I said, "oh, it's all right, Colonel. We got it all right." And so, we flew on up to the top of the mountain and I looked around, I'd never been up there before. And I saw a white H drawn on the parking lot, right next to the headquarters building up there on the top of Mount Tam. And all around that area, there was a little parking space there and some cars there and stuff, all around that area was a wick wire fence with barbed wire on top of it and a few power lines and things around. Like boy, this is going to be a tricky little approach getting in here. So, I did a max approach and came in and landed. Set it down, let Colonel out. He said, "you want to come in for coffee?" No thanks sir, I said.

                And one of the main reasons I didn't want to do that was I'd have to shut the chopper down and I wasn't sure without the help of an enlisted band to get me started again, if I could start it again. So, no thanks sir, it's all right. I'll go on my way. And then of course, it's a max takeoff to get back out of this thing because of of the water right there. Fortunately, the wind was pretty nice and helped me out. And I went back and parked the airplane at Crissy. Went in the ready room to put my stuff away. And the Sergeant said Hey, you've been up to top of Mount Tam, have you? I said, yeah. Was it difficult up there? I said yeah, that's a heck of a place to land there's fence all the way around the thing. And he said, what? He said, we don't land there. I said, you don’t. Oh no, there's a helipad down below that building in the open that you can get into easy.   Apparently, I had gone into a place that even the regular guys didn't go into. So, I that's just one of the stories.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. We did that one. We've covered this one too, but what were some of the serious elements of your job, either specifically for you or in general as a pilot here at Crissy Field?

  Wy Spalding: [00:38:30] Well, I've always felt if you're the pilot in command, you have a great responsibility, first of all to taxpayers of the country, to bring that flying machine back on the ground safely and use it in such a way that you don't bring discredit either on yourself or on your service. And even more important to that are the people that you take with you. And a lot of our flying here out of Crissy was taking people who had business in various places like Camp Roberts or Fort Ord or wherever. And there was one time I had a Colonel to take down to Camp Roberts and the weather wasn't good and I wasn't instrument qualified. Now I could have flown instruments probably safely, but I didn't want to take a chance of doing it without the qualification, the okay of my bosses. And so I found that I couldn't get through at a certain point.

                I was up over the Hills near Salinas, trying to get under the clouds. And I went into one little valley and had to turnaround come back out because it was no way out through the far end. And I felt that on that occasion, although I've flown a lot of different kinds of airplanes, I've had no combat experience, but I've flown a lot of combat type airplanes and fighters that I'm pretty good at maneuvering airplanes and that I didn't really risk that man's neck. But I apologized to him when I got him down to Camp Roberts. I went back up and flew over the top and came down to Camp Roberts. I said, I really did stick our necks out a little bit back there and I won't apologize to you. And I don't think he understood what I said, and I believe it probably would've been better if I hadn't said anything. But I do believe in being open and direct with anybody. But yes, in the job of flying, it's a big responsibility.

                I've known of things dropping out of airplanes. We had a thing on our B25's and some of the other airplanes during War II for our long-distance antenna. We would let an antenna wire out behind our airplane, reel it out about 150 feet and at the end of that thing was a lead weight, about three and a half to four inches long and teardrop shaped. I had one of those things brought into my office one day. Somebody in town had had it go through his roof and this is kind of thing... I thought about it immediately afterwards. I don't know if I've ever flown over a populated area with that thing sticking out there, but it could break off. And if it does, it's a lethal weapon. And so don't do it. In war time, you would take chances that you wouldn't take in peace time. Don't do it.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. How did you feel about your job as a pilot here?

  Wy Spalding: [00:42:00] One of the main things that I thought was, how wonderful. Here I have at my beck and call, 10 minutes from my house, an airfield and I can go out there and jump in an airplane and fly. Whereas if the rest of the people in San Francisco who like to fly I have to go all the way down to San Carlos or up to Napa or Oakland, the [inaudible 00:42:17] field at Oakland. Westfield or whatever they call it. Northfield, I guess. They have a lot of work to do before they get the air. Whereas I was privileged.

  Brett Banky:       [00:42:30] Okay. Was this good duty for you?

  Wy Spalding:      Always. I love flying and it was just like breathing. I don't want to stop breathing, I don't want to stop flying. So, I'm giving it back to [inaudible 00:42:48].

  Brett Banky:       Do you remember what the chain of command was here at the Presidio?

  Wy Spalding: [00:43:00] It was very interesting. That's an interesting question. The post commander, when I was here flying, was the post commander and he actually commanded the post and the commanding general, although the post was one of his installations, he was actually a guest in his own home because of... That has all been changed now. The commanding general has now literally become the commander of the post, as I understand.

  Brett Banky:       Mm-hmm. Okay. Do you remember any names, who was the top general here then?

  Wy Spalding: [00:43:30] Well, I was going to mention one. John Cook, you remember I said was the VIP section of the motor pool. The non-com in charge. John had something like two or three dozen pieces of shrapnel in his body he carried around with him. He'd been very severely wounded, and he was a wonderful young man. And apparently, I think an orphan. General Wyman adopted him as his own son. And I thought that was a beautiful thing for the commanding general to take an interest in one of the enlisted men in his command to that extent. And John, by the way, did a nice thing for me. He went over to Benicio one day and they were selling some surplus and he had a couple of swords. He paid 50 cents apiece for these musician swords of the civil war period and he gave me one. And the interesting thing is that it was put together in a strange way, been altered in such a way that made it different from any other that I had seen. And I'm quite certain that this is a California national guard sword.

  Brett Banky:       Oh, that's great.

  Wy Spalding:      I still have it in my collection.

  Brett Banky: [00:45:00]  Okay. This tape is going to end shortly, but I have another one I think I want to put in, because I have a few more questions to ask. Actually, maybe it's so close I'm going to turn it off for a moment, change tapes.

  Part 3

  Brett Banky:       Where'd you go after you left for the Presidio? Did you continue to be a pilot?

  Wy Spalding: [00:00:20]               Yeah, I found that I was just uncomfortable living without flying. So, I managed to fly a little bit with the [inaudible 00:00:25] group up at Gnoss Field in Marin County. And then I got a little time at Halfmoon Bay with an operation down there. The FBO was rather nasty to me one day, because he thought I was idling my engine too fast. And I was idling at a thousand RPM, which is what I was used to doing in the military. And the way he addressed me turned me off real bad. He was very rude, and I figured, "Look, I'm paying for this thing, and I'm doing it for pleasure. So, I'm not going to fly with his airplanes anymore."

                And shortly after that, I went to a flight instructor's refresher course down the peninsula here given by the FAA, and looked around to see who I could find would be a good flight instructor to bring me back up to par as a pilot. And I spotted Amelia Reed. Amelia's one of the most famous women flyers in California. And she has an operation at Reid-Hillview Airport down in San Jose. So, I started flying with her.

                At first, I was going to be an instructor pilot. I thought I would probably, when I retired, I'd go someplace like Lake Havasu. And we got a little airfield there, and I'd buy myself a Stearman, and I'd give lessons to little old ladies, and have a lot of fun in the air and on the ground. And well... No, that's that's nonsense. But the idea was I would, I would go into the wild blue yonder and the sunset simultaneously.

                And I was working hard at, at this instructor thing. And I realized it was going to take quite a bit of time for me to come up to the point where I would be ready for it. I was also reading the FAA regulations, the forest, we call them. And I discovered that in order to keep my qualifications instructor, I had to fly a lot of instruments every year, keep up my instrument rating, and had to be responsible for the safety of the flying that was done by my students. And it was starting to get to this point where the legal side of flying is now just about killing off a lot of general aviation people that fly.

                I went down to Watsonville to see the air show there, and the Amelia was doing some aerobatics. And the next time I went down for a lesson, I said to Amelia, "Look, Amelia, I decided I don't want to be an instructor anymore. I want to do what you did at the airshow. How about that?" And she said, "Well, it'll take a little more time, Wy, and it's a little more expensive. I have to charge a little more for aerobatics."

                Now there was another reason why I made this decision. We were rolling out in a Citabria. This is a Bellanca airplane, little high-wing airplane, and the aerobatic airplane. I was revving up the engine, preparatory to take off. And I was checking out my instruments, and Amelia said something, "Oh my gosh." And I looked up, and here was a little Cessna 150 on its back out in the front, just off the side of the runway. And what had happened was the airplane had tried to take off, had gotten off to the edge, and had run into... Or maybe it was landing, I don't know.

                Anyway, it had hit the VASI light, which is what the FAA puts in to help pilots make their final approach. At the right angle it's got a white light up high, and a red light down below, and a green light in between. And if you're on a right angle and you see this well, you know, an airfield's supposed to be a safe place to put an airplane, right? But then you put these hazards up there, it's apt to make trouble. Sure enough, it tripped this little airplane up and totaled it. The young man that was flying it wasn't hurt, except he got it a little shook up because he loosened his seatbelt, and he was upside down, and he bumped his head a little bit. When he discovered that he was upside down, the only way to go down was up, as far as his head was concerned.

                Anyway, we looked over, and here was the instructor standing over by the hanger. This poor guy, that was his first time-

  Brett Banky:       No.

  Wy Spalding:      [00:05:00]... he'd let that student out alone in the airplane. And this told me something, I didn't want to ever be in that position. So the heck with it. I loved flying, I had a very good time. I didn't want to spoil it. It's got to be the love of my life. Okay, next to you, babe.

  Brett Banky:       Story, I wanted you to tell, I just remembered, flying conditions coming into Crissy Field. You encountered some kites occasionally, didn't you?

  Wy Spalding: [00:06:00] Oh my gosh. You know the Marina Green, which actually was an airfield too, in the very, very early days, has become a kite heaven. People go down there and fly kites, we saw kite just the other day, and sometimes there's a mess of them up there. Well, it's right on the final approach for runway two four at Crissy Field. And so, it got tricky. Sometimes you'd be dodging these kites. You'd be coming in weaving and... Or if you had to go higher, that meant a very steep approach, and probably a slip, or a different kind of final just before you touch down. Damn difficult.

  Brett Banky:       Didn't they make you come in even higher? Then you were worried about those barracks in the ballooning of the air too.

  Wy Spalding:  [00:06:30]              Well, that... You'd do it if you could, but now with the UA... No, any of them, well you'd want to get as close to the ground as you could, on a good approach angle. And if you get a balloon, heck all right, balloon, but get her back down again. I fought many a time. I fought a beaver down in the ground, having gotten a balloon out of that hangar, out of that barracks.

  Brett Banky:       And what was the danger of the kites to the pilots?

  Wy Spalding: [00:07:00] Well, if it's the string... Mainly if the string gets wound around the prop, it can seize up, or start a fire or something, if that stuff gets into the intake. And you could lose power, or possibly be on fire when you hit the ground. So, it's a little bit dangerous.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. What would you like people in the future to know about what you, or your unit, did at the Presidio in those days?

  Wy Spalding: [00:07:30] I'd like them, first of all, to know that we didn't dent an airplane. That we did our job, and we didn't cost a taxpayer a penny in repairs. And that everybody was safe flying with the people that I was flying with.

                Now, there was one time for instance, that sticks in my memory. I've forgotten the pilot's name, but I flew with him sometime afterwards. And in fact, I think he was the pilot in my last flight up to Rohnerville. That man, I don't think was ever comfortable in an airplane again. He was coming back I guess from Fort Lewis one time, and over the [inaudible 00:07:59] was coming back into California. There was a downdraft that took him down 10,000 feet, in a U-8. When he hit the bottom of it, the airplane bent in the middle. The nose went up, and the tail went up, and then it snapped the other way. And when it snapped the other way, it snapped his antenna and it broke the seat, the co-pilot seat, right out of the floor. There were pop rivets all over that airplane.

                Now he was lucky to get back alive. But he was flying in air. Now air could do that to you. So it scared him. And I think... I don't know if he ever took up flying after he got out of the army.

  Brett Banky:       Okay.

  Wy Spalding: [00:09:00] I want to tell you some fun things I like to do. I found out for instance that early, when I first started flying, that it was kind of fun flying up over the city, and over SFO, and down the bay and everything. And then the Navy was flying jet fighters out of Moffitt at that time. And I discovered those guys would come in off of missions out here over the sea. And they would hop up over the hills, and then come down to the deck again, screaming about 600 miles an hour. Well, if I was in their way, they couldn't avoid me. And I sure as heck couldn't avoid them.

                So, I decided that this was an unprofitable way to make your way down to Fort Ord. The best way would be to go down the coastline, fly 75 feet off the water, parallel to highway one. And those guys in the jets, because they're going so fast, they have to start rising before they get to the coastline. So they'll be going over your head. They can't possibly, if they run into you, they're going to run into the hill too. So that was safe, that was the safe air, was down there next to the water. If I had an emergency landing, it'd be tough. I'd have to land in the water, or maybe on the highway. Whatever.

  Brett Banky:       Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Wy Spalding: [00:10:30] But there's some lovely sights, particularly down there at the very point before Monterey Bay starts, is [inaudible 00:10:08], that island. And there are a bunch of great big elephant seals on there. And at first it was okay to fly over there, now it's restricted area. But always, because I didn't want to disturb the animals, I would just glide over with my engine completely throttle down so I wouldn't make any noise. And you watch those big bruisers down there, playing around and fighting, and going in and out of the old light housekeeper's house and stuff. It's their house. Have you been down there?

  Brett Banky:       Yeah, I have.

  Wy Spalding:      Isn't that a sight?

  Brett Banky:       Yeah, it is.

  Wy Spalding:      Can you imagine it from the air, when you're right in close like that. That was great.

                One day, I landed at Fort Ord, and they said, "Hey, did you see the sharks?" And I said, "No." "Well, yesterday, you should have seen them yesterday. There were about 200 sharks, all stretched along that beach there in the surf." Just sort of basking in the surf. Whether they're basking sharks or not, I don't know, but they're big fellas. Because when I took off, I was flying chopper that day, I went down and checked it out and they were in groups of twos, and threes, and five like that. Twenty feet long, big sharks.

  Brett Banky:       Wow.

  Wy Spalding: [00:11:30] And they were right in the waves. Right there, close to the beach. They were having a convention. You know, why? Hell, I mean, people are researching on sharks. I had a terrible thought. I thought, "You know, these are bad animals." That's what I thought at that time. "Why don't we take some surplus bombs, and bomb them?" It'd be so easy, just, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Drop few frag bombs in there, and there'd be a lot of shark meat on the beach.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. Let's see-

  Wy Spalding:      One more thing.

  Brett Banky:       All right.

  Wy Spalding: [00:12:00]               I was flying in a H23 at Hunter Liggett. A hiller killer, as they used to call them. And there was a practice area, there was the H drawn on the ground and everything. "Hey, this is fine." Now it was the summertime, so we didn't have any doors in the chopper. We were flying in the open air. And I went down to this H like that and started hovering. All of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Somebody had run some cattle in there, and there was cow flop all over the place. And what a chopper does, it puts down a big blanket of air, which then circulates up and comes down through the top again.

  Brett Banky:       Oh. Oh, yuck.

  Wy Spalding:      And I tell you, I couldn't get out of there soon enough. I couldn't. I was covered with it; the whole chopper was covered with it.

  Brett Banky:       Oh, yikes.

  Wy Spalding:      Awful. I felt so sorry for the poor men that had to clean that thing up.

  Brett Banky:       Anything else in your list you want to cover here?

  Wy Spalding:      [00:13:00] I think I've got everything. Yeah. I got Dick Davis. Now, Tim.

                Oh, I want to tell two stories that... You know, you can't help but pick up some stories from the other guys. It's called hangar flying, that pilots do. And I heard two Vietnam stories that I think are kind of interesting. One of the pilots had that I knew there for a while, I've forgotten his name, and I were standing around the dispatch desk, and he was telling me how it was. And he said, he came back from mission and his Huey, and his crew chief took a look at his chopper and said, "Hey, you've been landing around pongo sticks again?" He said, "No, I haven't." "Well, look, you got a stick sticking into your chopper, you must have been." "No, no, I haven't been anywhere near a pongo sticks today." You know what they are there, they're those bamboo-

  Brett Banky:       Punji.

  Wy Spalding: [00:14:00] Bamboo... Punji sticks, right. And they went out and looked at the chopper a little closer. You know what it was? It was an arrow. Some Kong had actually shot that chopper with an arrow. And when they pulled it out, it had come that close. Now what I'm showing Brett is two inches, from his butt. It had gone right up into the cushion of the pilot seat. And that's that's one.

                The other one I think is even more amazing. Choppers are coming back from some of their missions that were kind of milk runs, with bullet holes in them. And they couldn't figure out where they were getting these bullet holes from. And then they remembered that as they flew over one of these rice patties, there was a single farmer down there, with a hoe. And he was always busy hoeing with his hoe when they could look at him. So, they figured they'd better string out a little bit and see what happened.

                One of them went around, I think, and came back a little later, and he watched. And as the choppers went over, the hoe was picked up by this farmer, with a whole part of it put against his shoulder, and he fired it at the chopper. And then he put it right back down again and went on to his hoeing. And so, they sent a patrol out there and picked the guy up. Sure enough, he had a gun barrel for his hoe hand.

  Brett Banky:       [00:15:30] Okay. Couple of last pretty open questions. One is you have studied the history of Crissy Field; I'd like to know what you think of its history and significance in the past, even before you were there? Was it his- [inaudible 00:15:47]

  Wy Spalding: [00:16:00] Well, I'd say when we're giving the walk, I sometimes say this, and I think maybe it's not the right thing, because I have such respect for you. But I think it's true that the early history of Crissy Field is really not as... At least is not as lengthy as the later period. The period when I was there, because it only lasted about 15 years, the early period. Whereas I think it must have been at least by... I wonder if it was 1947, when they started to use Crissy. But let's say it was 1946-

  Brett Banky:       You mean Hamilton? Is that what you mean?

  Wy Spalding:      I'm talking about Crissy.

  Brett Banky:       Okay.

  Wy Spalding:      The army switched from Crissy to Hamilton in 1935.

  Brett Banky:       [00:16:30] Yeah.

  Wy Spalding: [00:17:00] Well then came World War II, and they used it as a staging area for Letterman. And it was trains, and buses, and stuff like that operating out of there. But then in 1945 or six, or maybe it was 47, when I think Vinegar Joe was here as commanding general at first, that they reopened Crissy Field as a flying field. And then it closed in '74. So that was nearly... What is that 25 years?

  Brett Banky:       Yeah.

  Wy Spalding: [00:17:30] 20 to 25 years. So, it was a longer period. And not that it was any busier. There were times when there was a lot of flying being done, and you know, that we heard a Huey leaving here just so we came into the building. We're still using Crissy, and I guess we'll continue, as long as Sixth Army headquarters is here, they will continue to fly choppers in and out of a portion of Crissy. So is it important? Very important. Very important for the main reason that it is a close in airport.

                Most of the airports nowadays are way out beyond most cities. And it's a good idea they are. I'm sure that you've come into San Diego in an airliner, and it’s scary as heck. Sometimes coming into LA scares, me too, coming over houses and buildings and all on a final approach is not the best way to do. And here is one that was placed in such a way that it wouldn't require approaches over houses. It's still a safe place to come into. Let alone the air that you have to use, it's an ideal place for an airfield.

                And then, because it's buildings, it's hangers, the headquarters building itself, and the housing for the pilots and all, are still in place there. I have no knowledge of another airfield in the United States, or anywhere else in the world that has existed in practically the same configuration for this many years, that we can call an early aviation field still in it's an original configuration. That's, I think, very, very important.

  Brett Banky:       [00:19:00] Well, that leads into my next question then. What is your personal vision for the future of Crissy Field? What should we do down there?

  Wy Spalding: [00:19:30]               Well, I can tell you what we should not do. We should not turn it into a swamp. We should keep it as a visual reminder of the early days of aviation, out of respect for all of the flyers that have operated out of Crissy Field, or any field, in a military or a civilian manner in this country. But especially for the memory of a general Arnold, who was one of our first aviators and became such an important person in our history. That's his field. And for his sake, I would like to see that field... I thought at first, we ought to keep the runway the way it is, because after all it's, you know, that's my field. But if we change it into a grass field, or a sand field, that's okay too. Because that's the early field, and that is still Crissy.

                I'd like to see the tar back in place, but then that wouldn't match the grass field. Because I'm sure that was built after the war. And so, okay. If we make it in 1924 field... Which, 24, by the way is a neat focus point, because that's the general Lowell picture that we have. That was taken in 1924, when he was here. And Lowell was like, the first military aviator in the United States. And then it was the year of a Douglas around the world flight. And the Douglas plane came here. So it seems to me like that's a real good focal point for the field. And it should be a national historic site that can attract the sum of the millions of visitors who come to the Golden Gate every year.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. I have one last question and that is, do you have any last comments you'd like to make?

  Wy Spalding:      Sure. I am very grateful to you, and to the National Park Service, for the opportunity. That should be fine.

  Brett Banky:       Well, you're welcome. All right.

  Wy Spalding: [00:21:30] Yes. I was checking over my checklist here, and I've gotten everything in, except in 1956 in the autumn I was called in my air force reserve unit up here at Fort Miley. I was offered a chance to teach aeronautics to a bunch of students that wanted to take this in night school, adult education, in the San Francisco unified school district. And since I had taught aeronautics in high school before that and had in a number of ways been prepared to do this kind of work, I volunteered. And sure enough, I got to work. And we first met this class at O'Connell Tech, over in the other side of south of market. You know that high school, or technical high school. But most of the students were from the Presidio, or from this part of the city.

                And it turned out that the commanding officer, whose name escapes me at the moment, it was something like Rosegrants, and his son wanted to be in the class. So, they provided the... He was the post commander, he provided a classroom here, and all sorts of audio, visual equipment. And the class really stepped up in caliber and in interest, when we moved over here. About October, I guess it was, of 1956. And a lot of the students were the enlisted men, the mechanics at Crissy Field.

                Now the commanding officer, the post commander and his son, both got A's. And it had nothing to do with my prejudice in their favor. They were very intelligent, bright people. But so did a lot of the enlisted men from the ready crew at Crissy Field. And it was my pleasure to teach them out of the USAFI courses that were offered at the time. And then they wanted to take navigation, so we continued the course. And I spent the entire year, two or three nights a week, preparing, preparing, and teaching this course. It was a very interesting experience.

  Brett Banky:       Okay. Did that cover everything?

  Wy Spalding:      Sure.

  Brett Banky:       All right.

 

Crissy Field

Golden Gate NRA, Park Archives, GOGA 35258

---

"So anyway, we ran right into that thing. I swear, that plane came to a complete stop. I was looking down at those rocks thinking it's going to be an awful cold swim in from there. We limped in under the Golden Gate Bridge and made an emergency landing at Crissy Field." - Jack Lehmkuhl

 

• Jack R. Lehmkuhl

  
  

  Interview with Jack R. Lehmkhul, who was a Colonel in the army in the 1930's and 40's. The discussion covers time in CCC camps and interaction between military and civilian life in and around the Golden Gate. Interview takes place in a restaurant.

  Date created:

  02/15/2024

  Audio Transcript

  Jack:      00:07    1933 I got a telegram directing me to report for duty on the first of May. So anyways, I reported on the third. They built the first CCC up in Park Meadows on the big old flat road going into Yosemite. They had five camps in Yosemite and the got transferred in the business to get [inaudible 00:00:27] in Fresno. I stayed with that post til 1939 and decided to get back into civilian life. It just lasted a year and I got called back in in the spring of 1940.

  Brian:    00:42    I see, spring of 1940. Right to harbor defenses?

  Jack:      00:45    Pardon me?

  Brian:    00:46    Right to harbor defenses?

  Jack:      00:47    Yeah so then I was there in 1941 then on until General Stockton and I left in 1942 and went to Texas, that was the end at Fort Scott. Those were interesting years. I have a few, I think, interesting experiences that happened. On the first blackout after Pearl Harbor, my biggest problem was trying to get the lights turned off on the Golden Gate Bridge. Everything else was black and that thing was sitting there with all the lights on as an invitation to bomb it. I had to phone all over. I had to phone somewhere in Hayward, somewhere in Santa Rosa. There are more jurisdictions mixed up with that thing. So we made an arrangement immediately that I would have a phone and I would alert them if we were in a green state or yellow state. In 20 minutes I would turn off all the lights. It worked out fine.

                               Another one was in the spring of 1941 we had a maneuver where theoretically paratroopers were dropped on the Presidio Golf Course. The purpose of it was to see if we as harbor defense could defend our own rear, which obviously we couldn't. Our commission was to shoot at battle ships coming in. So the result was in the War Plan they put a provision that in the event of hostilities at the time of infantry, or not personnel, to set up a perimeter defense to defend our rear. I was up in the command post and about 3:00 in the morning this lieutenant colonel came up and identified himself and said he would set up this perimeter defense and there was a machine gun nest at each corner of our command post, our command post looked right out to Golden Gate. So as soon as it was dawn, I went out and there were three men with a machine gun. The three men, they were all Japanese. Of course we were all a little trigger happy at that time so I made a call to General Stockton and they were taken off. But they were just as loyal as anybody else. That's another crazy thing that happened.

                               Then another time, one real stormy night, we had of course the harbor defense had all the way from Fort Funston on the south and Fort Cronkhite in the North. We had observers down as far as Half Moon Bay and almost up to Drake's Bay. Got a report that there were signals being flashed out to sea. Well it turned out that up in the top of those towers of the Golden Gate Bridge there was a red signal that flashed as an interval. There were some homes up on the Marin side, called Wolfback Ridge, it was going in one window and being reflected out another window. It looked like signals going out to sea so we had to send somebody to check that thing out.

                               One night, it was real early after Pearl Harbor, there was a blackout. Of course we had sonar for tracking. We were tracking a submarine that was approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. Our big worry was it one of our own or was it an enemy submarine. Again, I was going all over trying to identify it. This blackout came and somebody down at the Presidio decided they'd be a hero and they pulled the master switch. We couldn't communicate and we lost track of the submarine and everything. We didn't know. Our big worry was that it might have come on in the Golden Gate. Laying on the bottom, there was a net gate that extended all the way from Marin County clear across to St. Francis Yacht Club that we controlled. So we were a little bit worried. Much to our astonishment, the only gun that we had that fired into the bay was a little three inch cannon that was over at Fort Baker that have never even been activated. But anyway, it turned out that nothing came of that.

  Brian:    05:27    So that was during one of the early blackouts?

  Jack:      05:30    Yes, one of the early blackouts. We were tracking, of course sonar was top secret in those days. Turned out that nothing came of it but we were worried for a few days what was going to happen.

                               Another thing that's just kind of amusing that you probably know, when you put on camouflage, you have to change it with the seasons. So General Stockton said we better get ahold of a plane somehow and get over on our set up and seconds. So, we started up at Cronkhite in an old color driven observation plane. We checked everything out so this pilot said "The minute we get through down at Funston, I'm going to get right down on the deck and come in that way because these guys are pretty trigger happy." Which we were in those days. So he got right down on the deck and we made the turn right by Mile Rock Lighthouse. Just a short time before, we'd extended a great big line out to the Mile Rock Lighthouse to give us information on any activity because the fog had come in and we couldn't see. We were always afraid of motor torpedo boats will come dashing in.

                               So anyway, we ran right into that thing. I swear, that plane came to a complete stop. I was looking down at those rocks thinking it's going to be an awful cold swim in from there. We limped in under the Golden Gate Bridge and made an emergency landing at Crissy Field.

  Brian:    07:05    Oh my goodness. So you're saying the line was above the water?

  Jack:      07:09    Yeah, it was an overhead-

  Brian:    07:10    Oh I see.

  Jack:      07:10    A big telephone line and everything else. It'd only been in there a week or so. The pilot didn't know about it and I didn't think about it.

  Brian:    07:10    Okay, well that must have been pretty frightening. I mean, so close to the water you couldn't-

  Jack:      07:10    I say it was an old time plane anyway. It was really a very interesting for all us. It was funny, before this happened he was flying so low I was like Jesus, he's going to scrape some of those rocks that are out there. But anyway, that's the whole set up. That's about all we know, to give you background.

  Brian:    07:49    Oh that's fine. So HDSF had control of the Golden Gate Bridge as far as the blackouts and turning on the lights?

  Jack:      07:57    Blackouts and that sort of thing. You have to give them some warning or there could be quite a pileup of all that if you just put that thing in darkness.

  Brian:    08:06    I see, I see. So HDSF must have had control of the area along the water? Was that it? I guess it was close to the Forts.

  Jack:      08:15    More or less.

  Brian:    08:16    Yeah.

  Jack:      08:16    Of course our mission, like I say, was to shoot the artillery guns out of there at any enemy. We have a few antiaircraft guns but very few. It was not the extent of it. I have a book right there, if you can reach that.

  Brian:    08:34    Oh this thing?

  Jack:      08:35    Yeah. After things were going along, things got pretty calmed down. When you came in there as a new officer, you'd had to hunt so many damn places to get information of what it was you wanted to do. So in the middle of the night, I got all the information together. This is the original copy of everything together. So when you reported to duty, you read through that and you knew just about everything that was going on.

  Brian:    08:35    Yes.

  Jack:      09:16    [crosstalk 00:09:16]

  Brian:    09:16    Oh yeah, I hadn't seen this before. This is very important.

  Jack:      09:23    Just at the time I was getting it ready was about when General Stockton and I got transferred to Texas.

  Brian:    09:30    I see.

  Jack:      09:32    But that other book that's going alongside it, see we went into a big antiaircraft training summit and I ran into the same problem that's in there. So I wrote that book and that's one of the reasons I got that contributed to getting that Legion of Merit decoration. Also later the Bronze Star. So both of those books, the one there especially, that was it for 26 weeks training center. Every hour for 26 weeks was covered in that and what you should be doing day and night. It has no relationship to Fort Scott.

  Brian:    10:20    This has a lot of vital information. In fact, the type of information that I could use in this book. I mean this was done at the time so it's got to be the most accurate of all.

  Jack:      10:34    Back in the peace time days, the Army number one weren't given enough funds to fire their guns.

  Brian:    10:42    That's right.

  Jack:      10:44    Coastal artillery, most coastal artillery in San Francisco is called the Honolulu of the coast artillery. Usually you would escort to Oregon or up to Washington or way out in the boondocks. There's not a great deal to do. So they drifted into sort of a ennui that they didn't keep things up to date.

  Brian:    11:04    Yes. So then once war came-

  Jack:      11:10    So I just finally put all this stuff together so if there was a new officer coming he could do what was expected to be done and when and where and so forth.

  Brian:    11:28    Is there ... I mean I don't mean to ask this in disrespect, but-

  Jack:      11:34    I don't know if that would be of any interest to you-

  Brian:    11:37    It's of absolute interest to me.

  Jack:      11:39    Would you like to borrow it?

  Brian:    11:40    I would like to borrow it. I mean, I realize this is your heirloom, this is something that is very valuable for you and your family.

  Jack:      11:50    Well that's the initial working copy.

  Brian:    11:55    Yeah.

  Jack:      11:55    We finally printed whatever it was in.

  Brian:    12:00    But I'd feel a heavy responsibility for borrowing it but I would like to borrow this book.

  Jack:      12:10    Well you're welcome to. It just sits on a closet shelf here.

  Brian:    12:14    Oh I see. Somehow I feel compelled to leave you a check for a major amount of money just in case somehow my house caught on fire or something.

  Jack:      12:21    Well, don't worry about that. That has no monetary value as far as in that case.

  Brian:    12:28    Oh but it has historical value.

  Jack:      12:29    That's right.

  Brian:    12:31    It has real historical value. Wow, it will take me days to pore through this and get the information out of this book. But it's the best bit of information I've come across so far. It would really help to make things really accurate.

  Jack:      12:51    Well why don't we go down to lunch now because I'm starving-

  Brian:    13:00    Okay.

  Recorded in a restaurant (background noise reduced)

                               [crosstalk 00:13:00]

  Jack:      13:00    Chain of command.

  Brian:    13:00    Yes.

  Jack:      13:04    It's funny, everybody knows about General MacArthur but very people ever heard of General Richardson. Actually, MacArthur had that little command, I call it little geographically, down in the Southwest Pacific. We had the entire Pacific Ocean from the United States to and including Asia. Another ironic thing, General Nimitz, Captain Nimitz had a Naval ROTC field at the University of California just like the Army had theirs. So I went out to [USFO 00:13:49] and he had Nimitz in command of everything of the whole Pacific. So I used to have to go every day to his staff meetings and come back and bring my General Richardson up to date on what was expected. He never knew me but I knew who he was.

                               I actually never saw a shot fired in action as far as the whole war. One time, we got a report that the entire Japanese fleet was X number of miles off show following the flank speed. This older general who's son had been up in the Bataan march, was of course upset about his son and also nervous. I sat down and figured out from the data I had where they were and the times, et cetera. I finally got him calmed down to the place where Colonel, if this is true, which I'm sure it is not, the Japanese fleet would be going through Reno right about now. There were several reports like that.

  Brian:    13:04    Yes, yes.

  Jack:      15:04    it turned out that no PBY was doing the reconnaissance work. Sent a message to indicate [crosstalk 00:15:20] a fishing boat and they didn't answer. Then he came and reported to the commander. By the time it got to Washington it was the whole Japanese fleet.

  Brian:    15:28    Yes. That was a fellow by the name of Colonel Baldwin was his name, that you had tried to calm down.

  Jack:      15:37    That's right.

  Brian:    15:42    But he wasn't in command of any of the tactical units. Wasn't he in supply at that time?

  Jack:      15:47    No, there was another battalion or something that came in there, it was part of the bigger corps, he was the commander of that. It was more of a field artillery than actually coastal. Again, they were in connection with the defense of our rear. I think they had other round missions.

  Brian:    16:16    But he had no authority to get the harbor defenses to actually come up to alert?

  Jack:      16:26    They put him, see we had this command post which was manned 24 hours a day. Of course because of seniority he was there. I was actually running the show but he was the commanding officer. He had his old chair and he'd tell me what he wanted done. After a while it became so routine it was almost like the Japanese were never going to get through our shores. That's about the time General Stockton and I-

  Brian:    17:00    I see.

  Jack:      17:00    See the coast artillery became obsolete the day Pearl Harbor happened. That's why we immediately went to antiaircraft training. Our first place was Camp Wallace in Texas, training replacements. We were not training a division or a battalion or whatever. You were X, Y, Z, number of [Crosstalk] we were training the men who were going to take their place, [crosstalk] Virginia and Georgia, there we were training actual antiaircraft units. We'd go out with the whole crew. [crosstalk 00:17:45]

  Brian:    17:53    The harbor defense command post, that also had Navy personnel-

  Jack:      17:58    Well I was going to get to that.

  Brian:    18:01    Oh.

  Jack:      18:02    We were at the harbor, harbor defense command. Then when they got the Navy, they sent a naval detachment so we had actually two head people at harbor defense command which was our mission and the harbor [inaudible 00:18:39] control post. Those were two commands that worked all at the same time. Ironically, the Naval officer, I'd always said the Navy could never function without coffee. The first thing they sent up was a big coffee maker before they sent any machinery to operate. We always joked about it. The senior officer on duty for the Navy would go to bed and I couldn't. I'd be up all night. This one chap was an Annapolis graduate and had [crosstalk]. I had an intercom, of course, and he had one right by his bed so about 3:00 in the morning I'd buzz in. I'd say "Joe, don't bother waking up. There's not a damn thing happening."

  Brian:    19:39    Did you ever get written up in the Golden Gate Guardian?

  Jack:      19:43    Pardon me?

  Brian:    19:43    Did they ever do an article or anything about you in the-

  Jack:      19:45    Not to my knowledge.

                               There was one other officer, they made a movie about him with Robert Redford. He and I built the first CCC camp together. We were both second lieutenant. He went back to Fort Scott and then he was sent to Sacramento. He was in district headquarters in Sacramento. He headed up, he was in what they used to call the War Department before it became the Department of Defense. Told him to make a study, I've forgotten what the science was. Remember the Germans had that special force outfit? I forgot what they called them. The lightning jobs, they went in fast and come out, they were trying to develop ... General MacArthur and several other top generals met him. I've forgotten. Anyway, he came back and he was given a job to make a study of how to set up this special force. It started looking for somebody to command. They were supposed to be able to make one of their actual mission plans to make a parachute drop in Berchtesgaden and kidnap Hitler.

  Brian:    19:45    Oh I see.

  Jack:      21:41    And crazy other things. So anyway, they were looking around for someone to command that. Several generals all of a sudden developed medical problems and retired. So they said Fredericks you've made this study, you do it. So he had the special service. One of his missions that he got mixed up in was when the Germans had that Mount Messina up in Italy. He was there and he said, well they had about 8% casualties but he got the men and they were dog tired. They're sitting up there shooting right down our throat. One interesting little side light, when you're operating in a muddy condition and you have a muzzle cover up your guns. The damn muzzle guns we had were so inadequate that by the time you were target locked and you got the damn thing off it was gone.

                               So Fredricks had this special force. Mark Clotz was the next eschalon. So Fredricks ordered I don't know how many cases of whiskey but it was the first time that liquor had ever been distributed to troops because [inaudible 00:22:55] so tired and morale was so low I figured that would work. They also had I don't know how many million condoms. Put the rubber right over the barrel, shoot right through it. Put another one on. I actually saw this letter from General Clark to General Fredricks, "What the hell are you doing up there fighting, fucking or drinking?" A letter between two generals.

  Brian:    23:26    Yeah, I guess they did the movie but there was a book that came out about it first.

  Jack:      23:48    Yeah, book first. Visited with him after the war and I said here you get this dream command, he had a [inaudible 00:23:48], he said "You're the guy that doesn't exist." What do you mean? "There's an expression that there's no such thing as an indispensable. I asked for you three times, every time the report would come back that he's indispensable and can't be transferred. So I'd probably be dead if I didn't hold this outfit.

  Brian:    24:12    Yeah, well could be. So you never knew that he had been asking for you?

  Jack:      24:21    Well I kind of assumed that he would. But there were situations where if they want you some place else you didn't have much to say about it.

  Brian:    24:40    Do you know if he ever got to, if he lived long enough to see the film that came out about him with William Holden?

  Jack:      24:40    I've seen the movie.

  Brian:    24:48    Yeah, but do you think he had? Because he's not alive anymore.

  Jack:      25:00    Back in Fort Scott and for a while he was down in Hollywood supervising the making of the film. So I'm sure he saw the finished product.

  Brian:    25:10    He should have felt honor that he got William Holden to play his part. I mean that's ...

  Jack:      25:13    Yeah, one time, trying to think what the occasion was, there was a play called The Drunkard at the Palace Hotel. My wife, for my anniversary, Bob and his wife invited us to join them at the Palace Hotel to see The Drunkard. I'd become very close friends. So I go and that first CC Camp was the first shipment we got. We were expecting heavy timbers to put in the foundation for screen doors and moving paper let's cut some trees down. So they actually started out cutting trees before they got their supplies set up.

  Brian:    26:25    The people that came into the CCC camp, how much of military training were they given? What was the regimen that they-

  Jack:      26:36    I'll tell you. We got together when we were stationed at Fort Barry for a few, couple of weeks before we went out. I was teaching these fellas right face and left face, just so I could move them on in training and stuff. Staff guard was running around stop, stop. The driver came down and said lieutenant and major so and so wants you to report to him. So I go up and report. This is when there was some rumors that the CCC was the secret army being mobilized. He says I want you to teach them right face and left face because of this situation. So we couldn't get anything having to do with direct training.

                               However it did work out in the timeframe that an awful lot of them became officers and were invited to officer training school.

  Brian:    26:36    Oh I see, you mean the people that came in to CCC-

  Jack:      27:32    A lot of college graduates and everything else. They were out of a job [crosstalk 00:27:41]

  Brian:    27:41    That's right.

  Jack:      27:50    As a matter of fact, one of the CCC chaps that I had, now the name has left me, is now the head of the Chamber of Commerce for San Francisco, it's right out my mind now.

  Brian:    28:05    But you couldn't give them orders, whatever time they had to wake up. I mean you couldn't drag them out of bed or any of that?

  Jack:      28:13    Oh yeah, that was administrative. If we were in a National Forest, the Forest Service did, they were the ones that took them out to do these various jobs. If you were in the Parks Service range, our job was to feed them, house them, take care of them medically and that sort of thing.

  Brian:    28:13    I see.

  Jack:      28:27    So we was outside the building every morning to make sure they were all there. [crosstalk 00:28:48]. So we bathed them, housed them, fed them.

  Brian:    28:58    Was this the secret army that certain people thought that FDR wanted to set up?

  Jack:      29:02    No, the European people, England was almost the war at that time. Shortly thereafter it did break out.

  Brian:    29:02    Oh I see, I understand.

  Jack:      29:02    Then the of course our relationship with the Japanese was pretty strained.

  Brian:    29:02    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

  Jack:      29:15    See it was supposed to be run by the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor, at the last minute, realized they didn't have the logistic ability to be out in the cold and et cetera, so that's why it was dropped in the Army's lap on 24 hours notice.

  Brian:    29:58    When was the Civilian Conservation Corps ended?

  Jack:      30:02    Well nationally, yes. There's still in California some-

  Brian:    30:02    Yes.

  Jack:      30:05    But national institution, oh I guess about 1939 or 40 wasn't it? Again, at that time there was the Thomason Act, if you remember, with that group of officers. They were really then realizing that eventually they were going to [crosstalk 00:30:40].

  Brian:    30:49    Before the Thomason Act I would imagine most of the officers in the Army were West Pointers were they?

  Jack:      30:52    Well yes. However, there were a few, like I remember one Major who was in command of the CCC of the Fresno district. He was a calvary officer and had been an enlisted man. He had taken certain courses. But there were very few in comparison to the way it is now.

                               I think it was Mustangs if I remember correctly.

  Brian:    31:12    The what?

  Jack:      31:12    If you were not a West Point graduate you were a Mustang as opposed to a cadet or whatever they called it.

  Brian:    31:56    Somebody else that I had talked to had mentioned to me that when reserve officers and Thomason Act people started coming in, the West Point regulars, the officers were given temporary rank of captain or something like that to keep them above the-

  Jack:      32:14    Well we had a funny situation that evolved after the war. Probably I was a first lieutenant by the time I went. I almost immediately became a captain in the timeframe of the reserve officers. Then, when war was eminent, they called for bosuns throughout the service. There were three of us reserve officers and there were three or four West Point graduates. General Stockton mixed up on who got promoted when, just the mechanics of it. He sent our three and the three West Pointers and the mechanics of the reserve set up operated faster so they ranked us as captains and we ranked them as majors.

  Brian:    33:17    I see.

                               [crosstalk 00:33:17]

  Jack:      33:17    We all had separate jobs. But there was a certain-

  Brian:    33:17    Yes.

  Jack:      33:25    Mainly the wife was the one that resented it. I know one wife was talking to my wife and said I'm going to take my rank to so and so. You don't have any rank. Your husband has rank but you don't have any.

  Brian:    33:25    Yeah.

  Jack:      33:42    It got so big it really didn't make any -

  Brian:    33:49    Oh here's something I wanted to ask you. You helped General Stockton draft the notice that went out to call all HDSF personnel back on December 7th.

  Jack:      34:00    That's right. We just started sending telegrams and telephone calls. Some of them were actually on trains. When they got to their destination they were given a telegram, get to a phone, sergeant so and so I'm on my way back. They just came dribbling in. A lot of them, I think a few of them just came back without any orders at all.

  Brian:    34:23    I see. But there was a public, a message that was released to newspaper and radio that you had come up with.

  Jack:      34:32    That's right.

  Brian:    34:33    Yes. Somebody told me that he just came down from the Washington Monument back in Washington DC and he heard this thing asking for HDSF personnel. He thought oh that's strange, all the way across the other part of the country, this one message comes out. Did you help draft the-

  Jack:      34:55    Yeah me and Colonel and another officer, there were about five of us. We decided, well the general decided of course and made the recommendation.

  Brian:    35:15    Did the harbor defenses have any public relations office that would deal with any reporters or newspapers?

  Jack:      35:22    Oh they may have later on but not at that stage.

  Brian:    35:22    I see.

  Jack:      35:33    The antiaircraft command headquarters, under another general, very good friend of General Stockton's. Anyway, they were stationed in Richmond, Virginia, all the antiaircraft training center. Actually, we went overboard on training too many aircraft [crosstalk 00:36:01] our Air Force is entirely different. The planes are so damn fast that antiaircraft was like trying to shoot a BB gun. They got much more sophisticated type weapons, guided missiles. But that's what the antiaircraft command evolved into, the guided missile. But that technology is far removed.

  Brian:    35:33    Yeah.

  Jack:      36:37    My biggest job was planning the invasion of Japan which, thank god, didn't happen.

  Brian:    36:41    Yes I know.

  Jack:      36:43    That would have been the worst. We studied weather conditions as far back as weather had been recorded. Then we added another several months on to that. Right where the biggest concentration of invading troops had been assembled to go ashore had the worst hurricane they've had in history.

  Brian:    36:43    That year?

  Jack:      36:43    That day.

  Brian:    36:43    Oh that day? Okay.

  Jack:      37:00    They were involved in it. As a matter of fact, some of them were beginning to come in the biggest problem is that it stopped the flow that's why I stayed in. I couldn't come home, you know with that points system. I did it from home before Pearl Harbor had happened actually. I mean, not Pearl Harbor, before the invasion. But I stayed out there in December, after the war was over because I was so damn busy trying to stop the flow of supplies and personnel and everything else. It was all in motion.

  Brian:    37:00    Yes.

  Jack:      37:00    We lost two cruisers and three destroyers, never even had time to get off an SOS. They just apparently capsized and sank.

  Brian:    37:00    Oh, during the storm?

  Jack:      37:00    Yeah. You can imagine with all those troops and [MSTs 00:37:00] and all the small landing craft.

  Brian:    37:00    Yeah. So when you came back after World War II did you stay in the Army long after that?

  Jack:      37:00    Well I kept my reserve commission active. I had 30 years of service in 1961.

  Brian:    37:00    Oh okay.

  Jack:      38:20    In 1961 I was 51 years old. I had reached the age bracket. Do you want to order some dessert?

  Brian:    37:00    Oh okay, I'll have some.

  Speaker 3:          37:00    I brought your dessert already. I thought you ordered-

  Brian:    36:59    Oh yes, I had the fruit cup. That's fine.

  Speaker 3:          36:59    But if you'd like something else-

  Brian:    36:59    Oh no, this is fine.

  Jack:      37:00    Do you have any utensils left to eat that thing?

  Brian:    37:17    I've got one.

  Jack:      37:17    Yeah I was assigned to the Sixth Army under reserve status. Then I got called back to duty. Then I went to the every two week meeting, kept my [inaudible 00:39:18].

  Brian:    37:41    Yes. You never ran across a Captain Calvin Chin through that time did you? He was Sixth Army and reserve status around the Bay Area, my father, during the 50s.

  Jack:      39:29    You never know.

                               When General Lamb became chief of staff, my wife and I, we spent a couple of weeks with him and his wife. I wouldn't have that job with all the money. The [inaudible 00:39:59] you can multiply it by about a thousand. At 7:15 the General will be at so and so. At 7:28 he'll be at so and so. At 8:10 he'll be at so and so.

  Brian:    39:29    Yeah.

  Jack:      40:10    And that was his schedule 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you stop and think about the poor president has to do it all ... You're a constituent, he has to take five minutes to shake hands.

  Brian:    40:29    I know. [crosstalk 00:40:29]

                               I guess that's why they have people telling them what they have to do at that moment.

  Jack:      40:36    That's right.

  Brian:    40:40    They probably don't know what's about to happen next. Somebody has to be taking care of us.

  Jack:      40:45    A funny side light, we were playing golf one day, General Lamb as Chief of Staff, the acting General, a Commandant of the Marine Corps and myself. So I'm driving one of the golf carts and Fred was ahead of me driving the other. The three par hole, we hit our shots and then you went down a ravine, up a hill to get up to the green. So as I said it's the general, me and the commandant in the Marine Corps. I'm driving and everybody is looking over at the green as we're approaching our balls. Fred stopped and I crashed into him. I almost removed two thirds of the armed forces right there. We all laughed about it.

  Brian:    41:35    Yes. I mean there was nobody, some aide following them with a little black case with whatever codes that are inside the-

  Jack:      41:51    No.

  Brian:    41:51    Okay.

  Jack:      42:02    [crosstalk 00:42:02] General Stockton was a senior brigadier general. So he was always [inaudible 00:42:06]. We had to make an inspection down south. We stopped, we had 155 GPS just one run at Carpenteria or something like that. So we stopped one morning and inspected it. General Stockton said there would be a better place for it somewhere else so they ordered it moved. That same afternoon, after it was moved, the Japanese lobbed one shell in there just to let us know that they knew it had been moved. This is also before it [crosstalk 00:42:42] my wife and I.

  Brian:    42:02    I see.

 

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