<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So you've talked about years later getting more of the story in terms of what this Italian farmer thought or remembered. Tell me how you reconnected with this Italian farmer.

JS: Oh, yeah. That's an interesting question. Yuri and I -- that's my wife -- she and I had gone to Italy several times just to try to find this farmer, or this farmhouse. 'Cause I had a clear picture in my mind of what it looked like and what the countryside looked like. I was mistaken in one, only one aspect of it, and that was another house that was maybe five hundred feet away. And in that house, German officers were using that as an observation, and they, we saw the officers looking across the field with their glasses. And I thought that was on a hillside, but it wasn't, it was flat. But that's the way I recalled it, and I had, I thought that I would never lose that image of where that farmhouse was. So we tried to look for it on three previous occasions before we actually found it, but it was just by coincidence that we located this exact farmhouse and farmer. Because there was a fellow by the name of George Watanabe, he's a Hawaii boy, and he's younger than we are. But he was a career soldier in the army, U.S. Army. And he spoke with a very heavy Hawaiian accent, but he was an educated man, he graduated from the, through the army, the University of North Carolina, I think it's an extension course that they had for army personnel. So he was a college graduate, and he wrote well, but he spoke with such a heavy Hawaiian accent that it was difficult for my friends to understand him. But we didn't know, and this was in 2000, we went over there because we had received a news article about our mission from the Stars and Stripes, an old one. And it kind of showed the area that this farm was in. And so we went... this is our third venture to try to locate the farmhouse in 2000. But we looked all over the countryside and I could not find this house that I had indelibly etched in my mind. [Laughs]

But then we came home, disappointed that we didn't find it, then someone in Seattle... oh, yes, it was Charlie Okada, I don't know if you interviewed Charlie, but he told me about this George Watanabe that was retired from the army but still living in Italy. And he was a kind of a self-made historian of the 442nd. And so he, Charlie Okada suggested I e-mail -- Yuri's better at e-mailing, so she e-mailed George Watanabe, we had never met him, and George, who lived in Livorno, that's Leghorn, it's a port city not far from Pisa. But he worked at an army camp very close to Pisa, so he knew the people around there. So he asked me to send him the sketch that I drew up from what I had in my mind, and I sent it to him and verbally described what, what it was like out there, the area. And just by coincidence, he was working with an Italian native that worked for the army, for the U.S. Army, at this camp. And so they were kind of coworkers, and this, so he, George Watanabe enlisted the help of this young Italian guy, and just by coincidence, this fellow happened to be a family friend of the farmer. And so he visited this farmer, his name is, now we know to be Bardelli, that's his surname. And he told Mr. Bardelli that there was some Nisei soldiers that were trying to locate him because they had, or he had helped them, and he recalled. And the man was ninety-one years old, this was in 2000, and he had recently fractured his hip. After he turned ninety, the family took away his driving license, so he was riding a bicycle and he fell off of that and broke his hip. And we learned about the fact that George had made contact with this farmer, and when he told this farmer that we were looking for him and the farmer became misty-eyed and he remembered clearly. And so we learned who Mr. Bardelli was, and that was in early, I think it was in February of 2001. And since we learned that he was ninety-one years of age, we said, "Hey, we'd better get over there before he expires." And so we went over in, I think it was either May or June of 2001, and we had a very nice reunion with him, we thanked him.

TI: And so who went with you? Was it you and Yuri?

JS: Oh, yes. Yuri and myself, and we had two Caucasian friends, a couple, two couples, and they wanted to go along. And they had, we had, the three of us, three couples had gone in 2000, and so we were all familiar with what the heck we were trying to find. [Laughs] But when the farmhouse itself, Mr. Bardelli no longer lived in, it was vacant, and it was kind of broken-down. But when I went to this house, when George took us to this house, it was clearly what I recalled. The flight of stairs going up to the living quarters, the kitchen area and so forth. And that, this is in 2001 now when we finally located and found out who this farmer was, that was in 2001. And so we were able to meet with them, and the little girl that was two years old was now in her sixties. And so, and he, the farmer himself was living with his son, and they had us over for drinks and refreshments, and we had a very nice chat, and I thanked him as best I could in my poor Italian. But he was very happy to see us, too, and he was happy that we remembered him. And so that was gratifying for us to be able to, after sixty years, to be able to thank our benefactor.

TI: It just seems, I mean, for you to have gone back so many times, this farmhouse, this incident, meant a lot to you.

JS: Well, it did, yeah. Of course, in our early years of marriage, we couldn't afford to go over there. So, but later when we had the means, I certainly wanted to find him to be able to thank him, but we didn't know whether he was alive or what. But it was really fortunate that he was still living. He has since passed away, but we are fortunate that we were able to thank him.

TI: And so did you tell the other guys like Ken Higashi?

JS: Yes.

TI: So they appreciated that you did this.

JS: Well, we invited them, too, but it was certainly short notice, and we were, we felt the urgency because of his age. He died at the age of ninety-three, so it was a couple years after we met with him that he passed away.

TI: Oh, that's a good story.

JS: Yeah, it is.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.