Densho Digital Repository - Katsugo Miho Interview V (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1022-5-8)

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WN: How much of a danger was it throughout the war of shelling, you know, shelling Americans?

KM: You mean counterbattery towards us?

WN: No, for you folks maybe given the wrong coordinates or something and then actually shelling Americans?

MN: Armed forces.

KM: Well, I don't remember our guns short firing on, they call it the short rounds. I don't remember any incident where we threw any short rounds. Short rounds means rounds that would fall on our own troops. But the only casualty that the Battery B and the battalion suffered was our fault, it was Tomita, Domiyuki Tomita, who was a forward observer at that time. And as I said, he was a very cautious GI who very meticulously built a beautiful foxhole with a covering on the top and all that. From the tree burst... the tree burst is the one that you are afraid of because that's the way, like a time fire, it would hit the tree and then the shrapnel fire all over the place, and so he had this done. And the only entrance would be from the back. And how he got wounded because the opening, was wounded from the back, could only be explained by the fact that there was the 155 outfit in the back of us who was fighting long range and, so that 155 fire must have been the one that got through his opening in the back. But that was the only casualty of the 522.

WN: Short fire, is that a malfunction or is that just...

KM: Miscalculation on the... or it would be the error on a part of... see, I take care of the deflection. The man on the right who pulls the gun to fire, he's in charge of the elevation, the elevation up and down, and this is determined by the bubble. There is a bubble like a level, you know, carpenter level? There is a bubble which shows you the gun is in a position, proper line, and if you misread that, if you don't see the bubble is level, a short one, one-tenth of an inch of what you call miscalculation on the gun can mean hundreds of yards up in the front. That's where sometimes if there's any short rounds, that could be the cause. Like I said, there's a big recoil, big shock, and then guns get back and we have to pull it back in the same adjustment, there's a what we call aiming post, you realign, and then the gunner realigns his bubbles. So both got to work together hand in hand. And after when you fire so many rounds sometimes, you have a tendency not to be able to be consistent.

WN: And you got your coordinates and everything through a walkie-talkie?

KM: No, through the telephone, usually through the telephone. There's a telephone directly to the fire direction center. The fire direction center is the headquarters where they chart and read and everything. And then the forward observer is with the with the unit that visibly and physically tells you where the shot landed. The fire direction center gives you the map coordinates where the rounds are supposed to land, but the actual landing is by the forward observer so they have to adjust. So it's a complete teamwork, everybody has to be consistent in order to be effective.

WN: Did you ever feel gun shy like, gee, I'm not sure, what if there is somebody out there, our man out there?

KM: No we're always mindful of the fact that, in our case, E Company almost always was the, 2nd Battalion was always, our guys that we were in support of. And E Company had a lot of Maui boys, so in my case, I always considered, hey, those are Maui, my boys. What's his name? Dan Aoki, Dan Inouye, a whole bunch of Maui people. Toshio Anzai, he was E Company. So we were mindful of who we were supporting all the time.

WN: They were Maui boys.

MN: You know, being mindful that, hey, you're supporting these guys, would you always check on how'd they do? Did anybody get hurt? Did anybody die?

KM: That's the only thing that the 522 boys could really do is to be concerned about what happened in the last battle, who got hurt, who got KIA, KIA is killed in action. And it's amazing how you get the word right away. We don't get word from home, the word is from the, what they call wireless communication upfront that it's amazingly fast. Not only... normally I would, some of my closest friends I got word is how he got killed and things like that. I mean, the telegraph.