Life in the United States
Time 0:01:07
Tom Corcoran (TC): Yup. So I didn’t come back and as soon as I didn’t come back, I lost whatever college deferment I had as far as the military was concerned. And then I ended up in the military. I got drafted.
Emily Burton (EB): You got drafted.
TC: I was here. That’s worth telling, I guess. I was here and my dad was in the navy in the Second World War. We weren’t getting along really well at this point and time. I felt like I was doing as much fathering at home as he was, because he wasn’t there. I expected him to tell me to get my butt home as soon as he found out that I had been told to report to the draft and all that stuff. So I called him to tell him—to have the fight. That isn’t what he did. He said, “If you decide that you want to stay there, we’ll just come and visit you instead of you having to come and visit us,” which floored me. So to make a long story short, I packed my bags and went home—hitchhiked home the next morning. I was in the army a week later.
Oral History 14.05.07TC with Tom Corcoran
Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21