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TI: And so then after the rescue, you still were sort of up there on the front for still a few days, and then finally you said when you came off, you took your boots off and your feet just swelled up?

JS: Yes. Well, we were then put into some sort of a barn away from the front there. We were relieved, in other words. And, and so we were in this barn with hay to sleep on and so forth. And so I took off my boots, and immediately they swole up and you couldn't even walk, you know, you couldn't stand on 'em. So that was the end of my service.

TI: Because what kind of recovery? I mean, what would have to happen to recover from trenchfoot?

JS: Well, all it is is time, I guess. And it was a painful experience, and you couldn't tolerate the sheets to be touching your feet in bed. So what they did was, like, cardboard box, they'd cut off one end of it so it'd be a three-sided box, and so that the sheets wouldn't touch your feet. And you know, interesting thing, in my interview with Hanashi people, I didn't realize it, but I had said that I lost all my toes. And while I was saying it, what I really meant was I lost all my toenails, not my toes, because I still have them. [Laughs] But years afterwards, they had sent me a tape of that, and I listened to that and I told my wife, "Hey, I didn't realize I said I had lost all my toes," which was not true. [Laughs]

TI: And so after you recovered from trenchfoot, then what happened?

JS: Well, I was sent, it would be some months before you could recover. I was sent from, down to Marseilles, and then from Marseilles, a ship to Boston, a hospital ship. And then from Boston I was sent to Spokane, to a hospital in Spokane. And they tried a treatment in Spokane, and it was on my, it was a spinal tap that they made. They stimulated one side -- I had trenchfeet on both feet -- and in order to help the improvement of the circulation and so forth. And I do know that for years afterwards, I had athlete's feet on the side that they did not treat. I don't know if that was just by coincidence, but I had, I've had athlete's feet for years, but not on the foot, the side that they treated with that spinal tap.

TI: That's interesting. And so you're in Spokane, at what point did you see your parents again?

JS: Let's see. I saw my parents, they had moved from camp to Connecticut, and they were working, my father was cooking for a family, and my mother did housework. And so I visited them after I returned, I was discharged. And I was living in Chicago because I had hoped to, I applied to the University of Chicago. But that's an accelerated system where some very bright students, and I would never have made it there, but I tried to get in. But they wouldn't accept me because they, they had to give preference to in-state residents, veterans. So I came, I moved from Chicago to Seattle to enroll at the UW.

TI: And so you finally did get your college education.

JS: Yes, I did.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.