Ron McFarlanの Personal Journey (7) - ベトナム戦争と徴兵の恐怖、そして友の死

第二次世界大戦敗戦後、日本は戦争を全く経験していません。本当に平和な半世紀以上を過ごしています。また、シンガポールや韓国のような有事に備えた徴兵制もありません。

ベトナム戦争の最中、志願して兵隊になった人もいましたが、ボクサーのモハメド・アリのように徴兵拒否した人もいました。Ronさんの場合はどうだったのでしょうか。

反戦運動も盛んでした。当時の反戦歌はここ。



As the Vietnam War was still raging, we were all susceptible to go to fight. Then, came the US Army Enlistment Lottery, which was the newest selection method for drafting men to enter the US Army, be training as solders and sent off to Vietnam to fight. In the system, there were 365 numbers, one number for every day of the year. The higher the number, the less likely you would be called up to go into the military.

Well, I got 108, a number sure to be drafted. That was a real blow, as I hated fighting and hated even the smallest of guns. So, I joined whatever military reserve unit I could get into for six years. I felt that would be much better than two years in the active Army and a chance of being killed.

Anyway, I found an Army Reserve training unit right in San Jose. I signed up for whatever specialty they had available, and there was only one assignment open to me, drill sergeant! So, I could peacefully, carry on with my studies, do my security guard job and go to my monthly US Army Reserve meetings without being killed.

Then, disaster struck. One day, I came in late from my security job at the refrigeration plant to be surrounded by policemen and a lot of sad, crying faces. I think it was Bill Minkel, another roomer who gave me the bad news. Bill Minkel, Ken Holden, David Koppel and several others in the house were also from Mountain View. On weekends, Ken Holden would hitchhike home to be with his family. Well, evidently a murderer picked him up and was brutally killed. His body was found in the mountains in the area. That was my last semester just before graduation, and I was going through final tests at the time.

Ron McFarlanの Personal Journey (6) - シェアハウスの住人達

前回も書いたように、Ronさん、24歳（1972年）の頃の話です。1972年は札幌オリンピックが開催され、沖縄が返還された年です。また、アメリカではニクソンが再選されました。
個人的な好みですが、この年のお気に入りの映画は「ゴッドファーザー」。いまだに年一回程度みます。音楽は、ミッシェル・ポルナレフ。



Also, there was Sam Fisk. He was a graduate from UC Berkeley and extremely smart. He was in San Jose in a Master’s program in Psychology. He later dropped the program and decided to transfer to San Francisco State University and pursue a Masters in mobility and orientation for the blind. I meet up again with him years later in Hawaii.

Another person in the R & W House was Tom Tang. He was from Hong Kong, and we were not that close, but one summer a friend of his studying in the UK came to visit. His name was Jimmy Chan, also originally from Hong Kong. He went away to a British boarding high school, and then continued on for university and graduated school in mathematics in London. Well, we became the best of friends from that first meeting in the R & W House and are still in contact today, 40 years later. He now makes his home outside of Toronto, Canada. I visited him in Canada several times over the years, as well as meeting in both Hong Kong and Japan.

Then, there was Ken Holden’s. He was the #1 drug user in the R & W House and majored in Art. As a matter of fact, his class twice hired me as a nude model! I sat nude for an hour and was paid extremely well.

I learned many things living in the Roger Williams House through the other occupants, but something also sticks out among all others. We all had our problems of one sort or another, and we learned to care and accept each other as we were. That is something most of us did not get in our respective homes. We in a sense became a family.

いままでのRonさんの話から、多民族国家、モザイク国家といわれる米国では、幼少期から学生時代の多感な時期に、異文化と触れる多くの機会があることが分かります。
日本でもコロナ禍で外国人観光客は激減しましたが、職場や日常生活で訪れる飲食店やコンビニなどでも外国人と触れる機会があります。
ちょっとした外国人との交流をとおして、異文化理解を深めたいものです。

と、以前は思ったものですが、もっと積極的に体験して欲しい！でも、コロナで海外にも行けず、大事な異文化理解の機会が失われています。

Ron McFarlanの Personal Journey (5) - シェアハウスにて

サンノゼ州立大学に通い始めたRonさんは、学費稼ぎのアルバイトを始めるとともに、学校近くのシェアハウスに住みます。ここには様々なバックグラウンドの人が住んでいました。

多民族国家の米国には、異文化に触れる仕組みが日常生活に内包されていますね。

ここからは、Ronさん、24歳（1972年）の頃の話です。遅めの大学入学ですが、このチャレンジこそが大切なのです。

ちなみに、この年の洋楽のヒット曲No.1は、ロバータ・フラックの「愛は面影の中に（The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face）」でした。この曲を聴きながらお読みください。

I lived in the cheapest place I could find, the Roger Williams (R & W) House which was right on the campus of San Jose State University. I was owned by Grace Baptist Church. In that house I started out by sharing a room with another student on campus and gradually got my own room when one became available. The house was so old that it literally swayed in the wind. I think shortly after I moved out, the house was condemned and torn down. I meet people in that house that impacted on me very greatly.

First there was David Koppel. He was from Mountain View, just up the San Francisco Peninsula heading north. He has a Jewish guy that loved to cook. He was one of the “Head Chefs” at R & W House. He specialized obviously in all the Jewish seasonal foods. He majored in environmental health, graduated, got a job in Ukiah, CA as a sanitation inspector for the county up there. He married a Christian girl from Grace Baptist Church who later converted. They bought some land up there, and in the early years, they lived in a trailer that was parked on the property. Slowly, board-by-board, piece-by-piece, they built their own home, just the way they wanted it. After completing the house, they started producing the children.

Ron McFarlanの Personal Journey (4) - サンノゼ州立大学での学生時代

1969年、Ron-sanは、サクラメントのアメリカン・リバー・ジュニアカッレッジからサンノゼにあるサンノゼ州立大学に移りました。

サンノゼは今ではシリコンバレーの中心都市の一つ。半導体とITなどハイテク産業のメッカです。

私が初めての海外出張（初めての海外旅行でもある）でサンノゼを訪れたのが1979年の12月でした。
今ほどではありませんが、日本よりははるかに豊かでした。

Ron-sanは自力で大学に行くために割のいいバイトを始めます。夜勤の仕事です。巡回のとき以外は、勉強できるので、お金の面だけでなく「割がいい」のです。私も同じ理由で、学生時代に夜勤のビル管理のバイトをしました。Ron-sanとはカブル話が多いようです。

After three years at American River Junior College in Sacramento, I transferred my credits to a big 4-year school, San Jose State University. My confidence was still quite low as to me surviving in a 4-year school, so I decided to go down to San Jose and take a few summer school classes to reduce the shock of adjusting to a higher level of education.

From the age of 16 years old starting with a newspaper route, I always had part-time jobs here and there. But, to insure my survival at San Jose State University, I decided to use up savings and do nothing but study that summer as well as my first semester there.

Well, not only did I survive, I learned that the worst was behind me, as I was starting to love the subject matter and my discipline to study started to come more second nature.

The only problem was physical inactivity. I got fat, had headaches and my savings in the bank was going down all the time.

So, I decided to go out and get some kind of part-time job, which would keep me active and stabilize my finances. I got a job as a security guard at a refrigeration plant. You can’t get a more boring job than that! For insurance reasons and safety, this refrigeration facility needed security guards around the clock as a person from the local bar may wonder over to a freezer (which is the size of whole warehouses in which fork lifts can drive in and out of) walk in and freeze to death. I had to walk around the facility once an hour and had to clock-in at various locations. It took about 15 minutes per hour. There was also a weigh scale in the facility for trucks to weigh their produce, as they brought it into the storage areas. So, I weighed trucks the rest of the time.

I worked from four in the afternoon to mid-night, and really had nothing to do about 45 minutes of every hour. The average person who took a job like that was about 60-65 years old. It was a mindless job, but for me, it was ideal, as I could study and get paid at the same time! I did that for about two years and came out of college with not only a degree, but also a bank account that was relatively healthy.　　

＜忍び寄る戦争の影＞