<Begin Segment 26>

TI: So you just finished Sassetta, and, and then what happened? What was the next, the next thing?

FS: Big blank. [Laughs] The next, the next thing I remember was it was -- this was, and this, we were committed late in June... can't tell you when. But the next big, the big battle we had was for Hill 140, which was about Fourth of July. It was, it was close to it, I can't remember, it was Fourth of July, because I remember we were, we were hiking, marching, hiking, whatever you do, you walk ten, ten feet apart to move up, just in case. And I remember we walked past this huge German ammo dump. It was just huge, and the German forces had to leave it, so we went by there. And as we went around this hill, the German, German self-propelled gun opened up on us, so we, so they, the platoon leader had us move up and climb over the hill, and suddenly we were on this front slope of this hill, and the German artillery spotted us. And I can remember laying on the hillside most of the morning with those shells coming in.

TI: Just trying to dig in as much as you can?

FS: You just, you kind of bury yourself in the, in the soil, because that, those, that was a pretty, pretty intense artillery barrage. I don't know how many guys got hit, but we somehow, until somebody got in there and took care of that self-propelled gun, that thing kept firing at us. And somebody up in front, because we weren't, we weren't the lead troops, that thing, finally that stopped and we got off that hillside. But it was a, it was a hell of a day. And it was, it had to be the Fourth of July, because I remember thinking, geez, that was a hell of a way to celebrate the Fourth. [Laughs] And then that's, that's the beginning, staging for this, the battle of Hill 140 where the 3rd Battalion...

TI: And this is kind of after Luciano, Livorno, that time?

FS: No, this is before. This is before, before now. This is, this was one of the, one of the major German defense lines before you move into, in towards the Arno River Valley. And so we were, we were... well, our, my platoon, the weapons platoon, as I recall, were towards the back. But as that, as the day wore on and the riflemen were up just, just up the hill from us, we spent the night on that hillside, and the Germans would send mortars over. And that's where Johnny Matsudaira got hit. There, hit the base, he was down at the base of the hill with, with, he was a runner for the lieutenant for the platoon, and he was hit down there, artillery barrage.

TI: Now, who was Johnny Matsudaira?

FS: He was in Seattle. He's, he's... oh, I'm sorry, I thought you knew him. He's a friend of, well, he's all our friends, Tosh and Frank Matsuda, and Dick Naito, Dick's passed away, and John Matsudaira. Those are the guys from our company. And he was, he was in our platoon then, and he, he was wounded so badly he never, he didn't come back, and he spent years in the hospital. His family's, his son, one of his sons is a professor at MIT, for example.

TI: Oh, I've met him, yeah.

FS: Well, anyway, that's Johnny. He's, he's a commercial artist or something. He, and he's got a lovely...

TI: How, so how would it feel? I mean, so you're now into heavy combat...

FS: Yeah.

TI: And so your, your fellow comrades are now starting to be wounded or killed. How, how was that for you?

FS: You know, I, when you think about it, you get... but at the time, you said, you gotta stay alive, you gotta keep going. Yeah, it feels bad, particularly if they've been really maimed, and say, "Oh, hey, John got hit today." Okay, he's off, he's going home or something. "Million dollar wound" was the expression used. If you got hit right, you got, you didn't get killed, and you got a million dollar wound and get to go home. But you just keep going. I, I guess there wasn't any mourning. We, we just moved on. But Hill 140 was a major battle. We... the guys, we, we took, we took several casualties, as I recall, on that hillside. Our platoon sergeant, I know our sergeant at that point was a guy named Big John. Big John Oroku. And he pulled us together that morning, afterwards, and he says, "You guys did well. You did a good job," he says. "I see you guys," you know, whatever pidgin he used. [Laughs] I guess that's sort of like getting a medal. I was really pleased.

TI: Because you guys didn't get praised very frequently, is that...

FS: No, no. They, when you think about real heroes, we were just, we were just soldiering.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.