<Begin Segment 21>

TI: So now I want to, again, jump ahead, 'cause there's a point where the 522nd split apart from the 442. Can you talk about that and when that happened?

NA: Okay. After the rescue of the Lost Battalion, the infantry was so low that they couldn't be called a fighting unit, so the whole 442nd Regimental Combat Team along with the 100th Battalion was sent down south to the Maritime Alps to hold the line. And while we were there, from the end of November or the middle of November 'til March of 1945, which was about five to six months, we received a replacement from the state, so the infantry was at full strength. And the infantry had what they called the Gothic Line, which held the, held up three divisions in Italy while we were fighting in France. General Mark Clark requested that the 442nd Regimental, regiment, 100th/442nd infantry regiment be shipped back to Italy to break the Gothic Line, and the 522nd Field Artillery, since shipping us back to Italy would have been a big job because we had all that big gun. And so we got shipped back to fight in Italy -- I mean, Germany. And so we started in France, a few miles before German soil, and so we, the 522nd, after being separated from the infantry, we went back into eastern France, and then from there we fought through the, I think it was the Maginot Line, we fought through that, and then fought in German soil up to the Rhine river and we stopped in March.

And the 522nd had to go, and then one evening, when the order came to advance, we crossed the Rhine River. And to cross the Rhine River, the Germans had bombers patrolling the Rhine River day and night. And that night, everything opened up, anti-aircraft artillery -- I mean, anti-aircraft guns, the field artillery, you name it. Everything opened up. And the anti-aircraft outfit knocked down every bomber that was flying, every German bomber that was patrolling the Rhine River, and it was already dark. And then midnight, under smokescreen, the 522nd went across the Rhine, we crossed the Rhine River over a pontoon bridge. And to this day, how we never lost anything, no personnel, no truck, nothing, no gun, nothing, we didn't lose anything. We crossed that in the dark, under smokescreen, too, midnight. And then once we got over on the other side, we didn't know where the front line was, so I was with a... what would you call it? A... not a reconnaissance party, but a party that was -- by that time, I was a forward observer since we lost so many men up at the, rescuing the Lost Battalion. One of the scout got hit, and he couldn't fight anymore, so I replaced him, and then I became a scout to go up the front line. But anyway, because of my...

TI: Your scout experience?

NA: Yeah, because of my position I held, I had to be a road marker, tell the trucks which way to go, and this was all in the dark, two, three o'clock in the morning, couldn't even see the, my hand. So all I had to go by was with the noise. And I didn't say, "Turn here," or anything, the truck automatically turned this way or that way. And then in the process, we didn't know where the front line was, so we got shelled. And one, one... in the... I still don't know what we were called that were dropped off along the route to direct traffic. But anyway, we were directing traffic, and when we all assembled to, after all the trucks went by, we assembled to go back and catch up with the unit, and we got shelled in the middle of the night. So we must have been where, German had scouts where we were, and then they asked for field artillery to knock us out, and so we got shelled. But since it was in the dark, they didn't know if they hit us or not, but one, just one, Private Sakata, had his rifle button broken, I think one of the shell fragments hit the rifle but no casualty.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.