Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tosh Yasutake Interview
Narrator: Tosh Yasutake
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: November 14, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ytosh-01-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: So, the next thing I want to talk to you is -- so now that you're set up, how long was it before you started seeing casualties coming through the headquarters aid station?

TY: Not long. Not long. Within -- well, if you go into battle, say, today, oh, within a couple hours, I think. They'll be coming through the aid station.

TI: And what was that like? I mean, describe how that was for you guys.

TY: Very chaotic, depending on how many -- how high the casualty -- in the very beginning the casualty wasn't very high so it was -- they trickled in and most of them -- many of them were -- when once they go through the battalion aid station they go back to the unit again because little scratches or just flesh wounds or something that's just a band-aid... and more seriously wounded people, guys would be coming to the headquarters and then back to the evac hospital -- evacuation hospital.

TI: Well, as they were trickling in, the very first ones, for many of them, it was their first action that they saw.

TY: Yeah, right.

TI: Can you remember what it was like for them when they came back and they were talking to you and you were talking with them?

TY: Well, I do, I do remember that the first, first time, one of the earlier casualties that came and one was very seriously wounded fellow and I forgot which doctor it was, but you could see the anxiety in his face, being the first casualty and all that. He really looked very anxious. I think that was Dr. Buckley, Major Buckley. And I think he was going through the, the growing pains of the actual action. Just like anybody else. And I remember very, I think it was one fellow that lost an arm and we had to put a great big bandage on him to keep his bleeding and -- it was kind of, some anxious moment even, just watching I got very anxious and wondering whether he was gonna survive or not. One of the few things I remember. The other things I don't really remember too vividly. On that one I do. And I imagine the battalion aid station was other, chaotic. It's bad enough under "normal" circumstances but in the first, I think the first day or two, I think it was pretty chaotic. Decision of whether to -- whether the wound is serious enough to send 'em back or whether you could just bandage 'em up and just send 'em back to the unit again. Walking woundeds were something else because some of the walking wounded, they could be seriously wounded but they were able to walk. Others were not very serious and you could send them back. But some of them were kind of in-between in the gray area and you wonder whether you send 'em back or not. And I think at that time the policy was, when in doubt send 'em back, instead of send 'em back up again.

TI: Because they just needed the men up on the front.

TY: Yeah, yeah. Send 'em -- what I meant was send them back to the hospital.

TI: Oh, to the hospital. So not to --

TY: To the regimental, regimental aid station and let the doctors at the regimental aid station decide what they want to do. Like myself, now I was able to walk in but I had a leg wound and it was not too serious and, but it was -- the shrapnel was embedded in, embedded in the bone. So luckily they sent me back to the hospital.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.