1 100 3 https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/9d570ab79cd4070a423d7508222b4645.pdf b1abffb2db6dda01da618a2c73c137d7 PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with Mitsuru Doi, June 7, 1999 053-Doi-Mits-1 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] My name is Ann Hashisaka and today is June 7, 1999. And we are here to interview Mitsuru Doi. On crew we have Ron---Rob Vaughn on camera, Ron Azuma on audio, Peggy Kamon on catalogue, and Craig Yahata directing. Please state your name. DOI: Mitsuru Doi is my name. INTERVIEWER: And place and date of birth. DOI: I was born June the 12th, 1924. INTERVIEWER: And where were you born? DOI: I was born in Koloa, Kauai. INTERVIEWER: Did you have a nickname? DOI: They call me Mits in school and while we in---in Lihue anyway. INTERVIEWER: Why did they call you that? DOI: I don’t exactly know, but there was another fellow that was older than me; his name was Mitsuru also, and his name was Mits, so they gave---they just called me Mits. INTERVIEWER: Can we talk a little bit about your family? Could you say what your parent’s names were, and your sisters or brothers, if you had any? DOI: My father’s name was Harue Doi and my mother’s name is Sao Matsunaga Doi. And I have a sister, Marianne Hanako Doi. INTERVIEWER: And was she a younger or an older sister? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 43 �DOI: She was younger than I was and she and I are 17 and a half difference. And I got no brothers and we didn’t have anybody in between. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe what life was like on Kauai [02:00] growing up? DOI: Life was pretty easy on Kauai because it’s a plantation village and Lihue Plantation was the main plantation in Lihue where I was living. And in the community, we had immigrants from the Philippines and we had Japanese family. Most of them were from Japan and the Philippines; they were mostly---they were married in the Philippines probably, but they were all single men over there. So we got along pretty well. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe what it looked like? The plantation? DOI: Well, you live very simple. And the pay at that time wasn’t too much because---was about a dollar a day I guess. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember anything else about the plantation life? What was a typical day like? DOI: Easy-going. And we all had victory gardens at home, so we raised our own vegetables and we had chickens; we had down in the valley and outside of the camp, they all used to raise hogs, pigs. We slaughtered the pigs. I remember they used to sell 25 cents a pound for a piece of pork. And most of them---we used to give it to our neighbors and vegetables. So we used to share a lot of things with the Filipinos [04:00] and the Portuguese. And they used to do the same. So we got along pretty well and I think the population at that time was maybe about 30,000 on the whole island, I think. INTERVIEWER: What kind of games did you play as a child? DOI: We played regular sports: baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, and the Filipinos used to play that sipa. They kick the ball with the feet made out of coconut---the ball is made out of coconut leaf or, what’s that, hau leaf. INTERVIEWER: Did your father work on the plantation, or somewhere else? DOI: He used to work for the plantation. And my mother used to work for the plantation also. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 43 �What did she do and what did he do? DOI: He was a regular laborer. And my mother used to be at the laundry room as a laundress for the plantation. INTERVIEWER: What does a laborer do on Lihue Plantation? DOI: Most of them work in the cane fields and some of them work in the mill. And my father was out in the cane field. He used to lay railroad tracks to pick up the cane, because they---when they harvest the cane, they bring it down to the mill on a train in cane cars. So he used to be one of those that laid tracks in the fields, and also they used to repair the main tracks too. INTERVIEWER: Did you have a job also, or did you just play sports and games after school? [06:00] DOI: Prior---when I went to school, just before I entered the service, I was working at the service station as a service station attendant. INTERVIEWER: What was the name of that service station? DOI: Kapaia Garage. And at the service station, what I used to do was pump gas, polish cars, wash cars, and service cars. INTERVIEWER: What high school did you attend? DOI: Kauai High School. INTERVIEWER: And were you involved in any activities there at Kauai High School? DOI: No. INTERVIEWER: Did you play sports? DOI: I played football; I played baseball. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 43 �What position did you play? DOI: I played center, football and I used to play---and play first base, play out in the field, all over. INTERVIEWER: Did you do a lot of things with your younger sister? DOI: I didn’t because she was only a year and a half when I went to the service. INTERVIEWER: And what is her name? What is your younger sister’s name? DOI: Marianne Hanako. INTERVIEWER: Did you go to Japanese language school? DOI: I did. We had a language school. When I was going to grammar school, the language school was alongside---neighbors-like, so I used to go to language school. I went up to eighth grade. INTERVIEWER: Did you like it? DOI: Well, not exactly, but as the baby-sitter, I guess. No one’s at home. INTERVIEWER: Did you learn a lot of [08:00] Japanese at Japanese school? DOI: We did whatever, from grade one to eighth grade, in line and we participated in judo and they had kendo also, but I didn’t pick up kendo. But on Saturdays we used to have judo class where we---those who wanted to attend can go and practice. And I didn’t enter any tournaments or, so . . . INTERVIEWER: Did you do judo for a long time? DOI: Oh, coupla years. Had fun. INTERVIEWER: And your family religion was what religion? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 43 �DOI: Like---my parents were Buddhists. And well, when I went in the service, I was a Protestant. INTERVIEWER: Why were you a Protestant in the service? DOI: Because I used to go to the Christian church. And like in---although they were Buddhist, they didn’t go to churches that often. But maybe two, three, four times a year when, you know, when regular days they---that they thought was important to go, so . . . INTERVIEWER: Who were your friends growing up on Kauai? DOI: Oh, I got lots of friends. Oh, since Kauai’s small, we got all kinda friends and lots of them, like a lot of the Army boys that went---served in this 442 and 100 and--INTERVIEWER: Did---that you grew up with? Did you grow up with them? DOI: I grew up with them. So I knew---although the 100 was old---they were much older than I am, maybe five, six years older than [10:00] I am---but since I used to play football and baseball, I used to know a lot of them before I went to the service, so it was fortunate that---and when I went there, they were there and they took care of me like a little brother. INTERVIEWER: Okay, well we could talk a little bit more about that in just a little bit. Is there anything else about growing up on Kauai that you’d like to talk about? Any fond memories that you have growing up? DOI: Not exactly. INTERVIEWER: Did you get to any other side of the island growing up, or did you stay where your family was at? DOI: Most of the time we stayed where we were because those days, transportation was very hard and the roads weren’t that good, so most of the time we used to have friends that were within walking distance. INTERVIEWER: Was that the only high school on the island at the time when you went then? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 43 �At that time, yes, there was just Kauai High School. So they used to come in from all over the island, from Hanalei to Waimea to Kauai High School. Then they formed Waimea High School. So, then later on, they had couple high schools. Now we’ve got three high schools on the island. Plus, a community college. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else? Okay. Do you recall---I’d like to talk a little bit then about what was happening when December 7th, 1941 [12:00] occurred. Do you recall what you were doing? DOI: December 7th, since it was a surprise. I was out hunting pheasants. Then I heard that oh, there’s a war going on. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Then I came home. INTERVIEWER: And what did you do at that time, when you came home? DOI: We couldn’t do much, so just stayed at home and wait for anything that develops. INTERVIEWER: What was the sense in the community at that time? DOI: At that time, was a shock to them, so---and we were all friends, so wasn’t that bad. INTERVIEWER: Did anybody treat you differently after the bombing of Pearl Harbor than before? DOI: Oh yeah, they started to change and they, you know---but most of our friends were neighbors and my parents used to do the laundry for them. Like, as I said, they were Filipino immigrants that came and mother used to do laundry for them part-time. So she still used to bring the laundry, and she did their laundry for them. So wasn’t that bad. INTERVIEWER: What kinda things happened that were bad? That were different? DOI: The difference was, well, martial law too, so you cannot get out at night. And most of the block wardens weren’t Japanese; they were all Filipinos and Portuguese and the others, so was---in those---in that way, it was pretty hard. But we used to go to the canteen. As young boys, we used to volunteer and go to the canteen and [14:00] help distribute coffee, and pastries, and sandwiches to outposts, or---wasn’t too bad for us and they didn’t bother---they weren’t---they treated us pretty good. INTERVIEWER: Did you have some sort of special identification? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 43 �DOI: We have---they give you a badge and you can go to---we go to just certain section. They used to distribute from the Salvation Army; that’s one of---one place where they get together. Then from there, you go out and at the county building. INTERVIEWER: What was a block warden? Could you describe that? DOI: They just have helmets and they---what did we---civilian defense, CD on the cap. INTERVIEWER: What was their purpose and function? DOI: I guess to keep---I don’t know. We didn’t go to any of their functions or to their meetings because we---they considered us as aliens, although we were citizens. And what I didn’t like was, we---they used to gather all the---our parents, the Nisei’s, go out to Mana, this Barking Sands, the air field. And Kiawe-Koa we used to call it. Cut all the Kiawe underbrushes so the planes get as camouflaged areas. And the only ones that go out there was the Japanese, the buddhaheads. INTERVIEWER: Why is that? DOI: I don’t know. They---to show our [16:00] patriotism and we really, you know---so we go out there; we do the work. But the others never used to come out, at evacuation camps. They say, “Oh, let’s build evacuation camps.” So who’s there? It’s mostly all Orientals, hardly any other nationalities. INTERVIEWER: How did that make you feel? DOI: It doesn’t make you feel good. I got mad. I went to it coupla times. The Army, they come in with the Army trucks, pick you up, and bring you---and bring you home. INTERVIEWER: How long did this last? DOI: Oh, for quite some time. But after a while, I didn’t go. So, I don’t know. I went a few times. INTERVIEWER: So after December 7th--DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 43 �That’s right. INTERVIEWER: ---how long was it before things sort of got back to normal, or did it never die down? How long after December 7th before things sort of got back to normal? Or was it never again? DOI: After we---after we came home, after the war that’s when things started to change, when we came home. INTERVIEWER: But before that? DOI: Before that? Well, we didn’t---we---and we never did associate too much with the other boys that were our age, but our neighbors, we used to get along fine. Didn’t think anything. INTERVIEWER: So you don’t think there was really discrimination in the neighborhood? DOI: Because there weren’t that much children too, where I lived. So in my area, there wasn’t too [18:00] much. INTERVIEWER: And what area was this again? DOI: This was in Lihue, in the camp. Most of them were single Filipinos, and well, the Orientals, well, at that time, they had big families. And so wasn’t---I didn’t---it didn’t bother me too much. But what I didn’t want---like was, as I said, when we have to go---they have to go to Kiawe-Koa and go out and work on the evacuation camps and all that, and nobody else, but only buddaheads. That I didn’t like. INTERVIEWER: How did you get into the Army? DOI: Well, what happened was President Roosevelt said, “We will accept volunteers.” So soon, when they said they accept volunteers, our aged boys, they said, “Oh, hey, let’s volunteer. We don’t want these kinda things to . . .” So that’s how I volunteered, although I was the only one in the family. INTERVIEWER: You were the only boy--DOI: Boy, yup. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: ---in the family. So does that mean you didn’t need to volunteer? DOI: Oh, it’s voluntary, so it’s up to you. INTERVIEWER: If you hadn’t volunteered, as the only boy, would you have been drafted? DOI: Probably, but I don’t think so. Because they weren’t---I don’t know how that draft was after that. Or . . . INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about what it was like when you were volunteering? Do you have some picture or something you’d like [20:00] to show me? DOI: Oh yes, I have some pictures over here. After I volunteered in---I was the---I didn’t want to be the first. They don’t know who’s the first, so this is---this is one of the pictures that I was the first inductee in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. And they started the volunteering and they all taking was on---from Kauai, so---and I was on Kauai---born in Kauai, so . . . I was---I was proud. But I don’t think---this should have been somebody else. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe what that felt like, to be the first? DOI: Oh, it’s hard to say. [Laughter] We were still young. We were only 18, so. So this is the picture that I was sworn in and this is the---my father, my mother, and my little sister, and myself. That’s my family. They came to take the picture of the family also. And this is---we all got inducted the same time, but I was the first and they got inducted right after me. INTERVIEWER: And who was that? Who was that that got inducted right after you? [22:00] DOI: This is the Manabe brothers; they’re the first twins to be inducted in the 442 nd Regimental Combat Team. And this fellow is Herbert Kondo. His father was a World War I veteran living in Koloa. The Manabe brothers lived in Kilauea. And this is myself putting on all that [Laughter] gizmo. And here’s the sergeant that instructed us. INTERVIEWER: And where was this picture taken? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 43 �This was taken in Hanapepe. Where we---we stayed in---the home outfit stayed in---the volunteers stayed in Hanapepe in tents. Then that’s where we took our oath. And after we got inducted, they all went---got together in the Army and there they were sworn in, right after us. Then, so . . . INTERVIEWER: What did your parents think about you volunteering? Did they say anything? DOI: They were proud. They didn’t say anything, but they were proud that I got inducted. INTERVIEWER: Did they give you any advice? DOI: Oh yes, they say, “Just do your best and don’t shame the country. It will shame the family.” So--but we were really fortunate because as a group from Hawaii, we stuck together, so although--we were real friendly, so you know everybody. INTERVIEWER: Did you get inducted with some of your friends that you knew from childhood? [24:00] Did you know anyone from your childhood, growing up in the Lihue Plantation who was also inducted at the same time as you? DOI: Oh yes, Whitey Kurasaki, Archie Watanabe, Tet Tokita, we were all from Lihue. And there’s lots more that---from the same community and like, from---I knew people from Waimea, the Okadas. And Kawate Cannonball. So because I---two of friends---since Kauai was small as I say, they used to play sports so, I used to know them. INTERVIEWER: And when you all got inducted together on Kauai, then did you all travel together, or did you go alone after that? DOI: No. We got---we got in a boat and went to Oahu. Then we got together. Then from there, we got shipped to the mainland. Then from the mainland, we went to Camp Shelby on train. Then when you went to Camp Shelby, that’s where they call you out and tell you what company you’re going. And so you take your barracks bag and you---we got dispersed. You fortunate if you got your friends with you, or so you start out all over again. But we got along fine. INTERVIEWER: Did you get---have a friend with you, dispersed with you? Or did you go it alone at that point? DOI: I didn’t know anybody that---oh, I knew a fellow from Kauai, Lefty Okimoto from Lihue also. We were in the same hut---hut mates in Camp Shelby. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: What is a hut? DOI: A hut is the place where you---well, [26:00] we got about two squads in there. There’s about . . . maybe about 18 of us in a hut. INTERVIEWER: And what do you do in your hut? DOI: Well we’re in the same squad, and they got two squads in a hut so the squad is separate--they---when training time, we trained together as a whole platoon, but when you go out on the field, your squad goes separately from the others. So . . . you do---you do things, but as a group, and like, I would say like sports, when you train, you try to work as a team. END OF AUDIO FILE 1 BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO 053-Doi-Mits-2 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Okay, let’s go back just a little bit, and can you please tell me about the trip over from Hawaii to the mainland? DOI: From camp, we rode the truck to the pier where we got off. That was on April the 4th, 1943. From there, we took our barracks bag; we walked---we went over with the Lurline to the United States. It took us five days to reach LA. Then from LA, we rode the train, then we went to---on a trip to Camp Shelby. Was---when you go in the tunnel, whoo---plenty do’s---black soot on you, so close the window. [Laughter] That was a pretty long trip. INTERVIEWER: What did you do to pass the time? DOI: Play cards. INTERVIEWER: What kind of cards? DOI: Well, we played poker or whatever. Maybe crap game. INTERVIEWER: Is that where you learned to play poker and craps, or did you know already? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 43 �Oh, we knew already, but we---that was a pastime---that was a pastime for the 442, Go for Broke Outfit. INTERVIEWER: Did you get seasick on the way over; on the Lurline? DOI: No, the ship was big, so even on the ship, oh, that’s all you do; play cards five days. INTERVIEWER: How was the food? DOI: The food was all right, but you hardly eat. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what they served? DOI: I don’t know. [02:00] Anything they serve, you eat. INTERVIEWER: Were you afraid? DOI: Oh yes, but everybody’s afraid. But as a group, you’re going overseas, and you don’t think about it so wasn’t too bad. INTERVIEWER: What did you think when you first arrived in Camp Shelby? DOI: What? INTERVIEWER: What did you think when you first arrived at Camp Shelby? DOI: Ooh, was hot. And when we went to was, oh, that camp was deserted and we used to---we had to clean the area and build it up again, so. INTERVIEWER: What did that involve, building it up again? DOI: Oh, the hut was there. Only thing we had to---most of the things we have to do was clean the area up. That’s about it. But it was, ooh, grass high, plenty snakes, which we never did see, so we say, “watch out.” And a lotta rabbits too, but didn’t bother us too much. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: Did you get bitten? DOI: No, I didn’t. And most of the snakes in the grass over there were---weren’t poisonous, so wasn’t bad. Only out in a field where we had coral snake and we didn’t---I didn’t see no rattlers, but coral snake, I saw--INTERVIEWER: And what did you do when you--DOI: Keep away. So they tell you, don’t swim. Because there, water moccasin. Mostly they’re in the water, swamps. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe your training? What was a typical [04:00] day like? DOI: Training was very tough. Everybody go out and they do their best. What you need is conditioning. And we knew where we were---we didn’t know what area, but we knew we were going overseas someday. So we trained hard and what was---for me, it wasn’t too bad, because I was a little tall. But for the five-footers, or five feet two, to go over the obstacle was kinda hard because the obstacle is high. You have to jump over. And the---we used to have lotta tests, Army tests we’d go through. And we did pretty good on those tests because we all trained hard and the boys worked together. They were surprised; they think, “How they get over this 12 foot wall? Shorty, he can’t even reach up there.” What we used to do is the tall ones stayed behind, hop on your back and they go over. Make the small ones go over first. You cannot go around; you have to go over the barrier. So that was---that’s how they used to get over. INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about some of the other tests that the Army had? What else was involved in these tests? DOI: We have maneuvers, all kind. INTERVIEWER: How early did it start? DOI: Oh, like in the morning and [06:00] to about three, four o’clock. Plus we have 25 mile hike test, with full field pack and whatever you have to carry. Then you have forest marches, all kinds. INTERVIEWER: What was your worst experience at Shelby? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 43 �DOI: Twenty-five mile hike. Lotta blister and hot. You walking in about 100 degrees. Water discipline. Water discipline, canteen so, ration your water. INTERVIEWER: How much water did they give you for one day? DOI: You have one canteen, a quart, of water. That’s your water. So every time you go out, you fill up your canteen and you go out on problems or whatever. INTERVIEWER: Was there any other exercise that you thought was a good exercise for helping you later, that you learned at Shelby? DOI: No, nothing. Nothing extra because most of the day, you’re exercising, so you don’t need it. In the morning, we used to go on, ooh---bright and early we’d---before breakfast, we used to go on three mile forest march. We used to come back and have breakfast. After breakfast, go out, train some more. Get you ready. INTERVIEWER: And were you ready? DOI: We were ready; [08:00] we were in condition. And in Shelby after we went there, you go to the various company. And I went to Dog Company in Shelby training, and that’s a heavy weapons company. We got heavy machine gun, water-cooled; we got the .81 millimeter motors. That’s the big thing. Every piece---they have three pieces to a motor. Every piece is about 50 pounds, so if you got one, two, three gunners, first, second, third gunners, you carry the tube; you carry the [inaudible] bar, you carry the base plate. Then the others you got is ammo bearers; ammunition bearers. We used to call them ammo bearers for short. Then you got firing range practice and you got problems where you find location, gun and placement, ammunition round, and those are all cast at the officer’s gun, or the---there they see how good---how good is your placement and approach, ammo approach route, and all that. So they give you a test on all those things. I was in the motor section, so I know more about motor than the heavy machine guns. But we learned something about the heavy machine gun also. INTERVIEWER: What was the key to the heavy machine gun? What did you need to know to make it work? DOI: The key’s the headspace; that’s the hard part. But every gun has their own head space where the gun [10:00] won’t jam, where the bullet goes in and when she eject the bullet, if you don’t have the space correct, it’ll jam on you. If it’s too far, you can’t take the next bullet in. If it’s too This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 43 �close, it won’t throw the bullet out. That’s the---that’s---that---the German they didn’t have. They just slap the barrel, pop. You can fire away. You don’t have to, but---so every time when you go up on line, you make sure your gun is right. And they put water---it’s called water-cooled because when they fire, they fire so much that they need water to cool the barrel. INTERVIEWER: So you have to carry the water with you to cool it? DOI: The water is in the gun already, so . . . They say---I don’t know how many gallons of water they put, or quarts of water they put in, because I wasn’t in with them. We just learned how to go on the range and fire the gun. INTERVIEWER: Is there any other skills that you learned there? Is there any other skills that you learned there? DOI: No, anything come---take it as it come and . . . INTERVIEWER: What did you do when you weren’t training? DOI: When we weren’t training, you go on pass, so you go to the PX and have few. Make music. Meet the boys, or go to the---go to your---if you got friends or relatives, go to their place and talk stories. INTERVIEWER: Did you see other soldiers from Kauai that you went and talked story with--DOI: Oh yeah, I and my cousin and [12:00] Whitey were only one barrack away from me, so I used to go over there. INTERVIEWER: And what did you--DOI: Sit on the bunk, talk story, play cards, shoot crap. [Laughter] That’s work, when you’re not on the field. Play poker, night time. INTERVIEWER: Did you write home? DOI: Yeah, once in a while. I thought no news is good news; if I don’t write, so . . . I used to write home, yes. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: And what did you tell them when you wrote home? DOI: I tell them, not a long letter, short letter, tell them everything is all right. INTERVIEWER: Did you get letters back from home? DOI: Oh yes, my mother used to write because my father was a Issei, but my mother is a Nisei, so--so I two and a half “Sei”. [Laughter] Nisei hung. But the others were most---mostly, oh, a lot of Sansei’s, yeah. INTERVIEWER: What did your mother say in her letter? What did your mother say in her letters? DOI: Oh, everything is fine and they’re doing well and don’t have to worry about home. I tell them, don’t have to worry about me. So when I see my cousin, especially overseas when I see my cousin I tell, “Hey, when you write home, tell ‘em everything okay. When I write home, I tell ‘em you all right also.” Because we used to live pretty close, maybe coupla hundred yards away; that’s all, so . . . [14:00] So we got; they got in contact pretty well. In fact, my mother used to walk to work, so on the way home, she can drop in, because their home was before our house. So . . . INTERVIEWER: What else did you do for fun there? Nothing there? Were you ready then to go overseas? DOI: Oh yes. We were ready, but the 100 was overseas already. And they took a lotta beating. And the company---the battalion, they went as overstrained battalion. They had two companies; a battalion is four companies and they had E and F Company. They had two more companies over, so when they---when they got to battle and they lost a lotta men, they break the two companies and put it to only four companies. But still, that wasn’t enough, so they break the First Battalion of the 442nd to be replacement for the 100. So since they break that A, B, C, D Company and they---mostly rifle companies to go overseas, so . . . they sent them by increments. First, they ask you if you want to volunteer and go over, or they pick if no more volunteers. They tell you, you, you, you, you, okay. You’re going overseas, you. [16:00] First replacement. Then little while later, oh, second replacement. There’s some more in they come, battalion, okay. Third replacement. Then the 100 was back to strength again, so they save the rest; they ship them to second and third battalion, so the---on the second and third battalion, some companies, they got more men than what the company calls for. I don’t know actually how many men they called for, but---so . . . I went over on the third replacement. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 43 �What were you thinking when you had to go over as a third replacement? That meant that there was a first set of replacements and a second set of replacements and they still needed more replacements. DOI: That’s right. INTERVIEWER: What went through your mind? DOI: Well, they needed men and you cannot help it; you have to go and do your---go and do your work. We got . . . So, when I went overseas, it took us 29 days. April 11th, we left the mainland and we reach Naples May the 8th. Took us that much---many days to get to Europe because, oh, that was a large convoy we would go overseas on convoys. And several times, we got the--they said, “Oh, enemy,” so we---the Navy send their sub [18:00] chasers around. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe what a large convoy is like? How many ships are in a large convoy? DOI: I don’t know because you---the convoy is big and you spread out far; you’re not close going over. And you zigzag your way, I guess, so you’re not going directly. So that’s why it takes so long to go overseas. One--INTERVIEWER: Could you feel the boat? DOI: Like going over? Yeah, we went over on Liberty Ships, so it was like the Hualalai and small ships, so it was kinda bad, kinda rough. Some of ‘em got sick. I was fortunate and wasn’t too bad for me. INTERVIEWER: What is a Liberty Ship? DOI: That’s the one---the victory ship that Kaiser built. That’s one come in mass production and so those were the ships we rode on, went overseas. INTERVIEWER: They were slower than most ships? Is that why it took longer? DOI: Not exactly, but they have to---you have to follow, like, so it takes time. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe anything else about the trip over? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 43 �DOI: This---that’s about it, yeah. That’s how I feel. INTERVIEWER: What did you see when you landed? DOI: Like in Naples, they got a lotta blimps [20:00] in the air. Those are air balloons with cables coming down, because the Germans---to keep the German planes away from coming too low. And they have all the ships, drop submarine torpedo nets. So the torpedo won’t hit in case sub come in and shoot. They catch the net and they won’t hit the ship. So we saw a lotta blimps and I saw torpedo nets alongside the ship. INTERVIEWER: Did you see people there? DOI: Hardly, because we didn’t go off the boat. We stayed on the boat and convoy come and pick us up and take us to separation center before we go to our outfit. So we didn’t see a lotta people. They---of course, you see them on the street. That’s about all, but we didn’t get in contact with them. INTERVIEWER: What did--DOI: Those were mostly Italians anyway. INTERVIEWER: What did they look like? DOI: To me they looked like regular, no? INTERVIEWER: Were they hungry? DOI: Oh yeah, they were---they always come begging. But as I say, they beg from outside, we’re on the truck, moving. INTERVIEWER: What did it smell like? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 43 �Doesn’t smell too good, yeah, in Naples. [Laughter] You know, seaport town. And congested, so [22:00] doesn’t smell too good. But we stayed on the ship for only a little while, so not too bad. Then you get off and you go to your staging area. INTERVIEWER: What is this staging area, or separation center like? DOI: That’s---oh, they got a lotta tents and you stay there before you get shipped to your outfit. INTERVIEWER: And--DOI: So you’re just in there resting and waiting, waiting for this, that’s all. INTERVIEWER: And what happened next? DOI: Then from there, if they need you, they tell you, oh, they need so many men. Then they put you on the boat again and go on the truck and take you to wherever. So---but when---from there, I got called, that was in June, the end of May, we got called because they figured they were on the verge of breakthrough from Anzio to Rome. And Anzio, oh they were there for many, many months because they couldn’t move. The Germans pinned them---were---they got the best of us. So we were all pinned down. So since they were gonna attack on such-and-such a date, they shipped us, whomever, to Anzio. Then we waited. Then still they were on defense, but you still got casualties. So every day, two, three, four men go up on the line, [24:00] casualties come back. So then on June the 2nd---June the 1st, I went up on line; June the 2nd, we break through to Rome. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe what it was like the first time you saw battle? DOI: The first time, scary. You don’t know what’s gonna happen to you. I saw the first dead---dead man right about five feet when I---when we went over there. We were in a ravine and climb up and go over the hill, go into a---in the wheat field. Then the breakthrough to Rome, they sent a bunch of tanks then we were supposed to follow the tanks and attack. But the tanks all gave up; they came up. We got---oh they shelled and shelled, because they know the tanks are coming. But we have to move. So I probably went about---about 25 yards. Couldn’t move no more. And where our squad was, there was a tank in the ditch, sideways like this. So what we did was, the whole squad crawled under the tank. Cannot help; you have to go someplace. And they wanna knock the tank out too, so they threw a lotta shell at it landed pretty close though. We stayed down, your head bounce up, hit the belly of the tank that close, might come crashing on you. All day, from morning to night, you couldn’t move an inch. Just stay there. Then that night, we moved away. [26:00] Then the next day, we started attacking and we started to push through This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 43 �Rome. Then on the way to Rome, we were successful. The Germans---we can hear the Germans pulling out. Oh, at that time, I went to Baker Company, B Company. Although I trained with heavy weapons, Dog Company, and with the mortar, I went to Baker Company, a rifle company and I went to the light machine gun squad. A light machine gun and a heavy machine gun is two different guns. One is air cooled and one is water-cooled. And it’s lighter because you have to carry that gun and ammo and like the light machine gun, go--END OF AUDIO FILE 2 BEGINNING OF TAPE THREE 053-Doi-Mits-3 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Let’s go back and talk a little bit more about how it was that you found yourself under a tank at Anzio. DOI: Since we couldn’t move, the Germans were---Anzio is a plateau where the Germans were on high ground and we were on the bottom. So we couldn’t move at all; they can see us move, but we couldn’t see them. So they keep on throwing shells at us all day. So you just have to stay on the---under the tank, or where you are. Then, we moved out from that position at night, moved up forward closer to them, to the enemy. Then we dug in. Since we moved, we’re pretty safe because where---about---after we moved up, they didn’t shell us as much. The shells were going over us. So---and one thing I learned was, that was my first battle and that wasn’t fun. That was terrible, yeah. That’s where I saw the first dead man. I thought, “Ooh, these guy’s--they’re not fooling, boy. You can get killed.” Then from there, we started to push, attack. Then we got through---that was the push through Rome. Then since we started pushing and going on, they stopped us. We---I think our outfit was the first one to hit Rome. But they stopped us and we sat on the road. Then all these mechanized troops going [02:00] into Rome, the trucks, the tanks and everything. But every time they get enemy in front, they say, “Hey boys, clear that gun,” and they start---Rome was a open city, so they couldn’t stay in Rome and so they bypassed Rome. They pushed out and we went around and the trucks went in Rome. Then we stayed in the outskirts of Rome. INTERVIEWER: How did that make you feel, to know that you were the first one there at Rome and you were sitting by the roadside--DOI: Well, at that time, well, we didn’t---I didn’t care too much. But after a while, you start thinking, yeah, you think, oh---they don’t want the buddhahead to be in Rome before the haoles. That’s why they did that. Then from there, we moved out to Civitavecchia. Then the 442 nd came out--after Rome, they came out. Then we got together as a regiment. INTERVIEWER: What is an open city that you referred to? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 20 of 43 �DOI: Since there were---open city is where you cannot bomb or fight in that city because they wanna preserve, there’s a cathedral and, you know, St. Peter’s Square and all that. You don’t want the place to be bombed out and so they made it an open city. So they pulled out and we went around it too. But the troops went into too, and they went through Rome, but didn’t have any [04:00] fighting in Rome. And every town we liberate in Italy, the Catholics had a lotta cathedrals, and every town you liberate after that, they start ringing the church bells. The Germans, Norway, and there we didn’t like it, but then they start throwing shells in town because they know we’re there. Every town you go through, the Italians---on the roadside, the Italians all come out with flask of wine. We’d taste the wine; give ‘em back if it’s not too good. Taste of---go back, get the good one and take the flask and go drink wine. INTERVIEWER: What was their reaction to seeing Japanese-American faces? DOI: They didn’t know who we were anyway. They don’t know what a buddhahead look like. That--we tell them, “Oh, Japanese.” Then we started to pick up a little Italian. We used to call them degos, pisan, pisano. And . . . they used to---what they used to call the Germans? Aleman. Something like that. They had a---Aleman I think they used to call them, Germans. Then they say, “Tutto via.” That means, “They all took off.” So we know the town is safe. INTERVIEWER: Were they happy to see you? DOI: Oh yeah. [06:00] Because they couldn’t---they couldn’t do anything for how long, the war---since the war started. And they didn’t have anything to eat, or hardly anything to eat. So especially meat. They have a lot of chickens, eggs. And the Italian barn and the house is the same, underneath is the barn---the barn where you sleep, so. Then they take the cattle, ox---most oxens they keep and chickens, ox. Usually in the wheat field. INTERVIEWER: What did it look like? What did the terrain look like? DOI: Hey, get some good looking---kind of a most---something like Portuguese though. Got the big kind too. INTERVIEWER: What did the land look like there? DOI: The land is like a---like over here, wheat field, corn field, olive groves. So even like when we on frontline, or when we fighting, you go through a vineyard; you eat grapes. You come to apple orchid, you eat apple. We hardly eat our rations. You eat whatever you get on the road and This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 21 of 43 �being from Hawaii, we eat anything. The poor Italians plant the cabbage, we pull them out, we make tsukemono. And the [08:00] Herbert Ishii was our sergeant. That’s Eric’s uncle---Eric Shinseki’s uncle. He’s---he was our mess sergeant. We used to go get rice; he used to hustle for rice. Every time---every chance they got, we got musubi. Musubi and fried chicken or steak and musubi. And we used to get most of the rices from their seaports. Haole Navy, they don’t eat rice. Only buddhaheads eat rice, so we used to bring our potatoes and souvenirs, like Army souvenirs, helmet, weapons, or whatever. And they love it, because they can’t get it. We exchanged it. That’s why we got a lotta rice. INTERVIEWER: You liked the food there? DOI: We didn’t each much, so---not the food that they had, but . . . INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else about Rome that you wanna talk about, or Civitavecchia? DOI: No. Because we weren’t---we didn’t go through Rome; we was on the outskirts, then we went to Civitavecchia. Then we stayed over there as---well, every time you come back from battle, you stay in the Navy staging campsite where the whole outfit stick together. So we stayed over there for a while. INTERVIEWER: You stayed together as an outfit, so you didn’t stay in the actual houses of the Italians? DOI: No, we pitch our pup tent [10:00] and you stay your pup tent. INTERVIEWER: Did you go into their homes at all? DOI: Oh yes, we go in their homes and if our---no, it’s not occupied, we sleep in the homes. No sense no pitch tent. Do whatever you can do and . . . INTERVIEWER: What did it look like? DOI: Who? INTERVIEWER: The homes, what did the homes look like? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 22 of 43 �Oh, well theirs is something like this---plastered and not wooden homes. Hardly any wooden homes, they’re all plastered homes. So. INTERVIEWER: Were they small or large? DOI: Not too bad. Medium sized. And if it’s---if it’s in the city, the home’s not that big, regular, like the ones that we have around here. Out in the farm, the---since they got their barns with them, the homes are pretty big, yeah. INTERVIEWER: Then what happened next? DOI: Then from Civitavecchia, when the 442nd regiment---the other two---while we were in Italy, the 100 was called 100 Battalion separate, we were the 34th division. So we were separate; we weren’t 442nd then yet. But when the 442nd came overseas, and at Civitavecchia, then they made us the First Battalion of the 442nd. But they said they wanted us to---they wanted the 100 to change the name [12:00] to First Battalion, but 100 said, “No, we’re gonna keep our 100 Battalion, 442nd Regiment.” So we’re the---the 100 is the First Battalion of the second and third battalion of the 442nd. INTERVIEWER: And was the 100th decorated at that point? DOI: Oh yes. They--- in---the fighting was done, but they had a lotta casualties, so they---most of--was mostly, I guess, they got---they got citation but after the 442nd came, then we had this Battle of Bruyères. That was the 44---we were---the Second and Third Battalion’s first battle. Then we were in reserve. Then since we were in reserve, the two battalions pushed. Then they got pinned down. They got---they couldn’t even move. They really took a beating in Bruyères. The Battle over there, that particular battle. So we went---they called us---they called the 100, A, B, C to go around and get the artillery that were pinning them down. So it was about five miles I think, and at that time, we went around and Baker Company, Captain Takahashi, he led the--and Baker Company was the point and we hit the gun right on the nose. The four artillery pieces were firing away when we---when we hit Belvedere. INTERVIEWER: So this is the Battle of Belvedere? DOI: Belvedere, yeah. So what we did [14:00] was everybody get in position, the heavy machine gun, light machine gun, the motors and everything. And we say, “Don’t fire. The scouts go down. Wait until the scouts fire the first shot.” Then we start firing. So when they went down, we were all---the guns were all in position, ready to shoot so picked the targets. Soon the scout---one of the scouts shot the---there were four artillery pieces over there firing and pinning the---pin the 442nd and Third Battalion. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 23 of 43 �So soon the scouts shot, the whole front opened fire. And we were, oh, smack, right in the midst of it. We’re smack on top of them. A Company was on the right, yeah. So we really, really hit them real hard. The headquarters and the guards, and they were bringing more guns to shoot yet. INTERVIEWER: I noticed you have some pictures there. Can you bring---hold that up--DOI: This--INTERVIEWER: ---and you might wanna describe it? DOI: Yeah this is the battle. This is the story of the Battle of the Belvedere. And this is---this Slim, he knocked the tank on that battle. There were several tanks and half tracks and artillery pieces, jeeps. And we really---we really all got them. They didn’t know who hit them. They were running like chicken without a head. Yeah, we really got them. [16:00] And our casualty was real---I think we got about eight casualty and one killed, I think, only on this battle. And he died of a concussion. The other fellow went down, not Slim but Nakamura went down and hit the half track and a small tank. And they were so close and he was in a ravine, concussion got him and he died---Governagaji is his name, went overseas together. And I knew him when we went overseas. INTERVIEWER: How did that make you--DOI: And--INTERVIEWER: ---feel to see that? How did that make you feel to see all of that happening? What were you thinking? DOI: At that stage already, you figure it’s your friend but you cannot help, you know. Because you can’t do anything already. But one thing we’d---in battles what I noticed was we really look after each other. We stayed together, although you don’t know them, they don’t know you, you don’t know them. Especially while approach going to battle, you get artillery shells coming or a tank fire there, or the .88 is the cannon they shoot from tank. And that thing comes like a bullet, you know, not the kind “woo,” and land, it goes, “boom, bang.” Like that. And that, oh, really effective. That we faced all the time, so when you hear that---when you hear the boom, you duck, it’s too late. The bullet bang, and it switches. INTERVIEWER: So what do you do to counteract something like that? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 24 of 43 �DOI: You just have to move away and [18:00] get to a safer place and see where it’s coming from and try to knock ‘em out. INTERVIEWER: What do you use to knock them out? DOI: We used the bazooka, like the one that Slim has, that’s a bazooka. That’s what they used. And that’s---they put a special shell in there. INTERVIEWER: Who are the others in that picture and what are you doing there, at Belvedere? DOI: This is---this is a picture of myself, China Yamashina, Fundi---he’s our---he was our gunner at machine gun and he was our observer from 91st Division. They came from---up to see us---how the 100th fight battle. So they were observing because they’ll be serving C ration and he’s checking his weapon. See, this is a communication. This is a ammo can. This is beer hall, yeah, that’s what we do to pass time. And this is---this story was---this is an issue of September 8, 1944; I brought it home from Europe. INTERVIEWER: I noticed there’s another story that’s in there as well, right after the Battle of Belvedere, and it says something [20:00] to the effect of, “What do we do with the Germans after the war?”---or Germans and Japs after war. What do you think to have that kind of caption there? It says, “A soldier speaks, What should we do with the Germans and the Japs after the war?” It’s on the following page, after your Belvedere story. DOI: Yeah. Oh, this---oh I---this is---I didn’t pay too much attention to this. INTERVIEWER: Did that kinda not bother you? DOI: We got---no. We still were fighting and this was early---still early part of the fight so, you know, was really---the battle was really tough, yeah. The battle got little lead, not as---until almost end of the war, VE Day. Until then was pretty . . . INTERVIEWER: Okay. Is there anything else about Belvedere you wanna talk about? DOI: No, that’s about it--This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 25 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: Did you see your friends killed there? DOI: As I say, we were really fortunate because we---the whole outfit had only, what, one killed and about six injured, that’s all. INTERVIEWER: But did you know that person who was killed? DOI: Oh yes we were in the same company and I went overseas with Governagaji. He was our sergeant. INTERVIEWER: Did you see him killed? DOI: No I didn’t see him killed, but when I went down, I saw him where he was killed. INTERVIEWER: What happened next, [22:00] after Belvedere? DOI: Well after that, was like---after Belvedere, I don’t remember too much about after that, because the battle was all---you have to go---you had battles. INTERVIEWER: Where did you go next? Did you go to the Rhineland --DOI: Yeah--INTERVIEWER: ---from there or did you stop somewhere first? DOI: No, we stopped---we---from there, all the way, we went---pushed to Leghorn and 442nd to Florence. Then we went up to the Arno River, looking---we were on the seacoast side from--where we---the position we were, we can see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That---over there, well, the battle wasn’t in our sector. Wasn’t too bad because we just were holding as defense position. We didn’t push them much, but the other companies like A Company, they had counterattack from the Germans so---and their fighting was different place from where we were so I don’t know too much about that. INTERVIEWER: Do you know why they didn’t have you there with the A Company? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 26 of 43 �DOI: Because the battalion has certain sectors, certain companies this sector and we stayed the other side. So the only way we contact is---we get---what every night and on the left of us, toward Pisa, the British were on the left of us. But the contact patrols, contacting them. And from company [Inaudible] we get contact patrols [24:00] contact the other side, so we know that we--we in line and everybody’s safe. That’s how we get in contact with the other outfits on the frontline. Then you have passwords, but a lotta times, password doesn’t reach you. Every day, you’re supposed to get different password. Like when they say river, maybe it’s mountain, you know. Countersign. That’s the kind you have. Then when we don’t have password, well, to us, not too bad because we get a lotta Pidgin we talk, with that, “Hey, buddhahead.” And the way we say buddhahead and the way the others say is too different so, you know, that’s how we get our messages together in case we get stopped. And we say, “Who that? Who?” INTERVIEWER: Was there any trouble communicating in Pidgin when some of the other troops were not speaking Pidgin? DOI: No, because we---more or less we---together, the 442 is together, so the only time you get problem is when you go on contact patrol. Only I remember once, but this was way after when we were up in Bruyères, France. Before the Lost Battalion, Sergeant and I, we went up, he say, “One for one, you’re gonna relieve us.” So we go wake the boys up [26:00] and go back. We got shot---shot at point blank because we called, “Shimizu!”?? or we called, “Doi!” The haoles, they don’t know what---they think, “Yeah, that must be German, Doi, Shimizu,” they don’t hear that kind of name, so who---he almost got killed. He got shot right between his arms. For me tell you? Or tell me, we get the hell outta here; we’ll wake them up when it’s daylight. So we took off. You get---you get that kinda problem too. That’s when you with somebody that doesn’t speak English, not English, but doesn’t speak Pidgin, or they don’t understand Japanese name, that’s when you get into trouble. But most of the time, between ourselves, no. And they just came to relieve us so we can go back. END OF AUDIO FILE 3 BEGINNING OF TAPE FOUR 053-Doi-Mits-4 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Now let’s talk about what it was like to leave Italy and go to France. Can you tell me where you left and where you went to? DOI: I think we left from Leghorn, Civitavecchia, someplace around there. Then we landed in Marseilles. That was with the landing craft, the one that the front opens. Then we didn’t know where we were going or what they were gonna do with us. We stayed in Marseilles for about This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 27 of 43 �three weeks, I think. We didn’t have no orders or anything. We were waiting for orders, so. Then finally orders came and say, “Oh, get in a convoy.” We started to move. We---they took us to France, Bruyères, Northern France, into the Vosges Forest. That’s where we then went into battle from Vosges Forest. Then into Bruyères, France. Then after Bruyères, France, we came back to rest after we took our four objective, A, B, C, one, two, three, four hills that our objective were, we had to take those. Then the---now, 36 Division Outfit came to relieve us. So we came back from the mountains and we stayed over---that’s when the 141, the Lost Battalion [02:00] they got lost, cut off, and they stay lost. Then when we came back, they say, “Oh, check weapons. We have to go back again. The 141 is cut off.” But fortunately, I didn’t have to go back with my machine gun squad to---for the 141 rescue. But I became a jeep driver, also who still were involved with---we’d bring up ammo and rations every---every day. Then that’s where they got the---and that forest over there, you can see maybe about 10 feet or 15 feet. Because those trees grow in rows and you cannot see it. What was bad was when the enemy throw the artillery shell, they hit the trees. That’s what you call tree bursts. Then when they hit the trees, when he burst, the shells’ umbrellas come down to you. That’s how you get a lotta casualties. But if that was ordinarily on the flat place, it’ll hit the ground and the initial pressure will throw the bullet forward---only forward. But if you’re shot behind where it lands, well, you’re safe. You can be five feet or 10 feet. If the shell lands 10 feet in front of you, you’re safe. But this---in Bruyères, no. When the shell hit the tree, the tree umbrellas down to the---on you so [04:00] that’s where you got---we got a lotta casualties. INTERVIEWER: And this was in Bruyères or? DOI: Bruyères, France. That’s before---that’s when we went for rescue the---they bigger cut off in Biffontaine, above---they---actually, they come up when we were in Biffontaine. That’s after Bruyères. That’s the last hill that we took. INTERVIEWER: Can we step back a little bit and talk about Bruyères? What was the liberation of Bruyères like and what was your role there? DOI: Like, when we liberated Bruyères, they were really happy because they---they couldn’t move, just like when war, December 7, when the war hit Hawaii where martial law, soon it gets dark. You cannot get out, even during the day. Like up in Bruyères, they cannot get out. And that was the only route in the forest that they can go to Germany, well, fast, right through the mountains. That’s why that was a very important objective. INTERVIEWER: What did you do to liberate Bruyères? What was the---what was the fighting like? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 28 of 43 �Oh---oh, as I say, it was real terrible and really, really, hard, tough fighting. And when it came to the rescue of the Lost Battalion, was worse because they’re there---this---we have to attack every day, attack, attack, attack and move forward. So some [06:00] companies came back with only about, what, 12 men, of a company’s strength of couple of hundred? Most of the companies, if you had about 40, your company is good. So . . . and at that time, Bruyères, the fighting over there was during the winter, so it didn’t---I didn’t see snow, but it rained a lot, cold, every day you’re soaking wet. INTERVIEWER: Did you get hurt, or any injuries? DOI: I was one of the fortunate that---from Anzio all the way through battle, I didn’t have---nothing touched me. Somebody up there was looking after me. INTERVIEWER: How do you fire a machine gun or a rifle machine gun in Bruyères in a forest that’s dark and rainy? What do you do? DOI: That’s where---the---we didn’t---we didn’t fire the machine gun much. Most of the heavy shooting was done by the BAR. That’s similar to the machine gun; it has more bullets and fires like semiautomatic, like the rifle, but it has a lotta fire power. So only time we move into position, we set up and we don’t---you don’t want to sell out your position, because they hear your machine gun firing. They’re gonna---they’re gonna get you. So the BAR, you can get away faster. We used the BAR more so. We didn’t do [08:00] too much fighting except then for this Belvedere Battle. That’s where we fired our machine gun a lot. INTERVIEWER: When you weren’t firing your machine gun, what were you firing? What did you use? DOI: Position, we just set up the gun and we wait. And if there’s too many coming, then we fire, but if they can take care of it, we just watch them and look after them if the bullets---we will attack, pick up the gun and move forward with them. INTERVIEWER: So e[ven]--DOI: And the machine gun is right with the---attacking just behind the scouts, so we’re way up close. So we can see more or less if---what’s going on. So if we need it, we go up. If you don’t need it, you just follow and go. INTERVIEWER: Did you fire a regular rifle, like the infantrymen’s rifle? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 29 of 43 �No, we have carbines with us, so in case---we fire our regular rifles, but---carbines---but we don’t use the machine gun. INTERVIEWER: What is a carbine? DOI: That’s a smaller than a M1. Then they have the Tommy gun too, and Tommy gun is a clip with a lotta bullet. But the M---the carbine is the smaller rifle. And lighter, because you have to carry weight, so you need something light. Whereas the M1 and the 03 launches, grenade launches, and BAR, heavier I think. And one is about eight or 10 pounds I think, the gun, yeah. So . . . INTERVIEWER: At this point then, in the war, you had already had experience with the [10:00] machine gun and the heavy weapon and this rifles--DOI: On training, yeah--INTERVIEWER: ---and the carbine? DOI: Well, we’d go to range---firing range, when we go, you fire the M1; you fire the carbine. And so on record. INTERVIEWER: What was it like to shoot a German or the enemy for the first time? What did you think? DOI: I thought that if I don’t shoot him, he’s gonna shoot me. I thought, ooh, that’s why I say the first battle, when you see the men, your buddy dead or whatever, you say, “Eh, they shoot for real. They shoot to kill. No fool around.” So it’s either you or me. Anyway, I think when you’re out there, you---it’s really different from, you know, ordinary civilian life. Your attitude and feeling is different, I cannot explain, but it’s different. INTERVIEWER: Is there a less---less regard for life, for human life, do you think, in war? DOI: Oh yes, I think so. You don’t care if it’s not---if it’s your enemy, you go and get it. And they feel the same too. And most of the---like---well, in battle, or lotta times, when we’re resting, Axis Sally used to play Hawaiian music for us. Oh, we tell the supply sergeant, everybody, we got radio. [12:00] And we got together. When we come back and rest, of course, not up on line. But when we come back to rest, sitting around, chewing the fat, six o’clock or seven o’clock, hey, we’re gonna get---Axis Sally gonna play music. Everybody get together, listen to a good morale builder. Because you don’t hear those things. But oh, she knew terrific, she knew exactly where we were, what we’re doing, when we’re going up on line. She used to call us the little brown This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 30 of 43 �babies because we’re not white like the others. Yeah. Lotta Hawaiian music. Sing with the music. Drink when they have it, drink vino. INTERVIEWER: What did you think about her knowing where you were and what you were doing? How did that make you feel? DOI: We didn’t feel anything. I didn’t---I didn’t feel anything. We have to go---and she tells us who we’re gonna face and most of the time was the Penza Division or their Special Service, SS, Troop. We were facing---the 100, 442 was facing their best fighters most of the time. So she used to say, “Watch out, you little brown babies. You’re gonna face certain-certain outfit.” But good thing though, like from the beginning from when the 100 and 442 [14:00] went up and fought, we didn’t give up, always forward. So, they respected our fighting, so we had the upper hand, because when they---when they see we’re coming, they know they’re gonna get it too. So---so that’s where---we were really fortunate, but if we---if we were an outfit that was, you know, not too---they gonna come after us. And when we fight, we head-to-head until who---who goes. So that was the difference. And we had something to prove. That’s why the boys did---they didn’t---that’s why they say, “Go for broke.” INTERVIEWER: Do you think that what Axis Sally was trying to do actually didn’t work then? Her--- do you think that what Axis Sally was trying to do, trying to break your morale, didn’t work? DOI: I think so. I think so. I think that, “Oh, you know,” something like that, you start thinking of home and of course, you think of home, but you’re way out there; you can’t do anything; oh, enjoy the music. We used to laugh. INTERVIEWER: How did the Germans get so much information about you? DOI: Oh, I think they had pretty good underground work though. Because in one case, that was---that was in France, after [16:00], of course, this was way after---before we go to Champagne Campaign in Nice and all, we were up in Saint-Martin-Vésubie, they used to call this place. That’s the Franco-Italian Alps mountain, Alps. We were there for about---I would say about a week, yeah. And one of the spies were the barbershop men, where we go cut hair. That’s how I think they get---they were---they got pretty good information. The other places like, we don’t know where, but---but that one case, I know was the barber. He used to give them the---give the information. INTERVIEWER: Getting back to the forest and the fighting there, is there anything else that I missed there that you wanna talk about? The fighting in the forest? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 31 of 43 �DOI: Was hard and tough. INTERVIEWER: What was so tough about it? DOI: Because of your trippers, was really dangerous, you know, your artillery shells. You can’t see. Tanks come up. When you see the tank, it’s too close. INTERVIEWER: Why can’t you see the tank until it’s too close? DOI: Because of the trees. You can hear it coming, but you can’t see it. And they don’t come out in the open. They, you know, and they come out when you---most time at night. And while in the forest, we had two tanks that came in between the hill. That morning when we went, we had to take the---was [18:00] I think Hill B, I think. We came down Hill A; we went across the flat--trying to climb Hill B. We couldn’t do it because the enemy was too---resistance was too tough. So we pulled back and we came back to Hill A. That night, the tank---two tanks came right in between us. They started firing in Bruyères, fired about six shells, I think at Bruyères. Then they took off. And when they fire, the big muzzle blast, oh, they light like this. So close to you. INTERVIEWER: And what happened next? DOI: Then we got all our hills and then we rescued the 141 Lost Battalion with a lotta causalities. One incidence I remember was the general was up on line. That---this was during the day. We had to bring rations and ammo and---to the outfit, to the company, so---and the road is only one-jeep road and pulling a trailer. When I went in, oh, the general, he got killed right in front of my eyes. The general was up on line. He said, “Come on, get the boys out.” He was---was---because he know what happens, so he wanted to get these boys out. Then, the aid said, oh, the aid mark it right over there, and there was a long---the Germans dropped a log for a road block, like---and we go in, we have to reverse about [20:00] 7500 yards with the trailer, one jeep at a time, go in, drop your company ration, and get out. That’s---lotta times, we do night driving. We bring up rations nighttime. It’s pitch dark, oh, he tell me to do that again, I don’t know how I went through all that. Two of us to bring up rations. Then one on this side, front seat, and I’m driving. So in the trees---when I used to drive in the forest, what I used to do was not look at the road. I looked the sky, the opening. Then I tell him, “Eh, you watch the road on the side, where I’m going.” All pitch dark, no light at all. INTERVIEWER: How far ahead of you could you see? DOI: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 32 of 43 �[Laughter] Pitch dark. That’s night driving. All by feeling. Like . . . INTERVIEWER: What happened after the battalion was rescued? DOI: Oh, that---I cannot say too much because I---the rifle company, then linemen would know more and---about that because they’re right over there. And I know they were real, real happy to see the buddhaheads though. And they got hardly any casualties, and here we’re losing our men left and right. As dad say, we’re [22:00] expendable. INTERVIEWER: What did you think about that? DOI: It’s part of your work, cannot help. So I don’t think there’s an outfit that were attached to so many different divisions. We started with the 34th; we were with the 36th, the 45th, the 92nd. And I don’t know, maybe there’s more that we were attached to. INTERVIEWER: Did you feel you had to prove yourself each time you were attached to a new unit? DOI: Oh yes, because every time when we’re attached to a new unit, we’re in different sector, different fighting. That’s one thing, as I---I think we were real fortunate that we were close; that . . . INTERVIEWER: What happened after the Lost Battalion? What came next? DOI: After the Lost Battalion, we moved back to---went back to---went back to Italy. Yeah, I think we went back to Italy. Oh, no, we went Champagne Campaign first, then we went back to Italy, I think. INTERVIEWER: And where was the Champagne Campaign at? DOI: Champagne Campaign, like they say, Champagne Campaign. Not too much---not too much firing. You’re looking down; they’re not shooting at you; [24:00] you’re not shooting at them. Rest, come back, go into town, rest camp to Nice. Then we used to go to this---from Menton to Beausoleil and Monte Carlo. The---there’s a street, road---Monte Carlo is on the left, and Beausoleil is on the right. There, we used to go to dance hall and we used to having dancing. Every night, guys used to go. Then guys used to go to rest camp, to Nice. Lotta perfume. [Laughter] Chanel No. 5. And perfume factory, I think I bought some perfume from the factory. But when it comes it all evaporated . . . This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 33 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: Were the women friendly? Were the women friendly there? DOI: Oh yeah, they were---they were nice. They’re pretty friendly. Mademoiselles. INTERVIEWER: Did you make friends? DOI: Oh, I didn’t---I didn’t make too many friends, because every day, we have to drive and we’re not at one place that long. And when we were in Menton, although it was Champagne Campaign and always watch---like, we don’t do anything, so we watch the switchboard for any calls from headquarters or any messages come in, then we relay the message to them. At that time, one morning when I---when we woke up, we saw this one-man [26:00] sub that’s stuck in the sand in---right in Menton Bay on the sand. We thought, “Ooh, there’s a sub inside there. Oh God.” Then there was---I think there were a coupla Germans that came on the sub, so we were looking for them, but we couldn’t find them because if they wore civilian clothes, they look like French person, especially if they can talk French. So we couldn’t find them. Then the ordinance came and pulled the submarine and they took it away. I think---we’re the only infantry outfit catch submarine. END OF AUDIO FILE 4 BEGINNING OF TAPE FIVE 053-Doi-Mits-5 INTERVIEWER: [00:00] Let’s talk a little bit about the entertainment that you had while you were in the war. Did you have certain troops or entertainers that came out to entertain the troops while you were there? DOI: Yes, we had---we had entertainers like, I remember Lily Pons came to sing for us and we were---that was in April at the opera house. That’s the kinda voice she has. We were---and the Red Cross give you tickets to go into whatever entertainment is going on, or a movie, or whatever. You can go to movies there. Then another one I remember was when Irving Berlin came to sing to the boys and he---he wore his World War I outfit and that was really nice. INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else that you remember, like pin-up girls or? DOI: Oh---oh yes. There’s---this is one of the pin-up girls that they sent on this Yank Magazine, Yank Weekly. Every week they used to send magazines to the---comes to the outfit, or you go to--This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 34 of 43 �when you come back you go to Red Crosses and you can pick one of these up if you want to. Then there---they had, oh, not pin-up girls, but they shot some propaganda papers from the gun, or leaflets. That was mostly for the British---British [02:00] soldiers. I have a few home that I picked up and . . . INTERVIEWER: What did they look like? What did they have on them? DOI: Oh, something like this. And what they do is, they try to break your morale. So, you know, they say, “What you doing out here fighting, and here you’re loved ones going out with somebody else.” All kinds, something like that, that’s to break their morale, they said that. INTERVIEWER: But sounds like your morale wasn’t broken. You were enjoying the good times when there were--DOI: Oh yes, especially when Axis Sally played Hawaiian music for us; we got together and we sing along. INTERVIEWER: Was there anything else that was fun that you got? Did you have a big win on your gambling or anything like that? DOI: No more win, always lose. But was kinda interesting when we go out, we can see places that we never thought of, you know? Like when three coins in the fountain when you’re in Rome, and the Coliseum and all that. And the Tiber River running through Rome, you think it’s a big river, but it’s only a ditch. INTERVIEWER: Was there anything else that was kinda interesting and different, like people begging you for food? DOI: Oh yes, there, like---where did the---when we come back and we had kitchen area, all the pisans, Italians, come and they beg for food. And small, little mothers, all ages. Cigarettes, candy, chewing gum. They say, “Chewing gum.” [04:00] So they---they lived really tough, especially if you are---so I can imagine this war, you see all the refugees pulling out. You see, that’s how they live. And for how many years. So was---I think it was real tough for them. INTERVIEWER: Did it make you fight harder on their behalf, seeing that? DOI: Oh, oh yes. Because you don’t want to be a conquered country, because, I tell you, that’s terrible. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 35 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: Well let’s move on to the next section of where you went to after you were on the Champagne Campaign. Was the Northern Apennines the next stop, or was there someone else--somewhere else that you went? DOI: We went back to Italy and we got to---Mark Clark met us, and he said, “Boys, you’re gonna finish the war.” And he meant it because, I think we were without relief, I think, about two months, I think. Straight fighting. Usually about one week or 10 days, you come back and rest for two, three days and go back. But when Champagne Campaign---when you rest for so long, it’s not good because you get scared for a while. You’re afraid to go back and fight because you’ve been resting too long. But if it’s only a few days, you know, you don’t think about it. INTERVIEWER: So it was--DOI: So, we went back and until the war---until the war ended, VE Day, that the planes came, Piper Cub came and they dropped leaflets that saying that, “Oh this is VE Day.” [06:00] And that was at---way up north and we were chasing the Germans with---on trucks, because they were just running. Then they dropped the leaflets; I said, “Hey, let’s go back. No sense we stay here and get killed out here. We go back. The war is over. Let’s go back, celebrate.” Then, well, after that, we went up to---further north up to Milan and Milan, we missed Mussolini hanging. He got hung in Milan at the service station, they say. About two hours before we entered Milan, they say they just took the body away over there, the pisanos hung him over there. And we stayed at Lake Como, Lago di Como. We stayed over there for a little while. Then this---this---they brought us back to Geddy Airfield. That’s where we were processing the German prisoners, because the war was over already. And prisoners did---I think they walked 24 hours a day to---because, oh, thousands and thousands used to come in. We used to---what we used to do was confiscate their---anything sharp, guns, cameras, or whatever, they had piles---we---and I used to drive at that time, so I used to go [08:00] down to where they processed the Germans and load it up in the jeep and bring it to all different areas, pile it up over there. They had a lotta cognac and a lotta vodka. Had some vodka too. Grappa, Schnapps. Because we used to pick up liquor and bring---we had a company bar we used to put in and--where you can help yourself. That’s where I picked up a dog in my jeep. There were three dogs, one collie, one German police, and this small little, I don’t know what kinda dog---you cannot even see the eyes, all hairy. Cute one. I used to call him Achtung. Achtung in German means attention. So I said---he jumped into my jeep, so I picked him up and then the rest. And other boys picked up dogs too, like---they used to---like the German shepherds, they---I think they used to---the Germans used to use them out in the field I think. Because, hey, they’re really smart. Field dog, fighting dog like that. I don’t know, but . . . INTERVIEWER: Did you take your dog home with you? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 36 of 43 �DOI: No, when I---then, from Geddy area, where we were processing the Germans, we came back to Leghorn, Livorno. That’s where the company was in an area and all the companies distributed them into various installations [10:00] or important places to guard the place. So I was there then, I went to Switzerland from there on my pass. We had pass to go to Switzerland, so I went to Switzerland once. See, the second time, since I wasn’t wounded, and they go by point system to come home, see. So since I wasn’t wounded---and if you got wounded, you get five points. I got the minimum, so they said no. Then they say, “Oh, you can go to Switzerland again.” They say, “Oh, hey, you can go home.” I tell them, “Oh, I’m going home.” And it took us---without the convoy, this was in November---and it took us from Italy to the mainland, 30 days without the convoy. We hit the Atlantic storm one day. We lost four miles in three days. You just stay there and they push you back. Took us that long. And that was a Liberty Ship also. You can see the ship twists when the wave hit. Nobody could go on deck because the wave used to come over. Was that rough, that Atlantic storm. INTERVIEWER: Were you worried after all this time of surviving without a scratch that on the way home--DOI: Well, we figure we’re going home already, so what the hell. We’re going home. [12:00] INTERVIEWER: Is there anything else about the Italy and European theater you wanna talk about? Okay, let’s talk a little bit more about---there’s a song that I understand you learned. Would you sing that for us and give us a little background on it---on it? DOI: That song is a German song called “Lili Marlene” and the words that---the verses---some of them is---they are original, but most of the verses are verses that when we get together, be your boss, having a few, we make our own words. And it goes something like this: [Sings] Underneath the lamp post, by the barricade, standing all alone, you see her wait each night. She waits for a boy who marched away. And though he’s gone, you’ll hear him say: Farewell, Lili Marlene. Farewell, Lili Marlene. [Sings in Italian] [14:00] . . . Tutte le sere sotto quel fanal presso la caserma ti stavo ad aspettar. Anche stasera aspetterò, e tutto il mondo scorderò con te Lili Marleen con te Lili Marleen This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 37 of 43 �O trombettier stasera non suonar, legala col filo dei tuoi capelli d'or. Forse domani piangerai, ma dopo tu sorriderai. A chi Lili Marleen? A chi Lili Marleen? Darame cioccolate, darame caramel. Darame this and darame that till I am sick as hell . . . [Sings in Italian], but Signornia is my dish. It’s you, Lili Marlene. It’s you, Lili Marlene. And this was during the Truman Regime, so . . . [Sings]: Dear Mr. Truman, we have served you well. We have conquered Naples and we have conquered Rome. We have subdued the master race and all we ask is ship in space. So let the boys go home. And let the boys at home see Rome. INTERVIEWER: That was wonderful. That was a beautiful rendition. We really appreciate you sharing that with us. That’s great. Now is there anything else, in terms of entertainment, or such great things that you learned while you were away? [16:00] DOI: We had a lotta things, but I forgot already. Anyway, this Lili Marlene, I think most of us that served in the 442 or 100, they also has their version of Lili Marlene, so it’s something that won’t be forgotten, I think. INTERVIEWER: Is that about a woman? Can you tell us a little bit more about this---the origin of the song? It was about a woman? DOI: I don’t know where---it came out from Germany. That was the German soldier’s song. Then the Italians picked it up and they---and in French too. And like over here, Buddy has a version in Japanese. He passed away also, but . . . INTERVIEWER: When were you discharged? DOI: I was discharged on . . . December the 21st, 1945. I served for two years, nine months, and 11 days in the US Army. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 38 of 43 �Did it seem like much longer, or much shorter? DOI: It seemed long. INTERVIEWER: Did you receive any medals for that service? DOI: Well, just campaign [18:00] ribbons and standard. INTERVIEWER: What are---what are considered standard campaign ribbons? DOI: Those---what---we got this Asiatic Pacific and, well, Good Conduct, Campaign Medal--American Campaign Victory Medal, and that’s---then we got the Unit Citation. We got---I think the outfit, 442nd Outfit, got eight Presidential Unit Citation. INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any of that, when it was being awarded? DOI: One of them, I think, was this Bruyères---Belvedere Battle, and the other was for the Lost Battalion in Bruyères Battle. And the others were in different battalions and different companies, so. INTERVIEWER: And how did they award it to you? What was it like? DOI: We have parade and they put this ribbon and the put streamers on you company flag and your regimental or battalion flag. And they put---like the campaign ribbons are all on your regimental or battalion flags. You see all those, whatever battle. I got, I think, for every major battle, they give you a star to put on, so each star represents a battle. And when you have a silver [20:00] star, I think it’s five battle campaigns. And the---otherwise, not enough room if you go 10, 12 battles on the ribbons. So I think that’s how they . . . INTERVIEWER: How did it make you feel to be recognized by the president? DOI: Oh, I felt good. And it’s great to be recognized; and I’m glad I went---I was with the 100 and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. INTERVIEWER: What happened after you were discharged? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 39 of 43 �DOI: After I got discharged, I went back to Kauai. Then I worked at the service station again. Then I attended Kauai---at that time, they used to call it the vocational school, auto mechanic class. Then we started our own business in---when we started our business, I went back to Dunwoody in Minneapolis for further automotive techniques. But it was too cold, so we went home. November, ooh. Then we started our own business, three of us. Then after that, we sold our business and I went to work for the city and county on Kauai as a heavy equipment mechanic. Then I retired [22:00] from them about 10 years ago, 11 years ago. So . . . INTERVIEWER: When did you meet your wife? DOI: Oh, I met my wife when---before going to Minneapolis and we were married already then. We’re married for 52 years. And I have a daughter, Lauren Jane. And I have a granddaughter, Nicki Allen, yup. She’s married to a Chinese and she lives in Oahu. She’s a buyer at Liberty House, so she does a lot of traveling. She goes to New York; she comes over here took---on that magic, that buying trip. And she goes to Osaka, Japan on---buy material. And she goes to Singapore. So she’s---lotta work. And we go over and babysit. INTERVIEWER: Sounds like there’s a lot going on for both of you. That’s wonderful. Is there any messages that you wanted to tell your family by sharing some of these memories and sharing some of your thoughts? You sound like you’re very proud of your daughter and happy that, you know, she’s living a good life. DOI: Yes. INTERVIEWER: That’s great. What do you think about the monument that has been built? DOI: Oh. Oh, this monument is terrific. All the volunteers and the people that work at the city and county of [24:00] LA, they really---was really beautiful and terrific. And I’m sure a lotta people would like to see the monument, and they feel the same. And when I was there, I looked for my name and I found my name on it. I found lots of friends of mine, their names on the monument. That’s really beautiful. Young Kim and all of them did a very good job. INTERVIEWER: What do you think of the Civil Liberty Statement that’s on there? Do you think that it’s right for people’s civil liberties to be trampled upon? Do you think that it’s right that you had to fight to prove your patriotism? DOI: Well, in the position that we were, the way we were treating us, I think we had to prove ourself. If we didn’t prove ourself, we wouldn’t be here today like the way we are. So like---that’s all I can say about it. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 40 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: Now the generation that is coming after you, based on what you went through and all that you did to set the groundwork and to prove your patriotism, what message do you have for them to carry on as a legacy? DOI: Work hard and continue what we did. Be brave. [26:00] Go get ‘em. Enough already. INTERVIEWER: Okay, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. DOI: Enough. Enough. INTERVIEWER: Thank you. Thank you so much; you were wonderful. This is great. CREW MEMBER: I loved the song. DOI: Basta! INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that song. DOI: Basta, finito. INTERVIEWER: Basta, finito. DOI: Like---you know that? INTERVIEWER: No, what does that mean? DOI: Finish, basta. INTERVIEWER: Pow, that means pow. Okay, we’re all pow. Thank you so much again, you were wonderful. CREW MEMBER: Do you want to get into the video tape so it’s--This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 41 of 43 �INTERVIEWER: Oh, we’d like to take some close ups of your pictures if that’s okay. DOI: Yeah, yeah. You can you take--INTERVIEWER: Instead of having you hold them up, this time we’d like to get some of the photos--DOI: Oh yeah, like these two? Only these? INTERVIEWER: Yes, yeah the Yank. CREW MEMBER: Tell me where, and then--CREW MEMBER: And you move up. One more time, can you say it again--DOI: Okay, this is my dad and this is my mother. And I’m here. And my sister that was a year and a half when I left for the service. CREW MEMBER: Okay, that’s fine. The next one . . . okay . . . And what--DOI: This is Major McManus, that gave me---inducted me into the US Army, and I’m proud to be the first. And I think there’s a lot of---more that are before me, but [28:00] . . . CREW MEMBER: Don’t take too long. I’m running out of juice here. INTERVIEWER: Okay . . . DOI: This is the Manabe brothers, the first twins that were inducted in the Army, the same time that I was inducted. This is me and this other person is Herbert Kondo from Koloa, Kauai. His father was a World War I veteran also, First World War. And the sergeant is trying to explain how the gun works and . . . CREW MEMBER: Uh-huh, Yank Magazine. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 42 of 43 �Okay, thank you. Which page were you on? DOI: Yeah this, all kinda pictures that’s from all over . . . INTERVIEWER: Are you in this picture? DOI: Oh, this is Slim. He’s a bazooka man that knocked a tank in the Battle of Belvedere. And this is China, we call him Yamashina. He became our mess sergeant later on. And Fundi was my machine gun, first gunner. He’s a soldier from the 91st Division that were observing [30:00] the battles. And this is me over here. And the others were---I don’t know them, but they . . . CREW MEMBER: Okay. DOI: [Laughter] Morale builder. Every issue has one special pin-up girl that they said . . . END OF AUDIO FILE 5 This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 43 of 43 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mitsuru Doi oral history interview, June 7, 1999 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mitsuru Doi oral history interview transcript [full interview], June 7, 1999 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Doi, Mitsuru: narrator Yahata, Craig: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Type The nature or genre of the resource Transcriptions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Extent The size or duration of the resource. 43 pages, typescript Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-06-07 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1999OH0053_T_Doi https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/42b4e2bb4473b08f71bf15821337970c.pdf 9ebc59d3596e4badc25037ece360db27 PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with Colonel Christopher Keegan, June 7, 1999, Las Vegas, Nevada CREW MEMBER: Okay, we're rolling. INTERVIEWER: Okay, today is June 7th. We are at the California Hotel in Las Vegas, we are interviewing Colonel Christopher Keegan. Craig Yahata is the interviewer, Ian Kawata is on video, Ann Hashisaka on audio, and Kenny Furuya is on cataloguing. Colonel Keegan, can you please start by just introducing yourself with your name, when you were born and where you grew up. KEEGAN: Oh, I was born in the Bronx, New York on 16th of May in 1915. I grew up there and I went to a private school when I was a kid. Of course, going to a private school wasn't in the neighborhood I was in wasn't the best of things you get. Of course most of us who were Irish were into private schools, it didn’t make much difference, we had enough muscle to handle ourselves and so on and so forth. But the Bronx at that time was an area of highly-motivated Irish, Hungarians, Jewish people, Italians. It changed quite a bit from that now, I mean. And then when I was in the---10 years old, my dad got reassigned. He's a printer, and he got reassigned to Cincinnati, Ohio. We moved to Cincinnati Ohio and that was a completely different environment than what I was used to. I still went to a private school, as did my siblings at the same time. And of course, in those days, and of course you don’t really realize what hardships some of the people went through, and this was during the Depression years that we were growing up at that time in Cincinnati. And of course [02:00] there was a lot of turmoil in the families, including our own family, but you learned how to fight it and get along with people, and lots of people. There's only one thing in my internal life outside of the Bronx: I never was really raised in the midst of any area where there was antagonism towards any race, even in when we were in the Bronx, whether you're Italians or whether you're Hungarians, or Jews, or Irish, didn't make any much difference. You fought amongst each other, kids did, but that wasn’t the reason that there was fighting, because of race This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 68 �problems. And then when we moved to Cincinnati there wasn't any race problems at all. We were practically all in the same Irish neighborhoods and so on. But the big problem there was the Depression in that lot of people were really suffering trying to pay their house payments and their car payments, even though there were Model T Fords those days (inaudible). And at the same time trying to raise their kids and get 'em to school. And, of course, the kids at that time didn't realize, I didn’t realize it until I really was grown up and became a teenager, and then it became a real problem. I went to a private high school in Cincinnati, all boys. In fact, most of the schools I went to were all boys until I get out of high school. And most of the people in high school came from pretty well-to-do families, at one time they were well-to-do families, but during the Depression, lot of 'em lost their jobs and their money and so on. But they came from really outstanding families most of 'em. Some of 'em became movie stars, and the kids I graduated with, at least two of 'em, one became Tyrone Power [04:00] was a classmate of mine. They were great actors. Several others that were---also became great actors, most of 'em have died since then. And then from there I went to---from high school I went to Xavier University in Cincinnati, and went there until it became a hardship for my family to support me going. So I had to go to work in the daytime and then I went to school at night. And I did that and until the war came along and then I was drafted in February of 1941 and sent to, as most of us from Ohio, we were sent to Ohio, and Indiana we were sent down to a place called Camp Walters, Texas, where we trained in the, either an infantry units or heavy weapons units. And I was fortunate enough to be trained in heavy weapons unit and, of course, those days noncommissioned officers who were training us were individuals who had been in the Army anywheres from 15 to 20 or 25 years. I mean, they were real tough hombres, real tough characters. They knew the field manuals backwards and forwards or upside down or whatever it was, and they knew their weapons and so on the same way. And then when you became trained under those people, you do---you better know what they knew. And I was fortunate enough to be under two sergeants at that time and they took a shine to me, so I stayed as part of the cadre. And within a couple of months I was promoted to sergeant. Actually, I had one of my own platoons at Camp Walters, Texas, and then training other kids like myself in the use of heavy machine guns and .50-calibers and 81mm mortars and so on, [06:00] so that when they went to their unit, they could occupy the positions in that particular unit that they'd be assigned to. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 68 �What year was this, about? KEEGAN: This was in '41. INTERVIEWER: This was in '41? KEEGAN: '41. INTERVIEWER: Do you mind if we talk a little bit, back up a little bit, and do you mind talking about your parents at all? [Interruption in interview.] Oh, I’m sorry. We have one thing . . . KEEGAN: Hmm? INTERVIEWER: I'm sorry. We have one thing to fix here. [Addressing the crew.] You got it? Okay? You okay? [Interview resumes.] We'll kind of go step by step and then kind of get---kind of---if we can stay in certain eras and then we can kind of get---move on from there. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 68 �KEEGAN: Okay. INTERVIEWER: But do you mind talking about your parents and where they came from and . . . KEEGAN: Well, my mom and dad were both born in the United States. My dad was born in Sayersville, New Jersey, one of 12 kids. My mom was born in New York City and she was one of three kids, she had a sister and a brother. And my dad came from a large farming family in the northern part of New Jersey in Sayersville, and they were pretty well-known, I mean, his father and his father's brother, one was Tom the other one was Christopher, and I was named after not his father, Thomas, but I was named after his--the other one, the brother, Christopher. They both come down from Boston area where there's a bunch of Keegans also, and then they got setup, a farming setup, between the two of 'em, the two brothers Christopher and Thomas. And they became very well-known in the Sayersville area and they acquired a lot of property at one particular time. And of course my dad’s family number 12 kids, and the other family Christopher named---also [08:00] had about---I don’t remember, but I think it was 10 kids. So they were right there, and two brothers had 22 kids, and they just scattered all over northern part of New Jersey. And my mom came from a family---her mother's name was Margaret Cody, and Cody was a---she was a relative of the Codys that went west and---famous Cody family, and if you ever go up and, where is it, Denver, somewhere around there, there's a monument up there to one of 'em, anyway. Her father was a boxer while he was---besides being a boxer he was also a, what do you call, make horseshoes and stuff, what do you . . . INTERVIEWER: Blacksmith? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 68 �KEEGAN: Huh? INTERVIEWER: Blacksmith? KEEGAN: Yeah. He was big and he was tough. He fought John L. Sullivan in the early---in the late 19---1890s or 1901 or 1902, and he beat him at one time. For a short period of time he was a world heavyweight champion of the world, you know, bare knuckled fisticuffs, that's what they in those days. INTERVIEWER: No horseshoes in the gloves, huh? KEEGAN: No, no. And when I read that story I thought, "My God, none of us looked like---grown up to be that size." But my grandmother was a big woman, on my mother's side, she was a large women. And her son, my uncle John, was a very athletic person, and that’s why I took---learned how to take up basketball because when we used to go visit him, that's the first thing you want to do is go play basketball, so we go play basketball with him. And I learned a lot from him on how to play basketball. My grandfather on my mother's side died fairly young for his [10:00] age. I guess he was in his 40’s or something like that. More because of the hard life he led in boxing and so on. But she lived a pretty good life up until she was about 70, my grandmother on my mother's side. My mother was lived to be about 75 years old. She was a housewife. She never worked at anything except to raise the six of us, six kids. My dad was a very, one I might say, very---he could do anything if he set his mind to it. I mean, he could take a vehicle apart and put it back together in one day. That’s the type---he was a master plumber, he was a master This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 68 �printer. During World War II he was hired by the Navy and he came out here to California and worked for four years out in the oil fields up here, setting in oil lines and etcetera for the Navy and so on; that’s what he did during World War II. And when he came back he was the most---he was so fit, he'd been out in the---for four years he'd been out in the open air all the time, and he was brown and tough and he looked great. And all of my kids looked up to him as, all of us, as---I was the oldest of our six kids, the six kids, we all looked up to dad. He never, never, as far as I know, ever use a harsh work towards us, he never spanked us when we're most probably deserved it or anything, either did my mom. I mean, we just were raised in a very religious Catholic family like the Irish of (inaudible) [12:00] today, I don’t know whether they do that or not, but we were very religious. We went to the church every Sunday and, as a unit, we became very acquainted with the pastor of any parish that we were assigned to. Give you a typical example, when in Cincinnati was in---when we lived there, one of the parish priests took a shine to me and he thought I was a West-Point-ready person [laughs]. He took me to summer camp up at Camp Perry. When he went up there he was a lieutenant colonel chaplain and took me with him up there to learn all about the Army so I'd be all set to go to West Point. Of course I wasn't thinking about West Point, but it was a nice gesture towards and the family. INTERVIEWER: What were your plans for the future and what you wanted to do? KEEGAN: What I wanted to do, I wanted to be an electrical engineer in the worst way, and because I thought in what I had seen of life that this was the wave of the future to be an electrical engineer. This is something where you are developing such things as TV’s and etc., etc. Of course, back in those as we didn't have 'em, but there were in the embryonic stage of---they were back in the---and the '30s and '40s, early '40s, if you really study what was going on, you knew that eventually there'd be a TV. And there'd be communication system that---and that’s the type of thing I wanted to get in, that electrical phase of that. But when the Depression came along, a lot of that stuff when out through---out the window. And of course I'm not the only one, there was a lot of other people gave up careers of what they were looking for for the same reason because you couldn’t afford to do it. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Now, you said that when you grew up---where you grew up there was different . . . KEEGAN: Nationalities. INTERVIEWER: . . . nationalities and everything. KEEGAN: During that . . . INTERVIEWER: There wasn’t any . . . [14:00] KEEGAN: No, no, no. We never fought because we were Irish or we were Italian or Jews or something like that. It was just neighborhood things. I don’t know if you know about stickball. We used to play it out in the streets and we'd play against teams, you know, like that. And then, of course, they'd get angry and mad at each other and start using the sticks on each other. That’s what happens, stuff like that. But not because you were one race or another race, that wasn't---I never was brought up that way and ever had, I mean, prejudice was not part of my being, and it wasn't part of any of the Keegan or my mother's family the, ?Heenan? family, either. Most Irish don’t, even today, don’t have that type of feeling about This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 68 �races. Because if you look back at history of the Irish, when they came here, they had a tough time. I mean, when they came over from the potato famine in the early 1850’s before the Civil War, you know what kind of jobs they got? Help build the railroads or the Erie Canal and (inaudible) along with the Chinese, doing all this stuff, the Chinese were in the same boat. It wasn't until the 19---early 1900’s when they became a political force in Boston and in New York that they really grew up, the Irish, and came out of the, you might say, the dregs of the working class. People like the Kennedys and the rest of 'em, that's what happened. They became leaders of the political factions, particularly in the Northeast and New York and in Boston and in those areas; they really became quite an influence. My family was not involved in anything like that. [16:00] Either my dad's family or my mom's family. They didn’t belong to---they belonged to the Catholic Church and they belonged---they did their religious things and that was it. But they never became involved in politics. INTERVIEWER: I think you had a close family even though it was large and . . . KEEGAN: Yeah. The families were so big, they had to stay close together as a family, and that's how they grew up. In fact, it’s an amazing thing, like my wife says---I took her back to show her my dad’s house the family house back in Sayersville, New Jersey---she says, "How did you know exactly . . ." I drove right up to it. I says, "I don’t know, it's just an instinct, I'd been here before," [laughs] drove right up to the place, just wanted to show it to her. But I hadn't been there since I was about, oh, I guess, 12 years old, 12 or 13 years old. And then I took her and some of my kids up there to show her [where] my dad grew up in Sayersville. And they were surprised that I went right directly to the house, and it's marked, the Keegan Homestead, in Sayersville. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 68 �So you said that you wanted to go towards electrical engineering and then you graduated from high school. Now this is just a couple of years before the war, right? when you graduated from high school. What were your plans? KEEGAN: Well, I immediately went to Xavier University when I graduated from high school. My dad insisted on that, and also the parish priest said that any help that we need to Chris to college, we'll take care of it. Well, that became more of a---after a year became quite a big burden because Xavier University was a private school and then tuition---of course it wasn't like it is today, but in those day when you're talking about $100, you're talking about a lot of money, because some people weren't even making $100 week in salaries [18:00] in those days. And food and everything else became the real problem, and paying the mortgage and so on. That was maintaining your entity in your own home and the capability of taking care of your family. So, I talked to my mom and dad about it and I says, "Look," I says, "Now, I'm the oldest sibling and I have a right to say what I wanna do. What I wanna do, I want to go find a job, then I'll go to night school." And that’s what I did. I'm wanting to---work for some Jews in a shoe store and eventually in three years I was running one of their stores for them. And then from there I went to--they had a big department store called Alms and Doepke's in Cincinnati and I took over the floor where they had a big shoe outlet in one of the big department stores, and that’s the job I had when I actually was drafted into the Army. But during, I was going to night school all the time. INTERVIEWER: So, about just before the war broke out you were about 25 or so? Is that right? Did you have any ideas about what was going on in other countries. I mean, at that age were you . . . KEEGAN: Oh, yeah, we knew Hitler. Yeah, we knew what Hitler was doing and Mussolini. Of course in those days you had radio and mostly of us were glued to the radio, regardless of the news, anyway. And we kept--most of us kept pretty well in tune with what was going on in Europe, particularly the way that the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 68 �Germans were reacting when they---all the way---when all the actions they took to really destroy England itself with bombs and so on so forth. And when they took over France and also moved into Russia, I mean, we were right always right with it all the time. Just like if---I don't know whether--[20:00] like your families were following the 4-4-2, we were following what Hitler was doing and what the French were doing, and how can we solve the problem. And I think all of us were pretty much involved in that. INTERVIEWER: So, when they started talking about the draft, were you ever---did you ever consider enlisting? Were you fearing to go into the military? KEEGAN: No, I didn’t want to enlist. I knew that I'd get drafted. And a lot of guys were getting married. I you got married, then that was a---you could be eligible not to be drafted. But, and my wife, my Anne and I, we were very steady company at that particular time and we decided not to get married until something happened further on in our lives. She went to a private school where most of, well, my sister went to the same school she did, Regina High School, which was a private school. And I knew her brothers very well, they were classmates of mine, and so that we grew up together, let's put it that way. Her brothers and my family kind of grew up together. INTERVIEWER: So, you guys didn’t---you did not get married before the war? KEEGAN: No, no. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Okay. KEEGAN: None of us did. None of us did. Her family and her brothers didn’t, neither did any of my brothers. In fact, all five of us siblings in my family, they all served in the war. Let's see, there was one, two, three--three, four of us served in the Army and one 'em in the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army Air Force, and then one of 'em was in the Coast Guard. I didn't put any of that in there, so, didn't know you were gonna ask me that. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: No, no. That's okay. I'm finding out now. So when you did get drafted, how did [22:00] they notify you, what did you feel, how did your father feel? KEEGAN: I wasn’t surprised when they called me, and I had one of the lower numbers, my number was 1021, so I knew that I was gonna be in the first draft. The big question is whether I'd pass the physical, and that wasn't any problem at all, I mean, I had bad eyes then and I still have bad eyes. But the only think it kept me out of, it kept me out of the airborne corps. It did. I volunteered for the airborne corps and they found out that I had imperfect vision, what they said was imperfect. I have very unique vision. I can measure depth with either eye, if you understand what I mean. Your eyes focus like this right? That gives you the distance that---well, I can do that with either eye. [Laughs.] Very unique. I other words, I don’t have one eye that’s dominant over the other. INTERVIEWER: Right. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 68 �KEEGAN: So, in other words, usually most people have one eye that’s dominant that becomes the major focal point. INTERVIEWER: Right, right. KEEGAN: I don't. My vision is this [pointing forward with both index fingers]. INTERVIEWER: Mmm-hmm. KEEGAN: Really, it is. And that’s why they says they kept me out of the airborne corps and also out of the Army Air Corps was because they couldn’t fathom how I could judge distance, you know. INTERVIEWER: Right. KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 68 �It didn't keep me out of the Army. [Laughter.] INTERVIEWER: They still have to take you. KEEGAN: No, in fact, when I went to physical, the doc said, he said, "I see here you got a very unique vision," I says, "Yeah." And he says, "How do you feel about it?" I says, "I don't---I feel fine. I play basketball, I play baseball, I do all these kinds of things I even play golf." He says, "You have any problems playing golf?" I says, "No." "You mean [24:00] you don't have problems getting the ball in the hole?" I says, "No." He says, "And then there's nothing wrong with your vision," he says, "You're A-one." So that was it. INTERVIEWER: You should just show him your batting average, right? You could hit that ball! KEEGAN: He was a very, well, very down to earth person, but the big problem was is that all the guys I went to school with, you know, like Tyrone Power and classmates that they were all finagling how to get out, not to get drafted. That kind of irritated me, I mean, they were good friends of mine but since they were good friends, it didn't irritate me that much. Like they had reasons for why they wanted to do that. But a lot of people, to avoid being drafted, got married. They really did. INTERVIEWER: Well, with that, why don’t we take a quick break. We're gonna switch tapes. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 68 �KEEGAN: Okay. INTERVIEWER: And we can probably put the air conditioner on. KEEGAN: Is that going pretty good? KEEGAN: Well, like they manned some of the Merchant Marines which carried us overseas. They were part of protection of the Merchant Marines. INTERVIEWER: Right. KEEGAN: When they were . . . [Interruption in interview.] INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 68 �[Interview resumes.] Okay? CREW MEMBER: We're rolling. INTERVIEWER: At this time, you're about 25 or so and you said that you got the draft. What did your family think? KEEGAN: Oh, my dad was a little put out. I'd---mom was too, of course. She didn’t want any of us to go, and she was a very loving person that I think it hurt her more than my dad. You see, first you saw me go and of course, eventually, the other four boys also went, were also drafted, except for one, Jack. Jack volunteered for the Coast Guard, the rest of us served in---the other three of my brothers served in the Army. In fact, one of 'em served in the U.S. Army---U.S. Air Corps in Italy when I was there and I didn't even know it at the particular time when we were in there---particularly in the part-time while we were in the Gothic Line, I didn't know that. But he was in Italy at the same time I was but I didn’t know it. And I think it hurt mom more than anybody. I mean, my dad was a, I don't know, what you might say, a little bit stoic-type Irish, you couldn't tell whether something fazed him or not or whether he's . . . But when I did come back and visit them, it was---he was so glad to see me. I mean, particularly when I came back as an officer out of OCS. It was kind of a---something that he was really proud of. Because he didn’t serve in World War I, he wanted to, but at the particular time [02:00] in his life when World War I was taking place, he worked for the United States Printing [Office]. He was in Philadelphia in the printing---in the Mint, and they wouldn’t release him from that because of his printing knowledge. And then when he got married, that was in 1914, that was another reason why he didn’t get into the service. But there was a kind of a unique setup between him and mom is that he worked in Philadelphia and he used to take the train home on weekends, back to the Bronx. And I really didn't know that until after I'd grown up. And I said, "How did you two, you know, get together?" He said, "Well, during the week, mom lived in the apartment and in the Bronx," and during the week he worked in Philadelphia in the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 68 �U.S. Mint. And after the war then he got a U.S. Printing which was established in upper New York outside of a major---the city itself. After the war, in the 20s, we moved into that. But I'm getting way off base again, I'm talking about family . . . [Laughter.] INTERVIEWER: That's all right. How about your wife or your girlfriend at that time how did she feel or take it? KEEGAN: Well, I think Anne (inaudible) put out because at the same time that I was being drafted, her brother, her older brother was also being drafted at the same time. And the amazing thing was that he got into the U.S. Army Air Corps and I was stationed at Camp Walters, Texas and he was stationed about [04:00] 30 miles north me and Wichita Falls, Texas, where the Army had built an air station there. And that’s where he was stationed. We were about 25 miles apart. But---so that when they came out to visit John, her brother, they also came down and saw me. His mom, John, and Ann, my future wife, they all came down and saw me at Camp Walters, Texas. But my family never did come, their family did. My mom and dad, of course, they still had kids at home . . . INTERVIEWER: Yeah, yeah. KEEGAN: . . . which were just barely getting into the stage where they're gonna be drafted anyway. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 68 �So, now you are going through basic training and then everything and what---how did you hear and what did you think about when you heard that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? KEEGAN: Well, I was in Fort Worth, Texas, on a weekend leave. Myself and my buddy who was a guy by the name of Myers, he was also from Cincinnati, Ohio. He had also stayed as part of the cadre at Camp Walters, Texas; we became very good friends. And many a time we could get a chance, we'd take leave and go spend the weekends at Fort Worth because of food and they had nice hotels and the food was great. And we woke up, Myers and I, and walked downstairs and there was nobody. There was nobody in the street, which was weird, there was no cars moving, there was nobody in the lobby, and finally I says, "There's something weird going on." [06:00] So we went back in to the lobby and finally saw somebody who was hooked up to a radio. And he was so intent on the radio he wasn't paying any attention to us. Finally we got his attention, "What's going on?" "Hey, you guys, you gotta get back to your camp!" We were in the uniform, see. "Why?" "They just bombed Pearl Harbor and everybody in uniform has to report back to their stations now, right now." That’s how we got notified. I was---we were in Forth Worth, Texas, when we got---he had car and we drove back and then that was it. And then---and that Monday, I went in and saw the company commander and I says, "Look," I said, "if this is gonna be a war, I'm not gonna do it as sergeant." And I told the first sergeant that first, and the first sergeant said, "What are you talking about you're not gonna do it as a sergeant?" he was a very tough old character. I said, "Well, I want to be an officer and I would like to talk to the company commander. He said, "Well, first we'll see if the company commander will see you." Well, he went in and talked to the company commander, "Sure, send Chris in." So I went in and I talked to him and he says, "Why do you want to do that?" I said, "Well, I think that I have something to offer to the Army, more above and beyond being just a NCO." And he says, "Well, I think you do, too," he says, "and I'll sign the papers to send you to OCS," and that’s where I went. I was in one of the first classes in Fort Benning, Georgia, the Officer's Candidate School, OCS #19. And most of the enlisted men at that time that were in my class, most of 'em were on master sergeants. I mean, they were old-timers, they were, oh, I'd say in their 30s, you know, five or six years older than I was, and it was tough. We became what you call "90-day wonders," you know, that what we---that's what everybody called us. [08:00] And we graduated and we were doing the same thing as lieutenants coming out of West Point at the same time. But it was an education This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 68 �in itself, beating other people who wanted to also be leaders in the military, and they had a lot of great men in that---in the class that I was in, OCS 19. But very devoted Americans, I mean, people that served in the Army, oh, I'd say, for 10 to 12 years more than I had. And I'd only been in the Army, what, actually less than a year. Where was I? And---but an education in itself, and we went through the same drills that every Saturday morning and if your rifle wasn't spic and span, without a dust mark on it including the barrel or any place else, you caught holy hell. And if your bed wasn't---if that quarter didn’t jump up there 5 or 6 inches off the bed, why, you stayed home for the weekend. It was tough. And that’s they way---that's what we learned to do when we became officers; you gotta be tough. INTERVIEWER: Now, you were in Texas at this time, are there many or any Asians in that Texas area that in Civilian life or Japanese Americans or anything? KEEGAN: No, there wasn't any. INTERVIEWER: Did you have any exposure at this time? What was the feeling towards Japanese? KEEGAN: Because most of the people in Camp Walters, Texas, came from Ohio and Indiana. I don't know why. Even the troops that I trained that came there, came from the same area; they were draftees from Ohio and Indiana, most of 'em. In other words, these camps which were setup throughout the United States to train the draftees in 13 weeks of basic training, [10:00] for some reason or other they came from various areas of the United States to certain camps. The only time I became acquainted with---I'm trying to---when I became an officer I went to Camp Carson. The only time I became acquainted with another This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 68 �race was Spanish. Because in the 355th and the 89th Division, a lot of we get in---we were getting a lot of recruits from---who are Mexicans from Texas and Arizona and New Mexico we were getting a lot of recruits into Camp Carson that were actually Mexicans. INTERVIEWER: At this time that you were in---Camp Carson is in Colorado? KEEGAN: Yeah. That’s when I want from OCS to Camp Carson and went into heavy weapons company, what they call M Company, the 355th Infantry, 89th Division. INTERVIEWER: What, at this time, did you hear about anything about the relocation concentration of the Japanese Americans? KEEGAN: I didn't know anything about it. INTERVIEWER: Was that held back from the general public? KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 68 �It must have because I didn’t read anything about it and that I didn’t know anything was going on in like in Washington or Oregon or California what was going on, I never . . . Well, first thing is, there was no such thing as TV, the only thing you had was radio and newspapers, and most of the time we didn’t, in the military, didn’t have much time to read newspapers. We'd hear it---listen to the radio, but we never heard anything about the segregation or the what they were doing with the Japanese Americans in the West Coast, nothing, there's nothing about it. INTERVIEWER: When did you hear about it? KEEGAN: I didn’t know anything about it until I came to Shelby. [12:00] INTERVIEWER: Hmm, really. KEEGAN: That’s the first time. And that’s kind of a unique thing because---and then, why did they send me to Shelby? I don’t know. There was three of us in the 89th Division, one from each regiment, myself in the 355th, Lieutenant Aull and Lieutenant Bill Colyer. We all served in the 2nd Battalion of the 442nd. I didn’t know that until till later on that we'd all served in the 89th Division, and the amazing thing to me was is that when my orders has came, I was on Christmas leave. I'd only been promoted from June until December, I moved from being a platoon leader to the exec officer of M Company to the company commander of M Company in less than six months. I was promoted first lieutenant in first part of November. I mean I never---I would imagine that you'd get moved this fast any place. And then when I came back from leave, reported in to the regiment, the battalion regiment, and then they wanted to This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 20 of 68 �know who I knew. I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." He says, "You got orders, you're leavin'." and when I went down to battalion, the battalion said, "Hey, who know, you leavin' and the battalion commander wants to see you." So, I---as soon as he was available, when I talked to him he says, "Chris," he says, "what's going on? How come you're leaving the outfit?" I said, "What are you talking about, I haven't seen any orders yet." He said, "Well, you got orders and you have to report to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and I'm a little bit teed off, the regimental commander's teed off, and you know the division commander's teed off?" He says, "There's three of you leaving." He's already gone to bat to the War Department to find out [14:00] why three of some of his best officers going some place when he needs 'em. He would rather they stay here in this unit than go where they're going. He had--and he says, "There's nothing we can do about it. In fact, the division commander called all three of us in to his office and said he was sorry that we were leaving, he really wanted to keep us, and he did everything he could to maintain us in the 89th Division, because we were all real goers and leaders, that’s the way he spoke about it, the things that he really wanted in the officer corps. But he---nothing he could do about it. So, we didn’t know where we were going in Shelby. Had no idea what was in Shelby. Somebody---kind of rumors I know "Oh, this is assignment for overseas duty in Africa. I didn't know anything. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: Did you ever find out why you were chosen or why the three of you were? KEEGAN: No, no. INTERVIEWER: You in a just . . . KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 21 of 68 �I had no idea. The amazing thing is that when you look back on it, most of the Caucasian officers came from the East Coast or the middle of the United States, except for a very few. Some were in Hawaii, of course, they were in Hawaii assigned to units in Hawaii that which is different. They came over with some of the---with the original Hawaiian group that came in to the 442nd, but there was very---there were only one in my company who came from anywheres near the West Coast, and it was Boise, Idaho, he was born and raised in Boise, Idaho, a Joe Ryan, was one of my officers and that’s as far West as--that I know of anybody. All the rest of 'em came from the middle part of United States or the eastern coast. In other words, we'd---it seemed like [16:00] somebody was trying to make sure that we never had any contact with Japanese Americans. That’s what it look like. We didn't know 'em. In fact, every time each one of us I know that went in to see Colonel Pence asked if we had any objections of serving with Japanese Americans. I know every one of us was asked that same question and I don’t know if anybody said yes, but as far as I know everybody says no. CREW MEMBER: Hold on. INTERVIEWER: Okay. [Interview is interrupted, then resumes.] So in hindsight, you can see that they all kind of came from a certain or they did not come from . . . KEEGAN: They were not associated with Japanese Americans. INTERVIEWER: Right. That’s interesting. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 22 of 68 �KEEGAN: Isn't it? Well, it was intere[sting]---after the war became very interesting to me. INTERVIEWER: Right, right. Okay. CREW MEMBER: What about---ask him what---you know when you were in training to become an officer, besides marching, were you good in strategy? Could that have been a reason why you were chosen to . . . Male speaker: No, I don’t think it was that, I think it was---most of us were--I think myself and Bill, and I want to say, I want to talk about Colyer too much because this---that's another story, but Bill, Aull, and I were kinda unique, we were kind of leaders. We did things that were different with troops. We did things in teaching them the basic elements of combat and how do get along kind of---we set up things for 'em. And like the general in the 89th Division, like when in my (inaudible) he said, "Why did you do that?" For example, what I had done is set up targets out in the range area where the machine gunners could shoot at moving [18:00] targets. I use a jeep and then had a trailer like that and we had targets maybe it was---no where where the jeep was gonna get hit. And they were calling stuff about 200 or 300 yards behind 'em, see. And the same way with mortar platoon; everything's a fixed target for the mortar, basically, but also there's a possibility that you have moving targets, you have man, men moving. And there was another thing that we do, we set up things like out in the field to do the same thing. When the general saw what I was doing out there he says, "This is really unique." He is a general and never said anything about it to him---you always had fixed targets always everything was fixed, but nobody did anything about moving targets. That is, as far as the infantry was concerned. Now, tankers, gunners, that’s different. They used this type of technique before. But that's it. I think that we---for some unknown reason---I guess---I don’t know if any officer in the 4-4-2 whether he was in the 3rd Battalion, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 23 of 68 �the 2nd Battalion or even, well, the 100th was different. I can’t speak too much for the 100th, but they had unique people too. But not the same as the 4-4-2. I know of like in Dog Company, not dog, my company who became a very good friend of mine, the 3rd Battalion, he was a very unique person, all of the officers that were company commanders were very unique people, with very few exceptions. Like as if somebody had gone through their records some place, somehow, and selected each one of these people. I don’t know who it was, but, for example, Lieutenant Farnum who was originally assigned to me, [20:00] if you want to talk about an astute officer, he came from the Citadel, the man was---he was the epitome of being an officer. But I had so many officers I couldn't use him. And I hated like hell to give him up, but when my battalion commander says, "What do you---what---you mean you can use him?" I says, "Look, I got---I'm filled up now---I got---I'm over two officers already." I was. I had two Japanese American officers too, and I hadn’t said much about them and I don’t want to. There's a reason. Well, let me put it this way, maybe it should be brought out. They were not trained as combat arms officers. They were trained most---the ones that we got came from the University of Hawaii and they were not trained as combat arms officers. Not trained like guys like Farnum or like Stefnagle. Stefnagle came to me from a military school, and so did Farnum. They were not trained as combat leaders. They'd been to Benning and everything else; these officers, Japanese-American officers are not. We're not saying that they weren’t very fine people, they were. And there was another thing that the battalion commander amd a few other people got on my butt because, "Why do you want to keep---why can’t you keep some of these Japanese-American officers?" I said, "Because I want officers in my company who are trained officers to train my men. And these officers don’t have that training." They didn’t. [22:00] Some of 'em were outstanding people, and what---to give you a real, how outstanding they were, they volunteered for MIS, everyone that I had. And most of 'em---a lot of 'em, became majors and lieutenant colonels and colonels, I mean, they stayed in the military. But they fit---there's a difference between being combat leader and other types of officers. You have to have the men under you understanding you as a leader. What you want and why you want it. You want it for a specific reason. One is, I don’t want you to get killed, that’s the first reason. And I told my officers in my H Company, "We're training use so you don’t get killed. That you do your job and you complete your mission without getting killed or wounded." and that’s what we did. And we were tough on 'em. And then some of the Japanese-American officers I don’t think were tough enough. Now if they came from the old school, like, I had a enlisted man in my company called Takeo Hedani, he came from the old school, Japanese American. Eventually I made him a lieutenant. But he was so tough on the men under his command he was tougher than we were which was too much, the point that, you know, the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 24 of 68 �Japanese-American people were not brought up under the same stoic reasons as they were in Japan, but Hedani was. He was tough. INTERVIEWER: It is just toughness, is that all old school that you're talking about or is there other traits that . . . [24:00] KEEGAN: The old stoic-type Japanese-type officer. I wouldn’t say officer, whether you---people. That---I couldn’t stand that and I didn’t want, like in the enlisted men, most of 'em like particularly those from Hawaii and from the United States were not brought up under that type of strict rule, and it was a detriment, really, except that Takeo Hedani learned not to be tough. And I told him, I says, "You're a good sergeant and I'll make you a lieutenant if you learn how to control yourself and not---realize that these are your men, you're like a father to them, they're your boys, but not a father in the old tough Japanese manner, the Japanese---turned into a Japanese-American manner. You're a friend of theirs at the same time." And Takeo learned that. And there's a lot of other officers that we assigned; Doc ?Yoshida?, I don't know why he became a lieutenant. The amazing thing about these people is that they coulda been leaders in any walk of life, and they did. They came out of the war and became leaders, a vast number of 'em, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs. In fact, in my company alone, I don’t know how many doctors we made and how many lawyers and how many farmers, big farmers, that they became. To me, it was utterly amazing. And the other thing about the Japanese Americans that we had, their education level was so far above [26:00] anything then I was associated with in any other unit, whether it was 89th Division or whether it was Camp Walters, Texas, or whatever. The educational level, the brightness, the shrewdness, the imagination of the Japanese-American young men, at that age, was far superior to any other enlisted people that I'd been associated with. You want me to talk about more about this? INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 25 of 68 �Well, what happened to the two . . . KEEGAN: Hmm? INTERVIEWER: What happened to the two Japanese Americans that you felt didn't have what it takes. I mean, is there something . . . KEEGAN: Well, they went to MIS, Military Intelligence Service. See, we---there was a unique setup at Camp Shelby a lot of people don't know about was we call "S Troop," and they could volunteer for this. S Troop was a beginning of Military Intelligence Service. In other words, they could sign up and go over there and become part of S Troop. And the amazing thing was is that a lot of the cadre spoke perfect Japanese. In fact all of my cadre spoke perfect Japanese. They wrote Japanese . . . INTERVIEWER: Okay, Colonel Keegan, let's back up a little bit. Can you tell us when---your experience of arriving to Camp Shelby, what you saw? What you saw? KEEGAN: Okay. Well, when I first came to Hattiesburg, I was shocked at Hattiesburg itself. I don't know if you've ever been to Hattiesburg, but it was like a railroad stopping point, that’s about what it was when we This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 26 of 68 �came in there. And the other thing was when I came in there, I came in on a train. It was February, and if you've ever been in Mississippi in February, it’s rainy, wet, and cold. And I had been out of Camp Carson where it's dry and beautiful. So, I had to get a taxi and go out to the camp, and of course which took me first to the camp headquarters because I didn't know where I was supposed to go, all I had was a building number. In fact, that’s all any of us had. We had a building number and we were supposed to report to that building. So I had go into camp headquarters and get the building number. "Oh, yeah, sure you're one of those officers go on down this way, this way, this way, and report down into the old area. I didn’t pay any attention, I just the thought the old area is what---how old is this, see. So we drove through---I had been in camps where every camp was new, brand new, World War II construction, and the troops were in barracks, you know, upstairs and downstairs and they had their own facilities, shower and latrines, everything right inside the building, and they had a big mess tent and everything--mess house to so eat and everything. And I'm driving [02:00] through the same type of buildings at Camp Shelby where other units are training, like the 69th Division that was there at the same time we were from (inaudible). And down into this old area, and I'm---when I get there I thought, "What in the hell is this?" I'm looking at buildings on stilts with flaps that come up, you know, when weather's nice and you want the air to come in, and then, of course, all you got is a screen, there's no window there, it's screening all the way around. And the flaps come down in the wintertime to keep you warm. And this is a regimental CP was the same way, that’s where I reported to. And I walked in there and there's only one enlisted man in the office and he was oriental and he was a master sergeant. Eventually he became a lieutenant colonel, but at that time he was a master sergeant. Of course, it didn’t bother me, and I reported to him, he says, well, he says, "Well, you have to wait a few minutes, I'll go in and see Colonel Pence and see if he wants to see you." And so I went---waited a few minutes and out he came and I went and saw Colonel Pence and reported to Colonel Pence and he says, "Sit down, lieutenant." And he says, "A few questions. Where'd you come from?" and I told him. "What was your job?" I said, "I was a company commander of Mike Company and 355th Infantry." And he says, "Most of the troops that you trained were all Caucasian?" I says, "Yes." I said we had some Mexicans, Mexican Americans, from Texas and few other places. [04:00] He says, "You ever serve with Japanese Americans?" I says, "No." I says---when I says, "Why?" he says, "Well, this is gonna be---this is a Japanese/American outfit." And he says, "I ask everybody that comes in here if you have any objections." I says, "No, I don’t have any objections." I says, "The only one I met is that---is he Japanese This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 27 of 68 �American, your sergeant?" He said, "Yes." That's the first one I met. And I says, "How can I object?" Colonel Pence looked at me and smiled and he says, "You know," he says, "that's unique." He says, "You're willing to accept 'em?" I says, "Yes." I said, "I was raised in the Bronx. We're all kinds of nationalities and I've never objected to anybody whatever race they were." And he says, "Well," he says, "Chris," he says, "You'll do." And he says, "You go down and report to Colonel Hanley who is the battalion commander." So, I went down there and I said, "Where," first I found out where he was. He says, "He’s in the warehouse." "Oh, okay, where’s the warehouse?" So the sergeant, he said, "Sergeant will show you." So I went down and we went to the warehouse, a great big---looked like a barn, is what it was. And Hanley was there and he was trying to work with the supply officer, we got supplies for the 2nd Battalion at that time, and I'm yelling and looking for Colonel Hanley and finally he comes out and he says, "You’re Lieutenant Keegan." I says, "Yes." He says, "I just got a call from Colonel Pence that you’re on your way up here." And he says, "Now," he says, "I'm not---I don’t have time to take you down to H Company, but" he says, "I'll show you where it is and you go down there and you have a very fine sergeant down there, the first sergeant." And I said, "What’s his name?" And he says, "Well, it's something like [06:00] Hatsuo Salai," [laughs] he says, "something like that," see. So I go down there and it was Saraye. Saraye was---eventually I came to the point that he was more American that I was. He was more devoted to being American than I was. Frank Saraye, he couldn’t say right, he always, left, light, left light, it was . . . And he was a little guy, see. And---but the other noncoms really respected him, I don’t know why. And Saraye was---when he was, I guess it was seven or eight years old, him and his brother, who was a year older than he was, his father died and they lived up in the state of Washington, and his mom took him back to Japan and they got their education in Japan up until they were---the older one was 19 and Frank was 18. And then she brought 'em in and said, "Now, you have dual citizenship, you’re both American citizens, you’re both Japanese citizens, and you can make up your mind and tell me within a week or so what you want to be. You want to be Americans or you want to be Japanese?" Frank told me this. And he said, "I already made up my mind. I told mom, I said, "I want to go back to America," [laughs] he said. And he says, "That’s where I was born, that’s my country." And his brother did the same. His brother was older, they both came back and they went with foster parents in the Los Angeles area picked 'em up. And that’s how he grew up. He was---Frank was drafted, his brother was not drafted, he had some physical disability and I don’t know what it was. But Frank was drafted in and the [08:00] other thing about these, the cadre, you have to understand, they came from all parts of United States. They---most of 'em were either volunteers or draftees, and they'd all been assigned to units, some combat units, some field artillery units, and so on. But when Pearl Harbor, came This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 28 of 68 �almost all of them were taken out of those units and put in such things as administrative duties, supply duties, mess duties; took 'em away from anything to do with arms, so to speak, combat units. And I didn’t know that. Frank---the first thing is they wouldn’t talk about it. I'd ask 'em where they worked---when I looked---I'd get their records and look at 'em and find out. I did and so did some of the other Army officers. They wouldn't talk about it. And, of course, most of these people---like Frank, he didn’t have any family in the internment camps; the guys, like my supply sergeant, came from Minneapolis/St. Paul area 'cause he didn’t have any members in this internment camp, and so did my motor sergeant and something like that, they came up from the eastern parts of Washington and their families weren’t taken like they were from most of the areas in California and lower Oregon. Some of 'em in Seattle area, yes, were taken. G. K. Sato who was in this 2nd Platoon, his family was and a few other families from the Seattle area were taken and put in internment camps, but most of 'em came from Oregon and California and [10:00] I didn’t know that until I got to talking to, first, the cadre, and then we got replacements before they came in from Hawaii, who were draftees and volunteers who came in before people from Hawaii came in. And these people did have their families in places like Arkansas and other places. And I started to talk and I said, "This is impossible. How can these guys volunteer to fight for their country at the same time there's people in the internment camps?" And Colonel Pence was very perturbed about it and so were the other officers, Colonel Hanley and the other two battalion commanders, they were very concerned about it also. Another thing that happened, which really made us feel like we were unAmerican was, I came back, I guess I'd been there about six weeks, seven weeks. We were almost finished with the cadre, training the cadre of their functions and duties and what they were supposed to do. And we came back on a Monday and Sergeant Saraye had been picked up and so were some of the other enlisted personnel cadre in some of the other units. I think it was about 25 or 30 of 'em who had spent any, evidently, anybody who had spent any time in Japan, were all picked up by federal agents over the weekend while we were gone, and kidnapped out of the regiment. That's what happened, they kidnapped 'em, took 'em out of the regiment. Disappeared. And you don’t think Colonel Pence wasn’t angry and [12:00] started putting tele---tee---TWXs and everything back to the War Department, find out what the hell's going on. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 29 of 68 �Frank didn’t come back for five weeks. He spent five weeks being, I don't know, interrogated, he wouldn’t talk about it. And some of 'em came back in two weeks, some back in three weeks, and some--but Frank was gone for five weeks. INTERVIEWER: Did you guys know where he went or anything like that? KEEGAN: He wouldn’t talk about it. INTERVIEWER: I mean at the time when he was missing, I mean, he wasn't, you didn’t, you knew that something . . . KEEGAN: We didn’t know where they were. INTERVIEWER: Were they considered . . . KEEGAN: As enemy aliens. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 30 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: No, I know, but in terms of the---in terms of your unit were they considered, not AWOL, because you're not . . . KEEGAN: No, no, no, no, no, this one, Colonel Pence, we still kept him on the rolls. INTERVIEWER: Okay, okay. KEEGAN: But I got another first sergeant. INTERVIEWER: I see. KEEGAN: The first Sergeant I got, well, he eventually became the sergeant of S Troop. And he was a very fine man and he wanted to stay in the company and I says, "Look, I can’t do that. Frank, when he comes back, is my first sergeant. I'm sorry, but he is. You're a very fine noncommissioned officer and I'd be glad to have you except, I want Frank." This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 31 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Within the officers, especially the Caucasian officers, was there any talk about the internment camps or any kind of, you know, protest or---among themselves? KEEGAN: No. No, we didn’t protest. We didn't---what we, what happened in Shelby was this: We were so devoted to train the cadre, we really didn’t get involved in the internment camps. I mean, even though some of these people had friends and relatives in internment camps. And particularly some of the younger cadre that came in during the period of time from when we started until the [14:00] Hawaiians came in. They had, they did, some of 'em would---visited their families in the concentration, I mean, internment camps. And Colonel Pence, treated this thing what I thought was the correct manner. What he arranged was, the one up, what was the name in Arkansas? I don't remember the name of it right now, it was an internment camp. And what he arranged was this: that they'd get GI buses on maybe once a month on a weekend. This is the way it started, and they'd go up and visit, the young guys would go up and visit, that weren’t married would go up and visit the gals in the internment camp there in Arkansas. And then eventually what happened is they invited---he invited the young ladies down to the camp for a weekend and he had chaperones and things take 'em. They have a party, dance and so on. The Hawaiians, when they came in, they didn’t know what was going on, they didn’t know much about the internment camp either, the Hawaiians didn't, and they were shocked. First, well, they were shocked on two things. The first thing they were shocked on, they thought they were gonna come in there and all be the sergeants and the noncoms to start with, see, they didn't know we already had noncoms already, see, and they---that really shocked 'em. And when the officers that came with 'em like Bert Nishimura and the rest of 'em, they thought they were all gonna be company commanders. Well, that didn’t happen, we were all setup. They made---the unit was already organized, cadre-wise. I mean, the skeleton force was already there, all we had to do was fit the pieces in, and that was the Hawaiians. [16:00] Then these people, there was certain amount of animosity for a while until they learned about the internment camps. And when they visited the internment camp up in, like, for example, Senator Dan Inouye, he was one of the first ones This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 32 of 68 �that went up there and visit 'em. And he was shocked, he never seen anything like this before. Then what happened is, the cadre and the Hawaiians had everything meshed together. The esprit de corps completely changed. Instead of being animosity among 'em, it was complete friendship. The team was being built. The team that really became famous was being built because of that. And that’s what happened to the 4-4-2. And the 100th Battalion was different; you have to understand that completely di[fferent], they were older. And most of the younger guys that they had before the 100th went overseas in the fall of, what was it, forty---I guess it was in the fall of 40’s, '43, yeah, they went over in '43, fall of '43. All the younger guys were---I wasn’t gonna say, I was gonna say dumped, but they weren’t dumped into the 4-4-2, the three battalions that we had. Guys like Ted Ohira, who you know, a whole bunch of 'em, came---a lot of 'em came into my company because they were trained. They were in Dog Company and they came over to Mike Company, or they went Mike Company or Dog Company in the 4-4-2. But, the integration of the men, [18:00] friendship-wise became because of the internment camps. That was the amazing thing. INTERVIEWER: You think that was the turning point that really solidified . . . KEEGAN: Glued everything together. It just glued it together and they became friends. INTERVIEWER: Did any of the Caucasian officers visit any of the internment camps? KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 33 of 68 �I didn’t, no. Some of 'em did, I didn’t. The first thing is, I was too busy. As the company commander, well, some people, like, who was it, somebody was from the battalion who was a---came from Arkansas, I can’t remember who it was but they visited 'em and they came back and told us the story, too, from their viewpoint. Besides the ones that, the guys that came back, we didn't know anything about it. It was just horrible, that here you got your families up there and they're in the---when I say really worst condition than we were. I mean, the quarters we were in were terrible, the world's worst. We didn’t have latrines like they had in right up the hill from us, in the 69th Division. We had open pits with a building over it, and every time we'd have to move it the same way with the garbage. INTERVIEWER: I'm trying to vision, how big is Camp Shelby? I mean, is it like a . . . KEEGAN: Well, Shelby was quite large. It was big enough for---to training a force larger than a division. That’s why we were there. The buildings that we were in originally came from some place in Georgia at World War I. World War I they moved 'em from there to Camp Shelby. Camp Shelby was a training area for the Mississippi National Guard and reserves, that's what they use it for. [20:00] And they use these buildings, World-War-I-type barracks and buildings that were there. And that’s why we inherited it [laughs]. INTERVIEWER: Amazing. Let's switch gears a little bit here, what, culturally, what were some things that you found were unique or different between the Japanese Americans and others that you've encountered, foodwise and attitudes. KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 34 of 68 �Well, rice was one. When the cadre was there they'd---we'd get the same amount of rice as the Caucasians, you know, one of the box rices or something like that, they did buy it in the big sacks. So that---we were eating potatoes and stuff, see, just like everybody else. So, Colonel Pence got that changed around so eventually we got the big bags of rice and everything else and typical oriental food. But Americanized, too, I mean, we ate chicken and roast beef and all the other stuff, and fish. That---but the rice was the big thing, typically rice. And tea was the other thing, too, which the Caucasian units didn’t have as much of that as we did. I didn't notice there was much change there because my mess sergeant was Sergeant Meade who was not only a trained cook but he was a chef. He owned two restaurants in the Los Angeles area before he was drafted. He was a great guy. I had all great guys in my team. INTERVIEWER: Sounds like you were very close to them? KEEGAN: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: What about names and nicknames, do you have anything to say about. . . KEEGAN: Well, in the [22:00] cadre there wasn't anything, but when the Hawaiians came over, everybody had a nickname. I mean, some guys calling a guy Papoose and "Who in the hell is Papoose, we don't. . ." Who is Big Boy? see, or Short Stuff, or weird names, and they didn't fit the guy. The guy they called Big Boy wasn't big. And the guy, Papoose, was, he was small [laughs]. They had real weird names and I was---I said, "That's a lot better for me because I hate like hell to pronounce your Japanese names [laughs]. We This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 35 of 68 �were---what we were all afraid of is, well, all us company commanders and platoon leaders, the platoon leaders especially was, is that there was a unique thing in the military at that particular time where somebody, some inspecting officer might come from a higher unit and say, "Okay, you find your platoon," you know. "I want you, lieutenant so-and-so, to about face and your company, your platoon'll be behind you, and I want you to name every man in your platoon." And they were scared to death. I was scared to death, they were scared to death. Some character come around---how the hell we ever gonna pronounce these names? INTERVIEWER: Did it ever happen? KEEGAN: No. But it did in a lot of units. INTERVIEWER: That’s interesting. Do you have anything else that you want to talk about in terms of training and the first impressions of the men, and how about what did they think of you or did you hear anything, you know, even now, when you see them now, do you ever hear stories about what they---their first impressions of you? KEEGAN: Well, they thought I was too tough, I guess. [24:00] I---and I was too tough for a reason. I wanted them to be tough physically and mentally because my understanding of warfare was that, you have to steel yourself to what’s gonna happen. And that was the way I trained 'em. That’s the way I had my officers train 'em, do the officers the same way. You got to steel yourself to what’s gonna happen, because if you don’t, if you don’t put it in your own mind and in your physical being that this is not gonna be a This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 36 of 68 �picnic, they're gonna be scared to death. And what you're facing is fear, the first thing you have to understand about combat in that sense is, you got to be doing something all the time, then you don't--then you get rid of the fear and being afraid, because---but if it keeps building up, you don’t know what the person's gonna do. And like I said at the beginning, I started to say about this one officer that evidently he hadn’t built himself up to this. Because when we were at this particularly one point in combat and he was a battalion staff officer, he got scared to death and the next thing I know he was taking off and running like hell towards the rear. And I turned to Colonel Hanley, I said, "What's wrong with him?" He says, "Well," he says, "he’s evidently afraid." And he says, "Well, what are you gonna do about it?" "Well, I'm gonna reassign him, get him reassigned get him out of here." But the guy wasn't any dummy. He was very smart, very intelligent and presentable, but he hadn’t steeled himself to what’s gonna happen, and that’s the thing. [26:00] I'll give, like, Willy Kiyota who came from Denver with my platoon sergeant of 2nd Platoon, he'll never forget me. And one time I says, "Why won’t you ever forget me?" He says, "Well," he says---Willy's a little guy not a big guy, not more than five foot three or four, and at that time he weighed about 120 pounds or something like that, and he had---we went on these forced marches in the evening sometimes at least once a week, maybe five miles forced march, two and half miles out, two and a half miles back, sometimes between supper and going to bed, and with your full combat gear and your personal weapon, and the platoon sergeant carried a pretty heavy sack and carbine, and Kiyota was lagging behind his platoon. I said, I walked---I'd walk---run back and check the platoon and run back up the front of it again, I mean, the company, and watch, he was in the 2nd Platoon, I said, "What the hell's the matter with you, sergeant?" He says, "It's too much. It's too much, captain, it's too much for me." "What's too much?" He says, "I'm carrying too much." I says, "What do you mean? Gimme your pack." So I took his pack and I took his carbine, swung it over my shoulder. "Now, how do you feel?" "I feel better." I says, "Okay, let's get moving." So I carried his pack down there and he never forgot that, never. And I forgot it a long time ago. He remembers that. INTERVIEWER: That's good. That's funny. I think we'll have to take a . . . This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 37 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Do you know if you had some (inaudible)? KEEGAN: I don’t, I don’t . . . CREW MEMBER: It is just that he was just a genuine officer in that . . . KEEGAN: I think---I didn't know Colonel Pence before I met him in Camp Shelby. But, my executive officer, Lieutenant Meyers who had worked for Colonel Pence some place else, and he said that Colonel Pence was most probably the sharpest senior officer he ever met because of---when we met people, he didn’t segregate anybody. In other words, whether you were Negro or black or yellow or green or whatever color you may be or what (inaudible), he was that way, So, because as Lieutenant Meyers was my exec said, "We had some black guys and we had some guys from Mexicans and so on, but it didn’t faze Colonel Pence. I mean, they're all Americans to Colonel Pence. That’s the way he felt about it. And that’s way like Lieutenant Meyers who was a---he was a---he came from Salt Lake City, his whole family were Mormons. Meyers---I don’t know whether Bob Meyers really---some of the things he did, he was not really a very religious Mormon, but . . . [Laughter.] But, Bob was very complimentary of Colonel Pence the way he handled people. He had a unique capability of getting people to do things, regardless of what nationality they were, whether they were black or whatever. People just respected him for that. One thing you have to understand about Colonel Pence, Colonel Pence was also a veteran of World War I. Lot of people don’t know that. He was. [02:00] He survived two wars, two of the major wars the United States Army was in. First as a young lieutenant, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 38 of 68 �and here he was, what, 1915 to 1941, what is it, how many years later is that, 20-something years later? He wasn't any young chicken when he was a regimental commander. And the amazing thing was is that some of the---one of the lieutenant colonels in the 3rd Battalion, for example, was younger than Colonel Pence because, but because of his physical disability, couldn't go overseas, whereas Colonel Pence didn't have any physical disabilities. And, of course, that battalion commander also served in World War I. Colonel Pence was a unique person, very unique, I mean, very friendly, very understanding. And I talked to him quite often, more, more, I talked more with him in combat during combat operations than I did in Camp Shelby. Not saying I didn’t talk to him but, at Camp Shelby, but I had more conversations over the radio with him than I---in combat than I did than I had telephone conversations in Camp Shelby. He was a very understanding man, and he fought tooth and nail for the 4-4-2 with higher headquarters when we were overseas. Lot of times the 4-4-2 was put in positions that were really untenable positions, which no other unit would most probably would ever been put in. I---[04:00] sometimes I just wondered whether it's because of their bravery or because of the unique---that they were Japanese Americans or because they had the do-or-die spirit which some units didn't have. And that’s what the 4-4-2 and the 100th Battalion had, they had a do-or-die spirit in whatever goal or objective was assigned to 'em in combat; and some units didn't have that. A lot of units---American units didn't have that type of attitude. Lot of units were, well, you take the34th Division, for example, and the 36th Division were not regular Army units. You understand what I'm talking about? Hmm? INTERVIEWER: No. KEEGAN: They were not reg[ular]---they were National Guard and Reserve elements, which were---they were called to active duty. The 36th came from Texas and the 34th came from, what was it, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota area, that area up there, that's where the division came from. So they weren't in, how can you say it, they weren't, you might say, in the point like today, you have regular Army units. In those days we didn't---we had very few regular Army divisions. The United States depended on the Reserves and the National Guard for implementation of the force. But today we have, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 39 of 68 �what, 10 divisions, well-trained, I hope, like the 82nd Airborne Division and other units that are constantly under training and constantly got the best equipment you can get in the world. And they're trained combat soldiers, my son is one of 'em. He's a major, [06:00] he's very devoted to what he does, and he trains for it. I mean, if you ever see him you'd think he's a real GI Joe. [Laughs.] He's got hair cut down and, you know how it was in the 82nd Airborne Division. Butch, real butch haircuts and skull---you see their skull and everything. INTERVIEWER: Was there any point during training that you knew that you had a special team, a special (inaudible) of people? KEEGAN: Yeah. I would say, when we finished cadre training, I knew we had something special. Because these people were so devoted to what they did, just the cadre. And so did the officers there, the three platoon leaders, they knew it too. And they felt the same way I did about the Japanese Americans, I mean, they thought they were the very---there had been other units too, just like I had. Here, the cadre was very well-educated, too, besides the guys that came in later. They weren't any dummies, they were---if they were in school, most probably they were A students or B students or they were part college or they were working on degrees and so on, they weren't any dummies either. And they grasped things so fast. Let me put it this way, Colonel Hanley was a unique person, he's a battalion commander, and he was a teacher, or taught in the, not, what do I want to say, Fort Benning, Georgia, he was an instructor, [08:00] Fort Benning, Georgia. So, he had a unique habit of going around, like, talking to the noncoms without letting us officers know. I mean, this is one of his things, the fallacies where he worked. He come up and asked maybe some machine gunner, he says, "How you," the cadre, "how you check headspace?" And that’s the reason why we used to call him Headspace Hanley, but this headspace in a machine gun has to be perfect; otherwise, when you try to fire the weapon, it doesn't fire, see. this is the tube, gun tube, and the place back here has to be absolutely perfect and it has to be checked and make sure when the weapon is---before a weapon is put in action that it does have the proper headspace. Otherwise, it---the thing---the bullets might explode right in your face. It's just like--This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 40 of 68 �in the rifle it isn't the same way, with a machine gun, it is, because the barrel was movable. In other words, you could take the barrel off and screw it back on, but the headspace has to be perfect. So he got to be named Headspace---all the cadre called him Headspace Hanley. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: At what point you did you hear or know about the 100th Battalion that was already out there? KEEGAN: Well, we heard about the 100th, we did, in Shelby before they came down from where they were up in North, what was the name of the place up there? CREW MEMBER: Wisconsin? KEEGAN: Yeah, Wisconsin, yeah. We knew it, and then we knew that they were coming. They came down to Camp Shelby while we were training the cadre. They moved into an area just, in fact, like H Company was here, then the 100th was right---moved right over [10:00] practically next to H Company in the same area as we did. And they were older people than our cadre. The NCOs were older, the officers were older; they were---they came from like National Guard or Reserve units and they were pretty welltrained people. And of course we inhered a lot of the younger ones, as I said earlier, when the 100th moved out in late '43, they were overstrength so they had to move some of the men out, and they became part of the 4-4-2. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 41 of 68 �Did you follow them knowing that your men were going to (inaudible)? KEEGAN: Oh yes, everybody in the regiment was following them and what they were doing in Italy, yeah, everybody. And of course we heard a lot---some of the guys who had brothers or cousins in the 100th and they'd be getting mail back telling 'em all about what’s going on, the stories and everything else, and what combat was all about, which was good, really. I mean, they got a firsthand accounting of what combat's all about. INTERVIEWER: Did they feel like they were anxious to get over there and get (simultaneous talking, inaudible)? KEEGAN: Oh yes, yes. They couldn’t wait. [Laughs.] They couldn't wait to go. INTERVIEWER: How much training did you guys have in Shelby before you were shipped out? KEEGAN: Well, we had---first we had the cadre training, and as soon as the Hawaiian boys come in, then we went to basic training with them, that's 13 weeks. And then we go into company tactics training, that takes about another 4 weeks or so, and you go into battalion tactical training, [12:00] learning how to conduct maneuvers as a battalion with three companies and a heavy weapons company. And then we went into the field, we do this out in the field, battalions would go out and stay out a week or two weeks. And the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 42 of 68 �same way, then we did it as a regiment against elements of the 69th Division before the 69th Division left, then we'd miniwar with the 69th, and we beat 'em. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: How long was that period in months-wise or is it . . . KEEGAN: Well, let’s see, we finished basic training, let’s see, we started, what, April, May, June, July, about August we started in the platoon and company level-type training. And then I guess we're doing---before Christmas of that year, we were against the 89th Division and then we went into a period where we were rechecking everything, I think, from January to February after that, getting ready to go. INTERVIEWER: Is that a normal period of time or is that---or is that more or less? KEEGAN: Oh, yeah. That was normal for a regiment. The regiment would normally take, I’d say, from the time that, if they were---you got trained cadre then basic training, it'd take a year before our regiment's ready to go, at that time. Today, it may be shorter, much shorter, but in that time it would take about a year. INTERVIEWER: Can you talk about your journey from Shelby, and how you got to where you went to in Europe? KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 43 of 68 �You mean overseas? [14:00] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Were you on the Queen---you didn't take the Queen Mary over? KEEGAN: No. We were on . . . INTERVIEWER: Some of them, I think it was the 100th, did they take the . . . KEEGAN: I don't know that the 100th (inaudible). I know we were in a bunch of, what, Liberty ships is what we were in. INTERVIEWER: I interviewed someone, they said that they were actually, I thought it was (inaudible). KEEGAN: I don't know how they---I don't know how the 100th---nobody ever told me how the 100th got where they went. I know that they wound up first in North Africa just like the 2nd Battalion did, but the 3rd Battalion and regimental headquarters went right straight into Italy. But originally, the 100th wound up in North Africa. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 44 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Where did Company H---where did Company H land? KEEGAN: Well, we---the 2nd Battalion landed in---minus E Company. E Company, we were on Liberty ships. E Company---all of H Company---all of the 2nd Battalion was on one ship, except E Company. E Company was on another ship with some other elements of the 4-4-2, and they all went into Naples. We wound up in North Africa CREW MEMBER: Oran. Oran, North Africa. KEEGAN: No, it wasn't Oran, North Africa. The French, it was under French control. It slips my mind. INTERVIEWER: It's okay. We can . . . KEEGAN: But we went from Camp Shelby by train, and I was telling you somebody's story today about one of the officers under my command and one of the officers in the 2nd Battalion were very good friends of mine. We went---I got married in November and they had been married before and they were in, [16:00] their wives and families whatever, like Captain Ensminger who was the S-3 of the battalion, he had his wife This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 45 of 68 �and two kids that lived in Hattiesburg. And the lieutenant colonel who was my first platoon leader, his wife lived in Hattiesburg, and we went---they picked me up after I got married and we used to drive back into Shelby together and we'd go home together, we became very good friends. And the thing that shocked me at the---when we were loading on the train getting ready to go, that the first was Ralph Ensminger telling his wife, she was really crying, I thought---I says---I told (inaudible), "What’s the matter with her?" "Well, Ralph had just told his wife that he's not coming back." Then the next thing I know is, there's Lieutenant Crone's wife was crying too and the same thing happened, he said he wasn’t coming back. So I said, "That’s impossible. How can anybody do that to their wives, anyway. So it really shocked me that they'd say that. So I got Crone on the train, "What the hell you talking to your wife like this for?" He says, "Well, I gotta feeling Captain that I'm not coming back and I told her that." "Why would you do that?" He said, "Well, I just wanted her to be prepared," and that’s what they did. Both of 'em felt that way, that they wanted their wives to be prepared. Well, they shocked 'em to start with [laughs] right there. And the amazing was is that we didn’t say anything about it all the way till we got to Naples, to either one of 'em. I never said another word about it until we got to Naples. We spent about three weeks [18:00] in North Africa guarding supplies and stuff like that because the ship that we were on, the Liberty ship, if you've ever been on a Liberty ship, it rocks and rolls. And these kids got sick, [laughs] really got sick and, of course, the chow that we ate was typical GI chow and most probably should have been a lot lighter food than what we had, but they really got sick. A And lot of 'em would be upstairs on the rails and doing their job, getting rid of it, but some of 'em couldn't and there was a lot cleaning up of the ship is all I can tell you. And I slept down---most of the officers slept up on the deck. I had---my quarters were down with the men. I was out right outside the mess hall and where the mess was prepared, the food was prepared, and just the smell of the food sometimes would make lot of these guys sick. It wasn’t very pleasant, it wasn't pleasant. Almost 30 days being on a ship like that and that’s what it was, zigzagging across the Atlantic, in the southern part of the Atlantic, and with hundreds and hundreds, as far as you could see, there were nothing but ships. Liberty ships, big ships, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, all kinds of ships out there, hundreds of 'em, until we got past the Gibraltar. Then the thing separated there and we went into, it on the tip of my mind, into a port in North Africa and unloaded there, and we were surprised. We spent three weeks in North Africa protecting supplies and stuff [20:00] that was in this particular part of the world, and patrolling down as far---our patrol---I took a patrol as far south as the Sahara Desert is Sidi Bel Abbes, which is the home of French Foreign Legion, because we heard that some of the Germans had been in that particular area. The Germans were everywhere, and what---these were stragglers that trying to pick 'em up and bring 'em back, from This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 46 of 68 �Rommel's, the Korps, Afrika Korps and all that, that hadn't made in out. Then finally we got on a ship that---you're right, Oran is the right place, yeah, I think, got on a ship, a British ship, and it was worse than the Liberty ships. The food was terrible, sickening. The ship wasn’t up to---wasn’t as clean as the Liberty ship, the British ship. And a lot of kids got sick again. And we came into Naples, and of course when we got into Naples, the units that were there had already been reequipped with the new equipment that they've got, that was there for 'em. And then we had to go through the same drill when we got off the ship, so we spent a couple of weeks in Naples getting reequipped and zeroing in our weapons and so on and so forth. Then we boarded a landing craft from Naples and moved up to Anzio; at least the 2nd Battalion did. Second Battalion was held in reserve in the harbor at Anzio with the purpose of that it may be employed. The other units of the regiment went up to Civitavecchia eventually after the Fifth Army broke through the Anzio line and went up through Rome. When we first came [22:00] into Anzio beach area there, stayed on the ships, landing craft, I guess it was for two or three days, until they broke through and went up through Rome. Whereas the rest of the regiment had gone up, on the sea up into, offshore of Civitavecchia. And soon as Civitavecchia was cleared, they moved ashore and then we came up. INTERVIEWER: What was your first experience in combat? What were the . . . KEEGAN: The first day---God, why would you bring that up? First, the first experience was in the place called near the vicinity of Belvedere. And now, of course, Belvedere is known now in the history of the 4-4-2 where the 100th Battalion got the Presidential Unit Citation. And how this happened was very embarrassing to a lot of people. The 3rd Battalion was supposed to attack up toward Belvedere, and there was a road separating the 3rd Battalion and the 2nd Battalion. Second Battalion is supposed to take the high ground over here on the right of Belvedere. And this is---we did---we got up and we took the high ground over here, but then was a huge gap between the 3rd and the 2nd Battalion. And Belvedere---the 3rd Battalion's supposed to take Belvedere. So what happened was is that at 10 o’clock we had already moved from, starting at 6 o’clock in the morning, up to this high ground, the 2nd Battalion, we had the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 47 of 68 �Fox Company and E Company up on the high ground, and George Company was in reserve. And next thing we know, at 10 o’clock, we got orders---I got orders from Colonel Hanley that we would stop on the hill and wait for the 3rd Battalion to move up, we got a great big open flank. [24:00] In the meantime, new orders came down that told us to attack in this direction, and---what---then, why, I don't know. Nobody knows, except that left Fox Company way over here and then E Company all they did was do a right face and move down the ridge like this, and then George Company who was down the road moved down the ridge---the other ridge down this way with the road in between going in the east away from Belvedere. In other words, we were moving out this way to protect what was going on at Belvedere and then the 100th Battalion went in between the two battalions and took Belvedere. But Fox Company never got the word. Fox Company, we were supposed to originally move out from this new position at 10 o’clock, but then it was delayed until 12 o’clock because of the 100th Battalion wasn’t ready to move. So Fox Company moved out, they were supposed to be our reserve, moved down this road. And then nobody knew where they were. I didn’t know where they were. Colonel Hanley thought they were to our rear. They weren't to our rear, they were way out in front of us, and they got clobbered. The Germans were setup for 'em for some reason or other and my executive officer was with Fox Company, Lieutenant Meyers. And the first thing I knew of anything, he was calling me on the radio and he says, "You know where I am?" I says, "Hell no. I don't know, where are you? Aren't you to the rear of me?" He says, "No, we're down---way the hell down here at this road and you see this farmhouse?" he said, "I can see you people. You see this farmhouse down the---way down the road down on the other side of that river?" I says, "Yes." He says, "I'm on the top floor of that building, that house, farmhouse. [26:00] And he says, "The Germans are all around this house, their down underneath the house." I said, "What are you doing up on the top floor?" He said, "Well, that's where I was before the Germans came." And I said, "Well, where are your men?" He said, "My men are down Fox Company and they're all---they're under machine gun fire and all kinds of fire being exposed to the Germans---by the Germans." In the meantime, the 100th's attacking Belvedere, see, and we're in this mess. And my jeep driver almost got himself killed. The Germans opened fire with the machine gun, coming right down this road, and finally he got smart and got off the road and we both bailed out. And then I went back and saw Colonel Hanley and I said, "What in the hell is going on?" And he said at just about that time, his CP was off the road in a little drop not far from us. And then German artillery started showering the whole mess out of the battalion headquarters, and that’s where Captain Ensminger got This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 48 of 68 �killed, he was the S-3. And I was thinking, "My God, my mortar platoon most probably in the same place and they were, but we didn’t lose any men. And so, Takeo Hedani, who was a section sergeant, came up to me, he says, "What are we gonna do, captain?" I said, "The first thing you're gonna do, you're gonna put your mortars on the forward slope of this ridge." He said, "We weren't trained to do that." I says, "Put 'em on the forward slope of this ridge. You put 'em on the rear slope," I said, "you're gonna get killed." He says, "Okay." And I said, "Get ready to fire. You see that house down there? Be ready to fire beyond that house to start with and then I'll correct your fire when you---after your first two or three rounds because Lieutenant Meyers is up there, he'll be the observer. [28:00] And the artillery observer---the artillery forward observer was with me at the same. He says, "You want me to do the same thing, captain?" I says, "Yes. I want you to start getting your bits together with your battery and fire beyond the house first. And then we'll have Lieutenant Meyers adjust the fire coming towards the house." And that's what we did. And that's the only way they got Fox Company out of there. They had people missing in action. Sergeant Kaichi and Tahara, who were with Lieutenant Meyers, were down there pulling bodies and wounded people back into a ditch and trying to protect them with their own bodies. I don't know how many people, the wounded men that they moved out of the open areas down into the ditches and then into the riverbed to get 'em away from the German fire. But anyway, those two got Silver Stars for what they did. And Lieutenant Meyers, I was gonna write him up for Silver Star, he said, "No, you're not." I said---he said---I says, "Why not?" He said, "Unless you write yourself for a Silver Star, I'm not gonna get a Silver Star from you." [Laughs.] So we didn't write up anything. Anyway, that's the first day of combat. I stood there and watched them pull everything back, I guess it was midnight before I got out of there, and I watched the 34th Division come back in, and you think about people that were teed off, the 34th Division battalion, I can't remember the name of the battalion commander, went past me and he says, "What in the hell happened to you people?" [Laughs.] I says, "Don't ask me. I haven't the least idea," I said, "I still don't know what happened." And anyway, the same guy I talked to about two weeks later, he says, "You know," he says, "there's one hell of a lot of Germans, dead Germans, around that house up there." [30:00] I says, "There was?" I says, "I never went up there." (Inaudible) Bob Meyers." He said, "They were all over the place." And he said, "Also there This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 49 of 68 �were some dead Americans too." But that was out first day of combat. They were tough. It was--something happened there which I still don't know what---why Tom Akins from Fox Company didn't get the message. Otherwise, everything would have been fine. He just didn't get the message. INTERVIEWER: Can you---you mentioned earlier about two soldiers who, when they left their wives, what they told them. Can you tell us what happened? KEEGAN: Yeah, well, you mean Lieutenant Crone and Captain Ensminger. What happened, I mean, this is very unique, I mean, Ensminger was killed the first day of combat as I just told you, with battalion headquarters. He was one of the first casualties in the battalion---in our battalion. Actually, first probably in the 4-4-2. And that night when I was thinking about this, I thought, "I'm real glad I sent Lieutenant Crone to Rome." You know, I thought maybe---but he'd come back and have a different opinion. So when he did come back, he came back when we got into a rest about, I guess it was about 10 days later, he came back and joined us in the rest camp. We'd gone through Belvedere and a few other small skirmishes. We hadn't gone up to Hill 140 yet. Where---he came back and I said, "Now have you written to your wife and (inaudible)?" He says, "Well, Chris," he says, "I've written to her and I still don't---I still have a feeling that I'm not really coming back." I says, "I don’t understand it," I said, "you're," he's a college graduate, really is, Lieutenant Crone, and his wife was too. I says, "I don’t understand how you could say that." I says, "I couldn’t say that to my wife, I mean, even If I had the feeling, I wouldn't tell her that." He said, "Well, I just wanted to prepare her. This is the second time. I just wanted her to be prepared, to understand that I will not be coming back." And so his first combat was on Hill 140, [02:00] and I’m up at Hill 140 observing one of the rifle companies which was up there already which was Fox Company and George Company was off to my right and then my mortar platoon was already up there, was already firing, and next thing I know is that somebody on the radio, the platoon sergeant of the 1st Platoon is telling me, he says, "Lieutenant Crone and his messenger, Melvin, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 50 of 68 �has been hit." I said, "What do you mean he's been hit?" He said, "They were shot by a German." I said, "Well, where are they?" "They're being sent back to the aid station." I says, "Well, were they still conscious?" "Yeah, they were both still conscious but," he says, "Lieutenant Crone is very---is critical. The aid man says he's very critical and they had to hurry and get him back and make sure that the Captain Ushiro, who was the medical officer in the battalion to take care of him." But I talked to Captain Ushiro that night. I went back to aid station and I said, "What happened?" He says, "Well," he says, "I couldn't do anything, he just lost too much blood and just died." And he said, "One thing," and he says, "Chris," he says, "I learned one thing," he says, "I’m getting closer to the front. I was too far back." He says, "I may have had a chance if I'd been up closer to see that he hadn’t died, I could've done something." He said, "But when he came in he had lost too much blood." Of course they had blood plasma and everything. The medics had put it on him but he was still bleeding, and whatever they put on him just kept oozing out. He was shot right straight through the stomach and it hit the main artery, [is] what it did, at the same time. Anyway, [04:00] Captain Ushiro, from then on, I mean, the next---that night he moved his aid station in front of me. I'm at the OP here, he moved to a little gully down there, he had the aid station right down in front of where I was at the OP. It was amazing. I says, "You're too close." He says, "I gotta be this close, Chris," he says, "and that's protected," he says, "you know, I'm down here in the ditch and then I can take care of the casualties," and we had a lot of casualties on Hill 140. For example, in George Company, they lost all their officers except the company commander, on Hill 140. All the Caucasian officers got hit, wounded, killed. Except captain---except they won’t put it. I want to cut that in (Inaudible)_4:40_ except captain except captain, who was the company---yeah, Bill Aull, Captain Aull. He was a lawyer, a graduate lawyer. He didn't---he was---and I talked to him, he was shocked. I says, "What happened?" He says, "Well," he says, "we just got in the wrong place and the right time for the Germans; they just clobbered the hell out of us." INTERVIEWER: Do you think that when you were---before you the 4-4-2 went into their first battle, do you think that, well, the 100th was already doing battle. KEEGAN: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 51 of 68 �Yeah. They were battle trained. INTERVIEWER: Do you think that if the 100th did not do as well as they did, what would have happened to the 4-4-2? Do you think anything different would've . . . KEEGAN: No, I don’t think anything was different; I think that the 2nd and 3rd Battalion really learned a lesson the first day of combat. A very timely lesson which---we lost some men, yes, but we, I think we learned from that lesson that the first thing is communications, see, that’s where we messed up. The communications got all---we were not used to---you have to understand about something about the radios at that time that we had, that company commanders had. [06:00] If you're in (inaudible) you don't get nothing, that’s what happened, see. In other words, most of the radios were line of sight. So if you're on the other side of this hill over here and you're trying to get ahold of the guy up here, you're not gonna get him. [Laughs.] That was the radio---type of radios we had; it was line of sight. And that’s what happened and we learned. So from then on we---that’s why I---or most of the time I learned a long time ago of being on top of a hill, and that's where I was most of the time; I was on top of hills. INTERVIEWER: What type of decision making did you have to make, like, when you're given orders, what kind of decision making do you have to make as a captain in terms of strategy and positioning? KEEGAN: Well, like in a heavy weapons company you got two machine guns platoons and you got a mortar platoon which has six tubes, two sections---three sections and each section has two tubes, 81s. You have to---my---I have a theory about how to employ mortars, a lot of people don't. My theory is you This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 52 of 68 �maintain all four---six tubes together because you can produce more combat power decisively than when you separate 'em. Some people don't. Some people separate and put 'em in support of maybe one section is for this company and one section is for this company. I wouldn't do that. My theory or use was keep all six guns---just like artillery, you don't separate artillery either, but some heavy weapons company commanders did that. They put---but thing is, the rifle companies had 60mm mortars, you didn't have to do that, see? So I kept mine together. In a way---and also like in the rifle companies with their 60mm mortars, they didn't separate 'em either, they kept 'em together 'cause they get more [08:00] firepower that way. The same way with the machine guns. You could put machine guns in direct support of companies or you could put 'em in general support. If you put 'em in direct support that means they're right with the company. And they weren't really under the control of the that company commander, which I didn't like to do that. I wanted control all the time, so I'd put 'em in general support so that, if necessary, I could move 'em more rapidly that way. Besides, we happened to go through the company commander of the rifle company who we were in direct support of. INTERVIEWER: Could you talk a little bit about you and some of the awards and that you received; how did you receive them? KEEGAN: Well, Purple Hearts are not---I got one Purple Heart at the pink house, and that was kind of a strange thing, 'cause the pink house was the next big battle after Hill 140. This is where the lieutenant took off from I talked about before. The pink house was a very strategic OP. We could see all the way from there to the Medi[terranean] to the sea. And that’s where---that's---the 100th and 442nd were---we were taking all the high ground, see, away from the Germans. That’s what---lot of people don't realize what we were doing. And taking the high ground away from the Germans so that the Germans couldn’t use the road net that we wanted; they couldn't cover the road net which we needed to support the Fifth Army. That’s what---that’s basically what the 100th and the 4-4-2 is clearing all the high ground and get the Germans out of the way. In this particular place, the pink house, was a very strategic location. [10:00] I was up there, OP’s firing artillery and mortars in support of the battalion, two companies, G This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 53 of 68 �Company and I guess it was E Company. And one of my---Sugiyama, who was in the, which one was he in? the first or second, well, anyways, he was a machine gunner, machine gun sergeant. He was on one of the flanks where---which became under attack by the Germans, an opened flank. And he was out there and the platoon leader of the platoon, Lieutenant Peterson, called back and said, "We got trouble, Captain," he says, "our left flank is exposed, the rifle company doesn’t have---well-protected. I got one section out there of machine guns, and if we don’t get some artillery fire or mortar fire, we’re gonna lose 'em." Well, before I could adjust the fire for mortars and artillery---I could see it, I could see what was going on. Sugiyama had taken his own initiative. He put his machine guns---two sections---the two machine guns and (inaudible) which the Germans couldn't see. Then he went forward to see where the Germans were, and he actually attacked the Germans himself with grenades and carbine, well, most of 'em---I wouldn't say car[bine]---most of 'em were carrying Browning automatics, machine gun type pistols which they got from some place. [Laughs.] [12:00] Automatic weapons which had more firepower than the carbine had. He did it single-handedly, he stopped the attack, and then came back and then got the machine guns focused on the Germans at the same time. At the same time this was happening, we were (inaudible) into place with artillery and mortar fire which added to the---his problem, because he was fighting individuals, the German soldiers. And he sat up there and continued to throw grenades and everything else, same time has the machine guns shooting at the Germans. And finally the Germans got him. I don’t know how many Germans he killed, but he got the Distinguished Service Cross for that at the same time. But back here at the OP, well, that was just shortly after that happened, the Germans woke up to what we were doing. So, they started clobbering the pink house. One round---I had moved from my position at OP in the barn here---you have to understand German, I mean, Italian houses. You got a house here and right next to it is what they call the barn where the cows and pigs and everything else lived. They lived practically in the same building as the family to take care of 'em---they take care of 'em easily. So I moved from there and started to move inside the building, and I started to open this door with my left hand and all---a round of 88s came into that room. There's a soldier on the other side, evidently, something---the shrapnel or something hit---severed his neck, [14:00] and the gush---I was blood from here [indicating the top of his head] all way down, from this young Nisei. And at that time, I turned around, there was a window over there, and I yelled out, "medics! medics!" Got all the medics you can't 'em in here. This---most of the people in there were artillery radio operators or battalion radio operators, that’s what the type of people that were in there. Key people. And Hanley was there and he says, "What’s wrong?" I says, "We got a group of casualties in here in this room and I don’t know how many." And he looked at me, he said, "What happened to you?" This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 54 of 68 �I said, "What do you mean?" He says, "You're blood all over." I says, "I'm not worried about that, let’s get the medics up here, I'm fine." [Laughs.] So we got the medics up and when I'm saying the medics, they came right away. Captain Ushiro had put us aid station, I don’t think it was 400 yards from this building, and they were up there in no time and got the casualties out and took of 'em and finally looked at me, Ushiro said, "What’s wrong with you?" I said, "Nothing." He says, "You're full of blood." I says, "Well, there’s nothing wrong with me." So, by this time it was starting to get dark, so I started walking back towards my command post. And on the way back, a German soldier was in the same path I was. All I did is take my carbine and pointed it at him, he raised his hand. And I said, "About face," he knew exactly what I wanted and I said, "Walk," and he walked straight in front of me all the way back to where company CP and then turn him over to Sergeant Saraye and he took him---got him back to battalion. In the meantime, Saraye's looking at me, he says, "What happened to you?" he says, "you're full of blood. [16:00] You got blood all over everything." So, well, I told him. He said, "We better get it cleaned up." So in the meantime, I didn’t know that I had been hit, but this hand here was full of shrapnel. [Laughs.] I didn’t know, I was covered---all covered with blood. I didn't pay---I went in and took a wash and soaped it all up and everything else, and Frank says, "You better go to the aid station." "Naw, don't worry about it. It's a small piece of shrapnel, don't worry about it." We had our own medical kits, you know, and I took that out and bandaged it up and . . . Didn't pay any attention to it for, I guess, over a month. We got up to the Arno River and then some of these things started to get infested, so I had to go back to the aid station anyway. I had to go back to the hospital and they had to clean this all out, and they never did get 'em all out, but . . . INTERVIEWER: There's still some fragments? KEEGAN: Yeah. Every time I get x-rayed or something, I got, still got anywheres from 10 or 15 pieces of shrapnel somewhere in my body. [Laughs.] This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 55 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Can we jump forward please to---were you involved in the Lost Battalion? KEEGAN: No, no I wasn’t. I was involved in taking Bruyeres. I was involved in the leading the O'Connor Task Force through the lines, the friendly lines, that separated the 2nd and 3rd Battalion; leading them up there where they eventually took a---jumped off to make their attack. And on the way back, the area which we came out of was being shelled. The Germans shelled the areas where they thought we were. [18:00] And to protect myself from the area where they were, I jumped from a 10 foot cliff down to the ground and I thought I broke both legs but I didn’t. I wound up in the hospital again, so . . . INTERVIEWER: So that’s where you were when that was . . . KEEGAN: Yeah. And when they---I was---I was up at the time the O'Connor Task Force was committed, then I was back there, the hospital, because my both ankles had been severely strained and then the one on the left was---bones were broken in it, and I didn’t know that until the next morning. Colonel Hanley put me to bed and, at that time, I was acting as the battalion S-3 besides the company commander, and he put me to bed and he says, "You need some rest." So I---but when I woke up the next morning I couldn’t put my boots on. Both ankles are just swollen out like that, so . . . INTERVIEWER: As an officer, technically speaking, was the Lost Battalion---strategically, was that something that is right in the Army, I mean, in terms of . . . This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 56 of 68 �KEEGAN: Well, you have to understand the terrain in which we were functioning in. It's a---the terrain was very heavily wooded, I mean, the ridges were very heavily wooded, with pine forest and typical of what's in Europe. People preserved their forests on the hills, and that they cultivated down the valleys. They didn’t cultivate the hills and they used---and they wanted the hills that remained covered with the forest. And so it was easy to get lost. [20:00] Particularly if you're moving at night, it was easy to get lost, and I think that’s what happened to the Lost Battalion, they got most probably they're going down one of these ridges and they got lost. I mean, you could get lost because you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face in these forests at night, and that's what happened to 'em, they just got lost. And they got too far out to start with, that's another matter, the means of communication, why they lost communication with their people. And then the same thing happened to the Germans. The Germans, there wasn't more than the Texas unit being lost, there were some German units lost, too, in this whole area. [Laughs.] Around---back in Bruyeres, that’s what happened in Bruyeres. There was a unit behind George and E Company, in between George and E Company and Bruyeres, there was an unit, lost German unit, sitting there [laughs]. And what happened that night when after we took the---before we took the O'Connor Task Force out, we had a problem with that unit because when the 2nd Battalion tried to bring up the supplies to George and E Company, they got clobbered about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning. And being the S-3, I'm, "What the hell," why didn’t people understand that they---I knew they were there. Then something---and then Lieutenant Farnum is this A-number-one officer who was now in the 2nd Battalion, he was battalion executive officer, I mean, the company executive officer of the headquarters company. I says, "What in the hell, didn't you know that?" He said, "No," he says, "I didn’t know that." "Colonel Hanley didn’t tell ya?" He said, "No, he didn't tell me." [22:00] I says, "Well, I can tell you that we're gonna have a problem on our hands." I says, "How many people you have left in your (inaudible) Platoon?" A and P Platoon. He said, "We got about 10." I says, "Well," I says, "that's not enough." I says, "I tell you what. I'll give you half a section of the mortar platoon," and I said, "I want you and that mortar platoon section leader, Lieutenant (inaudible), he was a sergeant (inaudible) and eventually became a lieutenant. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 57 of 68 �The first---understand that you're going into combat, you're gonna get fired on, they're gonna shoot at you. And I want you to stay behind that---there's a trail going up in there, you stay behind that trail, don’t get on that trail, stay behind the trail and then take your force and keep going up that trail as far as you can go and then attack down the trail. They didn't do that. They walked up the trail and got clobbered. And Sergeant Kuroda, who was one of mine, my platoon, my section leader, section sergeants, he did a---fought a battle all by himself and he got the Distinguished Service Cross. And Farnum got the Silver Star for what they did, but they cleaned the mess up, eventually. INTERVIEWER: What’s your opinion on the whole situation of rescuing the Lost Battalion and how it was done? KEEGAN: Well, I think you have to understand what---most of the officers in the units that were involved in it, in the final attack on---to clear the Lost Battalion, most of 'em are gone. Most of the Caucasian officers and lieutenants are gone (inaudible). There were either killed or wounded, and particularly in the 3rd Battalion. Ted Ohira, for example, and his platoon leader, Lieutenant Williams, who was in my company, their story they says they were acting [24:00] as infantry. Lieutenant Williams who was the platoon leader in mortar platoon, he's got a recon force of the mortar platoon, coming down there to see what the Germans are doing, see. [Laughs.] This is not infantry, this is heavy weapons people. And the thing is is that, being sharp, we had one real sharp observer with 'em, finally spotted the Germans. And it was good thing they did because it save all their damned lives. But they finally spotted where the Germans were, the German tanks were, and they got fire on the tank and the Germans by artillery and the mortars platoon itself, which helped. But there was hardly any officers left. I mean, I was gone, Young Oak Kim wasn't there, he was wounded at Biffontaine with one of my officers. One of my---he was captured there at Biffontaine. Lieutenant Gleischer, who got wounded at Biffontaine in support of the 100th Battalion section. See, that's where I didn't---Meyers and I disagreed; he separated the mortars, see. He put one section here, one section here, and that, I wouldn't do, but he did. And I'm not saying, but it was wrong. Anyway, Gleischer got hit and he was wounded, and Young Oak Kim and his sergeant both got hit and they were being carried by the Germans, back as prisoners of war. Except the Germans This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 58 of 68 �left him on the ridge above Biffontaine, and I guess maybe they were doing---getting something to eat or something. Anyway, Young Kim and his sergeant, they rolled off the stretcher and rolled down the hill, even though they were wounded, they escaped. But Gleischer couldn't. He had said---I talked to Gleischer, he had, well, I talked to Young Oak Kim, too. But [26:00] Gleischer had such a wound that he couldn't [escape], he almost lost his arm from shrapnel, I mean, yeah, from shrapnel. Yeah, and I felt real bad about that because I chewed him out unmercifully, Gleischer, in front of his section. INTERVIEWER: Although you weren't there, was there---what was the opinion among the other officers about General Dahlquist's orders? KEEGAN: Oh, well, Dahlquist was a rare, a real rare, I don't know if he was stupid or what, but how he ever got to be a Major General I don't know. But in my caliber, he wasn’t a Major General. The first thing we had before we were attacking Bruyeres, he came up the ridge before Bruyeres, and his aide didn't have a helmet. And I'm standing there looking at this guy, and said, "Who in the hell are you lieutenant? Where's your helmet?" He says, "I'm the general's aide." I says, "That's no damn excuse. Where the hell's your helmet?" [Laughs.] And do you know he get killed, I guess it was near Biffontaine. He was a young lieutenant. He says, "I don't have wear a helmet." I says, "Who says so?" He says, "The general says I don't have to wear a helmet, he's not wearing one." I said, "Don’t do what the general's doing. If you want to live, put your helmet on." He didn't. He got killed up, somewhere before between Bruyeres and Biffontaine. I didn’t, like most of us, we didn’t have much respect for Dahlquist. I think he put us in---he put the 4-4-2 in positions that the 4-4-2 should have never been in. Let me give you a typical example: the 2nd Battalion had gone through Bruyeres, and I had watched 'em go through it, I'm sitting up at the OP [28:00] with Lieutenant Okusako, who's a forward observer, like, he was one of the officers---sergeants that I had promoted, he was the observer for one of the sections of the mortar platoon at that particular time. And we were watching George and E Company move down the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 59 of 68 �road, the main road into Bruyeres and shooting and firing and going down there. And we were firing mortars in support of 'em and knocked down one of the half-tracks that the Germans had there with the mortars, and then we continued firing in front of the George and E Company as they moved up and cleared the area on in Bruyeres. And after they done that, Dahlquist wanted to do it over again. [Laughs.] He wanted to come back and do it all over again. So that he could have movies. So instead of doing that, Colonel Pence employed the 3rd Platoon---3rd Battalion in an attack on Bruyeres for the benefit of General Dahlquist, and Bruyeres was already taken. [Laughs.] Well, all that the 3rd Battalion did was they cleared some Germans out of the some of the houses is what they did, in the basements (laughter). That’s a real true story. INTERVIEWER: That’s amazing. KEEGAN: But, he had the cameras up there, he had the press taking pictures and everything of the 3rd Battalion making the attack and taking Bruyeres. And you'll see it on U.S. military photos, the same thing. INTERVIEWER: So that stuff is pretty much reenacted, I mean, you can't take it if you already have it. KEEGAN: Well, it tells you [30:00] what kind of a guy Dahlquist was. He put us in some---in the---he put the regiment in some very embarrassing positions. Which---and he did that with his own troops, the 36th Division, too, which is not saying much for Dahlquist. And I don't think the people of the 36th Division thought much of Dahlquist either. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 60 of 68 �INTERVIEWER: Okay, Colonel Keegan, what’s---before we get to the end of the war, what---is there anything that you want to point out that---about the 4-4-2 and your men that may have stood out that we haven’t talked about? KEEGAN: Well, my men in H Company were, to me, were astounding individuals. People that---they catered to me to the extent that I really didn’t know, I mean, I don’t want to say that I was their hero, I wasn’t, but they think I was. What I was trying to do is save as many lives as I possibly could and then still do the job that was assigned to us, whatever task it may be. And I think that, I think that we did real well in that area. I think that we had trained our people so well that they knew how to conduct themselves under combat conditions. As I said before, they could be heavy weapons people, they could be riflemen, and that’s what---infantrymen---and that’s what they did. They could do either job very well. Although they weren't trained as infantrymen, they could do the infantryman’s job, because they're the type of people that they had to support, so they had to know how the infantry action then worked. At the same time, what started in Shelby was something unique in my company. We had a party every month in the mess hall. All the all the officers, all the enlisted men, and eventually the wives came, too, to it, so that we got to know each other, I mean, not just as leaders and---[02:00] by day, but that we were real persons by night and then that . . . So, in that type of thing, the parties that we had in those days, I think just lived on. Even when we were in combat we---they still built up the party fund. And I told Saraye, "What are you doing that for?" "Oh," he says, "one of these days this thing is gonna be over, we're gonna have a party again like we used to have in Shelby. We're gonna have a party for everybody, the officers and their wives and everybody." And so, they'd sell the cigarettes to French and Italians that came in the packets. They'd sell the sugar, the candy, which they didn't eat. They'd get rid of it and build up their fund. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 61 of 68 �And sometimes they'd trade it for food, you know, fresh vegetables or something like that. But---and I never objected to that. Some company commanders objected, I didn’t. I thought this is one way of getting---making friends with the Italians, making friends with the French. Because they needed, they needed some of the stuff that we had which they didn’t have because of their ration and so on, and because of the war, they---most of 'em didn't have cigarettes anymore. Most of 'em didn't have chocolates or sweet stuff which we had. And this is what they traded for vegetables or even chickens or whatever it may be, to amplify our own food supplies. We had a spirit in H Company, not only with me, but also with the other officers like Peterson and Paddock and Williams, that still lives on. I mean, I don’t know of any company that---where the officers in the enlisted men got together so often. I mean, this is---you---today’s Army you don’t do that. I mean, the officers don’t cohabitate with, so to speak, with the enlisted men. It's not [04:00] supposedly the thing to do. We did it. And we did it because we wanted to be friends, we wanted to have esprit, we wanted to all know that we're all human beings, we're all doing the same thing. And realizing that what they're doing is trying to promote something that’s honorable, in other words, as, what was it, Dan Inouye's dad said, "Don't dishonor the family." He wasn't the only one that said that, a whole bunch of 'em said that, too. Particularly to those who---that we are in---came from a Hawaii. But they had that spirit, they didn’t want to dishonor the family. They would---and you might call it gallantry, you might call it bravery or whatever it is, but I think it was more fighting for their honor than they were for being brave or to get medals or anything else. And these guys became---we became friends. Not just comrades, we became friends in combat. When I would---when I got hit at Mount Belevedere when---the Gothic---going through the Gothic Line in Italy, when we came back to Italy, I thought that'd be the last time I'd see these guys, I'd never see 'em again. And they brought to me, I can’t remember who brought it, a scroll, a great big thing it's about [indicates size of scroll with his hands], was a very complimentary words for me, but everybody that was in that company signed it. And all names of the people who died they had their names on there, and all the people who had been in unit during the war, their names were in there. And I This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 62 of 68 �thought---it's still in my, it's in my office, it hangs up there, it’s a place of honor. But---and I thought that'd be the end. It wasn’t the end. [06:00] When I came back, one of the first things I did, I made a couple of speeches in Cincinnati about Japanese Americans. And same time I was trying to complete the---well, I had already completed most of my requirements for my education, but doing that, too, we--I got mixed up with the JACL, they invited me to their meetings. Next thing you know they made me vice president of the JACL in Cincinnati. And these guys were---none of these people who I am talking about had served in the military. They were all Japanese/American businessmen who lived in Cincinnati, and their families. And when my first child was born, where do we get a high chair? We got it from one of the Japanese Americans. I told my---"We're looking for a high chair," and, "Oh, Chris, we got one for you, take it." That carried on, so, and then some of 'em visited me at in Cincinnati, some of the GIs, as they came back. In fact, Doc Ushiro who went to University of Cincinnati Medical School, he'd come and see us and my family and my wife’s family and visit us and they, the guys were visiting him, like, Sergeant Kiyota from Colorado Springs would come and visit me. And then he wanted to have a---they wanted to have one of the reunions up in Seattle, and I thought this was great. And then my division commander General Hutchins, he says, "You were 4-4-2, Chris?" I says, "Yeah." He said, "Gee, what a great outfit." He says, "You know any of the guys---anybody in Hawaii?" I says, "Why?" [08:00] He says, "Well," he said, "we're trying to have a luau." "What do you mean, luau?" "The wives want to have a big party." I was in charge of what they call a brigade at that time up there and I was also---he had nominated me for the Dad's Club and I was the president of Dad's Club and I got to know his wife very well. I said, "Well, I'll talk to Mrs. Hutchins." He says, "Okay. Will you do that to see what . . ." So, I talked to---what she wants, she wanted to have a luau, a Hawaiian party. And I told Ann, I said, "What do you think we should do? Should we write to somebody in Hawaii and see what can do to help us?" and she says, "Well, why don't you just call a couple." So, I called the President of the H Chapter, and then he says, "What do you want?" I says, "Whatever you can get." So, a guy by the name of Papoose Sadanaga, that was his name, Papoose, they call---everybody called him Papoose, little guy, he was the kind of the guy who could do anything, get anything, whatever. So, he called me up and he said, "What do you need?" I said, "Well," I says, "you know, just something, decorations or something for---the ladies want to have a Hawaiian-type party. They have a party every year and they want this to be Hawaiian type." He said, "Well, you have any Hawaiians there?" I says, "No, I don’t know if there's any Hawaiians. We do have some Samoans, though. And they're in my unit, This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 63 of 68 �some Samoan guys. He said, "You think they can cook a pig?" "Oh," I says, "I'm sure they can cook pig, they can do anything." He says, "Well, ask 'em if they know how to cook Hawaiian-type pig." So I asked the guys, "Oh---we---that’s easy, we can do that, we can do that all the time, see." So I said---I called [10:00] him back and said, "Yeah, they can do it." He says, "Okay, we're gonna send you everything you need for a Hawaiian party, everything. I says, "Well," I says, "Will you let me know so we can meet it at the airplane or something like that?" He says, "I'll let you know." So about a month later he calls me, he says, "You got two, two-and-a-half-ton trucks?" [Laughs.] I said, "What you are talking about?" "We're sending you by air on flight so-and-so and flight so---two flights, enough material, food, dresses, aloha shirts, aloha dresses, oh, flowers, plants, you're gonna need two, two-and-a-half- ton trucks to haul this stuff." He says, "And I'm coming too," Papoose did. He said, "I'm gonna make sure they do this right, the Samoans." We had pineapples, I don't know, pineapples and then mangoes and cases of the stuff, and dresses I think for every lady and Fort Lewis that belonged to the officer’s club. Muumuus, what do you call 'em, muumuus. INTERVIEWER: Right, right. KEEGAN: Aloha shirts for everybody and everything else. I was just astounded. And he came and he helped decorate the whole place, Papoose did, the officer's club. And the ladies just couldn’t get over it. It was just something---I couldn’t get over it either, and that was a beginning that of---not only my friendship with Hawaii, see, the guys in Hawaii. And ever since that, we meet, well, we meet with the guys in L.A. about once or twice a year. We meet---we go up to Laughlin or we go up to Vegas with 'em, or we go--or they come down to Escondido and meet us down there. And originally we used to have a party at my house, but it got to be so many people we just---it wasn’t enough room in my house so we used---we had the party at the motels, you know. [12:00] INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 64 of 68 �What we'd like to do when we finish up is---would you have a message to say to certain people. Would you have something to say to your H Company, I mean, it sounds like you guys were so close and . . . KEEGAN: You mean like, I'm like the father to 'em now. Well, I would say more than that, more than friendly, friendly father, I mean, they respect me beyond my anticipation to start it with, and I think it’s because they learned so much from me as a leader and lot of 'em have become leaders maybe because of what I did to them in war. I have such a strong f[eeling]---so does my family, and she was has a very strong feeling towards everybody in H Company, whether it's the men or it's women or the kids, I mean, we knew all the kids, too. She knows all the wives by name, she knows all the kids that they have, the children, and we watched them all grow up and they watched our kids grow up too. And our kids became friends with their kids, their children. When we visit Hawaii, when I was assigned to Hawaii in 1966, a whole flock of 'em came out on the pilot ship to meet me and my family. Doc Ushiro and Lieutenant, er, Major Kaichi who was in my company. He stayed in the Army and became a major. And Tahara, who at the time was a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, he served not only in Korea, but [14:00] eventually became a colonel and served in South Vietnam, full bird. All of these guys came out to meet me and the family. And then when we came in, we had pictures in the newspaper and of course my former general at Fort Lewis was now the Chief of staff of CINCPAC; he had three stars. So the first thing we did when we got there, we got there on a Saturday and next day, we---they had found quarters for us to live on, H Company did, a condo. Of course, we didn’t have any quarters at that time assigned by the Army, and down there in Waikiki. And we went you to the beach and General Hutchins was on the beach, too, in the officer's area, and he came over and he said, "What a great thing I saw in the newspaper. You and your entire family covered with leis from here up to the top of your head," 'cause that's the way the pictures were in the newspaper. And it's more respect than really I'm used to. I would say more---it's more like we have a love affair. A love affair because of the things we have done together, not only in wartime but also in peacetime. The guys like Lieutenant Meyers, for example, when I was going to the Army War College in 1962, I'm---when war ended---this type of school you go you work your butt off, I mean, it's a---the same time you're working on your master's degree, you're working for the---to graduate from the Army War College, you do two things, you get a master's degree at the same time you [16:00] get---graduate from the Army War College. And you're working day and This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 65 of 68 �night, weekends and everything. Anyway, it was midnight, the rest of the family’s asleep and I'm where doing what you may [call]---homework and Ann comes in and says, "You got a phone call from, believe it or not, Bob Meyers." I said, "What the hell is he calling me for at midnight." So I got to talk with Bob, he says, "I've been chasing you by telephone for the last week all over United States," and he said, "Now I finally got you and I gotta talk to you, Chris." I said, "Why?" He says, "Well, I got to have an operation." I said, "What for?" He says, "I got a tumor on my brain." He said, "And I want to talk to you in case I don’t make it." I says, "You're gonna make it." He says, "But I may not make it." He says, "I just wanted to tell you that you’re my dad, really," he said. He says, "I learned more from you in the short period of time that I was with H Company, than I did the rest of my life." That’s the kind of a person he was. That's the way I think most of the officers think about me, except maybe one. But, one of 'em thought I was too dominating, but---and the men, I think, take a completely different picture. They think I'm their fatherly leader and I enjoy that, I really do. I think if they think that about me, I think it's great. I think it’s a great honor to have served with 'em and it's an honor to be respected the way I am respected by them. They may---soon as I was in Hawaii, they made me the president of the Hawaii H Company chapter, and I didn’t want that, I had too many other things to do, but they did anyway. They said, "You don’t have to come to meetings. You're the president while you're here." [18:00] INTERVIEWER: That’s great. KEEGAN: I have a great respect for all of 'em. Even the one that caused us the most trouble named ?Paia?. ?Paia? was a, you might say a spoiled brat, from Hawaii, he's always in trouble. Didn’t make any difference where it was whether it was in Shelby or in combat or wherever. He was a---and when I finally saw him after the war when I got over there in 1966 in Hawaii, I met him on the golf course. I says, "Paia, what are you doing here?" "Well, I play golf, colonel." He didn't call me colonel he called me captain. "I'm out here playing," he said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm assigned to This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 66 of 68 �(inaudible) in assist, I mean, intelligence arena and I asked him, "What are you . . .?" "Oh, I got a great job. I'm working with TV and assignments and, you know, going out and taking pictures and stuff in newspapers everything else. And I said, "You really got stepped up." He says, "Oh," he says, "I'm a good guy now." [Laughs.] And I checked with the other guys and they say he really is. ?Paia? is really a changed---completely about. He's not the guy with the storm hanging over his head always in trouble anymore; he's a good guy. INTERVIEWER: That’s great thank you for time. Is there anything else that you want to add, I think, that we . . . KEEGAN: No, I would like to say this about you people. I think that you are doing a great job. I hope, I hope that, and I've told this to Debbie, I haven’t told this Christine, but when they're starting up the educational program, I says, this is the most important thing that’s going to happen in your lifetime, It really is. You gotta get [20:00] the word out not just about what you did during the war, but the reason you did it. The reason why you were there. The reason why you---fighting, you were fighting as American, not Japanese Americans, you were fighting as Americans, you were fighting for America and you are Americans. This was the thing that has to be really told. I'm so concerned about this that I don’t want people, like, they tell me now that they're gonna---the monument they're gonna build in Washington, D.C. is going to have a Japanese theme. I don’t think that should happen. It should have an American theme, just like the Go For Broke Monument that’s sitting there in Los Angeles, or the America---the 44-2 monument that sits up there in Waikiki. That doesn't have any Japanese theme, they are American themes. The 4-4-2 is American, 100th Battalion was American, it was---it had nothing to do with Japan. And I hope that you people do that. I really do. That the story is really gonna continue down. I've talked to high school kids, oh, how many times, once in---it was a couple of years ago, the last time I did in one of the high schools down in San Diego up there in Eastern part---El Cajon. A friend of mine, his son had became a teacher over there and he says, "Chris, would you, my son wants somebody to talk This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 67 of 68 �about World War II, particularly about the Japanese/American aspects of it and---for his history class." I said, "I'll be glad to do it." I went over there and I spent an hour with these kids, and when I got finished, they didn’t leave the room; they wanted to ask questions. They didn’t take their break, they didn’t go to their next class for another half hour. They were so interested in the [22:00] Japanese/American aspects of what happened. They didn't know anything about it. And this is what we gotta tell everybody. There's too many people who don't know your story. And some of your people don't know the story. There's a young lady who married a United Airlines pilot that lives in (inaudible) with me. She was born in Hawaii and she's a very nice young lady, I mean, she was a lady, she got two kids now with this airline pilot, and I says, "You're Hawaiian." "Yeah," she says, "I was born in Hawaii, my family lives in Hawaii." I says, "You ever hear of the 4-4-2 and 100th Battalion?" "No." "You never heard of the Japanese/American combat team?" "No. What is it?" This is in Hawaii! She's a grown woman with kids. How many other Japanese Americans don't know what you're talking about? Those kids who were born during the war and grew up. They don't know anything about it because their dad's weren't in the military at that time, right? That's---and that surprised me. I says, I told her, I says, "I'm shocked." She says, "Why?" I says, "Well, everybody in Hawaii should know about the 100th Battalion and the 4-4-2. "Cause ninety, let's say, anywheres between 65 and 70 percent of the people were in the 4-4-2 and 100th Battalion came from Hawaii. A major part of our troops came from Hawaii. My wife's gonna kill me. INTERVIEWER: Okay, we'll wrap up here. {Laughter.] Thank you so much for sharing your time and your stories. KEEGAN: I enjoyed it. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 68 of 68 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Christopher Keegan oral history interview, June 7, 1999 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Christopher Keegan oral history interview transcript [full interview], June 7, 1999 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Keegan, Christopher: narrator Yahata, Craig: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Type The nature or genre of the resource Transcriptions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Extent The size or duration of the resource. 68 pages, typscript Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-06-07 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Las Vegas, Nevada Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1999OH0055_T_Keegan https://ndajams.omeka.net/files/original/6d8cdcb696ed7873d1077abe822b55dc.pdf ad4064a7bbf0fd3e899391a488ac933e PDF Text Text Go For Broke National Education Center Oral History Project Oral History Interview with John Sakamoto, June 7, 1999, Las Vegas, Nevada INTERVIEWER: Okay. We're here on June 7th Monday in Las Vegas with John Sakamoto. I'm Stephanie Tanaka interviewing, Craig Yahata is behind the camera, Peggy Kamon is cataloguing, and Ron Azuma is doing the audio. Okay Mr. Sakamoto, could you please state your full name please. SAKAMOTO: John Minoru Sakamoto. INTERVIEWER: Okay, did you have any nicknames while you were in the ... SAKAMOTO: Not really, some when I was going to a grammar school, somebody called me Monk. INTERVIEWER: Monk? Why did they call you Monk? SAKAMOTO: Well there was a famous football player by that name, Monk Mile Square, in Santa Clara. So it didn't stick with me---I mean it was just that one and oh there were few other people who called me but really I never did because most of when I was growing up they call me "Min" because my Japanese name was Minoru. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: Other than that not really. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you please tell us where you live and your date of birth and your place of birth. SAKAMOTO: Where I was born---Vernalis, California which is south um just a few miles south of Tracy and that's where I was born, Tracy, California. INTERVEWER: And what was your highest level of education. SAKAMOTO: High school. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 1 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: High school. Okay. And what unit were you with---what unit were you with---the 442nd, 100th? What did you enter the army and what group. SAKAMOTO: 442nd. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, you were in the 442nd. SAKAMOTO: Oh well mainly I was with the regimental band. INTERVIEWER: Okay. And how did you---what was your platoon level and ... SAKAMOTO: What was that? INTERVIEWER: Your platoon level. SAKAMOTO: I really don't know. INTERVIEWER: You don't know? SAKAMOTO: No, I---you know I didn't really know that I was in even in E Company to tell you the truth until ah in 95 they started sending me some things that telling me that I was in E Company. So that's when I first heard about it. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you tell me the name of your father and your mother and any siblings you had. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, my father's name was Joseph Yu---Yuichi Sakamoto and mother's name was Hisa Sakamoto. INTERVIEWER: Okay and did you have any siblings and brothers---did you have any brothers or sisters. SAKAMOTO: Yeah I had ah I've got two brothers and three sisters. There were six of us in the family. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 2 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: And where do you fall in the order of the six. SAKAMOTO: Ah, number two. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: There was ah---sister. INTERVIEWER: Okay, so you're first born son---Okay. Where did you live prior to World War II. SAKAMOTO: In San Martin, California. INTERVIEWER: Okay, and what did your family do their? SAKAMOTO: Farming. INTERVIEWER: Farming, what kinda ... SAKAMOTO: Mainly growing strawberries. INTERVIEWER: Okay. And did your mother also work on the farm as well? SAKAMOTO: Yeah, they all worked in ... INTERVIEWER: Okay. What high school did you attend. SAKAMOTO: Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill---California. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Were you involved in any activities like ... sports … SAKAMOTO: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 3 of 30 �Sports. Basketball and baseball and also played in a band and orchestra. INTERVIEWER: Okay, and what instrument did you play? SAKAMOTO: Clarinet. INTERVIEWER: Clarinet. SAKAMOTO: Also on the side I play---saxophone. INTERVIEWER: Wow very talented. What kind of positions did you play in basketball and baseball. SAKAMOTO: Of course I wasn't as tall as so I just played guard or forward, guard mostly. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: Cause most most are hakujin members were much taller than I am so. INTERVIEWER: So your area that you lived in was a pretty mixed neighborhood had a lot of Caucasian people as well as Japanese and others. Okay. So did you go to Japanese school. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. And while I was going to ah grade school that was in San Martin, and grade school there was a little building over there that had a Japanese school right after school. So we went there, but didn't learning anything though. INTERVIEWER: How come you didn't learn anything. SAKAMOTO: Because, it goes from one ear to the other. And, I wish I paid more attention because--- whenever people come from Japan they try to converse with me and you know, I'm not very good at it. All I could speak was just you know family family Japanese and that was about it. INTERVIEWER: Did your parents only speak Japanese then? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 4 of 30 �SAKAMOTO: Yeah. My mother went to school in Japan. So she was pretty good at that. And then my dad was born in Hawaii so he in fact he knew more than my mother did. Really. You know you know he went to school in Hawaii and Japanese school and then and of course he went to Heald's College too so he was very in fact everybody tells me he was a very distinguished person you know. And he spoke a lot. You know---he spoke several places you know and and we kind of respect him. In fact he was very strict at home. Girls were ah they always have to look up to him you know. And so you were kind of afraid to date my sisters. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did your family practice any sort of religion. SAKAMOTO: Ah what? INTERVIEWER: A religion. Did you practice ... SAKAMOTO: Yeah, Buddhist. INTERVIEWER: Buddhism. Okay, great. And when you're in San Martin---did you experience any discrimination from any of the Caucasian families or any of the other families. SAKAMOTO: Some. When I came back why---Morgan Hill was my school that I went to and---the American Legion didn't accept Japanese at that time. So that's one of the thing and we had a good neighbor that lived in the same street. In fact they were German descent and they---know you know they they didn't like the Japanese so they moved out. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: Goodness. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, they moved out. INTERVIEWER: Wow. So did your parents practice any of the Japanese customs or anything at home other than the Buddhist religion. SAKAMOTO: No, that's about it. INTERVIEWER: No. Did you have any sort of festivals or anything with the Japanese community up there. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 5 of 30 �SAKAMOTO: Ah yeah---In fact we had we are myself and my sister we were involved in this young Buddhist organization. Yeah, YBA they call it. INTERVIEWER: Oh okay, what type of activities did you do in your YBA. SAKAMOTO: Aw---Can't remember what it did but we had different conferences in different cities you know. And cause YBA also had a baseball team. So we played you know various cities like Monterey, Fresno, and San Jose, Santa Clara. And all up and down the coast. INTERVIEWER: Oh so YBA was more of a social or ... SAKAMOTO: It was kind of---Well I don't know I guess it's a social club I guess, I don't know. I really don't know. Although they you know they had made money for the different organization you know. So it was kind of a helpful organization. INTERVIEWER: That's great---Okay, was there anything else you wanted to discuss about your early childhood. Any stories you can remember. Or anything that you wanted to tell. SAKAMOTO: In what one respect? INTERVIEWER: Um, just any fun memories that you remember about you know living growing up in your household. SAKAMOTO: Well I don't know. [Chuckles.] You know the thing is I can't you know like a lot of people I can't remember a lot of things when I was a kid---although as I was growing up my dad was a great boxing fan so when I was around maybe um oh second or third grade I guess he used to pick me up every Friday we would go to the San Francisco and Seals Stadium and go see boxing. INTERVIEWER: Wow. SAKAMOTO: He would pick me up and I'd change my clothes in the back of the car and he was great you know. We'll listen to the radio and listen to the you know ah watch the boxing, and that was his uh thing, and um oh other than that I don't know. I suppose um you know what I'll show you would say. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 6 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Oh that's fine. Um, well let's see. [10:38] What did you plan to do with your life when you were in high school and when you knew you were going to graduate, what did you plan to do after graduation. SAKAMOTO: Well I really didn't have ah all although I always thought I'd become a big farmer. But. Right after the war I um hurt my back. And so from then I said well I don't think I better work in the farm anymore so I moved to San Jose from San Martin and worked in San Jose for a while. And then that's when I went to the school district to work as a custodian for 20 years and retired and uh when I retired why they gave me a good send off---they ah I remember that they had a big party and they gave me a fly rod and full of cash and fishing net. And the board of trustee gave me a certificate of appreciation from the board and a letter of accommodation you know. So I would really appreciate it from school district. INTERVIEWER: It's wonderful. SAKAMOTO: And then then in 81, I moved to Oregon for retirement. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: So I, and I of course my wife was with me till 1995 and she passed away then---then ever since then why um the E Company have been sending me letters with this many reunions why I've been coming here ever since. Every year and this will be the fifth year there will be another one in October. INTERVIEWER: That's great. Well how did you hear about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. SAKAMOTO: Ah we were listening on the radio and that's when we ah you know when we were farming we we heard about it and we were really shocked. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And your your, even your mother was shocked even though she was schooled from Japan. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, we were really shocked, yeah. INTERVIEWER: So what did you think about Japan after they had done this. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 7 of 30 �SAKAMOTO: Well I---I suppose we were really disappointed for what they did. You know and and of course at the time there were two representatives from Japan that was here in Washington. So---kinda ironic that that happened and so and so I told my dad I wanted to volunteer but he didn't let me. He wanted me to stay farming but I couldn't stay very long because I only got about three months before---so I got in just anyway. INTERVIEWER: So you were drafted. SAKAMOTO: So I was drafted in 1942 February. INTERVIEWER: Wow. Were any of your other siblings drafted into the war as well. SAKAMOTO: What was that? INTERVIEWER: Were any of your other siblings, brothers or sisters drafted into the war as well. SAKAMOTO: No. INTERVIEWER: They were too young? SAKAMOTO: I couldn't hear what you said. INTERVIEWER: Oh I'm sorry. Were any of your other brothers drafted? SAKAMOTO: Oh, yeah. My younger brother that lives in Victorville. He was in a Korean War. Other than that. That's that's it. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. The younger one was too young to get in. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 8 of 30 �Wow, okay. So can you tell me what happened after you heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor what happened to your family and where did you go. SAKAMOTO: Oh well, you know why of course they were evacuated---instead of staying locally, they moved up to where my sister-in-law died, so they went into with that group and landed in Tule Lake. And my dad and my brother instead of staying at Tule Lake camp, they went out on their own to Utah. So they worked you know I don't I can't remember what they worked what they were out of the camp and so the rest of the family were still in Tule Lake and while I was in Camp Grant I went to visit them. Most of the time I spent time in a train because it took so long to get there. So I stayed went to visit them while they were in Tule Lake. And then when they had this segregation, people wanted to go to Japan. And so from there they got moved to Rohwer and I guess was that Arkansas I guess. And so they stayed there. But my dad wanted to get out again so he he wanted me to find out while I was in Camp Grant, he wanted me to go see this farm in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. So, I went to see the fella that owned property and so they eventually moved to Elkhorn, Wisconsin. My my folks and my sister's family, and there was another family call us---my sister's family was called Ike and then the other family was Shoji and three family was farming in Elkhorn, Wisconsin til the end of the war. INTERVIEWER: So they let the families out---they let the families out of camp. They released them? SAKAMOTO: Yeah, they they they came from Rohwer and moved moved over there. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: And um they were still there when I came back home. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: But my postwar home when I when I came home but I didn't know that they were home. INTERVIEWER: And home was where at? SAKAMOTO: San Martin. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Were you actually ever in the internment camp? This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 9 of 30 �SAKAMOTO: No I never did. I was in service before that. INTERVIEWER: Before that, okay. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: And, how did you feel when your family had to be uprooted and taken to these internment camp? SAKAMOTO: Oh, I was kind of devastated because you know you know that I didn't think they would do such a thing you know. So you know I didn't feel very good about it yeah. INTERVIEWER: Were you upset with the United States for doing this to your family. SAKAMOTO: Well in a way. But you don't despise them or anything you know. Suppose you take it for granted that that what they had to do you know so. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well going back a little. I just wanted to find out why you wanted to go and fight in the war. SAKAMOTO: Well I don't know I suppose that was the thing to for me to do I suppose. Being that um I don't know I guess---well being in this country and all you want be loyal to you know American being Japanese American, you know. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Did you ever visit your family in the camps. SAKAMOTO: What was that? INTERVIEWER: Did you visit your family while they were in the internment camps. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. I went while there were in Tule Lake. That was said while I was in Camp Grant, I went to visit them just once. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 10 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: And can you describe for us what the camp looked like and what the conditions were. SAKAMOTO: Well I don't know. It it sure seemed like um it wasn't a place where I would like to live. You know, it it seemed kind of sad you know because they were confined to this place with barbed wires and all that you know and it sure seems strange. Yeah. Well I guess that's the way they have to be I suppose you know. INTERVIEWER: Do you know how your family felt were they scared to go to the camps and how how did they feel about the camps themselves. SAKAMOTO: Well I'm not sure about that. I never heard any complaint or anything. So so I take it that they took it as good as they can get. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Were many of your childhood friends drafted into the war like yourself? SAKAMOTO: Pardon? INTERVIEWER: Were any of your childhood friends drafted into the war? SAKAMOTO: A friend? INTERVIEWER: Yeah. SAKAMOTO: Oh yeah. INTERVIEWER: So you went with a group of friends ... SAKAMOTO: Yeah I went with a group of fellows yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: They were drafted the same time. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 11 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Okay. And then so where were you taken to when you got drafted? SAKAMOTO: We were from from Monterey---we stopped at a Los Angeles, in fact who were we were like almost VIP. We stayed in this Wilshire Boulevard, one of the nice hotel you know and they fed us good and swimming pool and all that. And then from there we went to Camp Robinson. INTERVIEWER: And? SAKAMOTO: And I don't know how long we train but that was in 42 so. And then I guess it was 43 or 44 I guess. Well from there we went to Camp Grant. That was a medical camp. And I can't remember how long we stayed but everybody was assigned to a hospital work and and now some of us went to the officers mess and and so we stayed over there there again I don't know how long. And then they wanted to send us as a repla---first replacement. So we went to a train at Camp Blanding Florida, and I guess we were there quite a long time and then we were reassembled in Shelby, Mississippi where the rest of the bunch was. And from there we went from West Virginia where that Camp Patrick Henry is and it was sent from there to overseas and we landed over there in Italy. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Can you describe for us your training at Camp Grant. What did you do there. SAKAMOTO: We worked in the officers mess and we lived above the cooks and baker's school and so various people outside was assigned---someone were worked as a waiter and I worked in the K.P. department and I was kinda in charge of that. So in fact we ate better than the officers did. [Laughs.] In fact I got paid a three different times so I for a private I was getting as much as a staff sergeant was. So I kind of felt guilty about that. Although I felt good. INTERVIEWER: So when you first got to Camp Grant, what was your reaction to see this place. SAKAMOTO: Well I I really don't know. INTERVIEWER: You don't remember? SAKAMOTO: No I---although it felt strange you know I why we were there. And I guess we spend the winter there and I remember you know it was pretty cold there and and we used to go to Chicago from there because it was about 90 miles to Chicago and we took our liberty up there. And and I guess like I said I don't know how long we stayed but they all told us and I guess some of them didn't This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 12 of 30 �go to Camp Blanding they went to different camps. I I found out later. And then the people that I was with in Camp Grant I never I never saw them again. It's funny that, although I saw some fellows from back home you know in different outfit and ours is um---band is concerned there were several other fellows that I know the fellow that I was discharged. He was one of the replacement that he played the trombone and he was assigned at the L company I think. So different company would represented you know from when when as a replacement. Some from Seattle and half of them was from Hawaii you know as far as band was concerned. BEGINNING OF TAPE TWO INTERVIEWER: Okay Mr. Sakamoto. Going back to Camp Grant. Can you describe for me what your basic training was like. SAKAMOTO: Over there we didn't train. We were all what they called that now. I can't remember what they called that but, we were kind of settled in might say and I thought we was going to be there for a long time you know, but I didn't know there were 442nd existed at that time. And, until we were lifted from port, oh from Camp Grant that we knew that we were gonna be a replacement and send to Camp Blanding. INTERVIEWER: Okay. So at Camp Grant, what was the mix of nationalities there. It was not a just a Japanese group that was there... SAKAMOTO: Well, ah as far as I know when I was in the officers mess, of course the most of the workers were Japanese but the cooks that was there was hakujin you know. And naturally all the officers were hakujins too. At that time there were hardly any Japanese officers at the time. So and then one of my friend was also a cook. I don't know how he got that position but. And then various people had different jobs to do. And like I said there were waiters and then these were all Japanese. And and we worked as KP, that was a mixture too. There were no Japanese either. There was some hakujin mixed with it. And I would ah they had me make a roster for them you know. And there was a fellow that---fellow from Los Angeles his name was Arthur Ito and he was a head waiter. And then there was a fellow that another fellow from L.A. did all the buying for the commissary. And each person had different jobs to do. And we all lived in upstairs on the cooks and bakers school. And other than that we didn't do that was it. And then also, we used to go to officer's club and we worked over there too. So we got paid extra for that. And then like I said we got paid for the regular arm ah regular army pay plus also mess pay so we had we got three different pay. So I guess we were kind of lucky that way you know compared to the other people. INTERVIEWER: Did you experience any prejudice from your Caucasian officers in the camp---At Camp Blanding. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 13 of 30 �SAKAMOTO: No, not really. INTERVIEWER: So they treated you ... SAKAMOTO: You know we all we had pretty good relation yeah and there was nobody that you know was against our because we were Japanese you know we were treated pretty good. INTERVIEWER: Okay. And then from Camp Grant you went to Camp Blanding. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, Camp Blanding. INTERVIEWER: And is that where you received your boot camp training? SAKAMOTO: Yeah. In other words we have to learn just about everything to replace the ... They were all volunteers or so we had to learn just about everything so we could you know fit into you know each one would be assigned to different outfit you know. So everybody was kind of spread out. And so naturally when we went as a replacement, we hardly saw each other after that. I don't know who went where and I only found that out after we came home you know where they were because some of them didn't go to Camp Blanding from my camp ground. I think they went to Camp Sheridan or some other camp so and also they never did see when we went to Camp Blanding, we was reassembled at Camp Shelby. But some of them didn't even go to Camp Shelby. They went straight, they went to some other camp which I don't remember. And they went from there and we all we all got shipped from West Virginia, Patrick Henry so that part was you know we all got together there and ship. So we went on that those ship for all the Madisonian line that carried troop ship. So they were nice. Nice ships. INTERVIEWER: Well during your boot camp training, how did that make you feel. Were you scared that you knew you were gonna be going into war soon. SAKAMOTO: No I never. No I never was scared. No. I don't know I took everything in stride. And um no I never once was scared of being in service. INTERVIEWER: Did you ever think that you might not come back? SAKAMOTO: Yeah I thought about it but it didn't, it didn't set me back. You know. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 14 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Well what was one of your most vivid memories of boot camp, or one of your worst or best moments. SAKAMOTO: Well, I don't know. It's kind of up in the air. I hadn't, I really don't remember anything like that. So. INTERVIEWER: What did you do on your first leave from boot camp. Did you get to go on rest or relaxation prior to going to Camp Shelby. SAKAMOTO: Prior to camp ... Well there there was what they call delayed in route I guess after we finished training at Camp Blanding, we were able to go visit our folks and before we went to Camp Shel--and back to Camp Shelby so they gave us, I can't remember how many days but, we were able to go see our folks at that time. I think they were up there in Elkhorn, Wisconsin at the time, so I went to visit them. So that was nice. Everybody got in other words, after they got off Camp Blanding everybody got what they call delayed in route. And then after they everybody visit their folks. We were all assembled at Camp Shelby. That's where they ah most of the 442nd were trained. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well when you went to visit your family in Wisconsin, were they sad that you were going to be going to war. What were their feelings. SAKAMOTO: Well, not really. They told me to be careful and that's about it. INTERVIEWER: Okay. So you say that you're assembled then at Camp Shelby. What other training did you receive at Camp Shelby. Did you receive any ... SAKAMOTO: No, we didn't do anymore. We just assembled there. And while I was over there, I had a had a kind of funny because they because I did little artwork that I made signs for them you know like latrine and stuff like that. So I made a sign for them. And um, that's about it. INTERVIEWER: What did. I'm sorry. SAKAMOTO: We didn't stay very long there though you know, and I can't remember how long we were there either. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 15 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Did you happen to visit I guess the officers club or any type of club for enlisted men on the site at Camp Shelby? SAKAMOTO: No, we did have a chance to go into town and you know see the town. And um, other than that I can't remember too much. INTERVIEWER: Did you experience any prejudice when you went into town from the townspeople? SAKAMOTO: No, not really. No. I did---while we were I was visiting my folks while I was when they were in Tule Lake, you could see that there were a lot of signs that they didn't want any you know Japanese around you you could see there were a lot of prejudice showing. INTERVIEWER: How did that make you feel seeing all of these prejudiced signs against Japanese? SAKAMOTO: Well I didn't feel very good of course. No, but like all Japanese I guess they just took it as you know as good as they can get. INTERVIEWER: So, what did you do for your when you had free time when you didn't have to go to I guess mess hall or any other type of other ceremonial things in the Army. Did you listen to music. Did you go dancing or anything like that. SAKAMOTO: What's that. INTERVIEWER: For your free time. What did you do in your free time. SAKAMOTO: Well I was in um getting back to that while I was in overseas where there was a fellow that he was Walter Murray's one of the students from Walter Murray and he taught us how to dance. So everybody started learning dance from him. That's that's one of the things we did I guess overseas and ... INTERVIEWER: What type of dances did you learn to do? SAKAMOTO: Ballroom dancing. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 16 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Ballroom dancing. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay. What type of music did you listen to when you were in the army? SAKAMOTO: What do you mean what kind of music? INTERVIEWER: What type of bands, what type of artists, the names of them. SAKAMOTO: Oh, well it was strictly you know military band music. And like I said, there was this dance band which I wasn't involved in and they already had their own. And I guess I wasn't quite good enough anyway. [Laughs.] INTERVIEWER: So you continued to play your clarinet and saxophone after high school then? SAKAMOTO: Oh yeah. I still play once in a while and I also learning how to play shakuhachi which is very very difficult. And whenever every chance I get I like to go listen to them you know. In fact there was one one fellow that played while I was in San Jose there was this organization called Aya ah Aukai or something it's a Japanese organization and they there were they had some thing for the 442nd members. And while during that time we did some offering and they had this ah 1000 crane colored crane that while we were doing the offering this fellow from Stockton who was a Korean Vet played this flute, jack ah shakuhachi while he you know the offering was been performed. So I enjoyed that. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well, from Camp Shelby after everyone was reorganized back there, where did you go? SAKAMOTO: When was this? INTERVIEWER: When you were at Camp Shelby. SAKAMOTO: Ah hum. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 17 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Where did you go after Camp Shelby? SAKAMOTO: We were assembled over there at West Virginia, Patrick Henry Camp---from there we were sent overseas. INTERVIEWER: Did you feel any anxiety by going overseas? SAKAMOTO: Yeah I did yeah. In fact you know you're kind of curious what would be ah ahead of you, you know. And so there were anticipation. INTERVIEWER: Were you sent overseas with some of the boys that you went to high school with? SAKAMOTO: Um, some of them. I did come across some friends but you know with all that many people there you don't you don't really come across too many. No I. In fact one of the fellows that I went in with, I never while he was with me in Camp Grant. But after that, I don't know where he went. I never saw him and um 442nd or I don't know whether he was in there or where he went to this day although he's he's back home now. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Could you describe to me what your journey was like from Camp Patrick Henry to overseas. SAKAMOTO: Well you mean that during that trip you mean or ... INTERVIEWER: How did you get overseas? SAKAMOTO: Yeah. Well we went there you know like I said---Madisonian airline and I guess it took about two weeks all total and I know some of them I got so sick they stayed in bed all all two weeks. Yeah. And I wasn't feeling too good either. You know I get pretty seasick. I know back home right in Oregon whenever I go to a fishing charter, I'll take a Dramamine or something like that so I won't get seasick. INTERVIEWER: So where did you end up when you ended up in Italy? SAKAMOTO: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 18 of 30 �Um, can't think of the name. Southern southern part of Italy. I can't even, names don't come to me that easy. Anyways it was in the southern part of Italy. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe for me how you felt and what you saw when you first arrived? SAKAMOTO: Um, it was strange. You know you they weren't really that friendly you know. I guess the people didn't you know like the American troops, I guess. And, I mean every place you go because the Americans were bombing all over Italy and you know and the boy the women would come out and shake their fists you know because we're bombing their town just like they do right now oversees. And of course they didn't they didn't like that very well. INTERVIEWER: Do you know what theater you were going to go to battle you were going to be going into in Italy? SAKAMOTO: Yeah, well I wrote in that you might you might see that in that letter, I mean questionnaire. I can't remember now. It's a right rightlan Po Valley and Africa and Europe here and. Campaign. INTERVIEWER: So how long were you in Italy for at after you first arrived. SAKAMOTO: We stayed in Italy till like I said we got sicker. I was transferred to the band and then we stayed in Italy for a while and then we got transferred on a boat ship to France Marseilles, France. We got off there and we stayed and while we were there, we were in different places and one of the places was Nice, France which is you know kind of a resort place. And I guess it must have been a picnic for us really. We played for the various outfit you know dance band and we were stationed at one of the one of the men used to be a macaroni factory. And so you know we were you know it was no hotel Hilton or anything like that you know but it was a home for us and we would from there. It was an outskirt of Nice. Nice. And we would go into a Nice town and would perform the dance band for the various outfit you know for our troops. So that was one of our duties. INTERVIEWER: Can you describe for us how you actually got transferred into the band in the first place. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, well while I was in the E Company which I didn't know I went to inquire because I heard there was a band. So, I didn't think anything of it till a couple of fellows came and asked me if I wanted to join. And naturally I said yes. And during the assembly, company E’s assembly, they announced my name and said that I was gonna be transferred to 268G band and of course This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 19 of 30 �naturally the fellows that I was talking to at night you know we would be talking and while we were bunched up like you know and the campfire they would tell us all the activity they went through like a night patrol and all that they would tell me all that story of their previous encounter. And and so when they heard that I was gonna get transferred they told me not to say you better not go you better stay with us. But I was already committed to go so and the next day come we broke camp. In fact we were in what they call a half sack and each person got half of the tent. They called a half sack and then we broke 10. It was just muddy as you could get outside. The only place dry spot was where we you know where the tent was we broke and there were going up in the front. And I was going towards the fourth the regimental band from there you know I guess from there I guess we went from there to France from immediately. INTERVIEWER: So are you considered part of the original regimental band then, or ... SAKAMOTO: No, no I went I went we went as a replacement so the band was already formed. INTERVIEWER: Okay. SAKAMOTO: The original. INTERVIEWER: And ... SAKAMOTO: The original there were all volunteers so, some of those fellows was much younger than I was like Senator Inouye and I think quite a few were only 17 years old. And I know Senator Inouye went in when they were 17. But most of us that was drafted was already 21 years old you know. So. INTERVIEWER: So what other duties did you have being part of the regimental band. Did you just play music and play dance music for the troops? SAKAMOTO: No that's basically what we did. During the when we went from place to place, when the band played why I was kind of a assistant to this fellow from Seattle and him and I would set up a P.A. system so that you know they could hear it was set up wherever we went to perform. That was part of our duty. BEGINNING OF TAPE THREE INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 20 of 30 �Okay Mr. Sakamoto. Going back to your band days, what sort of music did the regimental band play. SAKAMOTO: We played mainly Glenn Miller. You know and that was the main thing of course we mix with the being that most of them was from Hawaii, we played Hawaiian music too. And there was a fella that would dance you know and he would dance as Hiro Haddy and there were a lot of Hawaiian music because there were a lot of Hawaiian people in the band you know so and the band master was from Idaho or was`that capitol ... what's the name of the capitol in Idaho? INTERVIEWER: Boise? SAKAMOTO: Boise, yeah. He was from Boise and he was a master sergeant. And but he didn't he didn't conduct the dance band. There was some other fella that did that. But like I said I can't remember most of the names but when after the war why they formed a dance band of their own back in Hawaii. And this fellow by the name of Archie Okamoto played the trombone send me a photo of the band which I have at home. And to this day, I was talking to a fellow from Maui and I heard he's moved from Honolulu to Maui so I told him see if we could find find him over there. I'll give you my address and tell him that Archie Okamoto the trombone player wanted to see if he is still living yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay. What other duties were you required to do being part of the regimental band? SAKAMOTO: Well mostly like I said as far as dance band was concerned, they were to perform for various troops and then the other thing was to we were performing different military marching. You know when they have kind of citation or like the most memorable one would be and ah when when they had that big casualty, we would perform during this was during the winter time it was snowing and it was cold and we were performing for memorial service where the folk was sick and I remember the whole regiment was a size of a size of a company and then you could imagine how small it was and because I was talking to this one of my roommate from this same E company, he said he wasn't at the memorial service because they were all in the hospital you know either hospital or got was killed. And I was listening to all the names that was a person that was killed. And some of them just got married went overseas and they were gone. That was the most memorable one I could remember and it was really sad to hear that. And one of our trumpet player played most of the taps for the you know most of the ceremonies that they performed. In fact one of the flute player, his last name was Kanae I think and he played this, oh it was so beautiful. He played this Lord's Prayer at the 50th anniversary. And I was wanted to go see him but by the time I was way on the other end and I guess there must of been over 2000 people in that banquet. And by the time I went to the front, why he was gone. So anyway I called him, I called him up later and then on this July big veterans reunion why I met him I finally met him because like I say you know they all changed. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 21 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Just to give us an idea, can you tell me how many men are considered a company? SAKAMOTO: What was that? INTERVIEWER: In a company, how many men are there in there? SAKAMOTO: Oh, gee, I I really don't know. INTERVIEWER: Do you think it's between 20 to 50 or 50 to 100? SAKAMOTO: Oh. See, a companies consist of platoons and squads so that number I you know I should know but I don't, although it there's 4 company to a battalion. And of course we had 3 battalions and I was in the second battalion which E, E would be under second battalion, the 100 would be A B C D and E would be in the second battalion and then there are also 3rd battalion so there's in other words there's 4 8 well 12 companies in a battalion because that's only part of it. The rest would be 522 field artillery and and then you got the engineering and so all combined, there's quite a few men served with all of them. INTERVIEWER: As being part of the regimental band, did you were you attached only to the 442nd or did you play for any of the others ... troops. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, we were always attached to 442nd, yeah. INTERVIEWER: So when you set up camp at your different locations, you were always with the rest of the 442nd. SAKAMOTO: Yeah, we were always with this like I said with the service company. And then there was couple times that we were in a different like a division we were with the 5th army we were 442nd was attached to the 5th army and then we also was attached to the 36th Texas division. There the one that was lost and you know there the one that we rescued. INTERVIEWER: Wow. Were you there when the lost battalion was rescued? SAKAMOTO: No. I like I say you know we we were with the service company so you know it was after the This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 22 of 30 �memorial service that we knew that they lost a lot of men. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay. You said that there were a lot of Hawaii boys that were in the regimental band. Did the Japanese mainland boys get along with the Hawaii boys? SAKAMOTO: Yeah. I would say about half and half because there were a lot of fellow from the mainland. I don't know if they were originals or not. I imagine some were originals. And like I say we were the replacements so. Like my my friend from Loomis who was discharged with me was in the L company and there was quite a few in our band that was in fact there was one fellow that was from back home from San Jose and there were fellows from all different places. There were quite a few from Seattle and one from San Diego and Santa Cruz and there were quite a few mainland. So I'd say about half and half was made up into a 442nd band. INTERVIEWER: Okay. How did you feel being part of the band and not being on the frontline with the men that you trained with in camp? Did you feel different from them or you know ... SAKAMOTO: Well, how do you mean? INTERVIEWER: Did you feel that you were contributing any less to the war effort. SAKAMOTO: Oh yeah. We we were you know, we felt that we were part of the rest of the fellows you know. So. I guess you know we were contributing our part. INTERVIEWER: That's great. Do, can you recall any stories that some of the men on the frontline told you around your camp fires? SAKAMOTO: Yeah, like I said when I was with the E company which I didn't know, they told me a lot of the stories previous to before we met they told us all the you know the [night big back] and hiking and all that they told us a lot of scary stories you know. And I suppose in a way I was kind of lucky like I said to be in a band. And like I say maybe if I was with the E company maybe I wouldn't have been here. INTERVIEWER: So you feel you're fortunate to have been in the band? SAKAMOTO: Yeah I suppose so. Yeah. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 23 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: So what did you do and how long were you in the band for? SAKAMOTO: Until until we got discharged. INTERVIEWER: And ... SAKAMOTO: Well no I take it back. Just before the war broke out why we all disband and we were stationed near...I can't remember the name of the town so we were all assembled there before coming back. So we were already this you know disband. INTERVIEWER: So you already knew that when you were gonna leave back home you already knew that the war was over, or is that when you found out ... SAKAMOTO: Yeah ah huh, yeah we heard it was over. INTERVIEWER: How did you feel about the outcome? SAKAMOTO: Oh feel great, yeah oh yeah, especially you know you wanted to get home and of course I was there for almost 4 years just shy of a few months and so it's quite a long time. And you know you wanted to go home as quickly as you can like my master sergeant he was if he stayed he would have been promoted to ah...I can't remember that next rank that he would have had. In fact, he was he was in the regular army almost 10 years prior to the war started. So he had a lot of service. And and so he didn't he didn't care for the promotion. He just wanted to get out you know so he went back home. INTERVIEWER: So when you were discharged, what level where you at at that point in time? SAKAMOTO: I think just before I got out I think PFC was the only top. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Great. SAKAMOTO: Top rank ... INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 24 of 30 �And so when you were finally discharged where did you go? SAKAMOTO: Where did I go where? INTERVIEWER: After you were discharged. SAKAMOTO: After I got discharged like I said on that questionnaire that you gave me, I went I wanted to go see my folks which I thought they were still in Wisconsin. So I proceeded to go and I knew that one of my oldest sister was in Utah, so I stopped over there and that's when I found out that they were home already. And in fact in fact the time that we got into Beale Camp Beale the plane that came after us...it was really foggy and the plane crashed right in the mountains and killed all the--some of the fellow never got a scratch and the whole plane crashed in the mountain and killed everybody. And I suppose my folks heard that and seen that I was coming home at that time. I guess they were worried and so I didn't. I still didn't know they were home. So, I proceeded to go see my sister in Ogden and that's when I found out they were home. But even then, I knew they were home I went to see my sister in Wisconsin and then then I came home. INTERVIEWER: Wow. And home was back in California again? SAKAMOTO: Yeah, in San Martin where we had a farm you know so. INTERVIEWER: Okay. When did you meet your wife? SAKAMOTO: In fact in fact I had 2 wife. INTERVIEWER: Oh, okay. SAKAMOTO: Ah, first one was through some friend’s acquaintances and I got married but it wasn't a very good marriage. So it was Japanese, she was Japanese but I got divorced from her and through the through that she we adopted a girl a Japanese girl. And so that's the only daughter I've got, the one adopted daughter that married to a hakujin fella and she doesn't have family. So there again I don't have grandkids of my own to say. So rest of them was all under my second wife which was a hakujin gal and through her I got all these grandkids. And so I am the only grandpa they know now. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 25 of 30 �When you married your Caucasian wife, did you experience any backlash from anybody around, how did your parents feel about it. SAKAMOTO: Ah, no my my my folks were really happy about it because she didn't like this other gal. It was a bad marriage, and so they were happy for me. Yeah really. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: So how many grandchildren do you have? SAKAMOTO: Well through marriage, I've got 10 grandkids and 15 great grandkids and 2 great great grandkids. So then you know that's through marriage and not mine, but they still call me grandpa so I'm the only grandpa they know. INTERVIEWER: That's great. Just going back a little bit, when you came back home after the war was over, did everybody welcome you with open arms or did you experience any bad feelings from anybody ... SAKAMOTO: Yeah like I said, I you know where I went to school in Morgan Hill, this American Legion didn't accept any Japanese as a member. And so from then on why I never did join any organization even though while I was in [INAUDIBLE] they asked me to join but I don't know why I just didn't want to join anymore. INTERVIEWER: Did you feel that you were being unfairly treated by them especially after you risked your life going to war for America? SAKAMOTO: Yeah. Well, ah you know there was getting back to that---there was a fellow that I ah right after I got out of the high school I went to get a private clarinet lesson in Gilroy. And he was Italian descent and he was corresponding right along. All of a sudden, he got some backlash from some other people so he stopped writing to me---of course it was up to him to you know and ah so although I well I came home I saw him so and everything was all right. INTERVIEWER: Well, nowadays do you ever see an internment type of situation ever happening again in the United States? SAKAMOTO: Well, I don't, I don't think so. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 26 of 30 �Okay. And have you ever told any of your children, your child or your grandchildren about your experiences during the war. SAKAMOTO: Ah, very little. They never asked so. I'm not the type to say too much anyway so. INTERVIEWER: Well, I mean didn't you ever want---don't you want them just to know what ... SAKAMOTO: Well I would think, I would think they should know though. In fact I think the 442nd's got a sons and daughter organization I guess you know that. And I was thinking maybe I could talk to my adopted daughter about it and maybe she might be interested in to join this---I was talking to this fellow one of our leaders, E company leader and his son is involved in it. And at that veterans meeting in last July they had a special meeting for sons and daughters and they said there's about 30 or so in the group. So I don't know, maybe I'll talk to my daughter and she would be interested or not you know. INTERVIEWER: That's great. Do you have any type of message that you'd like to send to you know the Sansei, Yonsei and Gosei generations about what you did and what other Nisei soldiers went through during the war. SAKAMOTO: Um ... Well I never thought about it but thinking about it, I would say that you know they they should know what we went through. I I've got to say I guess you might have seen this videotape behind barbed wire. You've seen that and I've shown this to my relatives and some of the some of the Sansei and Yonsei people was inquiring if I if they you know where they could get it. And I'm trying to see if they like to you know purchase one of those videotapes. So it shows that they're interested you know. INTERVIEWER: And did your did your wife know about what you went through during the war as well ... SAKAMOTO: Oh yeah, sure yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Well do you have any other thoughts or anything else that I might have missed that you want to let us know about about your experiences? SAKAMOTO: I really don't know what I could say anymore. INTERVIEWER: This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 27 of 30 �Okay. Well we just want to thank you for your time. Sure. Yeah---[24:20] Okay. Just kind of going back to Camp Beale when you returned back. Could you tell us any other information you know about the plane that crashed after your plane arrived? SAKAMOTO: Um, how do you mean? INTERVIEWER: Who was on board ... ? SAKAMOTO: I really don't know because these were not only the fellows from 442nd. It was a mixture of people. There was a lot of hakujin in that plane like like our plane was the same way. In fact we flew back from New Jersey and now we made about a couple of stops, once once in Texas and once in in in ah California, gee where was it now---what's that what's that resort---I can't remember the name of that---it's in a desert. What is that. INTERVIEWER: Palm Springs? Palm Springs? SAKAMOTO: Hah? INTERVIEWER: Palm Springs? SAKAMOTO: Palm Springs, yeah. That was our last two nights that we stopped and then we flew back to Beale during the time that there was a fellow that lived in Bakersfield. So the pilot said I would go right on top of your where you live. So we went right over the Bakersfield town and then landed in Beale. INTERVIEWER: And then how far after that did the crash occur. SAKAMOTO: It was after we landed and we were in the barracks and were listening to the radio and I imagine oh I guess several hours after the crash occurred. So ... INTERVIEWER: So you didn't actually see it, you just heard about it on on your radio was when you were in the barracks. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 28 of 30 �INTERVIEWER: Okay. And you attended the unveiling of the civil liberties monument in Japanese town this past weekend as well? SAKAMOTO: What's that? INTERVIEWER: Did you attend the ceremony, unveiling ceremony in Japanese town on Saturday. SAKAMOTO: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: How did that make you feel? SAKAMOTO: Oh great. It really made me feel great. INTERVIEWER: And when you first saw it. How did---did you just get a rush of emotion ... SAKAMOTO: Yeah. Well you know I I've seen the plumber area---they sent us a picture of it so I knew what they were going to look like already. It's not like I've seen it for the first time you know. But it was it was much much larger than I I visualized and or it was beautiful, yeah. INTERVIEWER: And do you feel that it's right, being a veteran who had come back. Did you feel it was right to have both the living and the ones who were killed in action on that monument? SAKAMOTO: What was that? INTERVIEWER: Well. You know how most monuments are considered war memorials. And this is an actual civil liberties monument. Did you feel that it was right to be---everyone should be included on that. SAKAMOTO: I think so. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Okay ... Other, other, actually, what was the band's duties ... This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 29 of 30 �SAKAMOTO: What's where, where I was or ... INTERVIEWER: Yeah. What was what was the job of the band members when during[INAUDIBLE]. SAKAMOTO: In a way of you know like the fellows in the front. Like I said there was at one time we almost went as a little barriers and I guess that that would have been something I would of like to experience. But at the time the casualty was so bad they just pulled back. So we never got to see any kind of action. The only action we saw I saw was while we were going from place to place they were bombing all over the place you know. So we could of got hit then or where while we were in the building because next one or you get up and you see a big hole in the side of the side of the building you know. So it came pretty close. You know we would that kind of as far as you know so we will get you know you could hear that you could hear that coming you know. And. So I suppose that was the closest thing for us far as we were concerned. This transcript is hereby made available for research purposes only by Go For Broke National Education Center. Page 30 of 30 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Sakamoto oral history interview, June 7, 1999 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Sakamoto oral history interview transcript [full interview], June 7, 1999 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sakamoto, John: narrator Tanaka, Stephanie: interviewer Go For Broke National Education Center: publisher Type The nature or genre of the resource Transcriptions Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Extent The size or duration of the resource. 30 pages, typescript Language A language of the resource eng Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999-06-07 Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Las Vegas, Nevada Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Go For Broke National Education Center Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1999OH0052_T_Sakamoto