Michael J. Kindle
History 297W
Excerpts from Oral History Interview with Dr. Ira Schwartz completed on April 25, 2001
May 11, 2001
MK: What were you doing before the war started?
IS: I was in college…I was in advanced ROTC and in the middle of my Junior year on a Wednesday we came to school and there was a notice on the bulletin board “You are on active service. Report at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning and we were processed.
MK: Did you follow the events as they were unfolding?
IS: Oh Yeah. I followed everything very carefully. I sort of enjoy history, and as a youngster growing up I had a tremendous advantage. The group of fellows and girls that I grew up with, no two of us were of the same religion or the same national background. So we celebrated everybody’s holidays. And we got to know. I remember at age 12 I was very impressed with the fact that so many people did something because of their religious belief. So I started reading about a lot of religions. I was sort of a science buff also. In college my major was physics. So I read those things and I keep up with them as much as I could. I was a very avid reader.
MK: And how did you feel about going in?
IS: I really don’t know. We just thought that was part of the procedure that was going on. Everybody was doing this and this was the thing to do. You couldn’t fight it. If you wanted to fight it, you were going to end in jail. So we went.
MK: Did you support American involvement?
IS: Oh yes.
MK: Your job was a cryptographer, did you decode for the US military? You didn’t do any intercepting of the Japanese?
IS: … we would get messages from Washington and decode them. And Macarthur would tell us what we had to do. We would also get messages from Macarthur that Washington would have to get and we would have to put those into code and them to send them out. We were also a relay station for CBI, China Burma India.
MK: How about the role…of women? Do you think the war had an affect on that?
IS: Oh yeah. I think it had a tremendous effect. The women who came into the service as “WACS” and “WAVES” and so forth, they broke them out of the shackles.
MK: What about the Japanese interment. How do you think about that?
IS: I didn’t know too much about it but I think it is one of the bad marks upon ourselves. One of my patients was interned as a very young girl. I think it had a big effect on her life…We didn’t even know they had internment.
MK: So it wasn’t in the media?
IS: No, no that was all hushed up.
MK: What emotions did you feel when you were in those combat zones?
IS: It really didn’t bother me, it really didn’t. I thought I was fairly well trained. I knew how to protect myself fairly well. And that’s all you could do.
MK: How was the morale of your company?
IS: It was good, it was good. We had pretty high morale. Although, I was still in cryptography. The troops really revolted in Manila. I thought McArthur was the greatest military genius the world ever saw. But the GI’s hated his guts. Right after we got there, out of no place was this huge Cadillac that was his. I couldn’t understand where the hell did this come from. The GI’s would go past it and kick it and spit on it. I found out later, in fact I didn’t find this out until two years ago, that he appropriated it from the madam who ran the whorehouse.
MK: What about races, in your company or unit, was there blacks as well as whites?
IS: No, at that time blacks were segregated. There were all black units. In fact, the most frightened man I think I saw in the war was getting on a boat in Frisco. He was a white captain and had an all black unit.
MK: Why?
IS: A lot of guys got shot in the back. They didn’t treat those black soldiers too well back in the states when they were training them. That kind of stuff went on. There’s no question about it. I don’t think I saw a black man out there. If I did, those things don’t bother me.
MK: Do you think that helped at all? Race relations, after the war?
IS: Yeah, I think it did for the black people and it did for the women.
MK: How did you feel when you were liberating the GI’s?
IS: Oh, we felt good. You know it’s a wonderful feeling. (Emotional sigh) You give a guy back his life.
MK: How did you feel during that time when you were preparing for the invasion of Japan?
IS: That was my job, and I was just going to do my job and that’s it.
MK: You weren’t any more fearful?
IS: No, I never had any fear at any time. Even when I was in places where there were bombs dropping, I wasn’t fearful.
MK: Did that give you any type of status at all, being a veteran?
IS: No. I didn’t look for it and I didn’t get it.