The Spy Who Loved Us_ The Vietnam War and Pham Xuan An's Dangerous Game ( PDFDrive )

108 THOMAS A. BASS
clothing anyway. All I had was my cardboard suitcase borrowed
from Mr. Brandes and a new bag for carrying my books
to school.”
An’s dormitory had originally served as a barracks for the
Santa Ana army air base. This boot camp for soldiers inducted
into the army air forces also served briefly, at the end of World
War II, as a prisoner of war camp for soldiers captured from
Rommel’s Afrikakorps and as a Japanese-American internment
camp, where enemy aliens were held before being deported to
Japan. When the base was converted into a community college
in 1948, courses in subjects ranging from cosmetology to
petroleum technology were taught in sixty-eight Quonset huts
and barracks inherited from the military. Many of the teachers
were also inherited from the military. The air base band master
became head of the OCC art department, and a former
mess captain became a professor of social science.
“The night I arrived in California the students had organized
a big square dance at the cafeteria,” An says. “The school
band was playing. Two teachers, a lady and a man, had been
brought in to show the students how to square dance. A student
took me to the dance so I wouldn’t feel homesick. I sat on the
side like a wallflower. Then a young lady came over and took me
out on the floor. Everyone was dressed like hillbillies and cowgirls.
They were hopping up and down like turkeys. They ordered
me back and forth. This was the first time in my life that
I held a girl in my arms like this. I was hot and cold all at
once. I realized I was going to make many, many mistakes.
“They would take me to the beach, five or six girls at a
time. I had no money for going out and no family to visit. I was
always in my dorm room studying, but no one else stayed in the
dorms. Everyone else was always out doing things. So the girls
would come and ask me to go to the beach with them. I never
swam. The water was too cold, but the girls swam. They were
strong and powerful. I was thirty-one years old. They were seventeen
or eighteen. They took me along as their ‘life saver.’”