<Begin Segment 14>

PM: Now, Captain Byrne was the captain that sent you to get better-fitting boots.

LK: No, he -- oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. When we went to France, he was captain already, yeah. Because he was captain when we left 140, Hill 140, yeah. Captain Graham and I was finished, our war life was finished after Hill 140.

PM: So tell me, why did he send you to get boots?

LK: Italy?

PM: Yes.

LK: Yeah, that's why I wonder why all these years I'm thinking, I said, gee, that's just during the war in France now, not in Italy. We was in France, and he sent me to Italy during the war of France. And so thinking about it, he said, gee, he feels sorry for me. [Laughs] Size 8 shoes. So finally...

PM: So he sent you to Italy, what kind of, you got custom-made boots? You got custom-made combat boots in Italy.

LK: Yeah.

PM: And what size were your boots?

LK: So when I got to -- I told 'em about my size, my feet size, and they came out with a size 3. So actually, I like that size 3, not a 2 1/2. But anyway, you know what? They gave me twelve pairs. Twelve pairs of shoes, and I took it home, now. And you know what? You know that Hawaiian rock is so hard, it chew up my shoes, all up. I mean, every one of my spare shoes. I didn't know that. And I keep thinking, "What happened to all my shoes I got?" [Laughs] I don't have any.

PM: Except one --

LK: So when Lyn Crost wrote me about the size 2 1/2 feet, I said, "I don't have any." So she told me, "You send me your footprint, and I'm gonna make it big," I mean, make you a shoes. So that's what she did. I send in a print of my shoes, I mean, feet, and that's what she made a spare shoes for me. Well, Smithsonian...

PM: Yeah, it's in the Smithsonian now.

LK: That's how I got a spare, spare shoes. Otherwise, I wouldn't have... anyway, she ordered one because I sent 'em a footprint. And somebody else from Honolulu, Dorothy Matow, she wrote an article about 442nd. Anyway, I sent her one, but she didn't write no article about that, but Lyn Crost did.

PM: Lyn Crost was a famous war correspondent.

LK: But what happened is, how that she know that I had a small feet?

PM: I was gonna ask that.

LK: And was 4-feet... you know, that is when we was in a rest area in, the 100th Battalion rest area, and then how come she come out with a thing like that? You know, to me all the time, she was exaggerating. But actually, it wasn't; it came out true. I went to the shoe shop, I got a 2 1/2 shoe, I went to the doctor, he took my height, four feet nine-and-a-half. I said, "How the heck she know that?" I didn't tell her, I mean, I didn't know myself. I thought I was always 5'2". To me, I'm 5'2", not anything else. I didn't know that. But when my record said I'm five feet, and you're not too short, I said, holy Christmas. But then my record got burned and came out 5'8", I said, "Oh, man." [Laughs] This is...

PM: Larry, you mentioned a story to me, too, about when you were in combat, how you stuffed cigarettes in your helmet, and that saved your life.

LK: My helmet? Yeah, you know now, I don't smoke. So my helmet and my liner, now, is so full of cigarettes, so there's a space between my head and my steel helmet. So when I got hit on the head from the -- you know, to me, it was a .88 tank, was up on the hill. Not artillery, but, because how can a tank, I mean, artillery, hit you direct the way they was aiming at? I don't think so. This .88 was up in the hills just watching us. And what, they told us the first time that this was the .88 tank, not artillery, but that's what came out, artillery. But that injured anyway.

PM: But then the cigarettes saved your life.

LK: So my cigarettes saved my life. Otherwise, it's just the helmet, and liner, I'd be dead. Direct hit like that. So I see two guys, now, sniper got 'em right through the steel helmet, and then came out the same place it came out. That was Akiyama and Kubota. You heard of Kubota? Okay, he got... you know, I was gonna keep that helmet for seven years, somebody told me, "Are you crazy?" Now, if I remember keeping that thing, Kubota make history. But now I can't prove that he got hurt on the head. Anyway, Mickey Akiyama get the same thing, but now, his helmet had the daughter's picture in the helmet, and he found that helmet, oh, he was happy and happy. And then so he wrote the wife that he saved the helmet. And I hope he saves that helmet because that hole, helmet got the same kind of hole that Kubota had, through the main helmet. But this one grazed his head, now. Kubota didn't. Just rattle around and then came out. But Akiyama, he got grazed on the head. So amazingly, but he said he get hit once in a while, and same thing I do, too. But I can't prove that, because I don't have no record. But now, finally, my daughter look at the computer, see, she went through the advanced computer school, and she found it out. How can she found it out at a computer? Anyway, she did. Now, I got the record now, so when I wrote, the story came out about the 8th, wasn't it something about the 8th, that, you know... anyway...

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.