<Begin Segment 29>

MA: So when, where was your final destination? You went all through England and then through France.

GM: France, and then to Paris, and then I met the 442nd as they came off the line after rescuing the "Lost Battalion." Now, here's where I see something different, because when I joined I Company up there, they only had four riflemen left.

MA: How many had they started with?

GM: Oh, about two hundred. And, and you're, six of you -- there was only six of us joined I Company that day, that made ten riflemen in the whole company. There should be two hundred, and you, now you're starting to wonder, you said, "My God, is war, this, going to be like this?" Because if there's, what happened to the rest of the men?

MA: I mean, what was it like seeing them come back from this, you know, harrowing battle?

GM: Well, the ones that was left was just like ordinary guys as far as I'm concerned.

MA: So you didn't notice any shell-shocked or any...

GM: Oh, no, there, they'd be in the hospital by then. But they told me lot of stories from their experiences, which was very interesting for me because I wanted to learn as much as possible. But yeah, that was one of the worst parts, is seeing so few men there. You know, you think you're going to be one of a small crowd of new replacements in a bunch of old war-experienced soldiers, but here there was... and all of 'em were all privates. There was no officers, no non-commissioned officers or anything. So I Company was the company that reached the "Lost Battalion" first, and they were the ones that took the worst beating. But I joined them and went along with this.

MA: How did the sort of, I guess, guys that had been in the war for a while, kind of the old-timers, accept or react to kind of the newcomers coming in? Was there ever any weird tension, or was it just normal?

GM: No, to me it was a normal thing, that we're going in there to help 'em. They're saying that a lot of these guys are, will be coming back from the hospital, and to me, it was a question of hearing these stories of what went on, and they're very, very interesting. They don't talk about it to other people, but among the soldiers, they talk an awful lot about some of the things you go through, and people getting shell-shocked, and talked about getting shot in the butt, and he said, "That's kind of embarrassing because they think you're running away." [Laughs] You don't want to get shot in the butt, stuff like that, you know. And then there's the other, like Kash always said that, "Okay, just remember one thing: we have never retreated." That's one thing he said, he says, "We have never lost a battle." He wanted to make clear that this was the way it's going to be. Says, "We have never left a wounded or dead man behind." He said, "We're going to take care of everybody," which means that if you had to, you risked your life to save somebody.

MA: So Shiro set this precedent at the beginning to you guys that just came in?

GM: Yeah.

MA: He sort of taught you that?

GM: Well, he, he told us after he come back from the hospital, but these are what these men were going, will be telling you. 'Cause that's what they believed in. And we kind of went along, there's nothing you can do about this, because you're there, you can't run away, and you're going to take it the best you can. If you're scared of the war, you better not be there, because you jeopardize everybody else. We don't want anybody that is scared. If you're scared, stay back, don't come up with us. 'Cause you gotta have people that's thinking more or less in the same direction.

MA: When was the first time you, kind of, were shot at or experienced something like that?

GM: To me? I don't know. I guess you might say it's like duck hunting. But...

MA: I mean when you're in the war, or in Europe.

GM: It's, you're not in the war all the time, see. But I guess the first time I really got shot at, it wasn't from a gun so much. We've heard artillery shells going over our heads, but it was up there in the Maritime Alps in the Champagne Campaign, we were up on top of this hill, and one night, Kim Muromoto and I were on a forward guard way up in the front, and it was windy and we couldn't keep our blanket down because it was so windy and it just kind of waved around like a flag. I think the Germans must have seen it, and they shot about fourteen, fifteen mortars, and it landed all around us, close, because we were on top of this little knoll. And in order to hit it, you practically had to have a direct hit. Anyway, it was a scary night, and I remember telling Kim to get close to me, because I might protect him and he might protect me from a shrapnel hitting us. And Kim heard it differently -- we're still arguing about it, he lives in Bellevue -- he said that, "No, George," he says, "what you said was, 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year if we don't live that long.'" [Laughs] He, he insists that that's what I said, but I remember what I told him. I don't remember telling him Merry Christmas. But it's funny how people remember certain things. But that was one scary night, because if one of those things would have hit us, it would have been goner for us, because those shells, you can't hear 'em coming, they just fall on you and they explode.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.