SM: Stanley Mu
MK: Mable Kong

SM: I was getting about fifteen dollars…I think fifteen a day.

MK: You were an extra too?

SM: Whenever there’s a job. [chuckles]

MK: Oh… What did you usually do? Do you remember?

SM: Well, I remember on that one movie, just before I went into the army… Richard Loo’s wife usually is the one that get a hold of the extras, and she knew I was gonna be in the army, so she got me some job- a job working, and I think I worked almost a week before I went up to the army. It was with Alan Ladd and William Bendix, and I remember I still…I had little over a hundred dollars in my pocket when I went into the army. And they picked me…I was…as a Japanese soldier.

MK: Oh, really?

SM: Yeah, and I can still remember I was coming around a Japanese soldier guarding the truck, and William Bendix and Alan Ladd jumped on me and killed me. [laughs] And that was…I think I got…I got almost a hundred dollars for that. 

MK: Did you have any problem being a Japanese soldier?

SM: No. 

Stanley Mu
Enlisting in the Military during World War II
Stanley Mu interviewed by Mable Kong

After I graduated from high school, I joined the army. I told them I wanted to get into infantry or field artillery. [I was a] young kid, didn’t know any better. I don’t think [my parents] really wanted me to join, but they didn’t say I can’t. A buddy and I in high school decided we’ll join together. He joined the Marine Corps, and I tried to join at that time, but I was not a citizen. Back in those days, if you were born in China and not a US citizen, it was more difficult to join the army. So, it took me a little longer to join.

I finally joined the army, and they shipped me to Belvoir, Virginia in the Corps of Engineers because I studied engineering at Los Angeles City College. I went there to learn to build bridges, roads, demolition, and how to dig up booby traps. You get up about dawn, then you line up for formation, and then there was a roll call [to] be sure nobody had sneaked out of the barracks into town. Then you go to the mess hall and have breakfast. After breakfast, you get a little bit of time of your own, and then you’re assembled, then you go through your daily training.

One of the things that we did [was that] one squad of people would go into a simulated town, and they would then put these explosive things in there, hide it wherever they want, and then another squad would be in another section doing that. Then after that’s all done, everybody trades, and you’re supposed to dig up the other squad’s.

When I was at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, I don’t think there were very many Chinese there. I didn’t have any difficulty at all because everybody in the barracks was all about the same age, so we all had a good time together.

After my basic training, I got sent overseas to England, and I was shipped overseas to a replacement depot. From there, they will ship you to a different outfit where they needed engineers at that time. I was very lucky because when I was in high school, I took a typing class. They needed people in headquarters to take care of the files and the forms, and they don’t want people just to write on it because nobody could read the writing.

The sergeant in charge of the office interviewed me, and he said, “I understand you can type.” I said, “Yes, I can type.” He said, “Show me.” So, I started to type without looking at the typewriter, and he was very surprised that I was really able to type. He said, “Good. You report to the headquarters tomorrow morning.” That’s how I got transferred out of a lined outfit into headquarters, which was very lucky because going to headquarters, I worked in an office. I had a nice place to stay in the barracks. The replacement depot received the new troops from the US, and then from there, they’re assigned to different outfits, and what I did was to type their forms. Was a pretty good job.
I had very few problems when I was there, but I remember one Saturday, we went into town, and they were having a dance there, and we would go dancing with the girls there. That night, there were a bunch of English sailors there, and since I wasn’t very big, about four or five of those guys kind of circled around me, where I was standing. You know that they’re gonna try to beat you up. My buddy, after the dance, came, and I gave him the eyes that he knew that these guys were all around me; they were gonna beat me up. So, he pushed a couple of them around so that he can get by me, then we exchanged some talk, and then these sailors all disappeared. He saved me from a beating that time. It was toward the end of 1943.

I really wanted to fight, but since I had such a nice job and everything was so nice, I didn’t mind just working in the office. That’s where I was stationed until shortly after the European Theater. The war was over in Germany. The 44th Infantry Division was pulled back, and we were to get a thirty-day furlough in August, then report back for duty to go to the Pacific Theater to fight with Japan. At that point, I had enough points so that I didn’t have to go overseas. But like the smart kid I am, I volunteered to go because I had been transferred to headquarters of the 44th Infantry Division, and General Dean’s personal secretary had enough points to get out of the army. He was smart, he got out. I got his job to be personal secretary to the commanding general. Halfway through my furlough, we dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan, and the war was over. So, I didn’t get to go overseas to the Pacific. I got discharged from the army and then came home, and I went to school on the GI Bill.

I was naturalized in England as a US citizen because I was already in the army. As I understood it, Hitler made some sort of statement that if any of the US soldiers were captured and they’re not citizens of the US, he would execute them as saboteurs. So, they gathered about six hundred US troops in England and naturalized all of us at the same time.