(gentle music) (gentle music) - Hello, I'm Abe Shragge.

I love history and I find it especially rewarding to discover and investigate the themes that make up a community's story.

It's DNA, if you will.

San Diego's military history goes back to its beginning.

Today, you're going to meet just a few of the many who are part of the military strand of San Diego's DNA.

My colleague historian, Iris Engstrand, and I, talked with them at the Veterans Museum in Balboa Park.

(gentle music) - Welcome, Wally.

I'm so glad to have you here in our program on military experience.

In fact, I understand that your military experience started probably before anyone, so let's hear about it.

- My father who came from Western New York, joined, lied about his age and got into the Army back in 1915.

He was sent to the Philippine Islands, spent a couple years in the Philippine Islands, then he was sent to China, spent a couple years in China and Siberia at the end of the First World War.

Being due, he was assigned back to the United States after being 13 years overseas.

And he was assigned to the 7th Bombardment Group, which was the army operation on Rockwell Field at the time, or at the time, the army occupied half of North Island, and the Navy occupied the other half.

- Is that a picture of the plane that he used in North Island?

I see the one over by you.

- Well, this is later.

This is in, he started out as a private on North Island at Rockwell Field.

And then the army started to put together a plan to see how long they could keep an airplane aloft.

And he was part of the ground service crew for that airplane, which is called a Question Mark.

The plane flew for 150 hours, which is almost seven days back and forth between Van Nuys and Rockwell Field being refueled in the air.

So he was on the ground support group.

My mother, who had just come from Iowa, was working at the flight line restaurant, and that's where they met, my mother and my father in Van Nuys in 1928, '29.

And so that's how they got together.

So she moved to San Diego to continue their courtship and she got a job with the Russell Parachute Company, that photograph over there, which is located in the old McClintock storage building, which is now the home of Rainwater's restaurant and a number of other operations.

That's the photograph from about 1928 when she was working there, although I can't find her in there.

But those are the seamstresses that were putting together parachutes for that company at the time.

- [Iris] Well, I see a little picture over by you.

Is that when you made your appearance?

- Well, I appeared in 1930 and we lived on India Street when I was born, which is now practically cut off by the High Five freeway.

Then we moved to Coronado, and then ultimately we moved right onto the base at Rockwell Field, and we were one of the first occupants.

We moved in in early January of 1934.

And this photograph here is of my family, my brother, myself in 1934, right after we moved in, and I was over there a couple years ago and took a photograph of the house that's still there, and they're well maintained, and they're now on the National Register of Historic Places.

- Your father made an interesting prediction when you were born.

I think it's in that newspaper article about you.

- Well, somehow they got an article in the newspaper a week after I was born.

This is in the San Diego Union, which says Sergeant Peck, who is receiving congratulations upon the arrival of Wallace Russell, that's me, says that just 20 years hence, Wallace Russell will appear at Kelly field, Texas, for instruction as an army pilot.

It's all settled.

The only thing which remains is for the 20 years to roll by.

Well, I was never too enamored about going in the service and he wanted me to go to West Point, and I vetoed that, and I decided I wanted to go to law school.

So I graduated from University of California at Berkeley, and I had a nine-month hiatus before law school started.

So I worked at the fry cook in San Francisco at a restaurant chain, and then along came the Korean War, and the Congress reinstated the draft, and I didn't want to be drafted.

So I immediately signed up for the Air Cadet Program, and as the article says, it was exactly 20 years later that I appeared in Texas for flight training.

My father, he retired in 1950 after 30 years of total service.

And I went in two months after he retired.

So one replaced the other.

(gentle music) - Well, hello, Ramon.

I'm happy to welcome you here to the program, and I'm hoping that you'll tell us a little bit about your military experience.

- There was a war going on.

As I recall, it was Second World War, and there was something called the draft.

And I knew a couple of things.

One is I didn't want to be an enlisted man, and secondly, I didn't wanna be drafted.

So to avoid being enlisted man and being drafted, I volunteered for the United States Army Air Corps, and that's how I became a pilot and a second lieutenant.

- Did you experience any discrimination in the service being Mexican?

- You know, I grew, I'm a Phi Beta Kappa.

I was a very good student and the Navy required two years to be a naval officer and they had a V-6 program and a V-12, they wouldn't take me.

And then I thought, well, maybe the Merchant Marine will take me.

And so I went to Long Beach and took an exam, and I never heard from them.

And then I heard that maybe the Marines would take me.

And so 14 of us from San Diego State went down to the Marine Corps Depot, 13 were taken and I was the only one rejected.

And then I finally thought, well, maybe I'll fly for the Navy.

The requirements were two years of college and a physical.

And so I went up to Long Beach and I went through the physical.

At the very end, my last stop was the physical of my eyes, and the corpsman there said, your eyes are not that good.

So I went home and told my father, and my father said, well, let's go see a specialist in San Diego, and we did.

And the specialist looked at my eyes and he said, they're perfect, but if your father will pay for the exercises that I can give him, I'm sure that he can go back and pass.

Well, I took the exercises, my father paid for them, and I went back.

I got through the whole thing until I got to the eye exam.

And another corpsman said to me, the commander wants to see you.

And this commander came and he said, sit down, son.

And he said, there's no place in the Naval Officer Corps for someone of your background.

The only place where you can be an officer is in the Army Air Corps.

And that's why I became an officer and a pilot in the United States Army Air Corps.

- I'm hoping that today in the military, in fact, I know it's changed.

- I know it has.

I know it has.

But you know, those were difficult.

Our results were difficult days.

My brother went through the same kind of thing.

My brother was also a lieutenant, and he could B-24 over in England, and he was also rejected by the Naval Air Corps.

And he won the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He flew over Germany 32 times as a pilot of B-24.

- I know in Mexicans in general, contributed so greatly to the war and World War II, and all the wars since then, of course.

- Yes, but that way, things were, you know.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - Part of your life here has been as the curator of the Chinese American Museum in San Diego, and you've been doing an oral history project with Chinese American Veterans of World War II.

And I wanted to ask you a little bit about that.

- Most of the Chinese young men of those days lived down in Chinatown, 'cause the only place that the Chinese could live along with the Japanese and the Filipinos.

You had to be south of market like and market to J, and second to Sixth Street, those eight blocks.

- Tell us a little bit about some of the fellows that we see in this picture.

- Well, this picture was taken in 1942 out at Fort Rosecrans.

That was the area, I guess, that they welcomed them into the Army Air Corps, 'cause they all were volunteered to join the Army Air Corps, but they never allowed Chinese to be pilots with a few exceptions.

And they all joined and they were all friends.

That's Henry Quin on the left there, who's a grandson of Ah Quin, who was a mayor of Chinatown in the late 1800s.

And next to him is James Hamm.

That's the older brother of Tom Hamm who was in the city council here.

And George Lee, then Norman Leon, Carl Coy, and as a twin brother here is Earl Cooey and then Miles Ham.

But they all went into the Army Air Corps and a lot of them ended up in the China Burma India Theater.

Some of them ended up in Europe.

- One in particular who ended up in Europe is Victor Schoon.

He's got a terrific story that I hope you tell.

- Yeah, he wasn't one of those young men.

And Victor, interesting is how he got his name.

The immigration officers usually were confused about Chinese names because Chinese, you know, used their surname first and their other names second and third.

So they would always take the third name and say, you know, and say you're Mr.

so-and-so, and that's how Ah Quin got the name Quin, because he is really a Tom and or a Hamm.

But anyway, the immigration officer evidently was a German ancestry, and so he didn't understand the Chinese name, so he just gave him the name, a German name, Schoon, okay, this one's turned out to be an advantage because when he applied for officer training in that, they thought he was German.

So he was trained to be a pilot to fly B-17s.

And of course, no Chinese before had ever been allowed to be a pilot.

- Victor Schoon had a very distinguished career.

He flew 50 missions in his B-17 over Germany.

- Yeah, this was out of Italy, and 50 missions.

And then after completing the 50 missions, every one of his crew members was given the medal.

- The Distinguished Flying Cross.

- Right, except he did not receive it.

- [Abe] And did he ever earn recognition for that later in his life?

- No, and a number of us has told him, they said, you know, you really ought to go to VA and appeal that, because I'm sure today that they would rectify that.

He says, well, it's too late now.

It's not worth it, the effort.

- [Abe] In your project, how many Chinese American World War II veterans have you found in San Diego?

- [Murray] Oh, I think I've gotten about 50 some that I've registered.

- Okay, it's a great project, and it's one that tells us a lot about our heritage, about the nature of life in the city, nature of life in World War II.

And I want to thank you very much for the work that you've done.

- Oh, you're welcome.

(gentle music) - Now, you were born and lived in a small farming community in Iowa to join the Army in 1941 and came out here to Camp Callan.

What was it like coming to a place like La Jolla, a place like the Torrey Pines Bluffs?

Have you ever seen anything like that before?

- No, and it never seen the ocean, (laughs) and that was really exciting to us, land lovers.

- Where were you and what were you doing on December 7th, 1941, the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked?

- Well, you know, they always quarantine you when you, particularly in those days.

And we found out that the one way to get off the base was to join the church choir.

Of course, none of us could sing, but we joined the church choir anyway, we were just sitting down to eat in the afternoon.

And when the report came over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

- And what did you do then?

- The radio put out information that we should stay, if we weren't on the base, we should stay where we were.

And so they called us in by companies.

And we went in after dark and we had to walk down, and light a match to find out where our barracks was, because by that time they had blankets hung up over the windows and absolutely no light.

- But it wasn't long after that that you joined the Army Air Corps.

So off you went, now you were part of the eighth Air Force, is that right?

Based in Germany, probably based in England.

But flying missions into Germany.

- No, in Italy, I was in the 15th.

- I'm sorry.

- Yeah, I was in the 15th Air Force.

- Okay, but flying then into northern and Eastern Europe from there?

- [Frank] Yes.

- [Abe] On a B-24.

- [Frank] Yes.

- [Abe] And how many missions did you fly before the next great event?

- I got credit for nine.

And if you made nine, then you were an old timer.

- And what happened then?

- Well, we got shot down over our target in Vienna, and we went in with a four-engine bomber and came out with a two, and both of 'em were on one side, so we weren't going to be in the air for very long.

The engineer was wounded pretty bad and we were going down.

So I put a shoot on him and another guy, and I dropped him out, and with instructions, and then we all jumped and our parachutes, and we were pretty close to the ground, some of us when we got out of the plane.

- Well, you made it to the ground and then you were captured.

- I got caught in Budapest by the Gestapo, and from there, I went to, they sent me to a POW camp in what was part of Germany in Poland, what is part Poland now, about 25, 30 miles from the North Sea.

- [Abe] And how long were you in that prison camp altogether?

- That one, I was only in about two and a half months.

And then they transferred me on a hospital train because I was suffering from shrapnel particularly in my legs.

And so they sent me to another camp up on the Baltic, and then we were liberated by the Russians there on May 1st.

So I went down on October the 13th on a Friday.

And so I was actually a prisoner about eight months.

(gentle music) - I was born in 1950 in a small city, south of Luzon in the Philippines, which is Naga City.

Then I moved to the city of Manila and I went to college and work, and ended up being a recruit in the United States Navy.

- [Iris] Well, now how are you recruited for the United States Navy?

- Process is fairly simple.

You send a six by four in photo, you put your information behind and you mail it.

Then they take the pictures and they send you a letter to come and take the test.

And the test consists of written, verbalization, language and a little bit of math.

Then if you pass that, you go for an interview that same day.

- Well, Vicente, tell me about your first enlistment and where did you go when you first got into the Navy?

- Well, trips started from Subic Bay to Clark Air Base, Yokota Air Force Base, Anchorage, Alaska, and Travis Air Force Base, Treasure Island, and San Diego recruit training command.

- [Iris] Were you here in San Diego at the Naval Training Center?

- Yes, I was recruit trained here and I was with company 827.

- Did I see that you had some other very interesting experiences?

Now which of the wars have you been fighting in our involvement overseas?

- The end of Vietnam was the evacuation, but I wasn't really on each other, but I was more on the Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

That was in the 90s.

- [Iris] Well, your family must have missed you while you were gone.

Did you keep some letters going home?

- Yeah, during those times, the only thing to communicate is by mail and by phone is quite expensive.

So there's always a lot of letter writings, telling stories and also giving the news about, especially when the ship is going back for homecoming.

- Tell me a little bit about those letters.

- I mentioned a lot about what we do and how are the planes are being recovered on the aircraft carriers.

And also I mentioned in my letter at one time that during the first Iranian crisis, we were there, and 10 years later, we were back for Desert Storm.

And that place, the Raven Gulf in South Asia is really a spot that has a lot of turmoils and a lot of life's, as I say now, has been lost over there just to make sure that they would understand freedom and democracy.

You know, when the ship is coming back, you know, you're so excited.

You write letters and in fact, one of the letters indicates that if we travel at 14 knots, we will be in San Diego in 45 days.

That's how far we go, you know?

- Wow, and I'm sure you're very glad, your family's glad when you do finally land and the 45 days are over.

- Over.

And it's always a great reunion.

- Downtown San Diego has historically been a place where soldiers, sailors, and marines pass through on their way to some distant outpost.

We have been incredibly fortunate to find a group of portraits of young men and women taken in a downtown photography studio during the Korean War.

A find like this can generate some wonderful oral history, as we found out when we tracked down Bill Orcutt at his home in Talmage.

- I'm Bill Orcutt.

- How do you do, Mr.

Orcutt?

Very nice to meet you.

- Come on in.

- Thank you.

Recently we found a collection of photographs that were taken in San Diego, presumably during the late 1940s and 1950s from the World War II era into the Korean War era.

And we found this picture and we found a number on the back.

We looked in the log book and we matched up the log book, the number on the picture in the log book, and we found the name Beverly Orcutt, and we looked in the phone book, called the number, found you.

And I would like to ask you, is this a picture of you?

- I was just recalled at the time this picture was taken.

- Now recalled you had been in the service previously?

- Yes, in World War II, I was a sergeant in Army Airways communication system, which is part of the Air Corps, Army Air Corps.

- So you've spent a significant portion of your life right here, an amazing stroke of luck that we could find you, your picture, all in the same place.

- Yeah.

The surprising thing though is I was up in LA for 35 of those years in intervening years.

- And in Korea, what did you do?

- We had observation posts in bunkers and our photographers would photograph the enemy territory and then the intel would compare them to previous photos to tell where activity was.

- Now, there are a number of pictures of men stringing wire.

Was this telephone telegraph high speed internet?

- Cell phone.

No high speed internet in those days.

Those were telephone wires.

And that was the signal corps's job, springing wire.

- [Abe] Was there much infrastructure like that in Korea already, or were you really building this from scratch?

- [William] Mostly building from scratch.

There wasn't much there.

They weren't very sophisticated.

- So this was in a sense, bringing Korea a little bit into modern age.

- [William] Right.

- [Abe] There are a number of photos in your book of people, children, in fact, the elderly people as well.

What were living conditions like for the Korean people?

- [William] Pretty bad.

Yeah, pretty basic.

You know, they had a roof over their heads and they ate rice and stuff, but a couple of these people, I asked people that could speak English, I asked what they thought of the war and they said, we don't care about the war.

It's your war.

And it kind of shocked me, you know, as a young military guy, I was surprised that it was our war, not theirs.

- But what did that mean to you?

How would you interpret that?

- It disturbed me, but it disturbed me because why are we here?

You know, we thought that we were helping them fend off the North Koreans, but I think they considered us, well, they considered us outsiders.

- This is a very disturbing image.

There's no information on the back.

Can you tell us please what's- - Yes, one of my photographers shot this and he called it the jazz singer.

And the reason is the guy has his mouth open and he looks like he's singing, but he's really yelling.

So he doesn't hurt his eardrums as he's firing the artillery.

And this is the kind of war that was going on when I was there, the artillery war and a scouting war.

- One of the most remarkable aspects of this collection is how well it's been preserved.

And the fact that you took the pictures, you identified them, you sent them home to your wife, who took care of them, provides us with an amazingly rich record of events that have largely been forgotten.

I really want to commend you for the effort that you and your wife made in- - Thank you.

Commend my wife because she's the one that kept the collection.

I've forgotten a lot of this stuff.

- I'm very glad that we were able to bring this to light and I want to thank you again.

- Thank you.

- One of the lessons history teaches us is that the military will be part of San Diego's DNA for decades to come.

Our story is entwined with the history of the nation and the world, and it's up to us to preserve and tell that story.

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