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TI: Well, let's move towards Europe and when you crossed the Atlantic, it took almost a month for to you cross the Atlantic to reach Europe. What were you and the others thinking as you approached the landing in Europe?

DI: Well, I think all of us, in fact, 100 percent of us on the last days just before landing, must have had (much) going through our minds because you could sense the change. The first few weeks, you had a lot of activity: gambling, and singing, and carousing. But the last week gambling became a rarity, there was very little singing, people were just quiet. And you would see them standing on the deck looking out into the horizon and obviously thinking, doing a lot of thinking, and among that thinking was, "I hope I do well. I hope I do well." In fact, after our first battle, the encounter with the enemy, and we got together. I'm a curious fellow, so I asked each one of them, "What were you thinking about just before we got into battle?" Because we know at what point you're going to cross the line of departure and you know that at a certain point they're going to start shooting at you. What were your thoughts? And everyone had the same answer in a different way. One would say, "Boy, I hope I don't bring shame." Another would say, "I hope I do well. I hope I don't become a coward." It was something like my father said to me just before I got on the truck to leave. He said, "Whatever you do, don't dishonor the country or dishonor the family." And that's what it was. And for men of my generation, bringing shame upon the family or dishonoring the family was an important thing. And as a result there are certain statistics that we never think about, we just take for granted. For example, in Europe there were certain units where one half of the men had venereal disease, one half. In the 442nd it was a rarity. It was really rare. In my company only one person had it, and he had it before he came in. He was cured, but he was always identified as a VD and he never got promoted. There was an officer who got court martialed because he got gonorrhea. I think it's easy to say that our regiment was the cleanest in the whole United States military: army, navy, marine, air force.

TI: Because the men were just so careful because they did not want to bring shame to --

DI: They didn't want to go home with VD. That would bring shame upon the family and what young lady would marry him, right?

TI: That's interesting.

DI: And as a result this was very important. And so you would see gentle people who would fight like tigers because they wanted to bring glory and not shame.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.