Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Masao Watanabe Interview
Narrator: Masao Watanabe
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 19, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-wmasao-01-0026

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TI: And that's the thing, as we talk about this, think about the viewers of the tape and me, and that we really don't have much or any experience with weapons, or guns, or the types of things that you went through. And so when I ask you these questions, there might be times when I may ask for a little more detail, because this is something that's very, very hard for me to even imagine, some of the things that you went through. But now as we go forward, why don't you sort of talk a little bit about your first, I guess, taste of fighting and what that was like.

MW: Well, our initiation and our battle plans and structure of the platoons and the squads were pretty well like our training. We were good soldiers. But as we progressed, it changed to a point where... a good example would be what we called the German burp gun. It was a lot faster, and a lot easier, lighter. It was a lot better suited for close infighting, whereas some of the American weapons were more for longer distances. And they had more poop, but in close fighting, you didn't need all that velocity. So I think a lot of it was experience as we went along for what, what was required for that battle that we were going into. There was a time when we started carrying machine pistols, which were German, lighter machine guns, or whatever. So I think we were pretty, not creative, but just a lot of common sense as to what we needed for this battle or that battle.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.