<Begin Segment 10>

MN: What year and month did you leave for Korea?

RW: I left for Korea, I think it was in April, 1951. Came back in May '52.

MN: Now, before your unit went to Korea there was a stop in Yokosuka, Japan, and you had a few encounters where the, where the Japanese there said they would pray for you. What were some of these encounters, and do you think their prayers helped you to come home?

RW: Well, there were two things that I remember and bring tears to my eyes is, one is when I went shopping with this friend from Texas and we went to this little shop. This lady was real nice and I was talking to her and I bought some stuff from her to send home. I asked her if she had some wrapping paper that I could have or buy to send my package home, and the poor thing, she reached under the counter and got some old paper, like rice paper, I guess it was, and she was smoothing it out 'cause it was all crimpled. It was just a used piece of paper, and she gave it me. So I sent the package home, but I wrote to my mother through my sister, told her to tell Mom to send this lady, send this lady some canned foods and lots of rolls of wrapping paper, brown wrapping paper. So apparently she did that for me because when I got home and came back from Korea there was an unopened package that they left for me from that lady, and she had sent this big, nice Japanese doll. I have it at home up on top of my china cabinet, and I still have it. It's a nice, big doll, so that's been sixty years and I still have that nice doll. The glass case I had built for it is broken, so I need to get another case for it.

But anyway, that was my first encounter, but the second one, which is more heartfelt with me, when we were going back to the ship that night -- it was close to midnight, eleven o'clock or midnight -- we were going to the ship and this little girl was standing by the gate with a handful of flowers and a handful of money, and so I told her in Japanese, I said, "What are you doing here? It's too dangerous for you. Somebody's gonna take all your money away." So I gave her what money I had and I said, "Give me the flowers," she gave me the flowers and I gave her the money and she ran off. I told her, "Don't come back, stay away, don't come back." So then we went on the ship. We figured we were leaving that night, but then word came that they were still unloading things and loading things. What they were unloading was all our sea bags because it had our dress clothes and stuff, so we didn't need that. For all the Marines, you can imagine, it's thousands of, stuff had to be unloaded, other things loaded. So we stayed over one more night. We went into town, and then we were coming back about eleven o'clock and that little girl was there again. So then I went up and scolded her and told her, "I thought I told you not to come here anymore. Here's the rest of my money, so go home. Don't come her no more. Too dangerous." She said, "Chotto matte, chotto matte," So she went running down the street, and there were a group of about six or seven ladies standing way off in the dark of the street and she was pulling, dragging one of 'em by the hand, turned out to be her mother, and they said they came to thank me for the concern for their daughter, and then she said they would pray for me and they appreciated the fact that I had concern for her daughter. They said they came to see this Marine that spoke Japanese, and my Japanese was not that good, but I was able to converse because I could talk to my parents. And that was a very touching night for me, and they all said they'd pray for me. I did try to find those people, any one of 'em, years ago when I went to Japan -- I won a free trip to Japan at the Nisei Week one year and it just so happened some newspaper people were talking to me about the trip at Nisei Week and when they heard this story that I would like to find one of those ladies, they took my picture and they put in the papers over there. But never, never heard from 'em.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.