Page 82 - Appendix A

Phoenix. And they had four squadrons of B-25s there. There was hardly any room
to move around and do anything. Guys had to live maybe thirty-five miles away

from the base because Godman was a small town. And to find accommodations,
people were all over the countryside finding places to live. The white instructors
who were instructing the bomber group there, they all, and even the commander,
they had housing over at Fort Knox. So all they did was just go over to Fort Knox
and they had housing and clubs and everything. Whereas the blacks over at
Godman, they had a really overcrowded Air Base, the planes people and
everything. They had inadequate housing, everything there was really poor. Some
guys were living in shacks at one time until they could find something better. Now
when I graduated we were getting ready to close Tuskegee, so I was permanent
party there working the close up of the base so that we can move up to Godman.

And low and behold one day orders came down Bob Ashby you are transferred
and assigned to Japan. And I you know I was a second lieutenant and I said what
the heck is this? So I couldn’t do anything about it, these were orders so, I went
along with the orders and ended up cross country, cross the States by train and
on the boat in Seattle. And it took us twenty-one days to get to Japan because we
went everywhere. We went to Alaska. From Alaska we went to Korea. From Korea
then we went back to Japan. So I ended up in Japan. And of course being a pilot
over at Japan going through the replacement depot they assumed 'oh hey you’re
assigned to the Air Base. So they assigned me to Yokota Air Base which is in far

south of Tokyo. And I took the train down there and I reported in. They take one
look at me and say 'oh go back to the barracks we will contact you tomorrow.'
They did. The next day I got orders going back to the replacement depot because
they were not going to accept a black guy into the white outfit because that was
the military status at that time. Blacks were not assigned to white outfits. So I
ended back at the replacement depot and the people there really did not really
have a full scope for what was going on. And so they said 'oh they probably have
enough pilots,' so they assigned me to Tachikawa Air Base. And I reported in at
Tachikawa and they took one look at me and the same thing went on. I ended up
going back to the replacement depot. So they finally got the idea well 'hey you

know the whites are not accepting blacks so let’s see if we can find a black outfit
to assign this guy to. And so the nearest was one the Tokyo Quartermaster depot.
So I was assigned to the Tokyo Quartermaster depot.

Ivan: Wow.