<Begin Segment 3>

gky: When you got to New Caledonia, what were you called on to do?

RU: Oh, New Caledonia, that was an entirely different -- we reached our destination and we -- Colonel Munson knew exactly what to do. We started going through all the stuff that was shipped from the Guadalcanal. So we went through the, screened all the documents and translated all the important ones, and until February, when they shipped me to Guadalcanal with four other people.

gky: So you -- let's see, this is February of...

RU: '43.

gky: '43. So when was the big, the battle of Guadalcanal?

RU: Oh, Guadalcanal Battle was mostly fought by the Marines, and then in October of '42, the Americal Division moved into Guadalcanal, and the marines gradually left the Island, and Americal took over.

gky: So it's pretty much the mop up.

RU: That's right.

gky: Did you find any interesting documents, or any interesting...

RU: Oh, yes. We found a lot of the diaries, important diaries were translated by the -- we had five men over there and three were interrogators, and two men were nothing but translators so they did the translation.

gky: Do you remember any particular passages, or anything that struck you from a diary that you translated or read?

RU: Well, since the Japanese had evacuated the island a few days, one week before we got there, most of the documents were discarded documents, you know, so it wasn't that important anymore. The bulk of the people had left Guadalcanal for these other islands nearby, like Vella Lavella, Munda, New Georgia, and so...

gky: But do you remember where you, anytime when you were translating documents, do you remember reading anything in a diary that just sort of struck you?

RU: No, I didn't get to read any documents. All I read was a bunch of operations order that they had discarded, and...

gky: Let's see. You were there for the second battle of Bougainville.

RU: Yes. That was a year later. That was one year later.

gky: It was in 1944 in March?

RU: March of '44.

gky: What was... tell me what that was like. I mean, how you felt like you made a difference.

RU: Well, I felt that... when I was interrogating this prisoner on March 8th, which was fifteen days before the planned attack, I got the information that first, before that, the POW wanted to find out how he could get off the island. I said, "Gee, how strange, this man is asking me how he could get off the island. So there must be a reason why he wants off the island." So I kind of took, deliberated, and told them that it's going to take me a week to interrogate him, and it'll take another four or five days to cut the orders for him to leave the island. Another maybe four or five days after that, so we could get enough prisoners to make a consignment for railroad shipment. And so by that time, he was getting really scared that he may not be able to leave the island in time when they're going to attack us. So he said, "Did you know you're going to be attacked on March the 23rd?" I said, "Oh, yeah, sure. Several people have told me that." But I knew this was real important information, that nobody had ever given me such information before. So I delayed, I interrogated him for another thirty minutes or one hour, and I told him, "I got a headache so I've got to go back and get some aspirin for my head." And so I left him, and then went back, and rushed back over to the tent and told my CO that, "Did you know that we were going to be attacked on March the 23rd, at dawn of 23rd?" And the first thing he said to me was, "A Japanese soldier wouldn't say such a thing." I said, "Oh, no. He's telling me the truth. If you don't believe me, why don't you ask one of these other team members to interrogate some more higher ranking POWs at the POW compound?"

So the reason why I thought that he might be telling me, giving me some important information was because I knew that every prisoner that I talked to, ever since I started interrogation at Guadalcanal and Burma, they never told me their crew names, you know, their surnames. They were always giving me some other -- Tanaka or Murakami or Takahashi or some common name, Suzuki. And also I knew that no Japanese prisoners ever wanted to be recaptured after, you know, be recaptured by their own people. So I knew that this prisoner was telling the truth. And sure enough, when Sergeant Matsuda went over there to interrogate other POWs to verify the information that I told them, he said, "Yeah, you're right. You're going to be attacked March the 23rd." And then that our CO was convinced we're going to be attacked. So he told the commanding general, 14th commander that we're going to be attacked on the 23rd. And so that evening, all the movies on the island were stopped to get ready for the attack, although nobody was told the reason why they shut down all the movies, cancelled all the movies.

But then, on the 21st of the month, I said, "Gee, that's funny. Our commanding general is supposed to tell everybody to get ready for the attack.' And then I asked the mess people, because I knew that the mess people were going to get attacked by the Japanese. You know, every Sunday as I went to the mess hall on Sunday morning, I could see plume of black smoke about 300 feet up in the air, so I knew that the forward observer of the Japanese artillery is going to hit us with a barrage of shells whenever they attack. So as I passed through the mess line on March the 21st, which was two days before the planned attack, I asked, "Were you people warned to dig your foxholes any deeper?" He said, "No. Nobody told us to dig our foxholes any deeper." So I said, "Gee, I thought it might be a good idea if you did, to dig your foxhole a little deeper, because you might get attacked in the future, some future date." And then I let it go at that. And then the next morning I said, "Did you dig your foxhole any deeper?" He said, "No." He said, "Are you God or something like that?" I said "No, I'm not God, but I know we might be attacked, so you better dig your foxhole deeper." And then on the night of the 22nd, the commanding general knew that we were going to be attacked on the following morning. So then he told all the artillery people on the island to attack the Japanese at 7:45 p.m., and they attacked, opened up the barrage, and I guess it lasted about two hours, and the barrage was so heavy that the ground -- we were situated about two and a half miles from the front line -- but the ground shook like a earthquake, rolling motion of a earthquake. It was that intense. The artillery barrage was so intense, that... -- then I found out later that even the navy, there were six destroyers, and they called that, "Griswold's Navy," our army corps commander's name was [General] Griswold, Oscar Griswold. Even they shot many, many rounds of their naval gun at the enemy front line. So, but two days later when they counted the enemy casualties, there were five thousand dead, and nearly four thousand wounded.

gky: How did that make you feel, playing a pivotal role in this particular battle?

RU: Well, I thought I did my job, you know, since I was saving my own life. If I had not given that warning, they could have overrun our position. They had so much confidence that they were going to overrun our position that they had marked the place on the map where they were going to have a surrender ceremony, where the American commander was going to surrender to the Japanese general.

gky: Is that where the Japanese general surrendered to the American commander?

RU: No. No, but they had that much planning going on. They had a propaganda leaflet written up by the Japanese 6th Division commander saying that they have to avenge the defeat that they suffered in Guadalcanal, you know.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright &copy; 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.