GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan–On May 8, 1943, Virgil William Westdale (born Nishimura) took the commercial pilot’s license test at Kent County Airport, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He recalled that it was a particularly rigorous test given by a tough examiner from the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), forerunner of the Federal Aviation Administration.

            He knew he did well in the test. But he was surprised the examiner made no comment after it was over. After waiting anxiously in the lobby for hours, he went home, angry about the apparent discrimination.

            At age 88, Westdale was curious to know the results. Last year, he enlisted the help of his supervisor, John Mumma, Federal Security Director at the Grand Rapids International Airport. He received a large stack of papers. One letter from CAA on barely legible microfilm noted: “Mr. Westdale has applied for an airman identification card and, except for his Japanese ancestry, appears to be technically qualified to hold the card.”

The letter from CAA made no comment as to Westdale’s loyalty or character. “Our recommendation that he be issued an Airman Identification Card is limited solely to his technical qualifications.” On September 9 lst year, Westdale received in the mail his commercial pilot license–63 years after he passed all tests.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Westdale read about the harsh treatment against Japanese Americans in the West Coast in the US. He felt the world caving in on him. When he began flight training on October 14, 1941, under the Western Michigan College (Kalamazoo) program at the Kent County Airport, he felt his passion for flying was being fulfilled and that he was launched on a commercial pilot’s career. He performed slow rolls, snap rolls, loops, spin turns and other maneuvers.

In March 1942, he applied for and was pleased to be accepted in the Army Air Corps, then headquartered at Bendix Field in South Bend, Indiana. However, the attitude of the officers, his surroundings and his perception of being watched made him uneasy. He made himself as inconspicuous as possible, becoming an ideal student. He even anglicized his Japanese name, Nishimura (Nishi-west; mura-dale), to downplay his true ethnic heritage.

One day when he reported for Air Corps training, a CAA official was waiting for him, and demanded his private pilot’s license without any explanation. Westdale was grounded, but during this time he taught instrument flying. When the license was returned to him about three months later, again without explanation, Westdale resumed his flight training that included preparation for two tests, instrument flying and commercial license tests.

About two years after starting flight training, he received orders transferring him to work in the camp kitchen. “An instrument flight instructor one day, and ten days later  scrubbing hoods up above a stove. I couldn’t think of a lower point in my life,” he recalled. Subsequently, he got transferred again, to the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team as an infantryman, and then to its 522nd Field Artillery Battalion as a forward observer which trained at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and served in Italy, France and Germany. At the Dachau Concentration Camp, northwest of Munich, Germany, Westdale saw his fellow soldiers blow off the locks to liberate the inmates.

Upon receiving his honorable discharge in 1945, Westdale planned to resume his flying career. However, that was not to be. When he expressed his plans to his grandmother, she rejected it flatly, saying, “You were lucky to survive flying and the war, now you complete your college education, and get a regular job.” Westdale graduated from Western Michigan University, became a chemical engineer, and revolutionized the print industry with his inventions, particularly with toners.

Nowadays, Westdale is nevertheless happy to be working in aviation. At 88, he’s the oldest full-time Transportation Security Agency airline passenger screener at the National Airport here.