<Begin Segment 9>

MN: And I know that the 442 went through a lot of maneuvers. What do you remember about the maneuvers outside of Camp Shelby?

KM: It started off with field exercise, not maneuvers. We were learning how to set the gun, get the gun emplacement and fire at a certain target, how to determine the target. This took two or three months, I think it was. And thereafter, we then got into maneuvers with the 3rd Army or the 69th Division within the Camp Shelby area. But maneuvering came in after we had more or less become familiarized with whatever we were supposed to be doing.

MN: So was it during that time that the reputation of the 442 was sort of established as being a real solid outfit?

KM: Yes. During the maneuvers in the case of the infantry, the 442 was a regiment, 69th Division was a division, three times the size of the 442. But we were engaged in maneuvers, and I recall that one, you know, maneuvering was, we would go out into the field and at a given time, usually on a Sunday, it would be announced that beginning from, I think it was from six o'clock, it was what we called tactical. The conditions would be wartime, warfront conditions. In other words, no cigarette smoking, no lighting of the match in the dark, no fire, as if you were in a battlefront. You simulated and lived under conditions from six o'clock Sunday to Thursday, I think it was, what we called tactical. All of the conditions were as if you were in warfront. Thursday afternoon, six o'clock became off. From Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you would have three days of evaluation by the higher-ups. We had time to do maintenance work on guns and pig hunting. I don't know if you heard about the pig hunting. Have you heard of the pig hunting?

MN: No, you can tell us about that.

KM: Maneuvers was done in the wilds of Louisiana. And when we first went out there into all this shrub oak area, where we hardly ever saw houses and whatnot, we discovered that there was all these juicy pigs around, hundred-pound pigs, and wild all over. Every day we'd be down there, not anybody caring for them, and we thought they were wild. So the moment six o'clock Thursday came, every battery of our artillery battalion had somebody who knew how to clean the pig. So we'd catch it, cook it and whatever, barbeque pig. One month, I think, after we had been doing that, the word came down that the farmers in that area are saying, they're complaining because they're missing some pigs. And so the word came down, "Are you folks responsible?" Oh, no, no," we disclaimed any responsibility. But from there on, what we would do is we would dig a whole first, make sure that we have a sump. Clean the pig and cover up the sump completely, and we would not leave the carcass of the pig out because we would cover up the carcass into several pieces so that whatever we buy, it's as if we bought them from a nearby town someplace and having a barbeque. But our understanding is that in Louisiana, after our maneuvers, when we had left, the government had to pay the farmers x-number of dollars for loss of pigs. That's my understanding.

[Interruption]

MN: Before we changed tape we were talking about the men helping themselves to the wild pigs in maneuvers and practices. Since we just got into food a little bit, how was the food for you guys up at Shelby?

KM: It was, not much to complain, really. Except the menu was the same thing over and over, basically, there were very few variations. And for the people of Hawaii, especially, most of the food that we were exposed to in the army was completely different from Hawaii food that we were used to eating at home. Like what is the one, something on a shingle? It's usually in the morning we would have that. Completely new to us, from Hawaii. But you got to remember the cooks were our own cooks, our boys. So they were very good in cooking Japanese style to make do with whatever they had so that it will be palatable to us. So it depended on the cooks of your unit, the food.

MN: So how was your unit's cook?

KM: I had no complaint as far as the food was concerned. It never bothered me, basically. I tried to enjoy whatever there was available.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.