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TI: I want to go back to get your impressions as a new officer when you saw how devastated the 442 was. What was going through your mind?

DI: You described it rather correctly because when I was informed that the adjutant of the regiment wanted to see me, we were all set to cross the line. In other words, to go into combat. I had already ordered the men to take off their packs, just to carry the ammo and water and medicine. That means you going to get into heavy combat. And here I was looking at my clock waiting for my time to come and this messenger comes up and says, "Hey, the captain want to see you." So I thought well, there must be a change of orders or something so sensitive that they can't go through the walkie talkie. And so I went back, he gave me an envelope, and he says, "The adjutant wants to see you." For a moment I thought now, what have I done wrong. You see the adjutant's for court martial and so I got on the jeep and they drove me back to Bruyeres where the headquarters was, and I reported and the sergeant saluted me. I looked around and didn't occur to me he was saluting me, and then I went in and I says, "Sergeant Inouye reporting." I says, "Well... what am I here for?" He says, "Well, you're an officer now." He says, "All you got to do is take the oath." It was so unexpected. I didn't know what was going on and then I took the oath, took a physical, and I found that I was physically underweight. Can you imagine I was 115? [Laughs] My waist was something like 27, but hard as nails. [Laughs] My hair was down to my shoulders because we were in combat for about a month and a half without break and so it was long. So I got a haircut and then when I got back to the front, the war was just about over as far as the battle of the Lost Battalion. I got into the last... oh, hour or so, but by then it was all over. When I left my platoon, my platoon was one of the smaller ones. I left with about eighteen men, I believe, when I came back we had eleven, so seven casualties. Fortunately they were wounded, but none were killed.

TI: And so you saw that the devastation in your platoon as well as --

DI: So technically I did not participate in the heat of the Lost Battalion battle. I participated in the battles preceding that.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.