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Hi. My name is Joseph. Would they call me Joe? I was born in 1937 in Panama City, Panama. My great grandfather came to Panama in 18 80. He was an English sailor aboard a ship that went from San Francisco to Panama, carrying passengers and mail. And he met my great grandmother, who was of Spanish descent living in Panama.

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And he couldn't speak Spanish and she couldn't speak English. But somehow they communicated, got together and married, and they've, of course group. They had several Children who grew up in Panama, and one of them was my grandmother, who then, growing up in a bilingual environment, she taught English and Spanish, mostly Spanish, to Americans who were living in Panama.

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My father went down to Panama from the U. S. Army in 1922 and he took lessons from my grandmother. And that's how he met my mother and they got married. So on my mother's side, we've lived in Panama since the early 18 hundreds. Actually, my father's side, he came the 1922 and he never left.

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Except one time in 1953 he went to the United States to audit the books of the Panama Canal railroads steamship. And he said when he came back, you could give Manhattan back to the Indians because he had found paradise in Panama. So I was. I was born in 37 went to Canal Zone schools, graduated from Balboa High School, came to the University of Florida and graduated from U.

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S. In 1959 went to the Army and then returned to Panama and began a 33 year career with the Panama Canal Company and later the Panama Canal Commission. One word, I would say, is extraordinary. It was an incredible engineering achievement for the time it was declared one of the eight modern wonders of the world.

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When it was first built, it was known in today's terms, it would be called It's the Moon shot of its day. Just a fantastic achievement in the United States needs to really be proud of that achievement. I was born in 1937 and so I have memories of my boyhood growing up in the canal zone.

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Then I moved on to adulthood where I stayed there and then I had a career of 33 years. There so I have three kind of different phases of life in the canal zone. My boyhood memories involved the freedom to do whatever we wanted as people we could travel into.

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Walk into Panama City is young, young boys and feel no fear, have no security concerns. We would mingle with the general population. We would go to stores, the movies in Panama City unaccompanied, and we would go into the jungles and explore the snakes and the frogs and the the monkeys and the jaguars and the deer and the bugs, all the insects we would collect.

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Insects, beetles, large beetles about four inches big called rhinoceros beetles and butterflies. And the tropical tropical lushness of Panama offered all the opportunity to explore. And as a boy, it gave us a sense of being one with nature. I would say it was an American community in the middle of a foreign country with one common denominator, and that was the Panama Canal, which was the bond that bonded everybody together, regardless of race or culture.

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All of the employees of the Panama Canal felt it was their canal. It wasn't the United States Canal. It wasn't Panama's canal. It was their canal, and they had a fierce loyalty and fierce pride. And that bond permeated across nationalistic lines. Panamanians and Americans who worked for the canal, the West Indians, the other nationalities all felt strongly about protecting their canal, and they were dedicated to do the best they could.

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What I brought from Panama was great appreciation for a variety of cultures, of different nationalities. I never knew racism until I got to the United States. It was it was a melting pot of nationalities. Our friends were Panamanian Americans, West Indians, Spanish, Chinese, English, every nationality and the food.

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Also, you had all the culture of the different foods, but the appreciation of the various cultures, the tolerance that way experienced now in the early days of the canal from 1903 Thio mid 19 fifties, there was segregation which went on around the world. The United States practice segregation.

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We had, um, white drinking fountains, and we had colored drinking fountains. But that was the norm in the South, the United States and most parts of the world. It was segregation, but there was no discrimination. It's a difference. We got along well and nobody was was lording it over another person.

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There was no no one looking down on a particular category of of person. We all got along very well. Nice. That's what I That's the strongest thing I could bring Tell you that I brought back. Brought from Panama's appreciation for cultures and tolerance, there were three well, at least two significant events that took place in three significant events that took place in Panama while I was there.

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One was the 1964 riots in which the Panamanian students clash with American high school students over the raising of ah flag. The Panamanians wanted the flag to be raised in front of the Bow Bow High School, which was an American school. But the American kids didn't want their U.

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S flag lowered toe have the Panamanian flag put up. So that started a civil disturbance, which resulted in the break breaking of relations. Diplomatic relations between Panama and the United States. 21 21 Panamanians were killed in that in that disturbance, and three American soldiers were killed and we lived through that, and I was living in Panama City at the time.

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So when that disturbance occurred, the borders were kind of mhm, sort of close, but you couldn't get back and forth between without fearing for your life. So I was kind of a refugee in the Canal zone. Had to be put up with my friends for a while until I got my own apartment.

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The other significant. Another significant event was in 1989. I was of unofficial for the Panama Canal. My title was director Office of Executive Administration, and in that job I had the responsibility for policy advice for the administrator policy coordination, and I was a principal channel of communication between the canal and the Panamanian government, the American Embassy, the U.

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S military, the Congress of the United States and the board of directors. So it was a very responsible position. And around October of 1989 3 months before the invasion of Panama by the United States, I was a Panamanian Panama Defense Force officer or enlisted man. I wasn't sure in civilian clothes brought to me a list of 20 Panama Canal officials who were designated to be kidnapped with their families and taken to the interior of Panama in the event Noriega was captured or taken hostage, we would be used as exchange bait.

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I took that list up to the Southern Command headquarters and ask them to check it out. And three weeks later they came back and said, Yes, they This was true. So we had immediately in our in the canal We hardened everybody's house. We put steel doors, steel bars on the windows.

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We gave him a secure line in their in their homes, so if they picked up the telephone, it would ring it immediately. In the security office the night of the invasion about midnight just before the invasion started, there was some shooting down the street from my house, and I called up the chief of staff of the Southern Command and asked him what was going on.

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And he said, I don't know what you're hearing, but that's not our thing. And I said, What is our thing? And he said, I can't tell you This is not a secure line. Next thing I know in front of our house pulled up, um, 18 wheeler with a container on the back.

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The back of the container opened up and troops piled out, and they came running toward our house. I didn't know if that was Panamanian troops going to kidnap me or American troops to protect us. And so after a while, my neighbor called me and says, You know, your house is surrounded by troops and I said, I think I know that, but I don't know who they are.

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He said, I don't either. But they're not moving there, just standing there. So eventually I opened the door just a little bit and I heard Get back in your house, sir, which was relief. And I knew then that they were protecting us. So that was a pretty significant event, and the other the other one.

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That was his traumatic, probably is that Is that the end of 19 at the end of the Canal Zone, when the Canal Zone and the Panama Canal Company were disestablished on October on September 29th. Excuse me. On September 30th, 1979 we worked for the Panama Canal Company or the Canal Zone government.

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There were two separate but related government agencies. The next day we work for the Panama Canal Commission, and the two government agencies had been disestablished. The Canal Zone government had police fire, customs, immigration, post office schools and hospitals, and mortuaries and cemeteries. All of those were disestablished, and people were losing their jobs.

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And it was a lot of turmoil, A lot of anxiety. Morale was low. People were families were breaking up. People were losing their jobs. Uh, instead of living in the Canal Zone on September 30th, the next day, we were living in Panama under Panamanian court systems, Panamanian police, Panamanian jurisdiction, Panamanian immigration laws and residency requirements and documentation.

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And it was just incredible experience. It was difficult to see some of our friends lose their jobs. Um, lifelong friends people have been there two or three generations, didn't have a job anymore. And if you don't have a job with the Panama Canal, you couldn't live in the canal zone, at least in the Canal Zone.

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Housing either had to move into Panama City or move to the United States or wherever you came from. And so we were losing friends right and left. It was very traumatic, very emotional. People were having heart attacks. People were breaking up, divorcing, people were angry. They were, the morale was very bad, and it took a lot of it took a challenge for the management of the canal operation to try to bring that back.

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Several examples. One employee was working in the Marine organization. He had skills in that particular operation. A reduction in force caused him to be downgraded from that job to an administrative job where he had never worked. He had no idea how toe handle the job. So there were people being placed in positions.

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They had no experience for. Another example, the head of the motor transportation division, which is a fairly substantial operation because we had a fleet of cars and trucks and Busses to take employees and people toe work and whatever. He was a chief on September 30th. The next day, his job was chauffeur so working in the same organization that he headed up the day before and somebody else was moved into his physician, who had no idea how to operate that particular organization.

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So the challenge not only emotionally morale wise, but productivity suffered greatly all through that the canal continued to function. Ships kept coming through. They didn't stop for for any change over. So we got the ships through way, maintained the productivity Aziz well as we could. And eventually people got used to what they were working on, what their new jobs were.

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Their new way of life, their new friendships. But it took a long time to recover where there were two transitions. The one I described was the elimination of the Canal zone, where Panama assumed jurisdiction over its territory. That was 1979. And then there was a 20 year period of transition whereby the US trained Panamanians to take over the canal and the U.

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S. Transferred canal on December 31st, 1999. So from 79 to 99 we all were engaged in an aggressive program to train Panamanians to take the higher level jobs. And by the end of that 20 year transition period, almost every position in the canal was occupied by a Panamanian at all management levels, all mid management levels, all skills levels and all entry levels.

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We're all Panamanian, except for a handful of Americans who were left over. I wasn't there Then I retired before the end of that period, but the transition was similar. One day you're working for the U. S. Government on December 31st, 1999. And the next day you're working for the Panamanian government and those people who work for the U.

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S. Government. Even the Panamanians retired from the U. S. Government. They get a civil service annuity, but the next day they're in the same job, earning pay from Panamanian government and getting us annuity. So they made out pretty well. But even then, it's different working for a U.

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S. Agency than working for a Panamanian agency. Although to Panama's credit, they didn't change much. The same systems, the same procedure, the same requirements, the same obligations carried forward so that it was a seamless transfer from December 31st to the next. Well, actually, it was December 31st at noon when the canal transferred to Panama.

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So at 11 59 it was us. At noon it was Panamanian, and that's the way I think it was a smooth, seamless transition because the U. S. Did it the right way. And I think the US one message I would like to give is that the U.

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S. Is never given enough credit for the way it handled the transfer of the canal to Panama. It was. You know, here's this world power, huge country, dealing with a very tiny country on equal footing on equal terms and magnanimously transfer. The canal gave billions of dollars worth of assets to Panama.

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All the infrastructure. They trained the Panamanian so well that there was no effect at all when they transfer the canal. So it was done the right way. And I don't think the U. S gets enough credit for that. Panama is a beautiful country. It has mountains, It has beaches.

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It has jungle. It has the canal. It has. The people are wonderful. They're peaceful. Even during the civil disturbances, when they did riot against the United States and even during the Noriega years, when they did protests almost daily against Noriega, they did it in a peaceful manner.

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Most of the demonstrations were peaceful that some turned violent because of the aggressiveness of the authorities against them. But the Panamanian people are fun loving. They like to dance. They like toe, enjoy life. They were very friendly there. They're very vivacious. And Panama is just a country itself is beautiful, surrounded by two oceans, and it's just the perfect place to live