<Begin Segment 14>

SI: Except for the work that we were doing, which was terribly boring to be doing station complement work, and I'm fixing these rickety old trucks and stuff, which was terribly, terribly boring. So when a few of us as cadre got shipped off, we didn't know where we were going. We were given no advance information on the unit being formed so we went completely blind. When you move, you just have travel orders and a group, and we have some sergeant or somebody in charge. It might be some scuttlebutt to where you're going, but not what this mission was. So you get on the train and you end up in Hattiesburg and trucks take you to the area and here you are, you're in the, part of the 442nd.

SF: So you were assigned to cadre.

SI: That's right. I was part of the cadre and because of my background they made me a motor sergeant and other people became first sergeant or mess sergeant and so forth. So we were sort of the nucleus group and we were all, of course, mainland - kotonk GIs. And then the hordes, big group of the rather boisterous, active Hawaiians, many of whom were eighteen or nineteen year olds -- several years younger than us -- and the volunteers or draftees from the mainland joined, and pretty soon, within a month or two, completely filled up the capacity, and we went into our basic training. And I was in the motor pool completely bored, because... trying to keep vehicles running fine is good, but to keep them shiny and clean and waiting for Saturday inspection to see that there is no mud under the fenders... [Laughs]

It was, to me, totally unlike what war was supposed to be like so the first chance I got -- there was a hapa sergeant in Charlie Battery. He was from New York City, John Nishimura. He's since passed away, but he was the Chief of Detail or Instrument Sergeant for the battery. And what an instrument sergeant did was, did the work of helping laying in the guns, orienting the guns, and most important to fire, direct artillery fire. And this was a bit more demanding than ordinary... you had, for instance, learn to add and subtract three digit figures while standing out and directing artillery fire, shoot left, right, amongst other things. And this fellow thought it was a bit too much so he refused. I mean, he gave up the position. So I heard about this and so I says gosh, I think I'm going to volunteer -- not volunteer, but ask for this position. So I went to talk to the captain, Captain Ratcliffe from West Virginia, and I says, "I hear your chief of detail is giving up the position, and I'd like to give it a go." And he had whiskers like this, and he says well... we had a long talk and I realize that my mother had hold me not to get into any dangerous situation, and I knew what this job entailed, but I thought it would be much less boring than sitting in the back repairing trucks. Well, to make a long story short, he accepted me and I took the job.

We had some intensive, intensive training where -- we could not go to officer's training school because, the reason I don't know, not that I wanted to go anyway. But they had a sort of a miniature concentrated one month course of selected individuals. There must have been about twenty of us who ate separately, who marched to the huts, who had classes from -- we ate, I think, we had breakfast at six, and at seven we had classes, intensive classes, and a lot of figuring work to do at night. And run by one captain, Billy Taylor, who really wrung us through the wringer learning all aspects of, or many, many aspects as possible of what an officer does in an artillery unit. And this was invaluable training because it was like a miniature officer's candidate school course. And it was good fun because it was very, very challenging both physically and mentally, and I must say I enjoyed this. And so I was fully accepted as a chief of detail.

SF: These are all NCOs going through this course together?

SI: All are NCO. We were staff sergeants, buck sergeants, and there were some first sergeants and master sergeant. The three of us from the three batteries who had the same job, we all got field commissions so, the training... one of them is here now, the others died. But, so this was sort of a preliminary to what we were going to do, and it was invaluable training I must say because it's entirely different from being in combat, but you had to know the basics of what to do.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.