#38 - Lt Col (Ret) Dr. Brian Hobbs

And when I was at Yokota, and this was a strange and interesting time in the Air Force, that it was, it's post-Cold War, and the Air Force had really changed, and the rest of the Air Force was told that the graduate program for foreign area specialists was going away.

But because there was no internet really at that time, or it was just so weak and immature, I never got that message.

And I applied for a program to go into graduate school and to go to Monterey, although that was not exactly how it was advertised to me in the beginning.

And I got accepted and went, and I figured I could go and just improve my Japanese from being decent to being am- amazing.

And when I got there, basically we were informed that because the Air Force was thinking about doing away with the program and strange things had happened with the funding, but it had been restored, that I could choose any language I wanted to go into.

Okay.

And I thought, to me, this was amazing.

It's, um, both wonderful and disappointing at the same time because I had an idea in my mind that everything in the military would be laid out in a certain way, and when you showed up at a place, it would be certain expectations, whatever.

They're like, "Yeah, we have no idea what you're supposed to be doing." I'm like, "Yeah, I'd like Chinese.

Is that okay?" They're like, "You tell us.

Is it okay?"

[laughs]

And so that's how that worked out.

Because I also knew that from my experience in talking with people, there were so few, so limited opportunities for returning to Japan, and that-

Okay

... um, up to that point, I had been told, so when I was at my first assignment in Korea, they're like, "You can go anywhere you want.

We don't care.

You're a second lieutenant." And then I'm like, "I wanna go to Japan, and I wanna go to Yokota." That didn't work out, so they sent me to Misawa.

I was with a fighter squadron, tremendous experience.

The 13th Fighter Squadron, with which has within the last week, I believe, received F-35s, which is-

Wow

... a ma- a major change.

Then I was there, and I expressed to headquarters Air Force personnel my desire to move to Yokota, and they're like, "That would be your third assignment in a row in the Asia-Pacific theater.

That's going to really hurt you in the long run." I'm like, "Okay.

I want Yokota." And so I actually had to lobby for it, and it looked like it wasn't going to happen, and I thought maybe I was just going to get out of the Air Force soon.