Kenneth Stanley Matson's interview for the Veterans History Project at Atlanta History Center

today is october 2nd 2015 and my name is tony hilliard i'm a volunteer at the atlanta history center and with me is peggy hilliard another volunteer and sue verhoff the senior archivist here at the at the center we're here today to record the oral history of mr kenneth matson who served in the u.s marine corps during world war ii mr matson's oral history is being recorded for the library of congress veterans history project with us also today are mr steve merritt who is mr matson's son-in-law and jenna mert who is his daughter we're honored to have you with us today mr matson and thank you for participating in the project would you begin by telling us your full name and where you live yes my name is kenneth s matson m-a-t-s-o-n and my residence here is uh at a uh senior care center here in conyers and i'm happily located there my uh room when i checked in there uh they had two rooms in the entire place there were three buildings with 82 rooms or something and so there was one room right in this the one i chose was right outside my door i could just step out and there was my table in the dining room and so i took that one the other one was out in the left field okay and uh so i got the best room i could possibly get when i got there and then the people are great there and they have lots of things to do all sorts of activities all the time and like that and so i became a great proponent of participation okay good and i would when we'd have meetings and so on and they'd ask people if they had anything they had to say i'd always get up and i think a lot of them would say oh no we're going to get that participation speech again you know but i would tell the people you know if you sit back there in your room alone 24 hours a day practically except for meals what fun are you going to have unless that's what you enjoy and so get out here participate if there's something going on out here the in the recreation room good honor if you've never done it before you may find it something you like and they play bingo over there get over there and play bingo you know you're the motivator yeah and so that's i'm after them all the time to keep moving in like that good and but i get a lot of opportunities too i try every day to help somebody and sometimes i'll get a lot of opportunities sometimes i don't get maybe one but if i'm walking down the hall and there's some really elderly lady in a wheelchair trying to pump along with that thing i walk up behind her and i always say would you like a push because i don't want to walk up and do that and the woman's doing this for her exercise and she'll say get lost so you get a bad reputation yeah so i'll always walk up and i'll say would you like a push and 99 percent of the time they said i'd love it so i take them up and they'll say i'm in room 23 so i'll go up and take them in and park them in front of their tv and say anything else and they'll say could you open the blinds so i'll go over and open the blinds on the door and the window with the back wall and what else you need that's it well can you tell me a little bit well when were you born and tell us a little bit about uh okay earlier i was born in on september 21st 1923. so i'm 41 now [Laughter] but i believe at actual last count i was 91. i just had a birthday and i was born in a little town of elk point south dakota which is 15 or 18 miles from sioux city iowa way down on that southeast corner of south dakota 60 miles south of sioux falls and i went to grammar school and high school there and i had an interesting like uh cards they reported your grades on them so you could take them home and show your family how you're doing the report cards uh my mother and father were always shocked at the cards because i had straight a's for this all the courses conduct you unsatisfactory once in a while i'd get up to a d or something but i had more fun in school and class than anybody else and just enjoyed it but i was a smart kid and i had a very high iq and so on when i took iq tests to get into the military uh 124 as high scores you could get and i my score was 122. and i never did find out what i missed which question i missed but i got into the service well how did you get into the service so my mother had always espoused this theory to me when i was in grammar school she said when you are going through school now take every math and every science and every english grammar and like that course you can get your hands on because when you get to college you're going to have to write essays and you're going to have to get them typed and if you have to pay for that service it's going to be expensive but if you can do it yourself fine so i did i and in high school and grammar school in high school i really could type and i could really take shorthand so my service record broken the service and i was tested on this showed i could take shorthand 150 words a minute and type 100 words a minute and that's pretty good for the average and that was before electric typewriters were born so uh that was in my service record and so i finished boot camp and they sent me out to a what was a little base and now it's one of the largest marine bases on the west coast it's called miramar and i went out there to be processed for transfer overseas but it was going to be 20 days before the draft left to go overseas so uh it was the rainy season and the base the asphalt streets were ended like that but there were no sidewalks so between the barracks building and the street was just solid mud during the rainy season and so it made it a problem to try to you know shine your shoes and get all set to go in town on liberty and have to go out there and wade through mud this deep so you were in the marine corps i was in the marine corps yeah so where did you do recruit training at san diego san diego you had a choice for san diego or paris on you didn't have a choice i mean but if you were east of the mississippi paris island west san diego so i went through san diego and dog you were in the ccc first yeah did you ever hear that yes okay well that was a uh uh program that fdr came up with i guess uh so many of the men in the country were unemployed during that period so they brought these ccc camps out and they trained people there to do things like mow lawns trim trees and things like that and so they could if a mayor of a town requested their services they would send crews into town and go all over town fixing the trees and and whatever they needed and they did a lot of great service like that was that in california where you did that the south dakota south dakota okay so it just so happened the wealthiest family in my little town of elk point was a family named ringsrood and uh they owned a lot of stores and things like that they're very wealthy family and their son was ron ring ringswood and besides all of managing all these stores like that he was a captain in the army reserve and by virtue of being that he was the commanding officer of three ccc camps in the state of south dakota so he came to my house one night i had graduated from high school my dad was a carpenter and he could build anything like that and and at that time he was building grain bins for the lumber yard in town a small town and the problem we had the boys all the boys when they were growing up worked with my dad like at night in the afternoons after school and on weekends doing carpenter so by the time i graduated from high school i was a pretty good carpenter and so you're talking about boys how many brothers and sisters did you have well there were originally 14 children i was number 14. one had died at birth and so i i really had three uh 13 of us that survived and uh so uh there's a pretty large family and you learn to fend for yourself you couldn't sit there and say to somebody pass the biscuits or something like that enough to eat we had a lot of jokes and things about that status and so on and the people across the street had how many kids 19. and you can't imagine you know you can't imagine when he was 13 but imagine somebody was 19 and so they uh they really got along well the father worked for the county on the road crews and like that and the boys in the family had all most of work as grocery clerks in the grocery stores after school and at night like that so they had a pretty good life but i always got a kick out of it because quite often the mother would call and invite over to have dinner with him you go in and there's 19 people there but they'd find a space for you there to make a 20th you know and uh so it's is interesting to see it happen that way and ken now you joined the military because you saw what movie the movie this was in september of 1942 the movie was tell it to the marines and that is forever since a marine started if somebody was telling you a story and you didn't believe it you'd say tell it to the marines see so the movie starred a guy named john payne not john wayne but john payne and he was a big husky guy like that he's a marine and of course in the movie he won the war himself something like that so my buddy from high school and i went to see that movie and this would have been in september 42 okay and so we want to see that movie and boy we were helped up on that thing and so we both said let's join the marines let's go home and talk to our folks tonight and if they agree to let us join the marines we'll go what you had to do if you lived in south dakota there weren't any recruiting stations there you had to go to sioux city and they would check you to be sure you were alive there and then they would send you if you were they'd send you to des moines iowa and then you got the complete treatment complete physical and all that stuff and if you passed they would swear you into the marines right then and then you would travel in civilian clothes but you travel by train to san diego for boot camp let me ask you a question where were you when the japanese attacked pearl harbor okay remember that incident i was in that ccc camp okay and uh so uh the uh as i told you the commanding officer of the ccc camp was from my hometown rc so he had put me in there and and a couple of weeks later i was in charge of the camp and so when the war started everybody wanted to go fight those japanese you know and so uh i had two brothers that were stationed at fort meade south dakota and at fort meade south dakota was about two miles from the ccc camp so i was pretty fortunate there and that i had family that close to the camp and so they wanted me to come over and join up in the army and like that and i didn't want to be in the army i didn't like the army i didn't like they had no discipline and their uniforms were lousy and like that so i didn't want to be in the army i didn't know what i wanted to be in but i didn't want to be in the army and so uh we i wound up going back home in the ccc camp and that's when my buddy and i went to see this movie tell it to the marines so we talked to our mothers and fathers and they said yeah go ahead and join so we went to des moines and what sioux city had done to des moines and there you had to take your physical unlike that and assuming you passed the physical then they would swore you in but you could it was a joint recruiting place for the navy or the marine corps but the two of us were going to be those big fighting marines so we went for the physicals and it didn't take long to get the physical on like that and i got the physician past the physical okay and so the doctor said have us heat out there and pretty soon they'll call you so i was expecting any minute that my buddy would come out and sit with me and we'd go join the marines and so i sat there for 20 minutes and 30 minutes and a half hour and then pretty soon it was an hour and he hadn't shown up yet so i finally asked one of the people that worked there where is this feller clements clementson that came with me and she said oh he talked to the navy recruiter and he found out if he could join the navy they wouldn't be shooting at him so he joined the navy and there you were so he showed up in a little while and he said i hope you're not mad at me and i said hey man it's your life you have to do what you want to do you know so i went on and went to boot camp in san diego and boot camp was tough in those days i don't know what it still is now but in those days it was three months long the requirements were tough and you had to be able to swim forever and just all sorts of requirements were put on you and so uh i graduated from boot camp and was going to get my first liberty because when you were in boot camp you didn't get liberty and so i got myself all snazzed up my uniform and was walking towards the gate and the commanding officer of the boot camp was a marine colonel and he had a wife with him i didn't know it at the time but this guy was a hopeless alcoholic so i started walking towards the gate and i had about a block to go to the gate and then i was going to just step out there and probably the next car that came through would pick me up and take me into town and so this car came up there and screeched the brakes and stopped and i walked up and i knew it was a commanding officer's car so i walked up in a big salute for him you know like that and when i was six feet away i could smell the liquor and he was dead drunk and i thought to myself why did why would the wife let him do that or at least why wouldn't she be smart enough to stay home and let him go out there and get killed and uh so he's come on jump in i'll give you a ride in town you know and i said oh just happened to think of something i'm sorry colonel but i've got to go back to the barracks i thought ron started walking this way and he drove off and but anyway i finished boot camp there and went out to the miramar then eventually for assignment so what was your mos what was your duty it was uh uh if you understand moses i was an one okay oh one when i was enlisted i was 0141 i was a first as a clerk typist and then when i became an officer it switched to o130 which would administrative officer ads and like that and then i developed a couple of secondary mos's that the general assigned to me and but i was primarily in administration like that but i got to do a lot of things that probably nobody in the marine corps had ever done and so when i uh my first real major assignment was i was transferred to headquarters marine corps and assigned to the inspector general's department and of course the inspector general has the responsibility for inspecting the marine corps and he had uh hey dallas can we come back to that in a minute because when you were in boot camp that was long before you joined the inspector general's office you were in boot camp and then how did you get with general moore oh okay well i uh had done my taken my mother's advice and got all the shorthand on topic i couldn't like that but when i was transferred out to miramar out there for assignment i was waiting to go overseas and uh just sitting in the barracks road was raining you couldn't go anywhere there was no sidewalks out there so you'd have to walk in mud to get out to the street so you were just almost in confinement and so i was sitting here and the first sergeant came in said come on up front captain wants to see you so my first thought was what did i do and so i went up front with him and his captain introduced himself and he was a chicago attorney a real shyster attorney but the marine corps had taken him in to be a legal officer and they made him a captain to start with so he was a legal officer for the base so he told me you come up to my office i want to make a deal with you so we went up there took me in his office and he said i've got your service record your book and i see in there that you can take shorthand and type like a monster and i said yes he says is that true and i scolded him it's first time i ever sassed an officer what would that be in my record book if it wasn't true and so he said well i want to make a deal with you three months from now i'm going to be in the south pacific and i'm going to be aid to the commanding general of all the marines in the pacific i talked to him on the phone about you last night because he said he needs somebody to work for him he doesn't want a secretary he doesn't want to dictate into a machine or dictate to a a woman or a man with a skill of shorthand or anything like that he wants to be able to call somebody in and say i want to write a letter as a comment out of the marine corps and i want to say this this this and this and the next time i see that it'll be a letter perfectly typed no misspelled words all i have to do is sign it and you mail it can you handle that and i said yes and he said you got the job i went to work for him i worked for him for six years until he retired flew on his airplane with him anywhere he went he took me and we went to all over the world australia three times and is this the general that's the general james t moore what did the t stand for tillinghast can you turn that around and just kind of hold it about just under your chin yeah hey doll look right here hold it like this ken there you go yeah there we go yeah okay did you like him who i loved him he was like my dad and i think to me i was his son he and his wife were married for 43 years and were never blessed with a child so i think that was a circumstance he walked with a caney he had a football injury when he was in naval academy at citadel uh i'm sorry i always say naval academy citadel and uh wonderful man great general great leader and much of the stuff that i acquired in the marine corps the good things that happened to me happened when i worked for him so when when did you get hooked up with him um what year was it when you you went out to the yeah well i went in i'm 42. and it was probably 1944 i would think that i hooked up with him okay and uh so then i was with him until he retired six years later and then he passed me to another general and then when he would get transferred if he was going somewhere i wanted to go or didn't mind going they would take me with him but if i didn't want to go i'd tell him i really would prefer to stay here and but if i i hooked up early on most of the people probably had put in 20 years never realized that they could go to washington to the marine corps headquarters go back to the records department and look at their record and you know your service record book that you had with you in the service going from base to base might be about this thick but your service record book in washington would probably be this thing because everything that had ever happened to you anywhere wherever uh would be in your record book hold that one up now you serve with general moore all during hawaii correct yes and that was that that picture was at his command in hawaii that's good so you went from pendleton to hawaii yes okay and then did you where did you go from there well uh i would serve with him right and for example uh well i'll tell you a little another little story in the what we used to they used to refer to as the old corps in the marine corps the pre not the pre-world war ii if you put in 19 or 20 years you might rise from private to gunnery sergeant or something like that if you made sergeant major it probably took you 25 years or something i went from private to sergeant major in 19 months that's how long i had in this service when i was a sergeant major but i went to work for the general and he found that everything he needed i knew it before he did and a lot of times he would come out to my desk in the office in hawaii there and he would say i was just reading in one of the things that were passed around here about uh something and i'd like to have a couple of copies of that could you get them for me and i'd say have you looked in your end basket today yet and he'd say no and i'd say they're in there so i was always a step ahead of him it seemed like so he never had to think about it and for the all the time that i knew him he never had an officer aide and so the colonel that was the personnel director for the whole command a colonel named o'neal and he was a good buddy of mine because i had served with him one time you know back earlier and so uh he would come in and frequently would come over and ask me a question about personnel assignments like that and an example of that would be they didn't start women marines in the marine corps until 1943 and so women marines were something new but the idea of them was great and as in the other services it worked fine i saw it work in the marine corps and so when i was back in on in the state we started getting women marines in and of course i wasn't anybody then i wasn't a personnel officer or anything like that i was a corporal or sergeant or something but i saw these women marines coming in but i saw how effectively this worked because in would come five or six women marines two weeks later that many of our big able-bodied men would be headed out the door headed for overseas and so the purpose was there and that and it worked and uh so we had a lot of a sign that way here are the first two women that were assigned to general moore's office that you told me yeah those two women worked for you and that was general moore's birthday cake in hawaii exactly uh-huh that's a picture of it right there okay was it weird having women coming in like that it was at first it was amazing very difficult and one of the things of course that all of the military service various departments had army navy air corps whatever was a security for the ladies okay because you couldn't put them in the barracks with a bunch of men and so they always had to get like take a separate barracks and make it the women's barracks but they had to have security guards around it like that because they didn't want guys slipping in the back door or climbing in the windows like that and so the security of the ladies was always primary and then we uh after we started getting more and more of the women in they formed a women marine detachment on the base out there in hawaii and the woman marine major and very soon lieutenant colonel that was in command of the of the women's barracks there that was her sole responsibility and so the we finally reached the high point of having 95 women there and she was their commanding officer as far as barracks controlling their liberty and all sorts of things like that but the real boss then was the whoever she worked for in the in our headquarters there and so that was a very functional thing were you clear for top secret stuff under general moore oh yeah uh there was no way you could work for him without having and so on top of top secret i had cryptographic clearance which will you probably know what that is so i had topsick cryptographic and that's as high as it goes you know so there were no documents that i couldn't handle and didn't handle and uh so you saw the plans for all the major battles that were upcoming oh yeah and knew about it beforehand yeah and so uh this captain i told you they had there was a lawyer right and was assigned as his aide that very factor you just mentioned cost him his career and so we were the captain had told me if i would come up and work in the legal office for three months and get him caught up he was transferring then to the south pacific he'd already talked to the general about me and the general said i want him when i got on a ship and went to the south pacific when the ship landed he was there at the dock this captain was to meet me to take me over to meet the general i didn't know what the captain's relationship with the general was but i never liked this captain because of his flippant attitude and his lawyer i'm superior to everybody else like that and i never met a single soul during my association with him that liked him and so the general really disliked him and so anyway he met me at the dock and drove me over to the general's headquarters so we drove up in front of the building and stopped i got out of the jeep and one side he got out the other side and he was going to make a production of this the general was sitting in this doorway of this building the office building uh he had a just a desk just inside the door he was sitting there working doing paperwork whatever and i think probably he probably looked up when he saw the jeep approaching and saw that it was the captain driving and so that guy with him is obviously me because that's who he went to get and so we pulled up there and we got out of the jeep and he walked up there and he was going to make a production of this general i want you to meet he pulled up there and he got i think he got general out and the general looked up and said you get out of here i want to talk to him and i thought well i guess you don't have a very good relationship with the general so i went in walked up the desk and snapped to attention there and he said sit down i want to talk to you so he told me then of his situation you know i don't dictate the machines i don't dictate to people and like that i want to just tell you what i want to say in a letter you fix it and i sign it and you mail it can you handle that yes sir you got the job so where was this i mean you're not in hawaii anymore no no this was way down on the south pacific okay yeah one of the islands in the south pacific so i got the job and i stayed with him until he retired at the end of 1946 he retired and but we spent most of it in the pacific out there we uh he had his own airplane c-47 plane assigned to him his own flight crew here's a picture that you had and this is um general moore you told me this was louis merritt yeah that was a uh and you were underneath the general's wing of the airplane with battle plans for okinawa or somewhere yeah yeah this general merit was a one star he eventually became a three star wallace was a three star and he wound up being assistant commandant and director of marine aviation and so what rank are you here uh at this point i was uh i can't really see that i was probably a first sergeant then or a sergeant major and that was the highest enlisted rank and this is the general getting off his airplane did you fly on that airplane with the general yeah i i flew and lived on the plane with the general okay and we had some interesting things there when we were at palulu uh we flew in there and of course the fighting is going on this in this battle into the island the troops replacement troops were back this way and so they would have to move the replacement troops up to the battle area and bring the ones that were being relieved back and so at about the halfway point the general's plane was parked here and so i would be sitting under the wing of the airplane and on one of these islands there was a army major that we had a joint staff for some of these operations and so it would be a marine corps led the general would be the big boss and the uh if he had a an assistant uh general as his assistant it would be a brigadier one one star general and so then we would have a joint staff frequently and like in this particular case i'm talking about we had an army colonel a wonderful guy but he was so senior that he in the entire us army worldwide he was the number six colonel and the whole his name last name was was bridget bernard bridget wonderful officer like that and he became what the general called his chief of staff and so then he brought in a few people and there was like a navy captain which is an equal of a marine colonel and then he brought in this army major to be an ordinance officer this army major was a good guy young young feller and so at this island wherever we were there the army had seen fit or the it was war department knows nays not the department of defense they'd seen fit to put a depo there and they had uniforms supplies anything you could think of they had but except it was army so you it didn't do you much good to go in there and get another uniform because it was army uniform you couldn't wear it in the marine corps but we benefited in a lot of ways and so we had our plane parked there so this first thing this army major did that was on our staff went up there and he discovered that they had a brand new portable typewriter and you could take the top up and there's a beautiful typewriter there you take the bottom loose though and here's four legs so you could set that thing up in front of you and sit there and type just like it was on a desk or something like that see so he went up there and got along and brought it to me and i thought man is that i've got it made now see and so then this uh sergeant staff sergeant that was our navigator on the plane he was an expert at getting stuff for nothing and he went up there to that depot up there and told whoever was in charge or whoever was issuing uniforms he went up there and told them that the general had sent him up there to get new uniform equipment for the guys on his crew and the guy said well that'd be fine but these are army uniforms the marines don't wear army uniforms but that wasn't the idea the guy was angling you know those you may have seen them there were flight jackets they were dark colored leather and they had a fur collar on them yeah well in world war ii timing like that that was the rage of the world if you had one of those you were something right he went up there and he came back with a big cart and he must have had 25 of those things he told them the general wanted 25 of them so he was a expert at that and so he brought all this stuff back and gave you each one of us got one of our size and like that then you traded it all tell us what tell me what that is that is what's known as a piece of shrapnel if you are shooting artillery shells like that when they hit and explode they break up into pieces there may be bigger pieces like that but that's a piece of shrapnel where'd it come from well this one has an interesting background we were at i don't know what i don't remember what island it was yeah but anyway most of these islands down there i think i said this already despite the fact there's pacific ocean out there there would be this fresh water source in the middle of that island because that's what the people drank otherwise they would have had to process the salt water to get the salt out so they could drink it and so here at this particular island there was this beautiful pond just a gorgeous looking lagoon there and at this end there was decorations and and beautiful flowers growing and like that it was just a piece of serenity and so over here 30 or 40 feet was the general's office and art camp there and the troops we had a lot of troops with us of course but they were down here uh you know 200 yards or something like that no flowers down there and so we really had it made there and so one of the first things that this army major i was telling you about he went up there to that place and he had seen me i had a portable typewriter but it didn't have legs or anything like that hey dog go back go back and tell us about the shrapnel telling us about the show let me finish yeah let me finish on the shrapnel the general and i used to meet every morning at 8 o'clock and where we met he was the only one that had a tent on the island because he was the general so we had a nice tent for him here the rest of us slept on sleeping bags on the other ground like that and so here was this top secret trailer with all this communication stuff in it and so we wanted to protect that because it was that was the heart of our communication system and everything that went through there was top secret practically so uh the seabees had been come in and were working on the airfield because the americans in taking the island in the first place had blown up the airfield so the seabees came in and leveled everything out and put that you've seen i don't know if you've ever seen it but they had this stuff they could hook together and it made like a metal airfield almost matting on top of the coral and the planes could come in and land and take off and so on and so the general had his tent there and then that was that communications thing and so there was a this i had the seabees come in and they drove these stakes in the ground there were steel stakes about oh gosh there were at least half three quarters of an inch in diameter for thickness and at the top they had a loop on them and so i asked the seabees to come in and put these stakes all the way around that top secret trailer there and then they put a cord around so that people just can walk right up through there they could duck and go under it like that but they'd had a problem because about every 10 feet was a guard there with a machine gun and so they would have had a problem to try to do something with the equipment like that but the general's tent was right there and he's the only one that had a 10. so i told him i said i've set up a deal with you i'm going to call you every morning at 7 30 and the steward there will bring you your breakfast at about 8 00 8 15 8 30 i want to meet you in your office and he said wait a minute where's my office and i said you see that rope that goes around there you see there's a knot tied in that place that's your office that nod is your office i want you to meet me there every morning to eight o'clock during the night i will have reviewed all the messages coming in and because it was a battle situation gosh every two minutes here would come another message and they would all be top secret but it would say squad a moved 10 feet to the left or 12 feet to the right and i told the general i don't think you're much interested in that now if you say that the whole company was overrun by japanese now you could get interested in that in a hurry so i said i don't want these communications people waking you up all night every 15 minutes you just get to sleep got a top secret message general that says yeah they moved two feet to the left so he said good idea we'll meet at eight o'clock every morning at my office not off office with the knot and the rope so when he'd get up in the morning i would during the night the communications chief and i would review these messages and the only ones that he needed to see would be on a clipboard here and if there were any that were especially important i probably would have awakened him but if there were some that were pretty important i'd put those on top and so i'd always tell him here they are the further you go down the less important they are and so he would sit there and in 15 minutes he'd get caught up with what happened last night and so we had a real really tight working relationship and like that and uh so the personnel colonel came in one time and of course this personal colonel was my buddy but he went to the journal too tell us about the shrapnel how did you get that piece of shrapnel okay i forgot to tell about that the general and i were out there at our meeting point in the office and uh i was showing him what had happened last night and so forth and so he's standing here and i'm standing like this and we were probably two feet apart and i'm telling him things that had happened or maybe showing him something what happened like that and we didn't know it but over here about 50 60 yards there was an underground ammunition depot that the japanese had there the first marine division intelligent people decided later after this event that the japanese had set that thing up and had it ready to blow up because they had found out from you know the japanese had let them know hey man things are going bad you know get everything booby-trapped like that because they're going to be at your island and you know you can try to surrender but they don't take prisoners so you know get ready to blow everything up and so we didn't know anything about that and and we don't i i guess to this date i don't know whether it actually was true but i am inclined to believe it because of what happened so i was there with the general running through some of this stuff and this monster explosion went off back here i mean that island just rocked like this and uh so uh i think he hollered hit the deck at the same time i did and we both headed for the same plot of ground so we didn't hit heads but we just hit like this and just about that time that piece of shrapnel that he just showed you there apparently from one of these bombs must have gone just almost straight up and now came straight down and as he and i were going down like this that thing touched the top of my head up i can still have a little bump there but it didn't hit me actually but it did freeze one drop of blood but that was the extent of it it didn't hurt me or anything like that but when we landed that piece of shrapnel landed right there between us and brilliant me picked it up and it just went cook the inside of my hand because i threw it down and the doctor and his chief coron were standing rook 15 feet away and they saw this happen and so among other things that this doctor had since he was the medical department and he was out there in the war zone with the general unlike that well people that are going to get injured have been to come in there to be treated if it was if they got shot by a japanese soldier that was a war wound purple heart well thinking ahead of time he took a foot longer full of purple hearts out there with him so i didn't think anything about it at the time but i picked that thing up and then of course i threw it down but i had burned the inside of my hand he went over well first of all he came over and fixed my hand and put medicine on it and so forth and wrapped it like that but then i saw him born he was talking to the general but they were both looking you know they were talking together but they kept looking over there like this where i was and like that and i thought i wonder what those birds are talking about so in a few minutes the doctor came over and said in about 20 minutes the general's gonna have a little ceremony over here we're gonna muster a few troops some of my corpsmen and like that and we're going to muster a few troops here and the generals are going to have an awards ceremony fine that's great and he said well the awards is this he's going to award you the bronze star medal and the purple heart medal and i said purple heart what for and he said you were wounded in action and i said i was not i wasn't wounded in action i was a stupid person that picked up a piece of shrapnel that i knew was hot before i picked it up so uh anyway the general came over shortly and he said uh we're gonna have a ceremony here in a few minutes and uh we're gonna give you a purple heart so i said to him general we've been together quite a while and i hope we stay together for a long time but you're not going to live long enough to ever give me a purple heart for what happened here today if you think you're going to give me a purple heart you've got another thing coming excuse me the way i said that but that's the way i feel he said that's your final decision and i said yes sir and he said case closed and i never got the purple heart but i've used that a lot of times when i was talking to groups and talking and i'd tell them that story and i'd say now i want a showing of hands here first of all how many of you think i made a mistake and then how many of you think i did the right thing and it was amazing about 80 percent of the people thought i made a mistake really that i should have taken it and the others and of course i always say to the group that said i shouldn't take it thank you i agree with you for you other guys you ought to be ashamed of yourself this is a picture of the general's airplane now that's the one that you hold it up that's the one that you flew that's uh number one on the fronts of dc-3 yeah and that you flew all during the war with him on that one exactly all right and then this one is where you were you had just landed and you said this is general moore and on the far left or far right over here is pappy boyington yes that's correct now pappy boyington won the medal of honor yeah he uh was he a good guy he was wonderful guy there were two people in the marine corps that shot down 26 japanese airplanes in world war ii so they were fantastic they were taken back to washington and president truman put the medal of honor on both of them governor frost i mean uh he was a major at the time major foss he was a captain when he earned the medal major when he got it he was went on and later become governor of south dakota but the only reason he got it was his popularity and medal of honor and all that stuff if he had not had that notoriety he couldn't have been dog catcher of south dakota but anyway twice during my career working for the general i got stuck with joe foss he would come in and come in to see the general and then the general would say to him well i want you to go over here and address a bunch of guys over here and over there and address a bunch of guys and i would would be your i'll be your guide and your driver is that support and so i would take him out and put him in the car and we'd drive over to point a and he'd get up and give his talk and point me and give his talk not bring him back we had so much in common in that i was from south dakota anyway uh foss uh was to go on and become governor of cal of uh south dakota but he only got it because of his notoriety in the military but twice i had been assigned by the general to do things with him and for him when he was out there and he was the most stuck-up self-centered individual i ever met and i hated to even admit that i was from south dakota but of course the first time i met him he'd said he was from sioux falls and i said well by coincidence i'm south dakota i'm milk point i know where that is you know but he was just overwhelmed with himself contrast pappy boyington was a squadron commander out there he shot down 26 planes also and he also got the medal of honor from truman but i met him and i got to know him on a personal basis when he came back from overseas i was at the training center in san diego where all the returning troops came through and we had special arrangements made for all of them and then for the officers coming back they would come in and i would interview them and there were some forms i filled out and that information not only was for us but they would immediately wire that to washington to the division of personnel director personnel up there and they would be updated on the guy and the fact that he was back had reported back in the u.s and was being processed and he would already have his orders to whatever base he was going to next but then i would make arrangements for the transportation most of the time i didn't have much to do because most of the time you know he was out there and the family was back there but they would decide that when they got back that in getting back to north carolina they would stop at different places along the way and live it up getting dad back and so on so i could make a lot of the arrangements for her and so we had a good time processing too but the comparison of foss to borrington it was it was daylight and dark and uh boyington was just a jewel uh here's a picture when you were in hawaii and um this is your bronze star it's over here this is your bronze star ceremony and that's you standing right there yeah all right and then here's the general actually giving you actually yeah actually pinning it on yes good yeah and you won the bronze star for pelelu yes uh-huh yeah and uh so bronze star was a pretty nice turn around and show it to the camera though yeah okay all right next one you got it okay and the bronze star you got in four pelolo yeah the uh the packing order on metals i won't go the whole way but you could start with some kind of a service metal at the bottom and there's the medal of honor at the top and all these medals in between see so there's a metal there's the bronze star medal and there's a there's a legion of merit metal and the legion of merit is for officers because it's designed for it's really primarily for people that were in command situation like that and if you ran a battalion or a regiment or something in combat and you did it so well that they excelled and and killed the japanese and like that you'd get the legion of america if you were an officer and so i think i may have started this and it was kind of a cruel thing to say but i started calling it the officer's good conduct medal because they got it automatically and when they would come back through the processing center in san diego we'd look in the record book there see and if they didn't have a legion of merit and they had satisfactorily served over there the secretary would type a thing and the general would sign it and they'd award him the legion of piracy so i started calling it the officer's good conduct medal and it wasn't a very popular term amongst the officers but it was quite accurate was this mostly senior officers like majors lieutenant colonels usually yes and uh but it it would include probably captains at least and uh now dog you said that you served with general moore all through the service that's a picture of him you said was when he was addressing the troops when he retired yes you were with him yes oh yeah he uh as i told you he had graduated from the naval academy way back in the 20s and uh so when uh world war ii ended uh well let me start this over again when world war ii started you had the problem of getting people into the service and the marine corps was the last one to take draftees the army air corps and navy it finally got to the point where they had to get drafted into those services and uh so the marines jew usually could get enough but then when the marines started getting big when the war started there were only 120 000 marines in the whole world and that was their authorized strength from congress they went to two million during the war and so when the war ended the problem then become how do you get rid of them the same problems you had getting them in is getting them out because you didn't you couldn't just shut down the marine corps so you had to do it in some orderly fashion so i came with an up with an idea to take a sheet of paper a form put the person's name serial number and so on on it and then how long were you in the service how many months were in the service and there was a blank space and you could put 14 times 10 give them 10 months 10 points for each month 140 points how long were you overseas in months times 10 or 5 or something another one how often did you do this or how many medals did you get and this and so on and then it all added up down at the bottom up here and i told them that's how you get them out of the service they were drafted in draft about and so all they had to do they came in just staggered in but now you could reward the ones that had done it if you'd been overseas fighting and like that you deserved to go home first if that's what you want to do let's go if you want to stay in the service then you're back here telling people i want to stay in you know how can i stay and so that's the way we got rid of them then and it started out like the people that have x number of points just say a hundred get to go out first the next month the people that have 90 points two weeks later 80 points two weeks later right on down like that so were you in california when you were doing this or were you at headquarters marine corps it was sort of a combination thing the representatives of the director personnel of the marine corps were coming out into the field and doing a lot of this stuff but they had heard that i had come up with this system for processing people within the marine airway out there and so they came down to cv at the two lieutenant colonels and a couple of majors and they came down to see me and how do you do it you know how do you handle it like that so i showed him that point system thing and they took it back to washington and showed it to the director of personnel uh not director personnel director of marine aviation first and of course he knew me and said good idea took her to the director of personnel and they put it in effect for the whole marine corps and uh so then that made an orderly way of getting the people out so is that what got you to uh you were where were you where was the i the tour with the ig in all this the inspector general oh that came quite a while later okay yeah and i was uh i had been out in in pacific for a long time and then i went back and i was in hawaii there for quite a long time and uh but i got word through general wallace he was director of aviation in washington that i was going to be transferred to cherry point north carolina and he notified me he and his wife notified me personally because she came to me out in hawaii and came over and said ken i want to ask you a question i know you're going to cherry point and bill's going to cherry point that was general walnuts bill is going to cherry port you're going to get there the same day practically will you do for your for him what you do for general moore out here and i said of course i may do even more for him back there who knows but i certainly will do no less and so she said great and so when i got back there he came in and became the commanding general and we had a great time there together he stayed there for i think 14 or 16 months and then was transferred somewhere else and another general came in and so what rank were you at this point because you were commissioned somewhere well most of this time i was a sergeant major okay and then in uh 19 let's see i came in in 42 in 1951. i would have had nine years in the service i guess uh the a general by the name of woods three-star general from washington had come in and was now the director of marine aviation well it just so happened here was another case i had hand nurse general woods in his earlier days and so he had a really good liking for me and so uh he was director of marine aviation in washington and so i think just before i had 10 years in a program came out from washington saying that staff non-commissioned officers that would be staff sergeant and above who had outstanding records outstanding this outstanding everything had to be just if they were recommended by their commanding officer or their commanding general they could be awarded a field commission and become a second lieutenant out there in the field you didn't have to go back to ocs or anything like officer candidate school anything like that they just took your stripes off and put bars on you and you were an officer and so general woods three star was a director of marine aviation and uh so i was always so pleased that he did this uh he always told me that he didn't do it just for me because the aviators that were in washington in order to get in their flight time each month because they had to fly at least four hours a month in order to get their flight pay which was a couple hundred bucks a month so they had found that to get their four hours in a good way to do it was to fly from anacostia era from airfield right there in washington to cherry point four hour flight and they'd get their flight time in for the month and uh so anyway this program was coming out where officers that were staff non-commissioned officers with 10 years of service could be awarded a field commission no ocs or anything like that and you would if you weren't in a field that was authorized like i was in personnel and administration and in the listing it was number one number 01 and your classification number for your job like as a sergeant major i was an 0148 as an officer i would be 0130 and it looked like a lower number but it was actually a higher assignment like that and so anyway i wanted to put in for it you could apply for it if you wanted to but commanding officers were off authorized to just go ahead and recommend you whether you put in for it yourself or not and so uh general woods was three-star general uh director of green aviation and i was sergeant major at i guess it was cherry point somewhere i think it was a cherry point what would happen yeah and so uh a lot of the pilots flying stationed at marine corps headquarters flew to cherry point to get their flight time for the month and so they normally would land at cherry point get a cup of coffee and talk to some of their buddies get in the plane and fly back to washington so uh i was at the officer and uh secretary came in and apparently she had been told by general woods do not tell him who's he who's here just tell him he has a visitor so the secretary came in and said could you step in the outer office here or you have a visitor out here and to keep me from saying to her who is it she just said you have a visitor out here and she was gone and i walked out there and they're standing standing as lieutenant general woods and he said i have a present for you here and i said fantastic what is it and he gave me my perimeter commission so that i would be forever be an officer what was it like to go from sergeant major to second lieutenant i mean in terms of status well uh the salary was like going from sergeant major to that was not the salary difference was to second lieutenant it was all latin wasn't all that much because the sergeant major was sort of the top of the line and the second lieutenant was the bottom of the officers it may have been 50 bucks or something like that but of course getting on that pay scale was a lot better because you had a lot further to go and uh and then you served uh when you got your commission you went to the naval air station in memphis yes and why did you go there well that was the first question i had i was in the first marine division at camp pendleton california oceanside california and they had had a major problem with personnel problems in their surface battalion and the surface battalion was the battalion that did everything for the base mowed the lawns you know planted trees trimmed the trees kept the buildings painted the buildings and all that it was a service battalion and they had a lot of people there they had probably 400 people in that thing and they had always just been miserable with their administration but they had never had really they had a sergeant major and a commanding officer but they never had a professional administrator in the thing and so up at the division level in personnel the personnel director was a colonel but he had several assistants and one of them was a captain's billet and it just so happened that one of my buddies he was one number senior to me in the linear list of officers he was working as assistant personnel officer or there and he worked with assignment of officers ground officers and uh so he and i had been buddies for years and uh so uh he would call me almost every day or i'd call him and we'd shoot debris about things in general and like that so he called me one day and said what are you doing i said working you know he said why don't you come out of my office and have some coffee so i said okay so i jumped in the car and went up there and he was waiting at the door and he says come on let's go back to the office but instead he took me to the conference room and they had a whole group the commanding gentleman like that were all there and they had i don't know why permanent promotion or my promotion to captain or promotion it was some big deal right and it had come in and so they decided to surprise me and bring me up there and honor me up there and yeah but why did you go to the naval air station in memphis oh i was there at camp pendleton and i was happy as a lark we had that outfit that had been having trouble for years and it was just up and zing man it was working like a charm and i was really happy with the results i couldn't believe how well that thing was running and uh well dog you left cherry point and went to memphis yeah but why did you go to memphis why were they building up in memphis the korean war had started and so they decided that they needed tons more of people with like electronic skills and the various schools that they had at memphis metalsmith and engine mechanics and stuff like helicopter mechanics and so when i got the orders i called and told my buddy and personnel you know get them canceled and he called back shortly and said they aren't canceling these babies and so the colonel and i went up there my boss and and uh they explained to me that uh memphis has 250 people right now six months from now they're going to have 2600. that means you've got to have barracks location arranged for mess halls just think you know if you're taking care of 260 people and all of a sudden you have to take care of 10 times more so i said yeah but why me and i said well we figured you're the logical guy to do it every time you face a problem you face it and you get it done and that's why you got picked for the job i know you can't get out of it what time frame was this what year was this 1960 i guess it was 1986 1961 no 51 because you met oh yeah i'm sorry yeah it back off ten years okay yeah and uh and that's where you met your wife in memphis yes yeah so i went out there and when i got there it was true there were only 250 people there and i had an office force of about 10 or something like that and but true to their word they said when you honor analyze what you need and just tell us and we'll send them and uh so i decided that you know i was going to need 10 barracks so i was going to need 10 in top ncos to be barracks bosses and it just analyzed the whole problem and this is what i need and they just kept feeding them in like that but in the meantime man that people were coming from all over the marine corps to go to those schools like that and we went from 260 to 2600 in just a month and a half or two months and so we lead on them you know and uh they let me bring in a ton of marine instructors top non-commissioned officers like that to be instructors in the courses that the marines needed and uh so it so happened that uh my wife's brother was a pilot in the navy he was a lieutenant in the navy and there was an officer's electronic school out there and it lasted for the au for the enlisted people it was a 30-week course for the officers it was i think 16 weeks or something like that and so tissy's brother bob was a pilot and he was he was also a student he always wanted to be going to school for something and so uh he came out there and wanted to know what do i have to do to get to go to this school and so i told him how to fly in like that and uh so he he got to school and came out there and of course he spent quite a bit of time in my my office but he uh for the officers were pilots of course most of the time they were flying and so the officers electronic school and the enlisted school the flight portion of it excuse me could be conducted at the same time when they were flying around like that and the officer's instructor could be up there instructing the pilots and the enlisted instructor could be in the back constructing the enlisted person and so we kind of streamlined the whole operation there to get these two people to school faster and when you left there you worked for that and then you went to korea yeah and you were there for the whole korean conflict and you were the personnel director for the marine aviation wing for the korean war yeah for the korean war yeah all right and then you left there and you went to the inspector general's office yes and then in inspector general's office you had to inspect every um embassy in the world and you did all of those inspections yourself well it was like this the inspector general uh or the commandant of the marine corps i should say had an edict from the secretary of the navy for the combat of the marine corps to provide marine detachments or marine sentries to be guards at the embassies and back at that time you probably wouldn't remember this but back at that time they'd had a couple of incidents at embassies where some guy would walk in off the street into an embassy and shoot the guard to be some civilian guard or something like that and then go around and shoot him the ambassador or shoot whoever he could shoot and take off they'd had for a couple of instances like that so i guess the answer to it was to provide marine security guards at every embassy in the world and so the commandant of the marine corps made put a school in washington dc there and it was called marine security guard school and if you were selected for duty as a security guard at an embassy you had to go to that school first and they would teach you all everything about embassies like that protocol and so forth and then hey doc let me ask you this when you left the embassy when you inspected all you you traveled to 91 countries yeah inspected that and then you came back and you worked at eighth and i yeah and that's when president kennedy came in and that was the first president to come to the parade grounds and you were in charge of setting that up yeah tell that story about meeting kennedy and his rocking chair being there yeah the uh john kennedy was of course a great people's president but as you know he'd had that accident in pt 101 109 in the pacific and he himself was a decorated war hero and uh but he had this bad back from that incident and so uh he had he had trouble getting around and he it you know he could had a ceremony like that he could walk from here over there like that and it looked perfectly normal but he would have to have somewhere to sit he couldn't stand up for a long period of time so anyway the president very seldom ever came to the marine barracks and so uh i don't know who made the arrangement i did i couldn't claim responsibility for that but anyway we were going to have from april to september every year we had parades on the parade ground there at the marine barracks at eighth and i and they were something to see if you thought you had ever seen a military parade or seen the military in action in a parade situation they had a marine silent drill team there that was second to none and they were there were i think 11 of them i think wide 11 in a row but they had these m1 rifles with a uh the everything that they needed to do their thing and they would start that function at their show and it would probably last 10 minutes but you never saw those rifles stop they were always in the air like everybody said but these guys would just be standing there they'd just go they'd put their hand out and donk and a rifle would come in the dog and they'd throw theirs and and it was just you couldn't believe what you were see so they did that every friday night every tuesday night in downtown not in downtown uh washington but you want to cross the bridge the 14th street bridge to go into washington and at the first street constitution avenue you turned left and went way way down to the end of it and you're then again right on the river on the potomac river and the iwo jima memorial for the marines was there huge thing monster thing and so on tuesday nights the marines would send a special group over there to do their performance the silent drill team and like that and so tuesday nights in washington dc it looked like everybody in washington dc came to that spot to see it because it was worth the effort to get there just to see what these guys could do and i don't think in all the four years i did that i ever saw one of those guys ever dropped their rifle well dog tell about when kennedy was there and his they had his rocking chair on stage yeah and you had to you went down and sat in it this was kind of funny and the first place they had to protect the president right off the bat so the marine barracks there was a city block big parade field the size of a football field in the middle so if you went in the main gate solid wood a solid brick barracks and so forth across here solid same way the offices and so forth of the commanding officer and like that were up in this left hand up here along this end were three great big houses and the anun was just unbelievably large that was the common dance house while he was commandant the next one was the assistant commandant the next one was the director of marine aviation those were those three important houses then there were five barracks nice houses like that along here and these were for the bachelor officers that had all these functions many of them were aided to the secretary of the navy ed to the secretary of commerce they had all all over congress all over the the cabinet like that they had positions like that and so that was their function but that's where they lived they were all bachelors when they started if they got married they still retained their room there because they had to have their uniforms there and like that at all time they might live in an apartment or a house in washington but that's where they had to retain their stuff for the parade field like this well dog get back to when president kennedy came in in the chair so they announced that for the first time in years and years and years president kennedy the president of the united states it happened to be kennedy was going to come over and be the review of the parade well we were used to having congressmen and senators and cabinet members and like that or the mayor or the district of columbia anybody that you could think of that was a big shot they would bring them in to be the reviewing officer like that and so uh they decided to ask the president if he would like to do it and so he had a military background you know he'd been in the navy like that and so he accepted and so the parade was going to be like 10 days from now on a friday night so they started putting up protective gear now the marine barracks the right end of it was all barracks building so you didn't have you didn't have any wall for people to climb over no you told us that part talk about when kennedy got there okay so kennedy comes on the parade field yeah so he came and as part of the preparation for getting him there probably three or four days ahead of time uh somebody decided or he decided himself probably you know at that parade friday night i had something i really want to do but i don't think i can stand up you know for the hour of that parade i want my chair over there from the white house see and you probably never saw the chair most of nobody ever saw it perfect but that was a big close thing black leather and like that huge thing to high back i don't like that and so uh he said that he would have his chair sent over there for that parade friday night and they would send it over ahead of time so it would be there for friday night and when he got there he didn't have to worry about it when he walked out there there would be the chair at the appropriate place and so the friday that before the parade the afternoon i would always go around out there and check the parade field every detail on like that check between the houses and like that make sure everything was clean and neat and so on and that the whatever equipment needed to be out there for the reviewing officer was there and just attended the details in the middle about on the 50-yard line i'll call at the middle of the field we had a little set of bleachers we had some big bleachers we could put in 3500 people in there but here was a set of special bleachers these were vip bleachers and we could put 50 people in there in this set of bleachers and so you could imagine if the president is going to be the reviewing officer every congressman and like that wants a seat in that place up there so all we could do practically was take him according to when they called nash for the seat except we would always make it a point speaker of the house the top guy in the senate like that we always had a reservation for them the secretary of the navy secretary of the army secretary of the air force certain vips always had an arrangement there and but they just sort of assigned me as the ambassador to make certain that all the details were taken care of and that the parade went off nicely and so it wasn't much of an effort for me the president's band was going to be the musician i didn't really have to say much for them i could go after the band director and our buddies but i'd say don't forget friday night he'd say okay he wouldn't even say what time or anything he just said i'm ready and that would be it and so then we'd have all the details taken care of and things would happen according to the scheduling like that and when the thing started then they the uh this special firing squad the rifle squad would put on their act and then whatever was next and so forth and then the actual parade would start and the troops from the marine barracks would form in platoon formation and they would march up and across and and when they'd passed a reviewing stand they would do their eyes right and and salute and so on and and uh dog when you got um when you got the chair that was up there was kennedy's chair you went down and sat down in it yeah why did you sit down in kennedy's chair well what happened i'll tell you this there was a reporter for the washington post the maine washington newspaper and she was a hatchet woman and her desire was always to tear people down and so she liked nothing more than taking on you know the head guy in the senate or or the vice president or whatever and she'd write some column about something that would be bad about them rather than something really good about it i can't remember her name to save my life but she had this she had just established a representation a reputation as a hatchet woman i'd never seen her before never i knew her name but i'd never seen her before and so the president it was friday and the president was going to be over there at seven o'clock to review the parade so i went over to check the grounds and so forth at two o'clock in the afternoon and the white house had sent the president's chair over there this special charity award that supported his back and like that the one that came right out of the oval office it was his chair and so the company had come up with the truck and drove in the main gate of the post and i guess somebody i had instructed the people there that where it was going to go out there so they put the chair there and so typically then i would put signs on chairs such as that and i would put president so-and-so or vice president so-and-so or mayor so and so whatever the titles were on all of the vip things like that and of course part of the time kennedy would be out there but most of the time he'd be up on the reviewing stand because the troops were going to march by and so forth and salute him and like that but that was all details we had worked out in advance and of course he was thoroughly briefed and he did it three times during that one parade season so he knew what was going on so uh three days before the parade i went over there and lord here with the secret service out there had people out there and the 16 foot high fence they blocked that to the ground with let me just say cardboard i don't know what it may have been plastic or something up to the edge to the roof up equal to the height of the roof and it so it came from this end across all the way across and down and hooked onto the end of the building down here so when you went by there it was like looking at the box and there was a gate here but if the president was in there that gate was going to be closed and two security guards with a machine gun standing there see so all the security in the world was going to be on the marine barracks that night and uh and it was but i went out there that day to make sure that that chair was in the right place i had never met that hatchet woman writer but i knew well of her fame and or i wouldn't call her fame but her notoriety so i'm standing there by that chair it's not even faced the right direction and it's 30 feet out from where it's going to be that night but it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon so we don't worry about that at this point but all i was doing was making sure that the dang chair was there and we knew the white house was going to take care of the details when the parade ended i didn't have to worry about that chair the white house people just globbed that thing and zoomed and before the president got back to the white house his chair was back there and but you sat in it yeah but anyway the the chair was out there and so i went out there and we put the this beautiful inscribed card on there and it said president whatever his name was president so-and-so and i was standing there just admiring that chair and thinking this is where the prison of the united states sits and i had actually seen the chair at the white house one time on taking a tour of the white house but i never thought i'd be near it or be handling it or be responsible for it and so i was saying this woman walked up i didn't know who she was but obviously with the security we had there she must have presented some security to the guy at the gate or that she wouldn't have been in there and uh so she walked up and was standing there looking at the chair president uh kennedy kennedy so she said why don't you sit down on this chair and let me take your picture if i had told her what i really thought it wouldn't have been printable but i told her i said don't be absurd i wouldn't do that she says come on i want to take your picture and the president shared a nice thing for you to have you know you show your kids someday like that and i thought you witch that'll be on tomorrow morning's atlanta newspaper on the front page that's what she was really looking for see and so uh she asked me again and i finally told her there's the gate leave and she did and of course i never sat in the chair and uh but that night of course we had it there for him and uh when the parade started that's where he was out there and then he knew and he had we had a guy to ask one of the lieutenant colonels escorted him back to the reviewing stand and so they helped him you had to climb a kind of a steep set of stairs to get up on there so they helped him get up on there and that that evening they did and he reviewed the troops and so forth and then when it was over with they brought him down off there we're going to have to move toward closing here because the battery in the camera is starting to run down but what i don't want to close without hearing a little bit about your life after the marine corps i know you have at least one child [Laughter] yes well i i had some interesting things to do when i got out of course i had all this administrative experience and so forth and so uh in california unlike i'll say the rest of the united states i guess i could say everything west of the mississippi handles title insurance the way to handle it in california everything east it's handled by attorneys and there are title companies but they don't have sales representatives outselling their product like that and they'd handle it completely different and the title company itself does not issue the title policy that a guy gets when he buys a house the attorneys issued the policy and of course he they issued the policy and get paid by the insurance company and deliver it to the guy that buys the house like that out on the west coast they handle it differently the uh you had your title company but every piece of property west of the mississippi was in our databases so if your house was out in el cajon part of san diego and you knew the address of your house for example i could call or you could call for that better and tell our the title company in town i would like to have a property profile and this was something i invented for the title company out there and invented it hey let me interrupt for one moment because they're about to close um you got your you got your degree after you you went back to school you worked for bill bailey then you went back to school worked for trw yeah and then after you got your degree you got into business you lived in california and you retired uh in san diego um you had three daughters you originally got married in hawaii to esther ho yeah and you had ken matson jr yeah and then you all got divorced in 51 yeah and then you came back um you did the inspector general stuff you you did all that got your degree went back to school had three girls and then basically you moved here when jenna and i moved here um because we had grandkids the other two sisters didn't want to have kids 1988 that's right and so then we've been here ever since it just so happened that about six months ago or so we found ken jr we had not we didn't know about ken jr until we were going through some paperwork and then we got i found him in colorado ken jr came back here and they had a reunion about three months ago um and he hadn't seen him since 19 what 19 when when was the last time he saw him he was 10 years old 19 yeah yeah so ken jr now lives in colorado and he's coming back to visit again um but now when you married esther you had to get the general to approve that yeah because uh it was a mixed marriage you couldn't marry somebody that was a different race yeah so uh so the general had to approve that correct so uh we had general moore was commanding general and the deputy commanding general was a general named bryce and he was a southerner and of course he was against mixed marriages okay and so i had met mr astro out there beautiful lady and we were truly in love this wasn't just a deal of my being overseas and lonesome or something and so uh uh it wasn't uh a matter of whether she was uh hawaiian or chinese or whatever right but if you married somebody who was not pure white you had to get permission from the commanding general or from a general and so i didn't think that was going to be any problem so when we got we made all the plants get married and so on and so it was a long form you had to fill out as a eight by thirteen page both sides so i filled out all the form and so on and then down here was it where i signed it then it said approved and a place for the general to sign and then it had to indicate rank and position so uh uh how many minutes would you say i could have made it out for general moore to sign in the first place but since general bryce was the administrative guy i mean he was the deputy commanding general and he and i were good buddies he was a southerner like that but he and i were good friends i did a lot of good work for him and he appreciated like that and so i was personally typing this form out and like that and so i filled out the front side and filled out the backside and so down at the bottom i put w o bryce brigadier general usmc under the line where it said approved so i signed this sucker and normally i would have walked in and just said i need your signature on this general but since it was just a routine matter it didn't need to be signed today or tomorrow or next week because we weren't getting married for a while and i could have just thrown it in this indian basket but uh i took it in and told him i said this requires your signature uh let me know when you sign it and i'll pick it up so uh you know he and i were close i did lots of stuff for him and he did a lot of stuff for me and i and we worked together as a team so i didn't expect any problems with it but boy that southerner in him he was a southern gentleman and that reared its ugly head and he called me out in a few minutes and he said i'm not signing this thing he said if you want to marry one of these people from out here that's up to you but i'm not signing this sucker if you wanted to prove maybe general moral approve it but i won't so i said thanks a lot and took it back and walked around the corner and put it in general moore's basket and about five minutes he came out of his office walked off to my desk and said here you are and he had signed it approved and so then we went on and got married was there very much racism because you were married to a hawaiian girl not a great deal but occasionally there was but you didn't run into a problem in hawaii but when you came back oh yeah my first duty station back in was in north carolina and of course north carolina is about as bad as you could find for something like that and so i remember shortly after i'd gotten in town i had a brand new car and i went in we were going into i'll just walmart or some store roses maybe a grocery store and so i pulled in and and it just so happened the cars came down in front of the store and then the sidewalk turned a little bit and there were several cars parked here so i parked here and so we went in the store and so i uh when we finished we came out and got in the car i put her in the right seat and i went on to get in this side and about the time i was going to close the door i noticed this guy standing there he looked like he was 45 50 years old man and so it was unusual place for him to be standing looking at me or looking at the car or looking at her or whatever and uh so i said can i help you or something like that he said yeah where did you get that chinese thing and i went over and took it by the front said if i weren't a gentleman you'd be laying on the floor here if i ever hear you make a comment about my wife again like that i'll mop the floor on you i'm scared to live in hell out of him because he knew i was telling him the truth and i got in the car and we left we didn't have many things like that happening but if you were like just sitting in town here and you walked on the street you'd walk into the drugstore or walk into a place to get a chocolate soda or something you'd see people's eyes going like this when you went by okay we're we're just about out of time yeah okay interesting story i'm glad you were able to come in and tell us uh what it was like and i want to thank you for participating but also i want to thank you for your service well that's you're welcome my pleasure of course okay thank you

Channel: Atlanta History Center

Views: 1,032

Rating: 4.652174 out of 5

Keywords: Veteran (Profession), Atlanta History Center (Museum), Library of Congress Veterans History Project

Id: 10lkCHVWHfk

Length: 114min 42sec (6882 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021