<Begin Segment 10>

HF: Yes. The L-5 is the designation for this little light airplane that took us from Ledo into the fighting grounds. And after we were discharged from the airplane, because we were immediately thrown in with the fighting troops. By that time, because we had lost our general condition, and we had confronted the, all of a sudden the awesome Kumon Range, which practically ran straight up. And it was a sheer, I think, determination on the part of Calvin and myself to endure this climb. It was during the wet season, and as I recall, these leeches were rampant. And as soon as we took ten on an hourly break, then these leeches would seek us out, because they could sense the presence of temperature, and a warm bodied individual. And we were the most prime candidates for this. And at first, of course, we were very leery about these leeches in that they were described to us as carrying infections if we plucked them off, and we were supposed to either apply salt on these leeches or to burn them off with cigarettes. But you know, when you're tired, you don't take time to do this, and we ended up just plucking them off ourselves.

LD: They were big.

HF: These are huge leeches. When extended, they measured about three to four inches.

LD: You were climbing that range. Tell us how high that range, how high was that range? Describe that climb.

HF: Well, from sea level, of course, as we looked up, it seemed very, very high, but actually, I suppose it was no more than about a thousand feet elevation. But it did go almost straight up. And as the troops and the mules which served as our carrier for supplies and ammunition, struggled up the hill, many of them lost footing and rolled down the hillside. Some of them, of course, broke their legs, and for this reason they were no good anymore, and they were shot on the spot. And by then, of course, the troops were really hungry for some fresh food. We were subsisting on K rations and on C rations. And the sight of fresh meat was a welcome thing, and so these mules that were shot ended up being food for the troops, parts of them.

LD: When I asked you what you really learned from that experience, you learned something about, what about animals? Human beings as compared to animals.

HF: As we pushed towards our final objective, which was the airfield in Myitkyina, northern Burma, one observation really sticks in my mind even to this very day. Here we were, devastated by disease, by casualties, by malnutrition, worst of all, I think, over a prolonged period of jungle warfare. And we would see animals, pack animals, dying left and right through sheer physical exhaustion and malnutrition. Yet the human counterparts would persist and charge on and on towards the final objective.

LD: You're talking about you guys, you're talking about the troops.

HF: By then we were one and the same, interpreters as well as the troops. We were front line troops as well as the others.

LD: So these mules were dropping.

HF: Yes, these mules and horses were dropping by the roadside. And then in turn, then because our supplies and ammunition were vital to our continued campaign, the humans then had to serve as the pack animal, and we ended up doing so.

LD: An animal would drop, describe it, a mule would drop. What would you do?

HF: Well, the mule would be carrying, say, vital supplies and ammunition, and since we needed these materials, we would unpack the dead animal then, and then carry whatever we put on an individual basis, obviously not as heavy a load as what the mule carried, but distributed among troops, and we managed to save most of the ammunition and supplies.

[Interruption]

LD: So here you're looking at these animals, and I'd like to describe more the way you felt at the time. I just want you go get back into that time a little more. I realize this is... make that leap back to that time. Look at that footage. When you look at that footage, what does it remind you of? What does it bring back to you? What kinds of things do you remember? Like you said, there was push, a mule pushing from behind.

HF: Well, here we were fighting in the jungles of Burma, and we were supported by these pack animals for our supplies and ammunition. But then animals can do only so much. Human beings, as I look back now to that particular campaign, can do what the mind tells. So where animals fail, human beings carried on.

LD: What did you see in the footage? How did you feel when you look at that footage? Does it come back to you?

HF: Well, the realization right now is, "Did I really go through that hardship?" This is the feeling that I get when reviewing the footage.

LD: But I really... you can't believe you did it.

HF: That's right.

LD: How did you do it, do you think?

HF: Maybe sheer determination and pride to stick it out, and that probably more than anything else determined our action.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1985 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.