<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Well, after Camp Shelby, you took a ship to Europe.

FM: Uh-huh.

TI: And the ship, the ride was almost a month long. That was a long time you were on there.

FM: Yeah.

TI: But as you got closer to Europe, can you remember some of the things that you were thinking, and the others, as you got closer and closer?

FM: Yeah. When it got closer to Europe, they handed out booklets, "How to speak in Italian." So we know, "Hey, we're going to Italy." And we studied the book, so that we could communicate. Before you know it, we can, spoke pretty good Italian for a while. Just enough to get along, you know? How to go to the restaurant and order the food, or something like that.

TI: Was it exciting for you to go Europe? You landed in Naples, I believe.

FM: Yeah.

TI: What was it like to land in a, now a foreign country. Again, I keep thinking, you started in Molokai, and you went to the mainland, and now you're going to Europe, another country.

FM: Yeah.

TI: It must have been somewhat exciting for you.

FM: It was exciting, yeah. But then we were going to combat now, you see. So, everybody was a little serious, you know. But we did have our fun.

TI: When you said the guys were serious, did anyone talk about that a little bit, about what they were feeling, or some of their fears, or anything like that?

FM: Not in that sense, but you can sense that people are getting serious about doing their job. Going there... end the war as soon as we can.

TI: So...

BK: How did you do on the ship going over?

FM: Oh, the first five days I was sick.

TI: That's a good question.

BK: But felt better?

FM: But, after that, yeah. 'Cause they force you upstairs, you know. They don't want you staying down in the hole. They want you go upstairs and, we did some calisthenics and all that kind of stuff. Before you know it, nothing to it. The boat is going like that, we eating and everything else. No problem.

BK: Thank goodness.

FM: Yeah. And there was some activities on the ship, too. Like, our group have a boxing session with the guys on the ship, the crew of the ship. And we had some semi-professional boxers in our group on the ship. All the matches were -- they were bigger than our group -- but see, they were semi-professional boxers, they really beat the, what do you call, the sailors out there.

TI: So that was kind of almost a form of entertainment, just to do things like...?

FM: Yeah, just to pass the time. Yeah.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.