<Begin Segment 19>

MN: I'm going to end the session now and then we'll continue...

KM: We're going to go into Belvedere, we got a good story there.

MN: Shall we go to Belvedere?

KM: You want to?

MN: I think so.

KM: We could cover that.

MN: Okay.

KM: Because, as I said earlier, in the normal standard operations procedure, at that time, when the artillery were emplaced, in other words, the three guns would be emplaced. Before the three guns, the artillery would be in position to contact the enemy. The normal procedure was when the initial placement was made, our battalion commander would ask the regular divisional artillery to standby and support our infantry because our guns will be moving into place. Three gun crew batteries were moving into position. During that time, the divisional artillery is supposed to support our infantry. So when the 2nd battalion was ready to attack and enter into combat with the Germans, suddenly, there was no contact with the division artillery, there was a letdown in communication. And the four, the three gun batteries were on the road. We were moving into place. And so when the 2nd battalion wanted to enter into contact with the Germans, there was no artillery support. And usually, the artillery paves the way for the infantry to contact the enemy. They didn't have the firepower. And so they got caught behind the line, so to speak, by the Germans who entrapped them. And because we were on the road, the 100th Infantry was on a standby basis. Sakae Takahashi was the company commander, he saw what was happening. And he took it upon himself to flank the Germans from the flank and attack the rear of the German. That's how the day was saved. But I remember distinctly that the reason why all this happened was because our three gun batteries was on the move and on the road, and we were stuck. There was a... I don't know, there was some kind of a roadblock that we couldn't move any further from where we were. But the 100th saved the day, and for that action, the 100th Infantry got their first unit citation, and that was Sakae Takahashi.

MN: Could have been disastrous.

KM: Oh, it could have been disastrous. Dan Inouye was 2nd Battalion, and he was the, E Company was the forward unit, and that would have been his unit.

MN: That was at Belvedere?

KM: Belvedere area. That was the first day of combat.

MN: And what were your feelings at that time?

KM: We had mixed feelings because when we got to this hillside, we had our first sight of a casualty of the 442. Right on the roadside where we were stopped was a destroyed German tank, and two blanket-covered casualties was along the roadside. And it was pointed out that, "Hey, that's Buddhaheads," and we first saw, although even it was covered with the blanket, it was a very, very eerie feeling of being exposed to your first casualty. But later on, I found out that one of the two was one with whom I lived in camp, Atherton House. Happened to be... I don't know if I should say the name, but he was a member of the VVV. And what really shook me later on, when I found out about it, we found out who they were later on. But as a story, you know, we get all these wireless communication, how we get aware, but I found out that it was my friend. Not only that, the talk was that prior to volunteering for 442 as a VVV member, he was... well, no, he was a little bit older than the rest of the boys, one or two years older, and he had a girlfriend who we thought they would get married or what, but they were very tight. And among the VVV boys, I think it was a well-known pair. The thing that I found out later was that prior to his being, getting killed, he had received a Dear John letter from his girlfriend. That really shook me. You know, here this guy receives a Dear John letter, and I don't know how soon thereafter he got killed. But there's some indication that he and his partner was too near the German tank, because they got killed by the concussion of the exploding German tank, which meant they were too near the tank. They were exposed, but these are things that you hear about later. Somehow we get all this information, we gather all kinds of information.

MN: So like you were saying somehow you folks would hear, would you folks go actively seeking out information to find out, how is everybody, did anybody...

KM: I don't know how it worked out, how these information trickled down. But invariably after each battle, each engagement, one of the first things we would inquire into is who got killed. Not who got wounded, because wounded people would invariably come back again or go home but who got killed in action is something which we... and sometimes even how they got killed we would learn. Of course, one of the most sad ones was that... have you heard about that ammunition exhibit that was done after our first battle, first big battle? Yeah, I think it was after the first big, first month of combat where the demonstration of mine, land mines. Have you heard about that? Well, there was a demonstration of land mines by an engineer company. And we had our engineer company, too. So in front of the whole battalion... I think one battalion, not one, but maybe one or two companies. They had this demonstration of Teller mines and the land mines and how to disarm them and all that. But what happened was that these exhibit mines were being put back onto the trucks from the ground where they were placed to show how to, what type of mines they were and how to disarm them. Basically that was the display. And while they were putting it on, the whole truck blew up. And the demonstrators, there were, four or five of them got killed, and a couple of the 442 boys got killed. And one of them was also University of Hawaii from Kauai, Daniel Betsui. It was somebody I knew, too, at the university. But these things, you get word, somehow, as soon as this happened, you, comes down the grapevine. But that was a sad incident because... fortunately, not more people got hurt. But the truckload of mines just completely blew up. Somebody did not disarm one of the mines.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.