Jim Corrales, oral interview by Jett Bachman and Rossana Cheng. Claremont, California. March 27, 2015. Digital Recording.

Jim Corrales grew up in Ontario, CA and decided to enlist in the military to get away from home because he felt he was always being ordered around by his parents. He jokes about how silly it was to think that he would be ordered around any less in the Navy. In terms of his family’s reaction to his decision to enlist he says: “My dad was proud. My mom was proud. Uncles and aunts and everybody else that had already been in the service, Korea and WWII, [were proud].”

Coming from a neighborhood that was predominantly people of color, Mr. Corrales “hadn’t really faced bigotry growing up.” His first experience with overt racism was during his time in the military. Mr. Corrales recounts an incident where his supervisor asked him to type a letter three times in a row; each time he tore up the letter without reading it and told Mr. Corrales to write it again. By the third time, Mr. Corrales was so upset he punched the supervisor. Mr. Corrales says this moment was “the very very first time that (he) had ever been literally slapped in the face with bigotry.”

 

Mr. Corrales had intended to go to radar school, but as punishment for this moment of retaliation, that was permanently removed as an option:

 

Despite the unfairness of the Captain denying him access to radar school Mr. Corrales opts to look on the bright side:

Now, they did me an injustice by not sending me to the school, but in the same breath they made me a barber. I didn’t have to do any watches, all I did was delegate, ‘you do this, do this, do this.’ Every time we went into a port, I got liberty.

Mr. Corrales felt that the Captain was sympathetic towards him and thus punished him by assigning a job that actually offered him more freedom on the ship than he had before. The intense hurt of encountering racism for the first time cost Mr. Corrales the education that had been promised to him for his service, but he works to look at the silver lining because he does not regret his actions.

After this encounter, Mr. Corrales began to notice racism more in his daily life:

The bigotry continued even after I got out of service, I mean it was a little more prevalent and my eyes were a little more open. When I came back, and talking to a lot of the guys, when they came back too, they were so angry at authority, anybody in a position, they didn’t like them. And I was the same way.

He came back home in 1965 and he described coming home as “something literally out of the norm.” In addition to struggling with PTSD, it was hard to find a job. “If you admitted that you had been in the war, they wouldn’t hire you… Those were some dark years, coming back, trying to find a job, and being discouraged.” Reflecting on how the war affected him, he said, “From naïve to an animal, that’s about as close that I can get to what it’s like.”

 

Additionally, he had survivor’s guilt:

When I came back, I had a guilt feeling: why them not me? Then I realized that why I think the Lord put me here, spared me from whatever it was that I might have encountered as a marine, but he spared me to come back and do what I’m doing now. The advocacy.

He has been very involved with advocacy work for the last ten years. It all started when a brother (a Vietnam veteran) took the time to take him to the VA hospital when he broke down years ago. For the past decade, Mr. Corrales has been trying to help other veterans. He is a VA advocate. Some of his work includes keeping the veterans informed, finding them homes, getting them food, and most importantly, helping their families. He is also involved in the Bike 4 Vets Project Inland Empire, helping out veterans in need of transportation by providing them with donated bicycles.

Mr. Corrales says that “The worst thing that I have as an advocate” is dealing with someone “who doesn’t want to be here anymore.”

 

Going into the Vietnam War as a naïve young man and returning home as “an animal,” confronted with various problems associated with PTSD, Mr. Corrales found a way to heal and contribute to the veterans’ community. The VA provided him a safe space to connect with other veterans and cope with what happened as a result of the war. He sought help from the VA hospital fourteen years ago, starting a long and challenging journey of acceptance and healing. For the past ten years, he has been actively involved with VA advocacy work to help veterans like himself.