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TI: So share what... and I'm going to let you kind of take the reins here in terms of how much you want to share. I know you've done a similar interview about Operation Utah and some of the fighting leading up to that. I found it fascinating, if you want to share that again, I would love for you to do that. But I'll leave it up to you in terms of what, you know, your experiences in Vietnam, what you'd like to share. Because I know you're writing a book on this, too.

HY: Yeah. I'm writing a book about Operation Utah. Utah was the first battle between the Marine Corps and the North Vietnamese regular forces, and it was one of the bloodiest battles in the Vietnam War. And we had, it started off with one Marine battalion that was understaffed. A Marine battalion would normally be a thousand men, this is only six hundred men. Plus they had another unit of four hundred South Vietnamese, we called Army of the Republic of Vietnam, paratrooper unit. But they were actually more of a liability than they were a help, because when we got into conflict, we needed them to come up on our left flank and support us and they refused to do that. So we were exposed on that left flank and that unit was overrun. So this was... we were thrown into this, they had reports that there was a regiment, and a regiment would be about three thousand enemy troops in this area. And they heard this and they said, well, let's go over this Marine battalion and this ARVN, force of about a thousand men.

TI: So even though, knowing you would be outnumbered three to one, four to one, that was what you're...

HY: Yeah. And I think they did assume that we would use artillery and air power to make up the difference. Well, when they're that close to you, artillery doesn't help. Because artillery was positioned along the coast, we were inland, and the North Vietnamese were between us and the artillery. So the artillery couldn't shoot because the oversplash would hit us, so they weren't much help. Air strikes were more targeted, but they were so close to us. I mean, you drop napalm, you don't want to be that close to the enemy, but they were right on top of us. So anyway, at first when we landed, it looked like, up to that time, we were chasing Viet Cong, and we would maybe have an initial engagement and the Viet Cong would melt away. And so we didn't have a prolonged battle with the Viet Cong. We went into sniper fire, we'd take some casualties on the landing and so forth, but it wasn't a war or battle. And this time, when we came in, we were engaged right from the beginning. They shot down some of our helicopters because this was the regular forces and they had .50 caliber machine guns that could take down, they even shot down a phantom jet. And so I was down some helicopters and my platoon was designated to guard the helicopters until we could get them back out again and the rest of the battalion moved on. And then all of a sudden they got into a firefight, and the F Company that was on the left flank got overrun, and one of the platoons was cut off. And I remember I was, all of a sudden got a call, a radio call from my battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Utter. And you normally, battalion commanders don't talk to platoon commanders, but he called me -- he called me Yosh -- he said he needed me to go relieve Fox Company because they had a platoon that was cut off, and they need, you couldn't maneuver because they didn't want to leave that cut off platoon. And so he asked me to... I guess he asked me to go there and relieve them.

TI: But I'm curious, at this point, when you got the call, I mean, is it like this order, knowing that this going to be a really bloody situation for you, is there that conversation at all? I mean, at what point do you know that this is not good?

HY: He said, "Yosh, I need you to go and relieve, give F Company some relief and recover that platoon." He didn't say anything more than that. I know there was articles written afterwards where he said that that was a tough decision for him to make because I would be going right into the face of the enemy.

TI: Oh, so that's actually written up, that when he gave you that order, that was something that specifically he knew was almost like a suicide mission?

HY: Yeah, a fellow name Schulimon was the historian that wrote that, and had a quote from Utter.

TI: And how much did you know, when you got that order, how difficult it was going to be?

HY: Well, I knew it was going to be hard because we could hear the battle going on. We could hear the thump of these heavy machine guns, .50 calibers. We didn't have .50 calibers with us. So I didn't know the extent of that, you know, because I had just landed and I was just sitting here providing security, we didn't have any action where I was. In fact, we had broken out our c-rations and we were eating breakfast/lunch.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.