 ThinkTek Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Hello, welcome to another edition of Hawaiian Uniform. I'm your host Calvin Griffin. And for those of you who may not have seen the program before here, we talked about what's going on with the active veterans and the associated subject anyhow. For every once in a while I like to bring on veterans who have served our country in many different ways. And today I have two guests. One is Mr. Dan O'Leary and also Ms. Rowan Adams, who will join us a little bit later in the program. But we like to bring them on to share their experiences and enlighten us on some of the things that have probably happened in the past that you may not have been aware of. And at this moment I'd like to welcome Mr. O'Leary to the program. Glad to be here. Good. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, I was born and raised in a small town in New York, Mt. Kisco, New York, and went to high school in White Plains, New York, and then went away to college at the University of Detroit. And after two years at Detroit, I spent some time working in a grocery store and then went in the military. What made you decide to go into military? Was there any family members that preceded you? There were family members in the military, but it was a matter of I was going to be drafted or I was going to join the military, so I joined rather than be drafted. It felt pretty well for me because I was in ROTC at the University of Detroit, so the Air Force put me in a commissioning flying program, so I became a, I was commissioned as a navigator and a second lieutenant in the Air Force in 1960. Right. From the patch, I see that you're a member of the Vietnam Veterans of America. How long have you been with that organization and what are they about? Just two years, we get together mostly to try and help other veterans. And for instance, last week we had a graduation luncheon for the, for a PTSD class from Tripler. And the fellows seemed to have done very well. We had a nice luncheon and they seemed to enjoy it. I don't know how long their program was, but most of them were local from Hawaii. There was one from Oregon and I think one from California. Yeah. With the PRRP program, that's a program you mentioned about individuals who have issues associated with PTSD. Some of the participants in the program, I know some of them are Vietnam error and all went up to the current conflicts that we're dealing with now anyhow. What is the attitude that you got from the individuals you talk to with the program? They were high on the program and seemed to have come out of it very well. There were two Vietnam veterans out of the 12 that were on the graduation luncheon there. Yeah. And they seem to have done real well too. And it's just too bad that they can't get more people in the program. A lot of people won't go in the program. Yeah. I think it's a little kind of a stigma when you ask for help. I think when a few of the occasions I went to, it's better to ask for help. It's something to be ordered in the combat. But when you turn around and on your own, you know what the issues that you're dealing with have an effect on your family and the communities. And it takes a lot of courage for those individuals who go to the program to really appreciate their heroic act, but in the way I guess it is where they're concerned about being more of a contributing to the community instead of a tractor in any way. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So a little bit more about yourself. How many tours in Vietnam did you do? I did one complete tour and then I went into Vietnam many times before that. I was with the TAC Airborne Command Post. Our job was to help ferry fighter aircraft to Vietnam. And so I used to make sometimes as many as two, three trips a month to Vietnam to bring the fighter aircraft over there. Good. Everybody talks about their experiences and experiences different things in different ways. What is one of the major issues that you took away from being in that type of environment? Well, I felt that you need to have relaxation. You need to have a little bit of enjoyment each time. So we always had, whenever we went out to fly, we would get back, we would call ourselves a fly by night outfit. We always flew at night. We had black airplanes. And so we would come back at midnight, maybe one o'clock in the morning. We'd get our go down to the chow hall, eat, and then we would come back to our, call it the hooch, our building. And we had a refrigerator with beer and had a dart board and we would always be several of us there. So we enjoyed ourselves for a little while before we went to bed and then sleep in in the morning. There you go. I know that recently, well, with a lot of historical issues that have happened with the military, is there anything that you experienced or you were part of that was in the history book store that may not be there, that should be there? Well, I was involved in the An Loc, I don't know what you would call it, battle, I guess you would call it. And there was an army unit that was pinned down in a town called An Loc in South Vietnam and we were not supposed to fly in the daytime, but we did in this occasion because they needed us. So we went up there and the, any aircraft was pretty bad and out near the town from the, I don't know, who they were, South Vietnamese, North Vietnamese, Viet Cong, anyhow. So they had pretty accurate anti-aircraft. So we had to figure out how to attack the enemy without exposing ourselves because here we are in a black airplane in a clear sky and very easy to shoot at. So we, that worked out all right. We left and we debriefed everyone, told them what had gone on and what the situation was. The next aircraft went up there and got shot down. And luckily there were only three crew members that were killed in the aircraft. The pilot got the, got a very, very high decoration, the one right below the, he had to fly the aircraft in. The aircraft would have just slipped over and gone down if he hadn't held onto it. The autopilot wouldn't, wouldn't hold the airplane. And so everybody got out except the navigator and one of the crew members in the back who apparently was afraid to jump. Well, that's rough. I know that in the military you make a lot of friends and acquaintances. Is there anybody that you've been in touch with? I know that Rona, who of course will be on the program soon, did you meet her in Vietnam or? No. I met her here. Here. Okay. Is there any, are you still keeping in touch with any of your old flying buddies or? Well I went to a reunion last year. I didn't realize that there was an association of gunship crew members and I, so I joined the association. They had a reunion, they have a reunion each year now. And I went, last year my wife and I went to Dayton, Ohio. And so it was nice to, I really didn't see anybody that I knew because there were thousands of us that flew gunships in Vietnam and, but it was nice to, to meet and talk with the people that had gone through the same experience that I had and I'm sure it helped them as well as it helped me. It was about, it was a four day affair. We also had a banquet at the museum, the Air Force Museum at Bright Patterson Air Force Base. And speaking of museums, I guess you've been to the museum over on Ford Island? Oh yes. Yeah. Do you have any association with them in any form or capacity? No, I haven't. I've gone out there a couple of times taking, taking, you know, tourists out there that needed somebody to take them around. Yeah. Okay. What other, I know that now it's more, a lot of veterans have been helping one another, but what do some of the organizations are, are you involved in anything right now that helps other veterans or, you know, the community? Well, just, just this one, the Vietnam Veterans Association and we do as much as we can. We, I took a small group, I'm in charge of the visiting veterans in the hospital. So we went up to the, not, it's not exactly a hospital, but it's a facility at Tripler, on the grounds of Tripler and it's for veterans. And three of us went up there and the woman that's not in charge, she's the second in charge there. She took us around and we visited a bunch of the veterans. We, you know, visited them one-on-one, sometimes all four of us would be in one of the rooms and it was, it was very interesting when a, one fellow told me that when he got back from Vietnam, I'd heard that a lot of the fellows had trouble with, with the local population. But this guy, he got to his hometown and he met some of his buddies and they said, hey, let's go down to the VFW. Yeah. So we'll get a beer. So they went down to the VFW and they found out he was a Vietnam veteran. They kicked him out. So the Vietnam veterans really, really got a bad shake even from other veterans. So there were, you know, I don't, I guess it was just all the bad publicity about Vietnam. Yeah. That's kind of shameful and hurtful too, you know, when you served your country and then there's certain individuals who served in different branches at different times that want to make that distinction between who was a real soldier and who wasn't and, you know, all these experiences. But, you know, it seems that there's, of course, there's still a lot of issues that need to be dealt with. But it seems like there's more people who are willing to go ahead and, you know, they're giving the veterans their due. I mean, of course, with the President Trump had designated, I think March 29th as the Vietnam Veterans Appreciation Day or whatever. But there's still a lot of people out there that still are deserving of a, you know, a real welcome home and appreciation because so many, you know, have fallen by the wayside and it's really sad what happened in here. So, what are some of the things that you're a group right now with the Vietnam Veterans? Are you, is there anything special that you're working on right now, any type of community activities that would be of note? Not at this time. I mean, as I say, we did that one thing with this past weekend with the PTSD group. We don't have any other specific things that we're doing right now. But again, we do have a group that visits veterans in the hospitals. And it's funny, we had organized the group and about two weeks later, I got a call from Queens and they said, oh, we understand you're visiting veterans. Yeah. Yeah. And so they said, well, we got a veteran in the hospital here. So they said, we'll talk to her and see if she wants somebody to visit. Well, she didn't want us to visit. So that was the end of that. So now we have a contact to Queens and we haven't done a lot of it, but we have started it and we're going to continue. It's one of the things in our charter that we're supposed to visit veterans in the hospitals and nursing facilities, et cetera. With your group on question, they're always looking for new members to come on board. Is there anything that you can do to say to encourage somebody that may be a Vietnam veteran who hasn't been involved with any organizations for whatever reason and might want to come in to be part of something that might be a little bit more interactive with other veterans? Yeah. We meet once a month. We have lunch at the beginning of our meeting. So they ask us to show up about a quarter to 11, get our lunch, they have a buffet. And we sit down and eat lunch during the meeting. And we interact with each other a lot of times and go around, introduce ourselves to other veterans before the meeting. All services, all ranks, we're all together, we're all on the same boat and now we're all on the same boat again. But it's a good experience to get together with other veterans as often as too bad. More people aren't involved. We have about 150 members including associates. And the associates are family or just people who want to join the organization and be a part of it. Great. Well, we talked about the healing process of people who had the combat experience. Have you been back to Vietnam or have you been any part of any countries that you served in that you have revisited? Yeah, I was on a cruise and we went into a port south of Saigon and then we took a bus up to Saigon. And I hadn't spent any time in Saigon. I was at Da Nang. First at the time I was also at a field called Ben Wah during that An Loc battle and we were brought back. I was in Thailand at the time. Our outfit had airplanes at Da Nang in Vietnam and then NKP in Thailand, Nacom Phnom. And so they took us from Nacom Phnom down to Ben Wah outside of Saigon and we flew our missions out of there for, I don't know, maybe three weeks. So we went back to Saigon and, as I said, I hadn't really been there before. It was amazing. It's quite a modern city. They took us and dropped us off at a big, modern, multi-level shopping center. And we wandered around the town a little bit and the bus took us to, there was a museum that had some of our aircraft that we had used during the war. As a matter of fact, the aircraft that I flew, the AC-119, the only one left is in Vietnam and we're trying to get it back. So anyhow, we're in negotiations with the Vietnamese. Okay. We're going to continue our story anyhow. I'll get more into it anyhow, but hopefully we'll have Rona join us pretty soon. We're still waiting for her to join us here anyhow. But stay tuned and again, this is Hawaii Uniform and please stay tuned. Hi. I'm Bill Sharp, host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5.30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of contemporary Asian affairs. There's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very, very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the possibility of Xi Jinping, the leader of China remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Hey, Stan Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary so I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We got it nailed down here. So we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan Energyman. Aloha. Okay. You're back with Hawaii Uniform. Again, I'm your host Calvin Griffin and today one of my special guests, Mr. Dan O'Leary. And the topic we had advertised was going to be on the program about women in the military, services past and present, and we had to begin another guest that was coming on, Rona Adams, who hopefully will join us before the end of the program. But if not, I'd like to remind the viewers that as far as women in the military and serving the country, it comes in all forms and shapes and time periods. We need to show our appreciation for that also. May I call you Dan? Yeah. Dan, speaking of that, in the military, how many you serve with a lot of female service members? Any recollections on anything as far as your experiences or how things went? No. Being in a flying organization, women were the only flying positions that they were allowed to hold at that time were like flight attendant positions, but we didn't have any in the organizations that I was in. They felt that having females in an all-male organization wouldn't be that, especially going, we would go TDY and fly all the way over to Vietnam and back where we were stationed in North Carolina. So they didn't, we didn't have any women in our organizations there. And I was just a little early in the military before a lot of them now. They have female fighter pilots and transport pilots and everything else. So they're completely integrated now, but we never had any feelings. They just didn't allow them into pilot training or anything at the time that I was in the service. Yeah. Because even today, I think they changed certain rules as far as certain combat MOSs that women have been allowed to, but especially since the Gulf War. They've had women on the front line because the front line was all over the place. And a lot of them didn't get proper recognition as far as their contributions to the military effort over there. Because a few of them I've talked to would come back and they go to a VFW or some other organization and it's like, well, where's your husband? It's like, well, no, I'm the one that's served, you know? And then there was a little bit of, you know, seemed like a little bit of hesitation, you know, hopefully that's changing. But I know there's still some issues going on with that anyhow. But yeah, we fully need to, you know, get into, of course, as we say, the military is changing. There's all kind of different rules and regulations that have been relaxed, different identities as far as gender identification, things of that nature, that still kind of throw a lot of people off because, you know, you lose to the traditional wording or certain things that went on in the past. And for new things to come about, you know, it's kind of a change and a little bit stressful for some of the individuals who were really focused on the old terminologies that you would use anyhow. So we'll see. Right. We had a woman, a veteran, that was at our event last week. She was helping to cook in the kitchen, but she had a shirt on it. It said, I'm a veteran, my father, I'm the daughter of a veteran, and my daughter is a veteran. Very interesting when you think about something like that. Oh yeah, that's for sure. What else have you been doing? I know you travel other parts of the world. What's your latest adventure? Yeah, my wife decided that we should go on a photo safari. She signed up for a tour, and we flew down to Johannesburg, South Africa, along flight, and we spent a few days in Johannesburg. We got there a little early. We didn't want to miss our tour. So we stayed at the same hotel where the tour was staying. So two days on our own, two days with the tour, and then off we went to Kruger National Park and then Hwangi National Park, and Kruger is in South Africa, and then Hwangi is in Zimbabwe. And then we also went up to Botswana to Chobi River, Chobi National Park. And it just could not have been better. Thank goodness these people are taking care of the animals. They set up all these national parks, and you're allowed to go in there and view the animals and see them firsthand. Only one of the parks were the people armed that were with us. And evidently, the animals are just more wild in that park than they are in the other parks. But other than that, we were just out there, and we had some scary moments. We had a, it looked like there was a lion that was going to jump in our truck, but she didn't, she went between the two trucks and went running down the road. She was looking for some lunch, but I was glad she didn't come after us. She was looking at some impala that were down the road. But it was a scary moment for us in the two trucks because she turned toward the truck in front of us, then she turned toward our truck and started to run, and the trucks were wide open except for the canopy. There's no windshield or anything. She could have jumped right straight into the truck with us. But she went between the trucks and down the road. So other than an anxious moment, no danger there. But it's a wonderful, wonderful trip. We had a great time, and the tour guides were terrific. Yeah, it's like, I think a lot of people get a misconception of Africa. There's a lot of stuff that's going on over there. But I think in a lot of parts, it's very, you know, what can I say? I mean, it's unique over there for one thing, anyhow. Yeah. But I think like getting into, you know, being in the military, having the chance to travel to different parts of the world, you know, in support of whatever emissions, anyhow. Did it give you a better appreciation of what we have here or give you a comparison? Oh, absolutely. I, I, we used to travel regularly into Iran for one. Now, an American would be crazy to go traveling into Iran, I think. But it was one of our regular trips going into the Middle East. We'd go to Iran, down to, into Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Asmara, Ethiopia, and then on down to Pakistan. That was a regular trip. We used to do that maybe each one of us would do either every month or every other month, one of our regular missions. And we would, they were support of military operations that we had in those countries. Right. So we used to affectionately say we were carrying toilet paper to the Turks, but it really, you know, I was in C-130s and troop carriers, we called it. But it was really, we did a lot of cargo carrying and that was our mission down there in the Middle East. We supplied all the embassies and consulates and all the sites that we had in those countries. Good. So what, for the future, what does it look like for you? What, I mean, are you going to expand your involvement in the organization or is there anything personally that you have planned, you know, that will benefit the veterans of the military? Well, the veterans in the military, we aren't doing a lot with them. Mostly the people that are out of the military. And like I say, so visiting them in the hospitals, having functions for them, we go out and feed the vets out at the U.S. vets, you know, go out and provide lunch. And so everything that we, the luncheon that we had for these fellows, we provided all the food and the drinks and everything. The veterans center out in Foster Village, they provided the place, they provided the kitchen for us, they provided all the plates and cups and plastic ware and all that stuff, napkins but so we chip in and do that as much as we can. So again, we're not, we don't have any big projects going on really, it's mostly smaller stuff and trying to take care of each other. That's a lot of it, the monthly meetings. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of issues that still need to be addressed because of course we still have the issue about homeless veterans over here. Also, a number of different things, you know, suicides, things of that nature anyhow. But again, it seems like there's more veterans who are getting involved and trying to, you know, the peer mentoring, if you want to call it, where they're trying to help one another out, you know, because they've been a lot of vets who have been disappointed by the system for whatever reason. And a little shy away from, you know, any type of formal overtures, they're actually, they might help them, you know. But I think there's a lot of veterans who I have, say they have the means to help other veterans. And I think that's, you know, becoming more and more commonplace than it was so in the past anyhow. Is there anything I'd say that you want to touch on and something we might have missed that? Well, I think you remember, or you might not remember, but you probably read about it, that a lot of the schools, they had demonstrations and problems, Kent State, et cetera, but I was sent by the Air Force back to school and there were 600 veterans going to school at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Actually, when I started in there was University of Omaha and they changed to Nebraska. But we had an organization of veterans, their small group, we called the Penn and Sword Society, and we had an Army Lieutenant Colonel that was sort of our leader. And so the student group approached him and they asked him what we would do if they barred the doors and prevented all the students from going to school. They, you know, kind of a demonstration at the school. So he said, well, he said that we were all under military orders to go to school. So if we had to do that, we'd do it over their dead bodies. So he said, why don't you just chain yourself to a tree? And so that's what they ended up doing. So more of a demonstration than stopping people from going to school. Right, yeah, okay. Yeah, back in the 60s, it was very turbulent times. You know, a lot of people, the younger people nowadays don't really understand that there were a lot of people on both sides were very passionate about a lot of issues, you know, and who were willing to pay the price, you know, whether you were a pro or con or whatever, you know, but it seemed like there was more of a involvement with the citizens or, you know, I think maybe it had to be at some point in certain ports of the country where you had to make a stand, you know, and I think we need to get more involved, not in the same degree as far as with the radical demonstrations and all that, but I think as citizens, we still need to go ahead and get involved, do what we can, you know, you may not agree with somebody else, but the one we can think we can do is sit down and listen to them, you know, and get a better perspective or a different perspective. You may not agree with it, but at least the dialogue is there, you know, you have that verbal contact and you're able to be humanized instead of dehumanized someone else in you. Okay, okay. We're getting out to the wire and I want to thank you for coming on the program. I'm sorry that Rona couldn't join us anyhow, but try to get her there, you know, a little bit later anyhow. But again, I want to remind you, please, find, check out history, find out what's going on, talk to you, see any female service members or veterans, whatever it is, stop and ask them how things are going or whatever and you might learn a little bit of something more about the system and our military and how those individuals selflessly give up a lot of their personal careers to do what we can to make our country better. But I want to thank you again for joining the program. Thank you, Mr. Larry, for again for joining us. And the only thing I can say is, God bless and until that time.