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TI: We're running a little short on time so I'm going to now jump forward to a reunion, 1983, and this was a reunion -- I'm going to start talking about, a little bit more about Shiro Kashino. Can you talk about -- well, maybe I should even back up and when you think about Shiro Kashino, there was an incident he had in Europe where he was court-martialed. Can you describe a little bit about why he was court-martialed and what happened?

SK: Well, as far as I know -- this I'm hearing from a third person -- that my platoon members went to a small village to have fun, relaxation, because we were in a situation where it was a stagnant type of situation. We just guarded the German-Italian -- I mean, the Franco-Italian border to prevent Germans from infiltrating through our lines, you see, so it was sort of a static situation, and so our boys had time to go down and relax. And then at that time it seems like one of our boys, a platoon member, was involved in a fight with a Puerto Rican officer, an MP officer, military police officer. And Shiro and Fred Matsumura heard the commotion. They didn't know what was happening, but they just saw a scuffle over there so they separated the two and that was it. According to Fred Matsumura, they parted in a friendly mood, this misunderstanding. But the following morning Kashino, Matsumura, James Matsuda -- he was the one that got involved in the fight -- and Tadao Hayashi. These four were kept back. There were about ten guys who were corralled and taken to the MP station and questioned. The others were released, but these four were kept back. And this MP officer and a few men, MPs, came down with our battalion commander, and I felt at that time, why would a battalion commander come and pick up Kashino and the rest of the guys, but it didn't dawn on me what was happening. These guys were incarcerated, put in the stockade (during our) the rest periods. So we were sent back to Italy and they were still in (the) stockade. When time came for combat, they rejoined us. We fought our way. Kashino did. [Inaudible] at that time, he earned this Silver Star at one of the skirmishes and after the war ended, back again to the stockade. Then came the court-martial (hearing).

TI: Going back, it seems a little odd that they would be released just to fight and then when they were done fighting they would be back in the stockade. Was that a common thing?

SK: I felt that if a prisoner is a prisoner, he is a prisoner, not sent back to fight. Well, I don't know what went wrong.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.