Densho Digital Archive - George Morihiro Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

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MA: When you were in the hospital, was your family at home notified that you had been injured?

GM: There was only one letter: "Your son has been slightly wounded." That goes to my dad, and that's about it. So he wrote me this letter, and the war was over by the time I think I got the letter.

MA: What did it say in the letter?

GM: Well, my letter was very short from my dad. He says, if I remember, "Dear son, I hear you get slightly wounded. Kill more enemies but keep yourself safe." And "Pat, Ray and Fred are doing fine." He says, "Kill more enemies but keep yourself safe," and that's about it. "Your dad." The letter is real nice because of the fact that he signed his name, he got the date on there, and the address, which is 12-10-C. That, that tells you that he was in Minidoka, the address. And I still have the letter. It's something that, I read it, and I thought, "Gee, my dad's a pretty brave guy." [Laughs] You know, "kill more enemies, keep yourself..." nothing about some of the other things a woman will worry about. He understood. Most Japanese families understood that when their son went off to war, the chance is that he won't come back, but most of them came back. Quite a few didn't, but that's the way they think. I... to me, it was kind of a fun game, but it was not fun when you had to climb these high hill, sleep in the mud, sleep in the rain, and everything.

I got a funny story; there was once, in the rain, I was sleeping in the rain, because I didn't like to sleep in a barn because there's too many lice and stuff in there. I slept outside, and we always carried a raincoat with us. But our raincoats are only, we cut 'em off because they're too long, and we call 'em half of a raincoat, and we make it short. And so I took the raincoat and put my hands in backwards, and put the open side in, behind me. And I had this raincoat on top of me, and I went to sleep in this pouring rain.

MA: Were you in Italy at this point, on the Gothic --

GM: Yeah. I forget where I was, France or Italy. I guess I was in Italy, yeah. And oh, it rained. And... I was on, the way it went was, I wake up and here's this German sitting on my stomach, see. And I'm trying to get up like this and I can't move, and I'm fighting this German with my hand like this, see, and then, you know, it's, it's a dream. I wake up. And what was happening was the German wasn't sitting on top of my stomach, but this raincoat gathered all the water and put it between my legs, like about two bucket of rain water was between my legs, okay? And the sides were tucked in so I couldn't move. [Laughs] That's what made that dream, feel like somebody was sitting on top of me. I didn't tell the guys, and I woke up and there it was, the raincoat was holding me down, see. But this dream was, it was crazy because I dreamt that this soldier was sitting on top of my stomach, and here I was, trying to fight him off.

MA: Did you have any other dreams, I mean, did you dream a lot about warfare and death?

GM: No. No flashbacks or anything. I dream sometimes lately, because I have to talk at some schools and I try and recall what happened and stuff like that.

MA: I mean when you were actually there in Europe.

GM: Uh-uh, no. I, I don't recall if there was any dreams, but nothing of importance. Just one dream, I dreamt about this soldier sitting on my -- that I recall, but the rest of 'em, no. The thing was, I think I was too young to know any better.