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From an interview with Time Magazine, June 1963:

"You have to understand that I had a very difficult decision to make."

Here Wayne pauses and smiles, making him look years younger.

"I think in a way it's a weighty decision for anyone to make."

"I was a little old for that sort of thing, sure. But that didn't stop guys like Jimmy Stewart. . . Another concern of mine was that I had finally gone from making a few cents a day for cleaning off sets to being the man on those sets. I don't think anyone wants to just up and leave something like that, especially after something like the Depression."

Wayne pauses again and there's a far away look in his eyes. "I was turning this all over in my mind and I took a walk, don't know how far I went but I remember stopping near this little street-side cafe and I saw these two women talking and they were sobbing very quietly. . . This lady's son had been on the Arizona, and he'd been trying to save a friend's life when the flames trapped both of them.

Wayne's voice is a little ragged now and he takes a deep breath before continuing. "I'm sure you know that I'm not a real teary sort of person but there was something about the sheer grief on that woman's face that stopped me in my tracks.

"And then through the sobs that woman said that she hadn't thought she could ever be any prouder of her son, but she was wrong.

"And I thought about how this woman's son must have known how it was going to play out but he tried to save his friend anyway. And all the sudden I wanted, more than anything to be part of something like that, not just to fight for my country but to fight for the men beside me. And after what that young man and countless others like him did, I couldn't just stay behind."

From The Duke, Chapter seven, A Cowboy in the Marines:

In a 1963 Time Magazine Interview Wayne said that he decided to join the Military after overhearing a conversation between a woman and her friend who was the Mother of a crewmember who died on the Arizona.

Wayne originally tried to enlist in the Army but they turned him down because of his age. So Wayne went to the Marines and was sworn in and sent to Parris Island to begin training. In a letter to a friend he wrote that:

We're training every day, it's hard and it doesn't get any easier but after a while you get used to it. . .

. . . These young guys all call me Dad, and I guess it is a little unusual seeing a Marine recruit my age and it's not that I'm a wallflower but we just don't talk about the same things. And the only other guys my age are usually NCOs and they don't acknowledge our existence if they can help it. I thought I'd heard some language working on ranches and in Hollywood but these NCOs, it's an art to them, I saw this one guy go on for about ten minutes without repeating himself.

By the time he sent that letter Wayne was a Marine Private in the 1st Marines as a Rifleman and the Division was mobilizing to ship out to Guadacanal.
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