<Begin Segment 5>

JL: I was called to Washington to the special projects section. And they had come up with the idea that they could teach all of these dogs to bite only Japanese, and I was to select a platoon of men from the 100th Battalion to take 'em down to Cat Island, where they had assembled all of these giant dogs. And a Swiss captain had convinced President Roosevelt that this could be done, so they wanted to try it. So I went down to inspect the place, and there were three island down there just off of Biloxi, Gulfport, and one was Rat Island, and Ship Island, and Cat Island. And the Ship Island is where Fort Massachusetts, the Civil War prison was built, and that's where the troops were to be quartered, and the dogs were on Cat Island. And I went over and took a tour around...

LD: What was the idea? What did they intend to do?

JL: They intended to teach these dogs by taking perspiration from the men and blood from the men, putting it on the food, and teaching these dogs to bite only Japanese. The idea would be they'd take thousands of these dogs and turn them loose on these islands in the Pacific and the same men. Well, they stayed down there, this was in the dead of winter. We took thirty-five men down there and two officers and left them there, and they trained with these dogs for about three months.

LD: What did you think of that idea?

JL: Well, I thought it was stupid. I didn't think it would work, but they had to have a chance. The way it turned out, two or three of the boys, three of the boys really went in to fight the dogs, and they put on, they looked like tackling dummies from football, they had guarded pads and things. Two of 'em got bit and got some medals for it. But when they get through fighting the dog for an hour they'd pat him on the head and he'd wag his tail and follow him out of the place. So the whole thing was blown up, they made us scout dogs, and they all went to Monterey, California in a scout dog camp. They had a fantastic lot of animals. I was scared to death the first time they went through, they took a mannequin and they put a pound of meat in his throat and took a dog and said, "Heel," and they take the leash out of him and say, "Strike," and that dog would go from a sitting position for a pound of meat. The only consolation I could get had it going right over the head of most of our guys because the thing was too high. But gosh, it was frightening. And the reason they were going to tell him, because I told Colonel Gaither that I've got to go back to Hawaii and live with these boys. I can't be taking them down here to get chewed up by dogs.

[Interruption]

JL: Colonel Nickels called me in the morning to bring the troops over to Cat Island where the dogs were. And I said to him, "Colonel, haven't you forgotten something?" And he said, "Yes, I haven't forgotten it, but I can't do it." He said, "You're going to have to do it." What he meant was tell the boys what their job was going to be. So there was no reason for me to talk back to him, and so when we got over to the dock at Cat Island, and the boys all got off, I assembled them and told them what the project was as I knew it, and told them that there were maybe some danger from them being bitten, or some harm come to them.

LD: Did they say anything?

JL: No, but I asked them to just play the job, do the job the best way we can, the way we do all of our jobs, and that's the way we entered into the project. And as it turned out later on, only two or three of the boys were willing to go in and fight the dogs, and we ended up by taking the boys and put 'em out in the woods and hide 'em in trees and turn the dogs loose to go and find them like scout dogs. And that's the way the project ended, they took the dogs all to California to Monterey, to the dog training center. And our boys left there and joined us back at Hattiesburg.

LD: How did you feel about that?

JL: Well, I thought it was kind of stupid. I didn't think it could happen because this old Swiss captain had said he could make these dogs pass in review and do eyes right. Well, that's a lot different than teaching them to bite only a certain race of people by subjecting them to the smell of the food and perspiration and blood and that. And I just thought it was unfair. As a matter of fact, when we landed at New Orleans to go over there, the whole airport was cleared, and the entire place was circled by MPs. And when the plane landed, I was the first one out of the planes, walked right in the back end of the two and a half ton truck with a curtain on it, and those trucks went right out of there and down to the dock and put the boys on a boat so nobody could see them. And nobody was to go anyplace, nobody stayed right there. They were afraid that word might get out that the Japanese boys were being used for guinea pigs, to be tasted. And so word was that there wasn't to be any conversation with anybody, or anything was absolutely quiet. They even mentioned that they were afraid that this could get back as far as Tokyo Rose, could be spread all over, the U.S. Army is using their own boys for guinea pigs.

LD: You said "unfair." What was unfair about it to you?

JL: To pick one race like this and try to use them for guinea pigs to find out if this thing would work. They were using my human beings. Maybe if they'd been using from another outfit I would have thought different. First place, I didn't think the project would work, and second, I didn't like the idea of selecting our... and later on, I tell you, on the way back, when I stopped in Washington on the way back, in Washington, D.C., they gave me thirty-five pink slips that I'm supposed to take and have each one of these boys fill one out. And I said, "Wait, this thing looks familiar to me. This is not something I need. It was a loyalty questionnaire." And I said, "Look, you can take these thirty-five pieces of paper back and keep them. You're talking to men, soldiers in the United States Army, and it's too late to be questioning their loyalty, they're already in the army." The guy took the thirty-five papers back and never made me take them. But that's another example of some people wondering about loyalty, I think. Here these kids have been in the army, been through all these tests at Camp McCoy and down at Shelby, and here now they're going to have them fill out loyalty papers?

LD: What did they have in mind?

JL: I don't know, I think maybe because of the project. They were concerned about the project, if this got out to be popular, known by everybody, there could be some reaction from it. I'm sure that's the way they felt.

LD: What reaction?

JL: Oh, public. I think a lot of public, and even their own relatives. This was all Club 100, 100th boys. I think they might have felt that... you know, word gets back home, "God, they're using my son for..." and people would think that they're picking on only the Japanese boys I'm sure, because they're not going to get the blood from anybody else, are they? It was a dumb project.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1983 The Center for Educational Telecommunications and Densho. All Rights Reserved.