<Begin Segment 24>

TI: I'm curious; when you go to the hospital, and you're wounded, they present you with the Purple Heart. Does that happen right away, or does that happen after the war? When do the medals...

TY: After the war.

TI: After the war?

TY: Yeah. I, no, I never got -- I think otherwise it would be, it would have been so busy I don't think they would have had time to do that.

TI: Right. So all those medals and things --

TY: I think, latter part of the war, when later casualties, when the casualties weren't so great, I think they probably were presenting them with the Purple Heart at the hospital maybe. But I don't remember anybody getting Purple Heart in the hospital I was at.

TI: So, for you it would sort of catch up at the end of the war?

TY: End of the war, yeah.

TI: How about any other medals or citations?

TY: Well I got my, I got Bronze Star for that citation the day that I got wounded. I got Bronze Star for that. But Bronze Star isn't a big deal because thousands of guys got it and I just, I feel kinda embarrassed even talking about it, but I did get a Bronze Star.

TI: That was for going out and patching these guys up while the tree bursts were going through?

TY: Yeah, yeah, under stress. [Laughs] Well, lot of medics did that. That was -- it's not something you wanna do because you feel heroic but it's something you just, it's your duty, and you do it, and you don't think about, even when they're shells flying all over and they call, "medic," well, it's kind of a conditional response, when you hear, "medic," well you just go. You don't think about whether it might, you might be endangered because of all that fireworks going around you, but... you just, you just react. I don't think you think about anything else. I didn't. I don't know about other guys but, this is something you have to do and you just do it.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.