<Begin Segment 9>

BN: After the rescue of the Lost Battalion, you wrote that you moved on to... I don't know how to pronounce this...

GK: La Housiere. Oh, you know there, at the end of the mountain range, the 3rd Platoon went down and Sasaki came up. And 1st Platoon went down after that, to the right of the 3rd Platoon. And then all of a sudden, we see about five guys coming out from the German side. And they were Vietnamese or something like that, they spoke French. And they saw us, they didn't know what to make of us (Oriental guys). But what they did was they had something in their hands. They offered that to us, said, "Pomme de terre, pomme de terre." Good thing I knew what that was in French, potatoes. But that's what they (said and) they were surprised to see us. They were running away, so we sent then back, and I don't know what happened to them, but I remember that incident, pomme de terre. Good thing I knew (a few French words).

BN: How did you know?

GK: Oh, I knew a little French.

BN: La Housiere?

GK: La Housiere. What about La Housiere?

BN: Just what happened?

GK: Oh. We didn't go, actually, into La Housiere, but we were close to La Housiere, so that was one of our objectives, I think. And so we didn't go into La Housiere at all.

BN: But you were...

GK: Right next to La Housiere.

[Interruption]

GK: After the rescue of the Lost Battalion, we were chasing the Germans, and we couldn't go forward because there was a German machine gun firing right across, and we were firing back at the Germans. So I went to check to the right where the German machine gun was, and they were about to withdraw. So I came back and says, "Okay, let's go." And we rushed forward at the German line of defense, and that's when they say, well, I killed so many and all that. I don't know.

BN: But did you know that they were withdrawing?

GK: Oh, the machine gun stopped.

BN: Oh, it stopped. But you didn't know that they had stopped permanently, I suppose.

GK: No, no. So we went forward, but it was that they withdrew same time. But oh, that machine gun was firing right across in front of us. And then at that time, I was in the back of the line. And this big guy, George Miyoko, he was one of those guys, real curious about things. So he was trying to disarm a German mine. But that German mine blew up and killed that George Miyoko right there. But the thing that's really close to me was that Hideo Higa, who lives right across the street from us in Aina Haina, (...) he came from 1st Battalion to L Company. And he used to follow around Miyoko, George Miyoko. But that day, Hideo Higa got hit in the leg. So he wasn't following Miyoko, otherwise he'd be killed, too. But that's why I say that good thing Hideo Higa got hit, and he lost his leg, you know. If it wasn't for that, he'd be killed with George Miyoko. That's how the war goes.

BN: And it's after, after this, November, you arrived at Sospel? Thanksgiving, and cold and raw through December. Do you have any, what do you recall from that time?

GK: Oh, you know, we were on the mountaintop in a hut. And from there, the road began to wind down to Sospel. And that was December. Well, the funny thing that happened to me was that I heard, somebody told me, said, "Oh, your mother died." And that hit me. I've seen a lot of people got shot and killed, but it didn't quite hit me as hard as when I heard my mother died. And that was a different feeling. I don't know why. And here I've seen guys got killed, hit, wounded, but (hearing that my mother died was) a different feeling. Amazing, huh?

BN: Had she been ill?

GK: They didn't tell me.

BN: So it was completely out of the blue.

GK: [Nods] Back home, they didn't want to send any kind of bad news to the front because they figured we'd be careless and get shot or something like that.

BN: Were you able to keep in touch with your family at all?

GK: I used to write when I was in Camp Shelby to the members of my family that remained back in Waialua.

BN: But once you were in Europe...

GK: No. I used to write home, but they didn't write any bad news to me.

BN: Or any news at all. So you really didn't know what was going on.

GK: Like when I went back, they weren't living there anymore. Nobody told me that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.