R: Right after the holidays, in January [1942], I went down and volunteered for the U.S.
 Air Force air cadet program.

P: Why?

R: Well, I wanted to fly planes and make a contribution, and I thought that would be
 an exciting way to do it. I passed all the tests, but then I ran into a peculiar piece
 of red tape. I was not born a citizen here, and I have derivative citizenship because
 my parents have become citizens sometime during the 1930s, but to be an officer,
 you had to have been a citizen for at least ten years. So the air force, on my behalf,
 submitted a petition to waive the ten-year requirement because I was "a citizen
 through parents who were friendly aliens."

 So here I am signed up and ready to go, I had this big send-off party and everything,
 and I sit and I wait and I wait and I wait and I wait. In the meantime, here are
 people being drafted and going and all that sort of stuff and I am beginning to feel
 a little embarrassed. It took about four months to get that done. Finally, they
 waived that requirement and I went off to cadet school in about April of 1942.

P: Where?

R: The first stop was Monroe, Louisiana. Oh, boy! [Laughter] It was in the winter,
 and while the temperature never got very low, maybe down in the 20s, it was so
 damp and so cold. Everybody was trying to find an extra blanket anywhere they
 could find it.

P: And you were wondering why you had become patriotic in the first place.

R: It really was a terrible location for a camp in the wintertime. I do not know what
 it must have been like in the summer, but that is where we went first.

P: Hot. Hot and humid. It seems to me they went out of their way to pick the most
 attractive places to put these training camps during World War II.

R: Really.

P: Alright, from Monroe you go where?

R: Well, then I got a marvelous break.

P: You were commissioned?

R: No, not yet. We were air cadets which is a very special classification.

P: Neither officer nor enlisted?



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