<Begin Segment 21>

MN: And you talked earlier about being transferred to Bob Pike's unit, but it's around this time that you asked for this transfer and you ended up there. How did the other guys treat you? Did you experience any prejudice when you went to this new tank unit?

[Interruption]

MN: You were gonna share with us how you just joined Bob Pike's unit, and how did these guys treat you?

RW: Well, again, this is like when I went to boot camp, I was deathly afraid of how I'm gonna be accepted, the same feeling when I got assigned to a tank. I got to the unit where they were at, found which bunker they were in, I went in this bunker and the crew, four guys are sitting there so then I told 'em I was assigned to your tank. And they said, oh yeah, they're So-and-So and So-and-So, so at first it was, it was okay. A few days later, since they were treating me as a crewman, I talked with Pike 'cause he was very friendly with me and I said, "You know, when I first came to this tank, man, I thought I was gonna have a hard time adjusting, being accepted by you guys." Pike said, "I don't care what race you are. You're a Marine, you're assigned to my tank, but heck, you're a sergeant too," 'cause I was a sergeant by then, and so he says, "I'm a little uncomfortable." I said, "Man, that rank's got nothin' to do with it. I'm a crewman here." And so Bob told me when I asked him about the fact, "I was really worried that you guys weren't gonna accept me," but he said, "Hey, we, you are one of us, you're our tank crewman. You're a Marine. That's all that matters to us." But over the years, I came home and I visited him in San Leandro way back when we first got back, I've gotten back together with him a few times. We communicate daily on email, and we went to the Marine Memorial Hotel in downtown San Francisco for a reunion dinner. I stayed there and he came and we had dinner. I've been visiting with him quite a bit.

MN: Now you participated in something called Operation Mousetrap. Can you tell us what this strategy was?

RW: Well, I don't know what the whole strategy was. All I know is it was to try to just kill some enemy, and this was around the area where Bat was killed too. We were just giving up the hill. We were giving up that whole territory, and our tanks were told to tear down everything and load up our tanks and at a certain time we were gonna just pull out. We pulled out of this gully where we were hidden. We were retreating and all the units, the artillery, everybody, pulled out and moved to the rear. We stayed in the rear for, I guess, about a week at the most, and then at night they moved us all back up again. And then just before dawn they turned on searchlights on the hills and caught these North Koreans or the Chinese rebuilding their trenches and stuff and just bombarded 'em, so it was just kind of like a pull off and then go back and fight again.

MN: Now, you --

RW: I don't know the strategy.

MN: You know, in a lot of these missions did you ever feel like your life was in danger?

RW: Only when we got shelled. I just always never felt that that shell was meant for me. Even when we were in the tank, all we did was have to button up, close the hatches and just let the shells hit the tank and that was it. Then they would finally let up after they hit us quite a few times. As long as they weren't able to sneak up on us and fire some heavy weapons that would pierce the armor, but you have the ground troops around us, so it's not very likely they're gonna do that. I didn't get into real heavy tank battles itself and we did more support firing, supporting the ground Marines.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.