<Begin Segment 24>

TI: After New Guinea, why don't you tell us what happened next?

SK: After New Guinea, well we finally got orders to leave in September and I boarded this ship, LST 552. To the Navy, LST stands for Landing Ship-Tank. LST. But to many of us army passengers, LST stood for Large Slow Target. Because we were sitting ducks and as we approached our destination which turned out to be Leyte Island in the Philippines, L-e-y-t-e, within in sight of our destination three kamikaze dive bombers, kamikaze suicidal dive bombers came after us. And the first two were knocked down immediately, by gunners from the ships. But the third one, when I looked up was directly overhead and I could see black dots coming and I recognized it, they were, they were bombs so I hollered to the man that I would describe in a few, few minutes to flop on the deck and both of us flopped together, but this fellow on my left was a great big fellow from Minnesota named Andy. The bomb landed on his side and he got the brunt of it and I got the ricochet. And this Andy in New Guinea always volunteered when he found out that I was the one requesting transportation to the POW, prisoner of war compound because I used to give him odds and ends souvenirs, and he would send them home with some concocted story about how he got, how he got hold of the souvenir I suppose. Anyway, he came across me aboard the ship. In fact he almost stumbled over me. And he said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I don't want to get rolled into the ocean, so I've got my foot tied to part of this ship." He said, "You don't have to sleep out here." He said, "I've got a command car, you can take the back seat, I'll take the front," he said. So from there on, I'm riding like a prince. I'm the only one riding in the command car, back seat all to myself.

TI: So this was on the transport, there was a vehicle?

SK: LST 552. He's, he's responsible for that command car being transported to, to the island you see. So he and I were right by the car, because we were approaching, we could see the land and we were right by the car and, but unfortunately for him, and he was on my left and the bomb landed on his side and as I say, I got the ricochet and I got these burn marks on my, all over my face and on this side too and there were hot tid bits all embedded in my face and the main piece knocked my helmet off and the... I was wearing glasses, sun glasses which protected my eyeballs apparently. And, but the rim here cut me between my eyes here and you can see the scar here and the blood from this scar was running into my right eye and so I could not, I could not see out of my right eye, nor could I hear out of my broken ear drum. And so I find myself, when I came to, lying side by side with what I found out years later, through the good office of Tom Foley's, when he gave me the, the background history of the LST 552 story. I found out that twenty-six of us were wounded seriously enough so that we were laid side by side like this, stark naked except for our shorts, combat boots and everything removed lying on a beach on Leyte. And at first I thought, "Why out here in the open beach? We could get strafed any moment." And then I could hear firing going up farther up the beach and I thought, "Well why stark naked except for our shorts?" And I thought well, that's because they need to know by glance where the injuries are. I thought. And I thought we were all waiting our turn to get treated medically. Then I, I thought well maybe I've got, maybe I've lost my left ear and, and my right eye because I can't hear and I can't see. So I took my right arm and checked my face and I was pleased to notice that I had my left ear and my right eyeball. But the good Lord, that's where my good Lord, the good Lord interceded. He said, "Don't put your arm down like this, like where it was, leave it on your chest." So I did. I left it on my chest and apparently out of twenty-six bodies, everybody's arm down like this, there's one short Oriental with arm on his chest. To make a long story short, I never got buried with the rest of them. I was taken out of there.

TI: So the other twenty-five were, were bodies that were...

SK: Were corpses. That's why the chaplain, someone hollered, "Look over there chaplain, look over there!" and I found he was pointing at me with my arm on my chest. Chaplain stepped over all the bodies to come to me and I wondered at that time, Why doesn't he stop at the first guy? Why come towards me, because he came straight for me and bent down and he said, "What's your, what's your religion soldier?" And I couldn't talk and then he saw my dog tags, identification and just rubbed the blood off, peered at it and says, "Looks like a "P" but it's a, it's a "B" isn't it?" And I shook my head because I'm no Buddhist. And he was surprised. And if I could have talked, I would have told him I'm with the fightin' Methodists. Anyway, I lost consciousness again and when I came to a few moments later, his head was, face was just inches away from mine and he was reciting the 23^rd Psalm, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall not fear". And I thought holy Moses, this man thinks I'm going somewhere. [Laughs] And they came running over with a, with a stretcher and lifted me up and, and ran with me to some place and, where they put a oxygen mask over my face so that I could breathe easier and with that, they put me aboard a ship called Mercy. There were three hospital ships plying in the area. USS Mercy, Hope and Consolation. And I was placed aboard Mercy and taken to a nearest hospital in the Admiralty Islands.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.