<Begin Segment 25>

SF: What did you feel, though, when you saw these guys in striped uniforms and kind of emaciated...

SI: Yes. I think it's something that we were totally unprepared for. We were not told that there were these concentration camps where they gassed people and cremated them. I went to see the crematoriums later and you kick around in the ashes, and there are still bone and so forth coming up. The gas chambers were a small room where they crowded people and gassed them before they cremated them, but I think it was really shocking to see these walking skeletons come by, and even worse to see them trying to salvage food that we would throw in a mess area, garbage pits, and stuff. And it was, I guess, it was very hard to believe. And, again, I think on the other hand we accepted that this is the way the Germans did it and the result is we saw these emaciated, skin and bone, people who obviously were very, who were maltreated, but some who survived. I think it was a feeling of... it was very different from war and combat itself of how you fight with your adversary on relatively equal basis. They can shoot at you, they kill you just as much as you can kill them. But to round up enormous groups...

At the time I really couldn't equate this with our relocation centers, where my parents and sisters and all my friend and relatives were, with their concentration camps, which were physically not very different. There were barbed wire, there were barracks. In fact, the barracks were much better than ours with... there is still some restored to their original... so one didn't, I didn't... although I had visited Rohwer several times because Rohwer was -- I still had a car -- driving distance to Camp Shelby although there was obviously a comparable portion, but in no way were the treatment of individuals in any way similar, except for their rights as human beings, and Americans are being interned this way. So I guess as much as I accepted my parents and sisters being in a relocation center, or concentration camp if you like, here with the German concentration camps, which were much, much larger and the situation much, much different. So we didn't think about it much then. We thought it obviously wasn't right, but at the same time, the whole war effort and the destruction of cities and historic places and most of the bridges were gone and cathedrals were gutted, and is no way comparable to where, in the U.S. nothing was bombed or shelled, so it's very, very different. And the war was, as we saw it in Europe, was -- the war that they had, or we had there with them, and the resulting consequences... and the concentration camps were, as far as the war itself, was important in that it imprisoned millions of people -- I don't know whether it was millions or not -- enormous numbers and they killed a lot of the inmates. But in spite of that and in spite of how much a major portion of World War II this was, it still, in the whole sense of the war, not that big a part of the war, at least as far as we were concerned. So I think the social, political, and ethnic consequences of this are, again, rather large; but as far as the war itself was concerned, at least to me, it was a significant, but not a large part of it. So it was certainly a surprise for us to see this, and I think the type of horror that we saw was quite unlike that which we saw in war itself, where equals killing or -- we like to think we were better. But in many respects the German soldier was a much better soldier than we were. Maybe not -- I'm not saying our outfit, but in the American Army in general. Because I think in spite of fact that we hated them, they killed us and we killed them, I think in the long run you have to respect them for their professionalism and their ability to do what they did.

SF: So in terms of pure fighting professionalism.

SI: Absolutely. Professionalism and expertise and their dedication to what they were supposed to do. I think in many respects, I think we overwhelmed them with our endless supplies, huge numbers, and the general effort that we did; but for what they had -- I think if you really look at what they did with what they had, as far as professional fighting machine, putting aside the political ideology of the system, they really did a bang-up job. And I think from that respect, you have to respect their ability. And I think in many ways it's like the Japanese military fought for Japan and the Germans. I think they share a lot of the spirit of nationalism, the spirit of sacrifice, and the real dedication of the two societies to confront, right or wrong, the aims of their leaders. So I think there's a close parallel in this.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.