“The Korean War was on when I was in college and all of us were being drafted and a way to avoid the draft was to join ROTC, which I did, and they were training me to be an infantry officer. I applied for the Air Force ROTC, but the people at the University of Denver said, ‘You wear glasses, so you will never be a pilot.’ Then I saw a notice on the Board that said the Air Force is in dire need of people who have majored in mathematics or physics. So I wrote the Secretary of the Air Force. Now that was chutzpah—and if you don’t remember what that word means, it means “nerve”—because nobody ever writes the Secretary of the Air Force. I got a reply in three days which said, ‘You are accepted in the Air Force ROTC.’ I was transferred immediately and from then on at the University, I did Air Force training and I got out of the bins of things that the supply officers do and got into the more exciting world of what Air Force officers do.”
METEOROLOGY AND RADIATION DURING THE KOREAN WAR
“When I graduated, the Air Force immediately sent me to UCLA and I spent a year studying meteorology. They then sent me to Hawaii and I spent six months studying tropical meteorology. Then they sent me to a tiny little atoll—Eniwetok Atoll, four degrees north of the Equator—and I spent a miserable year on an isolated base that was so secret we couldn’t talk about anything, except that now I can tell you we were studying the effects of the atom bomb that was exploded on Bikini, to see what they did to the seafood. We spent some time fishing and turning the fish over to the scientists so they could see what was going on with radioactivity in the fish. Then I had one year left and I elected to spend that in Japan, where I studied the Japanese language for a year and learned to speak a little Japanese and enjoyed myself very much.”
PLAYING TENNIS FOR THE AIR FORCE
“The most interesting thing that happened to me when I was there was that I won the base championship in tennis and they sent me to Tokyo, where we practiced on the tennis courts of the Imperial Palace and that was fun. Then they sent me from Tokyo to the Philippines, where we continued to get ready for the World Championship Air Force tennis matches. They flew me from the Philippines all the way to Connecticut on Pan American Airlines, two engines with propellers, very good-looking hostesses, and 27 hours of flying time. Okay, so I lost in the first round and I got on an airplane and immediately flew all the way back to my base in [Zuki (?) Air Force base on Kwajalein Island] and played out my Air Force career.”
NEXT: AFTER THE WAR