Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Spady Koyama Interview I
Narrator: Spady Koyama
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary), James Arima (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 23, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-kspady-01-0025

<Begin Segment 25>

SK: A couple of days later -- well before I get to that, to the hospital, there was a nurse called Myrtle Talbot from Spokane who was a nurse aboard this ship Mercy. And years later, within the past four or five years, I read about her in, in the Spokane paper because she had participated in a ceremony and he mentioned it, the name of the ship Mercy. And I thought hey, that's my ship. So I looked her up by calling the newspaper and they traced her down and got hold of her and I got her into the Spokane chapter of The Retired Officer's Association. And this year, last year she was elected to be a member of the Board of, Board of Directors and she was going to serve on the shift this January, but she passed away recently. And I'm one of the officers that attended her funeral in uniform. But that was Myrtle Talbot aboard the same hospital ship Mercy. So...

TI: Did she treat you? Did you remember her from the, when you were?

SK: No, I didn't know her, nor did she know me, see. Just the fact that...

TI: It was the same ship.

SK: She was aboard the ship...

TI: Right.

SK: When I was picked up. And the place before, place down to a ship, a hospital in the Admirality Islands and a couple of days later a fellow with a clip board comes in, up to my bed and he says, "Sarge, what's your home unit?" I said, "My home is, I was with the GHQ in Australia." He said, "No, no, no, your home unit." I said, "Well Headquarters 6th Army, New Guinea." He said, "No, no, your home Marine unit." I said, "I'm no Marine, I'm Army." And he stopped writing, took off. A couple of days later I was wheeled out of there, placed aboard another ship, taken down to an Army hospital. I was at a Navy hospital to an Army hospital on the French speaking island of New Caledonia. And there I stayed until past Christmas and by that time I'm, I'm well, I was quite recovered, I could walk around a little bit and I was go ahead and then I was placed aboard a ship because they said, "You're going back to the states because you need surgery to get that shrapnel out of your chest." So I wound up in Veteran General Hospital, San Francisco and there they told me, you're... I said, "Where am I going? I'm from the state of Washington." He said, "You're going to Spokane to Baxter." You mean Spokane and what's a Baxter? He said, "If you're from Spokane, don't you know Baxter General Hospital?" I said, "No it must have come into being after I took off for the army." Baxter General Hospital, the current location, at the current location of the Veterans Hospital where I'm a frequent walk-in patient was the Baxter General Hospital which gave me this 34 stitch operation to try to get that made in Japan souvenir out of my lung wall and at the same to clean up the fifth rib which had been smashed by the bomb. See I've always been grateful that I have a short oriental nose, flat because that piece of shrapnel about the size of my thumb missed my nose, missed my chin, missed the rest of my face here, went in, kept on going this way, entered my chest about here. Well if I could take my shirt off, I'd show you exactly where. Entered here, knocked my fifth rib to smithereens, kept on going and its now located in my lung wall on my right side. And it's been there since the 25th of October, 1944. Four years ago when I survived the eight bypass coronary, I told the doc, "Say doc, if you're going to cut my chest open, how about going a few inches and getting my souvenir from World War II out so I can hold it in my hand." And he said, "It's been there over fifty years." He said," Nothing doing. I'm, we're going to leave it as is." And it's still there to this day.

TI: And so you went to Baxter Spokane and after you recovered at point, you were discharged from the Army.

SK: I was, I'd spent one whole year. Twelve months. From October 1944 to October '45. One whole year, I was finally discharged from the hospital as a technical sergeant with 40% disability. And so I went, I went back to Spokane after my discharge.

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