<Begin Segment 13>
BN: I know you went on the trip, the fiftieth anniversary trip up the Bruyeres and Biffontaine commemoration. Can you talk a little bit about the meeting of that?
GK: Well, it wasn't such a big thing except I went to the forest where we were.
BN: And that was the first time since...
GK: Where all the treeburst was. So one day, I was sitting next to a 522nd Artillery boy, so I was scolding him, I said, "You caused all the treebursts." He didn't like it. It wasn't him, though, it was the enemy.
BN: And then you were also instrumental in compiling the, kind of the memoirs of L Company also.
GK: Yeah. Well, see, what happened was that I wrote my memoirs and I was urging all the others to write. In fact, I used my rank. I said, "I'm your sergeant, you got to write." But just then, Hanamura, Howie Hanamura wrote his. So we just happened to put the two together, and then all the others started to come in. Like you noticed that one of the boys wrote, and he didn't want to write. So he finally wrote, and he referred back to my article and said, "On page so and so you wrote something, and at that time I was doing this." I think it was the attack on Folgorito. But Howie Hanamura did a good job. He started off from before the war. And the daughter is... what's her daughter's name?
BN: Wendy?
GK: Wendy. She was the go-getter. I think she even took the father up to Folgorito again.
BN: She's the one who became a TV reporter. Tell me about the recent, the Legion of Honor award.
GK: Oh. That, I don't know how it happened, but it must have been that after the Lost Battalion, we went to the right to chase the Germans, and I got the Silver Star. So Barney Hajiro was the one that got the Medal of Honor, and he was in I Company, I think, that attacked the Germans for the Lost Battalion. So, but like I say, it's a good thing I was in L Company, reserve. Otherwise I'd be killed or dead in the Rescue of the Lost Battalion.
BN: Did you actually go to France for that? This Legion of Honor?
GK: No, no. You see, my law partner was Pat Lee. He was a consulate, honorary consulate for France. So I think after Barney Hajiro, I was the next in line for having earned a medal. So when the ship came in, French ship, they honored me with the award of the Legion of Honor, and it was awarded to me on the ship, French ship.
[Interruption]
BN: Just wanted to ask you about the importance of kind of capturing this history and why you feel it's important... and then you were mentioning, telling the stories to your grandson for the younger generation to know about this history.
GK: Oh. I was very willing to do this interview because you mentioned Seattle. And I don't know whether this is going back to Seattle or not...
BN: It is.
GK: But there were boys in my platoon from Seattle, and the one that I mentioned was Joe Wakamatsu. And he was a very reliable person in my platoon. And he's from Fife. I don't know where exactly Fife is. And there was a guy from Bainbridge Island, too, John Kanda. He was in our platoon, and he became a doctor, I think.
Off camera: Jack Sameshima.
BN: She says Jack Sameshima.
GK: Oh, Jack Sameshima, yeah. Mercer Island.
BN: So quite a few from the Pacific Northwest.
GK: Oh, yeah.
BN: This is all in L Company.
GK: Uh-huh, our platoon.
BN: In your platoon. Is there... given that a lot of students, younger people, will be referring to this, anything important that you feel like you want to share with the younger generation?
GK: Yeah. And that is, the formation of the 442nd and participation of the 442nd in the European war, I think really helped the status of the Japanese in the United States. Because I don't think anybody would make funny kind of remarks like they used to. And I think that's because of 442nd and the war record, like the Battle of Mt. Folgorito.
BN: Thank you very much.
GK: Okay.
<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.