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PM: Okay, Larry, so after you were, you enlisted, you went to Camp Shelby. Could you tell me about your experience in Camp Shelby?

LK: Yeah, well, we was all, got in the company alphabetically. See, like K, I. So we got in the 2nd, 2nd Platoon. I was in the 2nd Platoon, and so... about a week, we went into a night project. What happened is, wanted to go out, we thought someone should find a way home to camp, and that was, I was good at. So finally the captain find out that, "How come Larry know how to get back to camp at night?" So that's how come first scout. And you know what? I got promoted to PFC right after that. I was the first guy to get promoted, promoted to private first class. Anyway, so now, all my life, I was... so anyplace that we go, we never been, Captain Byrne and I, we go, two of us. I don't know why Captain Byrne, he's so tall, and I'm afraid that they might shoot him, you know. [Laughs] He's never, he's never afraid of that. I can't understand that. That's why when he was next to me when Kreskowsky got hurt -- next to me, now -- he didn't even get one scratch. And me, I'm getting hit here, I'm getting here, I get a broken jaw and I got hit on the head. Now, how come all that when I'm so short and he's so tall, and next to me now? Amazing, huh? That's why somebody told me, Hashimoto is a soldier in the I Company, and for an Oriental, he's tall. Anyway, he never get a scratch. So amazingly, I do know, doesn't matter how tall you are. But to me, the Germans knew what we was doing. So now, back to Camp Shelby, I became a first scout. So I don't know what Captain think about that, but he was so happy about that. So I was surprised that when I came to camp, he said, "You're not going home." So I think that's something in his mind. [Laughs] But he didn't know at that time that, what kind of guy I was. But I didn't know myself, either.

PM: So describe, describe some of the maneuvers in Camp Shelby. What did you do, and did they...

LK: Yeah, and then every night, now, every night, now, we go eighteen miles hiking, every night. And you know, half the time I'm slipping and going in the ditch. [Laughs] I'm going in the ditch. And that's when everybody used to say, "Hey, get off your knees, Larry, get off your knees." Not that I was walking, but that's how it came out. "Get off your knees," because I'm slipping now, going through the ditch. [Laughs] I didn't know about that all the time, you know. Finally, it's not the walking part, it's that I'm going in the ditch so many times.

PM: Who was in your, who was in your unit at Camp Shelby?

LK: And then... well, we, first thing we do is calisthenics in the morning, early in the morning. We always do calisthenics about our leg. We always, and I learned how to march, like parades and stuff. So we always learned how to march. And then we used to call that forced march. Not walk, now, you run. Forced march. You run five miles every day, every day, to strengthen up our legs, so we walked five miles, I mean, run five miles. And those times, they don't call it walk, they called it run. But in the service, they called it "forced march" because you don't walk. So we used to run, so that's forced march. And five, yeah, five miles a day, every day, now, every day. Amazing. You know, we got strong. We got strong. So that's why we used to beat the white soldiers. You know, we went to a, I found an article, Tak Senzaki said, "You know, we went through an endurance test, and Larry passed the test." And I said, "Did I?" Said, "Yes, you did." You know, "You got 120 points or something like that." Good was 110, but we went 120. We, we used to beat the white soldiers, you know. Amazingly, after the endurance test, we have to do sit-up. And sit-up and push-up. I could go 110 push-ups, and so I was lucky on all the endurance tests because I passed that. The only thing I was mad at myself, because on the day that we were gonna go twenty-four miles walk, I got a toothache, so I couldn't go to the 24-mile hike, and I have to go to the dentist and pull my teeth out. Anyway, so that's the only thing that I'm sad that I didn't do. Otherwise, my history will be real nice if I went to the 24-mile hike.

PM: Larry, could you tell me who else was in the 2nd Platoon with you?

LK: Huh?

PM: Who else was in 2nd Platoon? Who was in your platoon at Camp Shelby?

LK: Platoon?

PM: Yeah.

LK: Oh, you know Kubota? Okay, he was my sergeant in my barracks, Kashino, Smitty Koga, Sus Kisaba, Fred Matsumura, and Sergeant Kinoshita, "Blackie." But amazingly, I didn't know that. He was shot in, before I got hurt. He got hurt in the throat, so he can't talk. So he was discharged early. Anyway, I had a good group; we all stick together. And anyway, Smitty is, he used to have a white girlfriend in Mississippi, Hattiesburg, and he always get drunk. So every morning when he comes to camp, he's drunk, I mean drunk. [Laughs] But we always help him out, so he wouldn't get into trouble. [Laughs]

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.