The Garfield High School (Seattle) Oral History project.

This is a collection of interviews with people about their personal experiences with events of worldwide historical significance since the end of World War 2. They were done by Garfield 10th grade A.P. World History students as end-of-year oral history research projects.

We've published these projects to the web because they are impressive and deserve to be seen more widely than just in our history class. We invite you to read a few. The label cloud can give you a sense of what topics are represented. You can search for a specific project by student name or topic, or search on topics and key words that interest you. Comments are welcome, of course.

Label Cloud

Search the interview collection - for topics or student

Taylor Johnson Interview #2

Interview # 2
Uncles Friend


Me: Why did you join the army?

Him:
A couple reasons

To avoid the draft because when you get drafted you are committed for at least 2 years and you have no say on where you go

99% of the time you could be in the jungle

This way I could get a chance at schooling I schooled high in administration

Hoping I would get it my way and hoping they would mess up and I would get out of the army
I went to a special school for administration and took a test and scored top 14 out of 100 that’s when they sent me to Alabama for flight operations.

That’s where I became flight operations flight traffic controller

So for a guy who grew up in Waipahu I did pretty well

I wasn’t patriotical or anything but I was smart and hoping for the contract that administration and pretty much everyone but the army draft guys get.

Me :What was it like for you to get home?

Him:
Well I wasn’t spat at or called names

But I never really walked around I spent a lot of time at home and didn’t show I was apart of the Vietnam war.

I stayed close to family

You could say I was depressed and isolated myself from the world

That has all changed now I am proud like your uncle I went to therapy and had much support from my family.

How was your experience different from my uncles?

Well it wasn’t really I remember those 4 soilders and that story your uncle was scary at the time

(laughs)

When I think of the war all I remember is sad faces,

a lot of blood

to be honest with you its all a blur in my head that I cant put into words

its like a loud boom in my head, and it’s a Smokey memory.

I saw many eyes that called for help and I did the best I could to help them on those helicopters.

I remember getting shot at a few times and seeing myself die.

One thing I wont forget is how muggy and hot it was in Vietnam.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Blog Archive

About this project

We are Jerry N-K's 10th grade AP World History students, at Seattle Garfield High School.