Densho Digital Archive - Chester Tanaka Interview (denshovh-tchester-01-0012)

<Begin Segment 12>

I: -- that pretty much impressed the technology, even their tanks were better. Did you ever come up against any tanks, German tanks?

CT: Yes, we ran into German tank, we ran into Tiger tanks and other, I assume it was a Tiger tank. And we couldn't even penetrate it directly with our weapons. We had some, really we had a little .37 millimeter anti-tan, gun, and those things would just bounce off like water off of a duck. And bazookas even couldn't penetrate, unless you happened to hit a little crevice somewhere, where it could sneak through. Most of the time they took a bazooka and blew the treads off so they became immobile, and then they, if they were sitting there and we could knock the German infantry away, then if we had gasoline or could get up and shoot in through a hole someplace and get some bullets to ricochet inside to stir it up like an eggbeater, that's the way we could clean out the tank. And sometimes they set 'em up to keep the Germans off, but if we're not careful, we stumble into it. Now, they also know the Germans set up booby traps. But in any event, we watch out for the booby traps in several areas. One where the water is, and two, where the toilets are. Because they booby trapped latrines and they booby trapped watering areas, and we had to be very careful. We do it, I mean, our troops do it when we replaced them on a fighting line, they'll booby trap certain areas, and so would the Germans. So we'd look at those areas carefully first.

I: How would they booby trap a latrine?

CT: The latrine could be booby trapped in several ways. If it's sort of a semi-permanent holding area, but you're still out in the woods someplace, they may have something like a semi-enclosed area, and they may have wires, not near the thing, but maybe ten or fifteen yards, twenty-five yards beyond the latrine in a circle so that anybody hits it, the wire, except on the entrance part, will set off a grenade or something.

I: Do you recall the circumstances?

CT: He was killed by rifle fire. The troops were pinned down, I wasn't there in that particular patrol sector, but I understand he was just cut down by rifle fire. He didn't try to stand up and get riddled or anything, he was trying, you know, to do his job, and he was killed. He was a good soldier, but he just felt this... he had been in action before. He had been in action for about ten or fifteen, six months from now, five or six months. This was not his first one, he'd been on many patrols. And he just knew at this particular time, something was going to happen definitely to him, and he said he was not coming back.