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WN: And between May and November, when you actually did go home, and you were with occupation...

KM: We were with occupation.

WN: You folks have to do that? I mean, you couldn't... what if you didn't have enough points at that time?

KM: No, no, no. We were there occupying, and we took it day by day, and we would read the Stars and Stripes and they would give out the points of people who were eligible to return. It was based on points, number of months you serve, whatever decoration you had, and it came out to so many points. The higher points one, to go back. And so it came to a point where we all knew what we had, we had close to between 95 to 100, I think, most of us, the average, and because there are some who were higher than that because they had Purple Heart and things like that. Not all of them, but there were a few. And besides that, there was some volunteers who were asked if they wanted to volunteer and get a thirty-day furlough back home, and then be shipped out to the to the South Pacific. War with Japan wasn't over yet. So there was this group of volunteers who volunteered and were supposed to go, go back, and then, but then the numbers came up and then by publication, we were supposed to be going back already. But we didn't know what to do, we were just grumbling amongst, oh, hey, by the way, you know, these guys who were eighty-five and eighty are going back home and we were ninety and ninety-five. And so our, my captain kept, at that point, he became a captain, Captain Brew, took it upon himself to go to Augsburg, see the inspector general's office and tell the Inspector General, "How come the 522 members are not being shipped back home?" Well, you see, we were a bastard outfit, we're all by ourselves we were not attached to any division and probably Headquarters or wherever had completely forgotten us. And we would usually go by division, the army, but a lone battalion of Buddhaheads is not going to be noticed by anybody. And so Captain Brew went to see the Inspector General and told him, "How come?" He said, "What?" "All of our boys are ninety-five, ninety." Inspector General came specifically to our camp. Within two weeks, we got orders to be shipped out. That's how we came home.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.