<Begin Segment 20>

SF: Do you occasionally sort of, did you ever... I mean, probably in basic training they try to jack you up to hate the enemy because they're doing all these horrible things in Europe and all of that, but on the other hand, sometimes when you take stuff off a dead enemy you probably see that he's got a photo of a wife and kids.

SI: Right. In Camp Shelby they would show us movies; they have posters of Hate the Japs; and the Huns; and Germans, the swastikas; but this is like, it doesn't mean much to you. Yeah, you're supposed to hate enemy, but what the hell. They're probably just like us. And it was like this when we went over and the first day one of my classmate, Zenichi Masuda, they were just marching up north of Rome, northwest of Rome, going into battle for the first time. And the way they did it then was they get on the road, and maybe on both sides of road, and then the infantry would march, and the Germans were someplace in the area. They let this whole group go through and when they had enough of them in sight, they just completely blasted away at them, and my classmate was killed on the first day. I was told this and suddenly you feel well, God damn it, this is for real, and you get a completely different feeling about what the hell we're here for. Nothing that anybody could tell me, and then you hear of more and more casualties. I had several of my classmates that were killed, and after enough of these and after enough of seeing many of our dead and many more Germans -- they were picked up last so they'd be dead along the road and completely bloated and black and don't have time for them, to carry them away or bury them. And rather soon after this, you figure: this is war and your mission is to kill the enemy or get wounded or killed, and you have a completely... I had a completely different outlook on how we're going to accomplish the mission and how we felt, perhaps even more important, how we felt about killing the enemy and knowing that some of your very close friends or good friends were killed. And to me, this is what brought home what, on a very personal and individual level and the very little niche that I had in the war, that I was here to try to be a part of a machine that destroyed the enemy. And you didn't feel bad about it because this is my job. And again as I said a minute ago, it's hard for me to feel that I could have thought this way.

On the other hand, maybe I'm hardened to this. I often ask myself, could I do this today if I were asked to commit myself? I think I could. In spite of the fact that I had experienced some rather precarious moments and come out unscathed and not to be, to feel that I'm especially brave or anything, but that I would accept my fate if it be so, were I exposed to a situation. As I often said, I think I would just as well expose myself rather than to have some young promising other fellow, other military or whatever personnel, to do the same because at my age I feel that I've done not only everything I ever wanted to do or expected to do, but and then some. So I've nothing to lose and again it goes right back, I think, to enjoying what you're doing and getting the most out of whatever situation that you have. And I can't translate this to anybody, well, my kids in particular. Sometimes I wish I could, but I think it's a very concept, a very... it's a concept that's very difficult to express and to implement, maybe impossible.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.