INTERVIEW WITH OSCAR TAPIO (DAD) RCT: Tell me if you enlisted or were drafted. DAD: I was drafted. RCT: What year? DAD: Well, before the war they started drafting people, and I was in that list. RCT: Were you working? DAD: I was working at the time. But I had quit my job and …Pearl Harbor was 1941, so I went in in 1942. April 10th. How it all happened, before Pearl Harbor, they had a draft and I had a low number. So I had to report, so I quit my job. RCT: Where were you working? DAD: Gerlach (Barklow) at the time. I took a trip to Florida with Tony (Vidmar) and came back. I was going down alone and Mr. Buret said, “You better go with Tapio and keep him company.” We had a nice trip down there. Because of the draft I was going to quit my job. When we got back, then we made another trip. We were supposed to go in. I was supposed to go in the draft, but I made a trip out east to New Jersey to see Bill Finger. Arne Kronlin went with me. He went up to see his brother in Connecticut. And I was scheduled to go with the draft. And while I was in New York & New Jersey I was 28 years old on June 15th while I was there. That was my last trip before going into the army. That was before the war. I had sold my car to Felix Krumpoch. Before I left I told him he could have the car. While out east the papers came out that any person that was scheduled to go into the army, if you were 28 years old before July 1st, you were deferred. So I called the Joliet draft board and asked how this affected me and they said you’re not going. They said you were deferred. Stay as long as you want to. I had quit my job already. So I went back from my vacation and I was deferred. So I went back to work again. That was in 1941. Then Pearl Harbor came along. When I came back I arranged with Himmelhawk, who was one of our salesmen in Detroit, to get me a car at a discount which was unheard of in those days. So I made a trip to Detroit and picked up a new Plymouth. I got a $200.00 discount on it. I came back to work and some people in Joliet squabbled about it because they went down to the draft board and complained that their son was supposed to go with Tapio and they are going and he isn’t. They said he was 28 years old. And that was Huey Robert’s mom. And Huey Roberts was a lot younger than me. But with me playing baseball with the Barr Senators last couple years, he was our scorekeeper. And they thought we were all together. He went down to complain but it didn’t do any good. Then came Pearl Harbor and I got my notice. Then I quit my job again. Naturally, this time it was for real. We were scheduled to go to Ohio to bowl in the ABC’s, so I went down to the draft board and told them what’s a couple more weeks. I can’t win the war in a couple weeks and would like to make this trip. So I was deferred for 10 days to go bowl in the ABC’s in Akron, Ohio before I took off. If that hadn’t gone through, I would have gone into the army in 1941 instead of 1942. I would have been in about 9 months but they changed the law, which saved me until Pearl Harbor. When I came back, I went down to get on the bus and they called me to the front office and they told me I was in charge of two busloads going into Chicago. It was my responsibility. I asked “why me?” And they said because you were qualified. So I checked the first bus, and all the names were on the bus, and when I got on the front bus where I was, there were three convicts and I was responsible for them. When I got on the bus there were these three convicts sitting there. And I got in they said, “Hello Tapio, don’t worry about us. We won’t give you any problems. And I asked, “How do you know me?” They said all the guys in prison knew you from playing baseball up there with different teams. And we know who you are. We were only supposed to play one time a year, but teams would load up. I played quite a few times in the prison over a period of years. So we got to Chicago. They didn’t give me any trouble. In as much as I was examined already, I didn’t have to take another examination, so they put me to work in the x-ray department helping in the 5th army there, in Chicago. We got there about 10 O’clock, and now it’s 5 O’clock, and in all that time I’ve been working in the x-ray department helping them out. The headman from Joliet came to me and said they liked what you’re doing there. This is the story of my life in the army. He said they’re going to try to get you to stay in Chicago and have my headquarters there instead of Rockford. He said they put my name in to keep me in Chicago and that I would be stationed there for the rest of the war. RCT: Where was the camp in Chicago? DAD: Right downtown in Chicago. RCT: And you were doing x-rays of the new people coming in? DAD: Yeah. And they liked what I was doing I guess. They tried to get me to stay, which would have been a good duty. But they said the papers had already gone forward, so I ended up in Rockford (Camp Grant). So when I got to Rockford, I had to go on duty in the morning. We didn’t know where we were going. I wasn’t assigned to Rockford. They said at 5 o’clock in the morning you had to help work in the bakeshop. They always assigned people different duties you know. For some reason it seemed like I was always one of them. I reported, and the bakeshop wasn’t open yet. So a guy gave me a brush and a bucket of water and put me in the cooler to scrub the walls down where the blood was from the cattle that are butchered. They put me in that damn cooler and I scrubbed those walls pretty clean. And the guy said you did a terrific job. From there I went to the bakeshop where it was hotter that hell. The guy came over and said we’d like to keep you here in Rockford. But it was too late there again. This went on through my whole stay in the army. Everybody wanted to keep me but it was too late, too late. So we didn’t know where we were going so I landed in Little Rock at camp Robinson for our basic training of eight weeks. We had a mixture of different guys. Japanese guys were training there. They tried to put one Japanese man in every 5-man hutment. When 5 of us were in the hutment, the corporal came around and looked around and wanted to know where the Jap guy was. He said which one was Tapio? And I said, here I am and he said, hell, you’re not a Jap. And I said no. But it was here we took our eight weeks of basic training. After six weeks I was scheduled to go to ordinance school in Baltimore after basic training because of my qualifications. That’s what they me assigned to. And after about six weeks they wanted to know if I wanted to stay as a (cadyman) there and be a corporal. So I made corporal in little less than eight weeks. In my seventh week there I was promoted to a corporal. Why? Don’t ask me because there is a lot of good soldiers around. So I made corporal and kept me there for a few more cycles and within a year I was a technical sergeant. In less than a year. Don’t ask me why, but I was. But I got along with all the guys and all that. Then they closed camp Robinson and from there we went to Camp Fannin in Texas. We opened up the base there. [The Government activated 37 new divisions in 1942. The function of Camp Robinson, along with Fort McCellan, Alabama, was to provide basically trained individuals in excess of the number that could be supplied to branch centers, to meet emergency requirements in all arms and services. They had capacities totalling 26,400 trainees for 8 weeks of rifle training. They would be assigned to whatever branch needed them most urgently.] RCT: How did you meet mom? I don’t know if I ever heard the story. DAD: I was Camp Robinson, and I had met Doctor Shiff who was head of the hospital which was down on Battery Street down there. Wickman was married and stayed with Dr.