<Begin Segment 12>

MA: So can you describe the accident and what you know happened?

GF: Well, that's what I mean. I don't know, so I wanted to find out from some of these members of the soldiers that might have been in Hawaii this last time I was there. But I didn't get to talk to them, so I didn't...

MA: But, was it a car accident?

GF: Truck.

MA: It was a truck.

GF: We was a truck. All I know is we had thirty, he said, thirty soldiers on the truck, the back end. And that went over an old river bed and the investigating officer says that it was a miracle that we didn't lose any more people in that. I think they said they, they lost one and I was the most serious injured and I think there was another man with a broken collar and another one with a broken wrist. So he said, "With thirty people in there and with the kind of wreck it was," he says, "it was a miracle."

MA: So what happened to you? How were you injured?

GF: Oh, I had a broken hip. And it wouldn't heal so they operated to try to get it healed, and it still wouldn't heal. I guess it did heal in a way because I laid in that cast for so long.

MA: How long were you in the cast?

GF: I was in there for twelve months. It was a body cast. And the reason I think it should have been healed and I should have been out is when I got transferred to this city here at Denver, Fitzsimmons, there's a colonel and a captain, the inspecting officers after, after they took the cast off, they come through in there. And I heard the, the colonel talking to the captain. He said, whatever his name was, said, "You know, I can't understand why they kept this man in this cast for so long." So then I start thinking. I said, well, I shouldn't think that way, but the reason I was down there -- it was in Georgia, it was down South. Maybe the southern people didn't like us Japanese. So, he was a captain, and I said, "Well, maybe that captain wanted to let me die in that cast over there." 'Cause if you hear somebody say, "Why did they keep him so long?" you start thinking. I did. Which maybe I shouldn't have, but I did.

MA: Well, yeah, yeah. So you were transferred, then, from Georgia to Denver, while you were still in the cast.

GF: In the cast. Yes.

MA: Wow. So then you were in Denver for a while.

GF: Oh, yes.

MA: You did your recovery in Denver.

GF: Recovery and I went from, from Denver I went to Colorado Springs and back up here and to Tacoma, Washington, and back here. And then finally I got discharged.

MA: So after you recovered, you were still sent around, around the U.S.

GF: Yeah.

MA: So when did you... when was your discharge?

GF: I got out in 1945. I don't remember what month, or I didn't look it up, but it was in '45.

MA: Was the war over at that point?

GF: Yes.

MA: Okay.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.