<Begin Segment 19>

MN: And then you had shared with us how you had last saw Bob Madrid before --

RW: I beg your pardon?

MN: Earlier you had shared about Bob Madrid, how you had met with him before he died on Hill 749.

RW: Yeah.

MN: Can you share with us how you learned about Bob Madrid's passing and how you learned about your brother Hank being wounded a second time?

RW: Well, at headquarters they post this casualty list daily. And I normally didn't go look at it because, hey, I don't know other Marines that much, our attitude at that time was nothing's gonna happen to us. We're somebody special. We're there to experience the war, and then we planned a beer bust, "Okay, when last of the three of us get home, we're gonna have a big beer bust, okay?" That was all we talked about. "We'll see you when we get home." We'll do this, we'll do that. "Hey, Bat, maybe when we get back we can go try to be a highway patrolman," things like that. We were always planning what we were gonna do when we got home. But it was not meant to be, I guess. One day I just happened to walk by headquarters, and I saw the casualty list and I'm looking at it, and wow, there's Bat's name, the first name of the killed. There's about ten guys killed and his is at the very top. That means he was the first to be killed. I asked the guy if I could have that list. So then I was wondering about Hank and I had no way of finding out. Well, what I did was I borrowed the company jeep and I went up to Bob's unit, found the three guys -- the Marines use what they call a fire team, four guys, and Bat was one of the four men in the fire team, took their picture, and talked to them about what happened. Then I thought about Hank, and I think the next day or couple days I was watching the casualties, then I saw his name. That's how I found out they were killed and wounded.

MN: And then a short time later your close tanker friend, Vernon Todd, is killed.

RW: Yeah.

MN: How did you, how did this learning of Bob Madrid's death and then Vernon Todd's death, how did that affect you at the time?

RW: Well, I just broke down and cried when I saw Bat's name. In fact, one of the guys thought I was hurt or wounded or somethin' because I was crying, but I couldn't help it, I just saw his name on there. When I saw Vernon Todd's name then I checked with some of the guys from his unit, what happened, and they said they were getting shelled and somebody got hurt and he looked up to see who it was and a shell landed next to him and decapitated him. The thing about Vernon Todd was... when I was leaving for Korea, I went to see my mother, I told her, "Do you want to come to my sister Mary's house and then come and say goodbye when the boat leaves? She said, in Japanese, "No, it's bad luck to say goodbye to somebody going to war. I'll be here when you come back." And she said, "Just do your best, be brave, and don't get sick." So as a mother, since she's not gonna be there to take care of me if I'm sick, she doesn't want me to get sick. But that's what she told me. I'll never forget those words. Well, in the case of Vernon Todd, at tank school he bunked next to me, and he's the guy I asked and said, "Hey, Vernon, you guys from Texas are real prejudiced, man. How come you are such a good friend of mine? You treat me really good." "Bob," he says, "you've never done anything wrong to me. And besides, you're a Marine. I'm looking at you as a Marine. I don't care what else is there." He was that type of guy.

His parents came about two weeks before we finished tank training and were visiting. They would give us rides out to the main highway before the freeway, Highway 5 and we'd hitchhike to L.A. or wherever, or I'd hitchhike home. I got to know them, and he was the only child and only son. The day the boat was leaving, his parents were at the dock. I always think about that and I always think how sad because little did they know that was the last time they're gonna see their only son alive. When I found out I wrote a letter to his parents, told 'em I don't know why God does what He does, but He took my wife and Vernon, I said I asked him why he treated me so well and liked me when I was Japanese and he told me I was a Marine and he respected me as a Marine. I always look back and say is what my mother said true then? Is it true that it's bad luck to see someone leave to go to war? The parents were there and they saw Vernon go and, poof, just one explosion and he's gone. And they would never get to see him again, never see his face. He was decapitated. There's an article in a book written by one of the tankers who was with him, tells about what happened. It's gruesome because he said they were getting shelled and when the shelling stopped he picked up something and it was a piece of a skull that was Vernon Todd's. The thing about the parents, one of her close friends was writing to me for a while and she was telling me the letter was read at the funeral, made me feel very good.

MN: Now, your brother Hank, were you able to go and see him while he was recuperating?

RW: No. I didn't see Hank again for a while because he was on the hospital ship USS Haven down in Pusan, I didn't even know he was there until I got a letter from him, and letter writing is worse than pony express. I mean, you're lucky to get it all. But he did write and say he was there and that he was trying to get them to let him go home because he'd been wounded twice, and getting wounded twice, a third time is not a charm in war, so he did finally convinced them. They got him all the way back to Division and then he finally convinced them that he's supposed to go home. So then he called headquarters to try to find me and they got word to me, I got back to him and told him I'd borrow the jeep and come back to Division Headquarters to visit with him. Then he asked me if I had an extra pair of socks and some money. He wanted to borrow five dollars. I went back to visit him, and there was an empty Quonset hut so we went in there, we were talking. Then the first thing he said was, "How's Bat? Have you heard from him?" I said, "Gosh, haven't you heard?" And he said, "No, what happened?" I said, "God, he was killed the day you were wounded." I said, "Didn't Helen write to you or anything?" He said, "No, the mail hasn't caught up." So we just stood there for a few minutes, then his legs just buckled. He fell to the floor. It was a bad experience for me too because I'm the one that had to tell him. I kind of wish that he'd have been told some other way. That was the last time I saw Hank, when he was on his way home, so I was relieved of that.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.