Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: James Yamazaki Interview
Narrator: James Yamazaki
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Van Nuys, California
Date: February 4, 2005
Densho ID: denshovh-yjames-01-0024

<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Okay, I just wanted to finish that up, and we'll come back. So let's go back to Europe. Where we left it, you had, the 106th had landed in La Havre, you were helping the navy with their, with a sick seaman, and then eventually you connect back up, you catch back up to the 106th and get ready in the town of Saint Vith. And again, going back to my reading, what I've read is the generals decided to put the 106th there because literally in the last several months, there was hardly any activity along that line, and they realized the 106th was a green unit, and they thought that that would be a good place for them to sort of get acclimated and get some more training and get ready. And so they chose this place for the 106th with that in mind. And so here you are, you get all ready and you get all set up, why don't you talk about how you guys all got set up in this location. What does it take for a new unit to come into a place and what kind of things did you do?

JY: We're an artillery unit, so the important thing is to get these, what they call these .105 shells and with the cannons in place at specific locations, and then there would be the main combat assignment, is to man these weapons. And then we would be the supporting thing for any medical needs. And we were assigned a farmhouse on the ridge where we would just set up our aid station. And then the boys, there was usually, at this stage, everybody's pretty hyped up, and they feel it's nearing Christmas, so they were running all over the place, green troops looking for getting all the goods necessary for a Christmas celebration. Chickens, whatever they get.

TI: So the sense was that they were at war, but it wasn't like this incredible danger or anything like that, it was more like...

JY: There were no signs of anticipating any kind of battle.

TI: So you're there for just a few days, and this is early December, people are thinking about Christmas. But I think it was around December 10th or 15th...

JY: That's right.

TI: What happens is the Germans decide to launch the largest offensive in the war, World War II, commonly called the Battle of the Bulge.

JY: Right.

TI: And where they start the offensive is right where you are located.

JY: So we were the "bulge."

TI: Yeah, so talk about what happened. How did you, when did you realize you were in this incredible fight?

JY: Well, we didn't realize it was an incredible fight, we just accepted this was, we were engaged in war. And not knowing this was a big battle, just something that all combat unit encounter. So for five days, it seemed like we were going from one location to another, and one day after the third or four day, the infantry unit that we were supposed to be following came toward us. So our response was, hey, we thought the enemy was over there. And they said, no, they're over here in back of us. So we started getting an inkling we were being surrounded, encircled. But somehow we were able to maneuver in and out. And I think about the fourth night, we were digging foxholes, and we could hear the German soldiers passing our area and just hoping they wouldn't find us. But during the night, there was just myriads of flares going up, and we realized we were in a valley, because you could tell the different levels at which the flares went off, and it was just an ominous sign that something was going to happen. And sure enough, at break of dawn, first light that came in, the barrage started in and continued relentlessly for the next several hours.

TI: Because at that point you saw flares essentially all around you, you could tell that, essentially, the Germans had the high ground and you were down below, and you were, essentially, sitting ducks.

JY: Yeah, when we looked down into the valley, because we put our aid station on the side of the hill, the trucks were all in tandem. God, it just looked like it's going to be a turkey shoot, because you couldn't miss. And sure enough, that's what was happening.

TI: And roughly how many men were in that valley?

JY: I really can't say, because things were happening all around our regiment, and that we were supporting were in the area also, I think. And so perhaps, at least for us, it must have been a thousand men or so.

TI: In those four days leading up to this, your unit took heavy casualties. You were, again, you mentioned how you thought that was just war, but in actuality, it was one of the bloodiest, hardest battles fought during the whole war. And your unit took just heavy, heavy casualties.

JY: But it was especially on the fifth day that happened, when we were encircled, and they let go on everything.

TI: As the battalion surgeon, you must have seen lots of casualties during that whole period. What was it like during those five days.

JY: It was just relentless. Just a stream of casualties you had to take care of.

TI: What kind of range of trauma did you see?

JY: Well, I don't think I saw the worst, because the ones that looked like they were terminal apparently were just left there. Because the chaplains came, there were two chaplains, one a Catholic, white-haired chaplain, Paul Cavanaugh, and another Protestant minister. And they both came and said, "What are we gonna do, there are so many out there? They need a burial at least." The discussion, I don't know who said what, but there's no time for burials, at least to give them last rites. And the general thing was do whatever they thought was necessary, but there certainly wasn't time for burials.

TI: So the medics out there were doing some triage then. They were deciding who would actually make it...

JY: That's right. They brought back the ones that they felt we could take care of, I think. Because they knew... we had a three-quarter-ton truck, and that's where all our medical supply was. And by the fourth or fifth day, we had very little to work with, hardly any plasma, morphine was probably running out by then. And all we could do was to evacuate the soldier as best we could.

TI: I mean, did it ever seem... and I'm just thinking how... did it seem ever like a contradiction to you? Here you were trained as a doctor to save lives, and yet you're thrust in a situation like this, this battle, this war, where you see such heavy casualties and heavy loss of life. Did it ever just, did you ever think about that?

JY: Oh, yeah. In fact, the whole rest of the experience in war and after the war in Japan, here we're in our training we're monitored to do everything we can to save one life, and that was our responsibility. And if you didn't have that sense of responsibility, one of the professors actually said, "You have no business being here, you might as well get out." I think words of that nature were sometimes said if you don't give all out to learn everything about the disease, the condition of the patient, and attending to the patient. That was the kind of fine doctors we trained under. So to see this kind of situation is incredible that it's against any kind of training we were doing.

TI: Well, the image I have is almost like this bursting dam, and you're like a little finger trying to hold it back, where it's like it's just overwhelming because there's physically only so much one person can do with all this injuries and death around, it must have been very hard.

JY: Yeah.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.