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MN: And, you know, when you were in Sospel, was that the site of the incident involving the Cannon Company?

KM: Yes, yes.

MN: Maybe you can tell us about that incident.

KM: Oh, I didn't tell you that, yet. While we were in Sospel, we were on this mountaintop. And about a thousand yards in front of us, which was the horizon, it was a little bit higher than us. We were down on the slope and this horizon, just below the horizon, there was this one Cannon Company gun. Because it was such a safe area, they were living in a big pyramidal tent instead of pup tents. And they were directly in front of us. And wherever we were firing, we were firing over their heads. And this was in a very quiet zone, one side, or the other side of the mountains was, there was a big valley and on the other side of the mountains were the Germans, was Italy, and on our side was France, and very little action between Germans and Americans at that point. But one day there was a call to fire as far as... that was about the only time that we used the full gunpowder charge seven. With each canister we have seven charges, powder charges, and normally we use charge five, meaning that we would take two bags out of the shell, discard them, and then fire with only five powder casings. And so the charge seven came in and they were gonna fire a testing round to see... I don't know what the fire mission was. So we got the gun and we, but we suddenly realized, hey, maybe we're not going to make that horizon. And so we have a certain procedure that we follow, look into the gun barrel to see whether there is a distance between the horizon and the ultimate route setting on the gun. When we looked at it, there was some leeway between the horizon and the eye level of the gun. And so even the Captain recognized, "Yeah, I think we can make it," so we just go ahead and did the fire first round. So that was my gun, and so we fired the first round. To our horror -- and we saw this by naked eye, you could see, it's about a thousand yards -- we could see a puff of smoke right near the pyramidal tent. And that's why we knew the pyramidal tent was occupied by our Cannon Company boys. And so fire direction center said, "Hey, what happened to the round?" Well, there's a puff of smoke out there. We don't know whether it went over the over the horizon or whether it's... "Well, fire another one, we need to have this fired. Go ahead and fire another one." Kept in contact with it, well, we're going to fire, you're going to fire. So we fired another round, and sure enough, same place, a puff of smoke come up. There must be some miscalculation and so we terminated the fire mission. And then what happened is that our two guns were on both sides of... there was a road that goes up to the hill, and that road, the Cannon Company mess hall would take up warm meals every night to the gun crew up there, and they would have to pass between our two guns. And so every time the weapons carrier would pass by, they'd yell at us, "What war are you fighting?" We'd be kidded about it and all that.

And so this incident happened, and then years later I'm going to law school, and they had a whole bunch of Hawaii boys in law school, George Washington. And so we always, every chance we'd get, we'd get together, the Hawaii boys, kind of Hawaii contingent. And one day when we were having a beer bust, I started, I related the story of how we accidentally almost shot at our own boys. And here my roommate with whom I had been rooming for about a year at that point, John Ushijima, who later on became president of the first state legislature. John was my roommate, and hearing the story he gives it a big ha ha, he laughed and he says, "Hey, Kats, what do you mean?" I said, "Yeah, that was my gun." He says, "You know, I was up there. I was one of the boys who were in that tent." And we laughed and then I get kidded by John, you know, "You almost wiped me out," that was it. Then years later, we're in the cocktail hour at Shadow Hirai's senate office, that was when I was in politics. And at this cocktail hour, all kinds of stories would come out. And then again the same story, and then Shadow looks at me, Shadow Hirai was a "politician's politician" of Hawaiian politics. And Shadow laughed and says, "Hey, Kats, I was there also." He says, "Now I know who I can blame." I said, "What do you mean?" Shadow was an operator even then, and the most desirable item that we could get at that time was an Air Force pilot's jacket which was, the filling was down, down fur and very desirable. It was the envy of all the infantry boys that the Air Force guys had this wonderful jacket. Shadow somehow got one jacket in his hands. But the brand new jacket has a smell to it. So just after he had gotten it, he was hanging this jacket on a clothesline right next to the pyramidal tent to get the smell out. That jacket ended up full of shrapnel. Oh, we had to laugh, then he tells me, he said, "You know, John and I, and not only that," he says, "Najo was also in that same gun crew." I said, "What do you mean?" Najo. So Shadow Hirai, Najo Yoshinaga and John Ushijima, three big-time politicians of Hawaii after the war, could have been wiped out by Kats Miho. [Laughs] But we had, but this was... and the thing is that we don't have too many chances to talk about it, but after a while, we had a lot of opportunity to talk story. And so in Shadow's cocktail hour session, I told him the story and the significance of it. You can just imagine the significance of it with, with Najo Yoshinaga and Shadow Hirai and John Ushijima.

MN: You could have changed the course of Hawaiian political history.

KM: Hawaiian political history, oh, yes.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.