George Trujillo |
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On being miles away from home
We didn’t talk to our parent, just wrote letters. About two or three weeks before I got the order to return home I was out on TAD to another unit so I hadn’t sent out any letters to my parents. I got orders to return home so I got my gear together and got on a plane. I was on Okinawa for about two weeks before I was actually able to get a flight back here to the United States so I hadn’t written to my parents in about a month. I found out later that they were very concerned and they were really starting to worry.
My mother was a cafeteria worker at the local elementary school. When I returned home I went over to the back gate of the school and I walked in and stuck my head around the corner, and I said, “Hi, how are you doing?” She looked at me and she said, “Can I help you?” She didn’t recognize me; I guess I had changed enough over the year. Later she told me, “It’s because when you left you were still a teenager but when you came back you were a man.” But one of the other cafeteria workers said, “Mary, isn’t that your son?” and she started crying. It was because she hadn’t gotten a letter in so long so she was very concerned that something had happened to me. She saw a lot of change in me.
Object Description
| Profile of | George Trujillo |
| Title | It wasn't ours to choose, it was just our time |
| Profile bio | George Trujillo was in high school when the Vietnam War began. He enlisted in the Marine Corps during his final semester of his high school at the age of seventeen, graduated on June 27, celebrated his eighteenth birthday in boot camp and was deployed in Vietnam for a thirteen-month tour of duty in late January 1968, just prior to the Tet offensive. He was a member of the 1st and 3rd Marine Corp that fought in the northern I Corps, a much-contested area close to the DMZ. George served as an ammunition and explosive ordinance disposal technician. The responsibilities of his job included clearing unexploded ordinances, munitions caches, etc. He fought with one main unit but, given the nature of his assignment, was frequently relocated for temporary additional duty. He currently lives in Long Beach with his wife of thirty-three years. |
| Profiler bio | Andy was born and raised in Hong Kong, and came to the United States three years ago. He is currently a junior at the USC Marshall School of Business. Julian is a junior from Pennsylvania majoring in Biology and Art History at the University of Southern California. |
| Subject |
Vietnam war enlistment volunteer deployment weapons technician service veteran |
| Profiled by | Wong, Chaklam Andy; Hricik, Julian; Shao, Ying |
| Profile date | 2011-04-01 |
| Geographic subject (city or populated place) | Long Beach |
| Geographic subject (county) | Los Angeles |
| Geographic subject (state) | California |
| Geographic subject (country) | USA; Vietnam |
| Coverage date | 1968 |
| Publisher (of the original version) | http://anotherwarmemorial.com/george-trujillo/ |
| Type |
images video |
| Format | 1 image; 4 video files (00:13:58); 5 transcripts |
| Language | English |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Part of collection | An Other War Memorial -- Memories of the American War in Viet Nam |
| Filename | trujillogeorge |
Description
| Profile of | George Trujillo |
| Title | Interview Transcription |
| Format | 1 transcript, 1p. |
| Filename | trujillogeorge-vid4_tr4.pdf |
| Full text | On being miles away from home We didn’t talk to our parent, just wrote letters. About two or three weeks before I got the order to return home I was out on TAD to another unit so I hadn’t sent out any letters to my parents. I got orders to return home so I got my gear together and got on a plane. I was on Okinawa for about two weeks before I was actually able to get a flight back here to the United States so I hadn’t written to my parents in about a month. I found out later that they were very concerned and they were really starting to worry. My mother was a cafeteria worker at the local elementary school. When I returned home I went over to the back gate of the school and I walked in and stuck my head around the corner, and I said, “Hi, how are you doing?” She looked at me and she said, “Can I help you?” She didn’t recognize me; I guess I had changed enough over the year. Later she told me, “It’s because when you left you were still a teenager but when you came back you were a man.” But one of the other cafeteria workers said, “Mary, isn’t that your son?” and she started crying. It was because she hadn’t gotten a letter in so long so she was very concerned that something had happened to me. She saw a lot of change in me. |
| Archival file | Volume5/trujillogeorge-vid4_tr4.pdf |
