Densho Digital Repository - Katsugo Miho Interview V

Densho Digital Repository
Katsugo Miho Collection
Title: Katsugo Miho Interview V
Narrator: Katsugo Miho
Interviewers: Michiko Kodama Nishimoto (primary), Warren Nishimoto (secondary)
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: March 9, 2006
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1022-5

<Begin Segment 1>

MN: Okay. This is an interview with Mr. Katsugo Miho on March 9, 2006. The interviewers are Michiko Kodama Nishimoto and Warren Nishimoto. And the interview is being held in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the UH Manoa campus. Okay? So Kats, to continue the interview, let's continue with our discussion of Belvedere.

KM: Belvedere was the first day of combat for the new combat team which included the 442 Regimental Combat Team which the 100th merged with us. And General Mark Clark, in deference to the record of the 100th, allowed the 100th to retain its own individual identity by naming, becoming the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, 100th separate, 100th Battalion separate. And so even 'til today we have a distinct separation between the 100th and the 442. But the 100th became the 1st Battalion of the 442 Regiment. As I said previously, we had three regiments of infantry, and basically the 1st Battalion of the 442, most of them became replacements to the 100th. And the leftover was, remained in Camp Shelby to be the training cadre for replacements to the 442. And so, I think the Camp Shelby was designated 171, so they have a different designation.

But we got together and Belvedere was the first day of combat for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. And a historical note is that the first day of combat, the 2nd Battalion who was leading the attack got into some difficulties, primarily because they did not have the support of the artillery when the 2nd Battalion went into combat and committed themselves and needed some fire support. Unfortunately, the field artillery was on the road. We were also getting to places to position our guns. And according to my understanding, Colonel Harrison, our commander, went according to what we call the SRP, Standard Operational Procedure, which said that when the infantry is out, and your artillery is not available, you depend on the divisional artillery for support. And so he had banked on the fact that when the artillery, all three batteries of us were on the road, the infantry would call on the divisional artillery for fire support, but that never happened. And because of that, the second battalion got pinned down. And he said at that point, the 100th Infantry, which was on a standby reserve basis, Captain Sakae Takahashi was given the task of, so-called... we 442 to hate to say it, but "rescuing the 2nd Battalion infantry," which was, so to speak, in a predicament, and for that action which ended in the routing of the German forces, the 100th infantry got their first unit citation. But the lesson learned by our Colonel Harrison was that thereon, thereafter, at no time did the artillery battalion move all three gun battery at the same time. One gun battery was always left in position to support the infantry, and until the other two batteries got their placements. And so thereafter, we did not depend on division artillery at all. Of course, for supplemental fire, there have been occasions when the division artillery came in to support the 442. But we worked as a combat team, fully as a combat team thereon.

<Begin Segment 2>

MN: I know that after Belvedere, you folks moved on. And people often talk about Hill 140. Maybe you can tell us about Hill 140 especially as an artillery man.

KM: Shortly after Belvedere, during the period of July 5th, I remember the 4th of July anyway, that battle of Hill 140 was fought. And this was an extremely critical battle for the 442, because it was, the Germans had been fully entrenched on this hilltop. The battle in Italy, the American forces were always at a disadvantage. The battle in Italy was with the Germans always on a mountain top and the Americans trying to dislodge them from the mountaintop. And when you got through with one mountain, they were on the other side of the other mountain, and it was a battle of yard by yard. And as contrasted to in France, it was all of these pine trees over a forest battle, but in Italy it was always trying to dislodge the Germans from the hilltop defensive positions. And as compared to Germany, it was a completely different style of war so the artillery, we were in experienced three completely different types of fighting. But in Italy it was really rough because the Germans were always in position with higher grounds and we struggled to dislodge them, as we say, yard by yard. And Hill 140 was, as we later learned, it was one of the most fierce battle of the Italian, of our entire campaign.

MN: And you know, when you say that it was one of your more fierce battles and it was a real intense situation as artillery man, how was it for you?

KM: Well, as an example, we never did experience that type of firing, intensive firing the rest of my experience. As an example, in one twenty-four hour period, July 5th and 6th according to our record, in that twenty-four hour period, which was at the height of the Hill 140 battle, we fired, the three batteries fired 4,500 rounds of cannon fire in support of the infantry. And it was at this Hill 140 that the 522 established its reputation as a time-fire expert. This is when our time firing was so fierce that infantrymen would tell you that they felt so pitiful for the Germans because they were near enough to hear the Germans crying out because they had no way of hiding from the fierceness of the time fire. And we established our reputation in the field as experts in time fire.

MN: When you use the term "time fire," what does that mean?

KM: Okay, in the ordinary projectile, you would fire and it hits the ground impacting on the ground and bursting. So you almost have to have a direct hit on a person before... people can get hurt with shrapnels and all that, but by that time, the Germans are all in foxholes. So as long as they're in a foxhole, unless you have a direct hit in the foxhole, there's no casualty by the Germans. But the time fire is a projectile that, as we understood, had a timing fuse on the projector itself, that after the projector leaves the gun, within so many seconds, it would burst in the air. And in the air bursting, all the shrapnel would go down, down to the ground. So there's no protection for the Germans in the foxholes. And I don't think the Germans knew about our proficiency in the time fire up until that point. But it required consistency in setting the fuse on the projector. And we understood that the projector had a timing field, which was the inner working, like the inner working parts of an Elgin watch. And we set the fuse by the number of seconds it would burst in the air after it left the gun, I remember it was something like close to twenty seconds that the average timing was. We would have to set it with a gauge wrench so to speak, they would set it according to the seconds that are on the projector. And unless you are consistent, that we are consistent, the people adjusting the fire could not make it ideally twenty yards above the ground to fire. And so between the fire direction center and the gun crew, both of us had to be consistent in order to adjust the fire. And without the consistency, you would not be effective. Because at some, maybe fifty yards up in the air, that would be just about useless.

WN: So you folks had to use a lot of judgment then.

KM: Not judgment, we had to be consistent so that the fire direction center would work on the consistency of the gun crew. Instead of one setting at nineteen seconds, one setting at eighteen seconds, they have to depend on the nineteen seconds being accurately placed on the projectile itself. And this is where our boys took extra care to make sure that we were being correct, doing things according to what it's supposed to be.

WN: Did Germany have the same technology?

KM: You know I don't know if the Germans had this thing. But you remember the Battle of Bastogne, well, at that battle, a new fuse came into being and this is what's supposed to have saved Americans. This new fuse was what we call a POZIT shell, which had an automatic... we were told radar that the fuse, the projector would leave the gun, and automatically at a given height it would burst. It was like a radar, it would hit the, supposedly the projector had a radar hidden in the ground and at a given distance it would burst. And this is what saved the Americans in Bastogne because to fire, you had to register first. The gun has to register the distance and by the time you fire that, usually takes three rounds to register the proper reading on the gun, the distance, the timing, the height. And by the three rounds, the Germans would be given notice the artillery's coming, and they would scatter or get into safety. But in Bastogne, with this new fuse, the Germans were completely taken by surprise. They were out in the open and the burst shells came and it was time fire in the air without any adjusting, which would warn the Germans that artillery would be coming. But supposedly what we heard at the Bastogne battle, all the fuses went to Bastogne, and we were supposed to have some for ourselves, but we got it much later.

WN: And to what extent during the war were you folks exposed to new technologies, or if any at all? In other words, from the beginning to the end, was it pretty much the same?

KM: I would say the POZIT shell was the single significant new technology that came after the, while we were in the midst of battle after Bastogne, but this is supposed to be one of the most singularly effective weapon that we had.

MN: And when that POZIT shell became available to you, would someone come out and retrain you folks on it?

KM: No, no, it was very simple. All what you had to do was... the projectile of the artillery came in two different pieces. One, the projectile itself and one canister where the powder charges were put in. It was two different pieces and you put them together and then fire it. But with the POZIT shells you didn't have to do any adjusting of the timing mechanism, you just fire the round.

<Begin Segment 3>

MN: You know, as an artilleryman, you're handling, you know, charges and everything. Were there any instances where you folks got hurt?

KM: Fortunately, we did... the 105 Howitzer was pretty safe in terms of mechanical maladjustments, but the 155 gun, which was a bigger gun, and it wasn't a Howitzer, it was a gun, it fired a bigger projectile. But that gun was well-known to have what they call a muzzle burst. A muzzle burst is when the projectile would burst as it leaves the gun. And so they were, when this happens, you would almost have some casualties of the gun crew. But the 155 gun was supposed to be very unreliable in that regard. But they always, always were firing further back than we were. They had a greater capacity of firing the projectile. And so there was a long range gun, but it was very, it had a bad reputation.

MN: Then I've been told that sometimes when you're doing artillery, and you're shooting a lot, the barrel of the gun gets really hot.

KM: Well, the Hill 140 is a good example. The barrels of our guns became so hot that we had to stop firing. We had to stop firing on a gun to let it cool off a little bit, and the other three guns would fire. But it was so hot you couldn't touch the barrel, you would get burned. And we thought, well, how can you... so we tried a couple of times. What we did was we would lower the gun barrel a little bit, and we poured water in the barrel to see if it would help cooling off the gun. But it never did help at all, basically, when the gun was too hot. So we just had to let it idle and cool off by itself. But that's how bad it was during the 140. And as I said, 105 Howitzer had two legs, so to speak, which would brace the gun from the recoil. But the natural recoil, the old World War I guns, it had no recoil, the gun would jump back, and there was a recoil. But as you would see on the, remember the pirate ships, you would see the gun, the gun will be rolling back, ten feet back, and then they would roll it back forward. Well, the 105 had a recoil system where the gun barrel would recoil. The 105 cannon with the cannon company had no recoil, but there wasn't that much of a difference. But that was a short distance gun. But the 105 had a recoil mechanism, which was a big help. But as I said, 140 was, we were firing so many rounds that the guns had to be always readjusted, we had to brace up the two shovels that we have in the back of the guns and re-engage the gun, re-registering the gun because of the fierce firing that we constantly, without rest. As I said, the twenty-four hour period, we fired close to five thousand rounds and you figure twenty-four hours and five thousand, you can just imagine how badly we were.

MN: With so many rounds being shot off, whose responsibility, whose responsibility was it to be providing you folks with all these rounds?

KM: We had one service battery, we had five batteries, headquarters battery, three gun batteries, and one service battery. It was the job of the service battery to keep us supplied with ammunition. It was their job to make sure that we were fully supplied. The only time we didn't have adequate shortage of fire was sometime in France, sometime in France, I remember there was a shortage of ammunition and it was rationed out so to speak. But the rationed out didn't affect us, the 522, because the 522 was the outfit to which whatever available shell was given first, we received the ammunition first, because the 442 was always in the forefront of any battle. And when the 100th was first put into battle, it was always the frontal battalion leading the Americans, but 100th would only move as far as both flanks keep up with them. They're the lead attacking battalion. You can go just so far because if you go too far up and without your, both flanks undefended, they would be encircled completely. A good example as I understand it, in the Battle of Cassino, the 100th had reached their objectives, but both sides were unable to do so, so they had to come back and withdraw. My best recollection is on three different occasions, the 100th had met their objective, but they had to withdraw again because both of their flanks did not keep up with them and prolonged the Battle of Cassino as a result. But in the case of the 442, you had three battalions, and we were able to protect our both flanks with our own group, which in the battle like in France with all of the, being in the forest, you know, it was not a big battle area. It was in confined battlefields, like wide open fields like in Italy.

MN: You know, before we get into France, say like at Hill 140 where the fighting was so intense, I was just wondering, how did all that firing affect the artillery men who are so close to the equipment? Say your hearing or in other ways affect you?

KM: Well, from maneuvers, from training, we got exposed to all this cannon fire. And we did not realize until after we got discharged and all that, that if, that there was anything wrong with our hearing, but we learned, like in my case, I'm the closest to the gun barrel, the breech. And every time the gun is fired, I would open my mouth to offset the concussion. And it didn't seem to bother me until years after discharge and among the, talk among the veterans, you know, "You should go and get your hearing checked," and all that. But the Veterans Administration very early did not recognize the fact that the ringing in the ears of the veterans was the cause of, was caused by all the gunfire. Years later, the Veterans changed their policy and became very liberal in recognizing the fact that the ringing of the ear and the gradual, early loss of hearing was due to all the gunfire. But it took them a long time to recognize this fact.

<Begin Segment 4>

MN: And then before we move on to France, I was wondering, when you folks were in Italy, what contact did you have with, say, the Italian civilians?

KM: Very little contact in Italy because we were always in a combat zone. Especially for the artillery, we would be in the front longer than the infantry, the infantry would have rest periods. After being up there for one week, somebody else would be replacing them. But the artillery will be there all the time in support until the entire regiment got the relief, then we would have a period of, a rest period when the entire combat team would be in a so-called rest area and we would regroup. Any training to be done, like I mentioned on the ammunition, unfortunate incident, things like that will be done during this week. And one of the most cherished things that we did was, you know, up there, there was no bathing facilities. We would take a bath with our helmet, and that's how we took a bath. Or if there was a pool nearby or swimming, river or whatever, which wasn't that often, we could. But when, these so-called rest periods, there would be bathing facilities, they will be portable baths that would come within the area, we'd go to that area where there was� makeshift tents, showers and you will get in line and you drop off your clothes at one end of the tent, get through the line, and they would be, we'll give you five minutes to take a shower and clean yourself up, soap yourself up and move on. And next, five minutes to rinse yourself and you get out and then you get new clothes that's waiting at the end of the line. But this was a pleasurable experience usually, about after a month of being up in the front. And it was something that was a great relief. Of course, your PX supplies would come in there, too. Although PX supplies would invariably come no matter where you were, within about every two weeks it was, we would get PX supplies. And one of our favorite pastime at that time was reading pocket books. And my favorite was... and we'd all fight for the cowboy books right away. And the other maybe ten, fifteen books or maybe, for a battery, there would be about twenty different types of books. But everybody would be picking the, looking for the cowboy books. I got to know quite a few of the cowboy book authors. To this day I remember the authors of these western books.

MN: And then I also was curious, I've heard of men who, during their time in Italy, acquired a taste for Italian food, say, spaghetti. How about in...

KM: The infantry boys had, when they were in the rest area, they had more leisure, and I think they had more opportunity to mingle with the civilian people. But the artillery, we didn't have that many occasions. Once in a while we're out in the farmlands, we would come across farmers who still... wartime, especially in Italy, the farmers never left their homes. They would be there until a battle comes and they would evacuate temporarily. When the battle is over, they're right back into their homes. And so when the battles were over, we would be able to have an opportunity to meet the farmers' family and some of us... not everybody, small groups would have opportunity to bargain with them for chicken, eggs and whatever. But in return, we would give chocolate and coffee grounds and whatnot.

MN: And how would you folks prepare the chicken and eggs?

KM: You know, you'd be surprised how... well, eggs, everybody just either fried or boiled it. It was a luxury item which... although you know we had all these powdered eggs and everything for breakfasts, because the artillery was fortunate, we always had, almost all of the time we had warm food. Mess hall always caught up with us, and we will have at least one day, one meal we would have warm food brought up to us. Every battery had a mess hall and the food would be brought up to us. But in the infantry they had more lines of K rations, which was ready-made. But in the artillery, we were very fortunate to have warm meals at least once a day. And people always had, some of them always had a supply of shoyu and things like that, surprisingly. We did receive care packages from home, you know. Yeah, we would receive care packages, various types of... and so invariably, cooking supplies were part of the care packages that everyone would get.

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: And then, so you folks moved from Italy to France. And I know that you were in Marseille for a while, and the last time when we were ending our interviews, off tape, you mentioned something about stevedoring in Marseille.

KM: We were in Marseille for I don't know how many days, staging area, and the distinct experience we had was that one day we got orders to get on the track there, and we ended up at the docks. And lo and behold, we were ordered to do some stevedoring and we ended up hauling cargo and the ordinary stevedore was hard labor, for which I remember I think each of us got one can of corned beef, I think it was. [Laughs] But anyway, it was in the midst of this war, before we got into Bruyeres area. That couple of days that we spent in Marseille, the French stevedores went on strike. They were the ones who were unloading the American cargo ship and whatnot. But they went on strike and they had to call upon us to do the stevedoring. And this was in Marseille and the other.... I remember we had one day off, then we went to... some of the boys knew they were there, had this Aix-en-Provence is, we understood that was a very famous small little town, the home of Gauguin, I think, and when we went there, sure enough, is all this... and then this town was completely untouched by war. Marseille was untouched by war completely. Most of, like Nice, Menton, France, was completely untouched by war. Was just a normal everyday as if there was no war around there. And so this small little town, Aix-en-Provence, was wide open and we went there and we enjoyed... although orders were, "Don't eat in the restaurants," the French restaurants, we jumped at a chance to get in and the French food that was available.

MN: What kind of foods did you enjoy?

KM: The best... my recollection of French restaurants, even in Nice, there was that as soon as you get into the restaurant, there would be, on the table, the soup of the day would be in a pot like on the table. And you help yourself with the soup of the day and then you order whatever entree you... and almost always it was very little, menu, difference in menu was either stew or... in Italy it was spaghetti, naturally what everything was, was spaghetti. But in France there were some, very few meat dishes but I enjoyed the soup of the day. I thought that in and of itself was a meal, but almost every restaurant I remember had this big bowl of soup of the day right on the table as you sat down.

MN: And how was your French?

KM: You learn the very minimal. Because when we were in Italy we learned... even to this day I remember, the phase that we initially learned was, "Do you have any chicken?" We started out with, we would as for pollo. Very soon we found out pollo is chicken. Then I remember the response by the Italians, "Niente, niente." Niente means "we don't have it." "tedeschi tutto potare via," meaning all of the chickens were taken away by the Germans. There was the standard response we got from the Italians. But very often in the farmlands there will be chicken and we would have a chicken fry.

So we went to France. And I don't know about France... France was, see, we didn't have much except when we were in Menton. It was more the French people speaking English than we were speaking French because it was a tourist town. Nice was completely... and it was as if nothing happened. The bars were wide open, the shops were wide open. We had a one day pass or three day pass, not more than one day usually. We were allowed one day passes. We were there from November of 1944 to... was it March of 1945, I think, during the winter period. But we did have the opportunity to go to Nice every so often. But it was what we called the Champagne Campaign. Because Champagne was... well, figuratively speaking, champagne, but we learned to drink green cognac. It's what they call green cognac. Cognac has to be aged x number of years, but the French people learned that American GIs didn't care about aged cognac. As long as it was liquor, it would satisfy us. So we were always provided with what we learned later on was called green cognac. The Champagne Campaign was after the Lost Battalion episode.

<Begin Segment 6>

MN: Then let's go back to when you folks were first in France and you went to Bruyeres, Marseille first and you went to like Bruyeres and Biffontaine.

KM: Yes, and then we moved up... artillery by our own trucks, we had to take our trucks and guns. So we drove up what was called... I forgot what the name of that, the Valley of, in the middle of France, the Rhone Valley, and we rode this famous highway from Marseille on up to Lyon, Epinal, and then Bruyeres. We had to stay over one night, one or two nights on the way up to Bruyeres. I think it was maybe one night we had to lay over because it was such a long trip. But that Rhone Valley highway, French highway, was very notorious, in that the French people had the use of their own cars and whatnot, and most of it was charcoal burning cars that burned charcoal as fuel. And most of the European countries at that point had charcoal, but even Germany and Belgium that I visited had charcoal burning cars. I don't think gasoline was available. But I don't know if it was the French or whether it was American troops -- mostly French -- were notorious drivers. And this Rhone Valley highway was noted for all of the accidents that happened on this road. And we could clearly see the evidence of all the accidents because this narrow highway had trees lined up. All European roads, you know, had trees, apple trees, mostly apple trees and fruit trees along them. And evidence of accidents were all over the place. In fact, a lot of the cars were left as-is when it was a total wreck, it was just left on the roadside. And we would see this evidence because we traveled this highway going up to Bruyeres, coming down from Bruyeres, when we went to recuperate after the Lost Battalion in Nice. We spent Nice from November to... I forget when it was. And then then we had to go back on the same route when we were ordered to go to invade Germany. So we drove this route going, coming and going in on two different occasions, the Rhone Valley, and it was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful countryside. Hard to forget, because you had the hills and the valleys and rivers and most of it was along the river. I guess that's the Rhone River, most of the highway was along the river, so it was beautiful countryside.

MN: Traveling along that road, did you ever feel vulnerable?

KM: No, it was completely... there was no evidence of any war, no war-torn cities or anything. You see, I think, you remember when the Germans first invaded and occupied France, they did so without, right after the Maginot Line was broken. And so south of Paris there was no war damage, so to speak. And this was in the middle of France, Lyon and Epinal, Dijon, we all passed through these cities. In fact, the one night, I think it was in Dijon.... Dijon, yeah. There was a circus going on the night that we had one day off, and so we had a wonderful time at the circus. This is when I first met Dan Inouye. Because the infantry boys were there, too. The infantry boys, they went by train and they laid over that night over there. And my good friend from Maui, who we grew up together, was Dan Aoki. I don't know if you folks know, but he was the enforcer for Jack Burns, Governor Burns. Anyway, "Balloon," as we knew him., he was from Maui, we grew up together. He's a couple of years older than I was, but a very good family friend and all that. I happened to see him on this night, one night out in Dijon. And he had a couple of boys with him and he said, "Hey, Kats, come, I want you to meet somebody." And by that time we had heard... now this is, as I said, we hear all kinds of things. We had heard about the young punk who was one of the up and coming officers, because he had just gotten his field commission, by the name of Dan Inouye. And he grabbed me and said, "Come, I want you to meet my friend and my lieutenant." And that's how I first remember meeting him. He had just become a field commission officer, and for me, it was such a big thing, because we had already heard about the exploits of this, and daring, devil-may-care, tremendously sharp field commission officer. And somehow I cannot forget that experience, and that was the first time I met Dan Inouye. And there was a circus, we enjoyed ourselves at the circus. In fact, was it there or was it Belgium, after the war? No, after the war, we had occasion to visit Belgium, I remember one of the first thing we had was banana ice cream... banana split. We enjoyed banana split in Belgium, because Belgian Congo was part of Belgium and it was still a colony of Belgium and banana was one of its biggest export items. And so, we had a banana split in Belgium and at that time, it was quite a treat. But in France... and then we, as I said, we on three different occasions went up and down the road of Rhone Valley.

MN: And then the first time you folks are going up, you folks were heading towards Bruyeres?

KM: Bruyeres.

<Begin Segment 7>

MN: And people always talk about the battle for the Lost Battalion. What was the artillery's involvement in that?

KM: It was... October 21st, I think it was, something like that. That winter had just started to set in, but it was a wet, wet type of winter, a lot of rain, mud, and then winter had just started. The snows just started to fall and so it was terrible conditions. But anyway, the story of the Lost Battalion is that the 442 had been up there, and so they were relieved and the 141st came in to replace where the 442 had been. But remember I told you that you have to have your flanks protected at all times? Well, the 141st was, took over where the 442 was. And as in the usual case, the 442 is the leading attacking unit. But somehow, the 141st did not, were not adequately protected on the flank. So they got quickly -- after they replaced the 442 -- they quickly got surrounded by the Germans, who made an encircling movement and the word got out that, oh, there was an outfit out there in trouble. And if you recall any of the testimony by the infantry boys, they had only come back three or four days, I think, after they had come back and been relieved, that they were ordered to go back again. I remember Joe Shimomura's video saying that, "Yeah, we went out there three days and they wanted us to go up again, we said, 'How come? We're entitled to one week rest." Joe, in the video, he says that, but they were ordered to go back again, and rescue or get the 141st out of the predicament that they got into. And this is the so-called Lost Battalion episode in the forest of what we call the Vosges Mountains of Bruyeres.

And Colonel Hanley, the 2nd Battalion commander tells us that he was involved as a very young lieutenant during World War I. But that during World War I, there was no fighting in the Vosges Mountains because the pine trees were so thick that there were no battles in that area. In the old days, warfare was trench warfare, wide open fields along there, but the Vosges Mountains was just pine trees. And I don't know if today the lumber industries have recovered from, because when you had all this firing and all these projectiles and all the shrapnels hitting the trees, the lumber industry has a reluctance to go into there to harvest the trees because of the metal content in the trees that would ruin the saws and whatnot. But this was one big aftermath of the war that the French people had to live with. But the warfare was such that... and we constantly gave protective fire to the Lost Battalion group because we were giving them protective fire from preventing the Germans from encircling them any further. So that was our number one task of the artillery because we were still in emplacement and the 36th Division artillery had not come into play yet. So we were constantly supporting the Lost Battalion. And this is the episode where General... what was his name now? I forget his name, the general of the 36th Division.

MN: Was it Dahlquist?

KM: Yeah, Dahlquist, who was right up there directing the 442, and so near the front that his military aide, as you may have heard, was killed by a sniper because they were too much upfront. And the military aide happened to be the son of Sinclair Lewis, a famous writer, novelist, but that's how near the front the general was up. And he had, on his own, had gone to the artillery fire direction center, and looking at the maps, he ordered -- this is a story by Don Shimazu -- he ordered the artillery to fire at a certain location on the map and that's where they need to be protected the most. And Don Shimazu says the lieutenant, I think it was... I forgot which lieutenant -- our battery forward observer anyway, I suppose, had told the general, "General, wait, that's where the Lost Battalion is located." And so they did not obey the command of the general to fire in that sector, which turned out to be very accurate that that was where the Lost Battalion was located. But had they, had we shot in that vicinity, we would have probably wiped out the Lost Battalion itself. They call it "lost," but they weren't lost, they were just encircled by the Germans up on the hilltop.

<Begin Segment 8>

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.

<Begin Segment 9>

MN: �Okay, this is the second tape of the session on March 9th. And, you know, we were just talking about how you would hear about any casualties or fatalities. In the case of the battle for the Lost Battalion, at that time, when you heard about the results of this battle, what were your thoughts or feelings?

KM: Not being physically in the presence of the infantry boys, as well as those rescued, there was no significant incident then, you know, because we were there where we did, we did a job that we're supposed to do. Those who will rescued, we didn't even get to see them. And those who were wounded or whatnot the in the K Company, I Company, we didn't get to talk to the survivors at that moment. We're still up there giving support to the ongoing battle because after that was Biffontaine and Biffontaine, the Battle of Biffontaine, we had to give continuous fire support. So it was moving from one job to another job.

MN: And then eventually when you did hear about the losses, what were your thoughts?

KM: I don't recall... I don't recall when we heard... see, I heard about the, what should I say, the number of casualties suffered by the infantry in rescuing the 200-something Texans. I don't recall any significance other than the fact that we were so decimated that we were being sent out to rest and recuperate and to regroup in southern France, because we didn't have physical contact with the infantry boys. The artillery, somehow we were by ourselves. And how the infantry moved down from Bruyeres area back to Nice, I don't remember. I think they all went by train, I think, whereas we had our own transportation where we went on our own, so to speak. But after the Lost Battalion incident, I don't remember too much discussion on the net effect of the battle. We were more concerned with physical discomfort because winter was just coming in.

MN: And how did you folks manage dealing with winter conditions?

KM: We didn't, physically we didn't suffer, except it's cold. And we were always on the road going down from northern France down to Marseille again. And compared to the northern side, southern France was relatively warm. Nice was, there was no snow or anything like that, except for the temporary time that we were up in the mountains in Sospel, you know, it was cold. It was so cold that my incident, my sore back, I incurred was my sore back. What happened was that we were firing or making fire to keep us warm in the evenings. So one day, my job was to chop wood. So I had this axe and chopping wood and I heard a click in my back. Very painful. It went away, but next morning, it was really painful. So I went to sick call and the medic sent me down to Cannes, the general hospital was located in Cannes. So I went down to Cannes and I spent ten days in the hospital in Cannes. And after ten days, I came back. And thereon thereafter, my back was never the same. But enough, not that bad to disable me, but years later, when I made a claim with the VA on this back, I saw my record, in my record that I did spend ten days in Cannes general hospital. And today, I do get a very small disability service for this wood chopping incident. But fortunately, my records, my medical records were all kept intact.

<Begin Segment 10>

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.

<Begin Segment 11>

KM: But the other memorable incident in Sospel was, in that area, there were lots of persimmon trees. Oh, it was just loaded, Menton especially, loaded with persimmon trees. But it was better, it had to be fully ripe before you could eat those. But I thought, well, you know, I'm going try and see if I can dry persimmons like I've had, you know, before the war, a few choice possession of Japanese dried persimmons, and I remember that. And I didn't know how it was done, but I figured out, well, I'm going to try it. Or what I see, remember is that that persimmons were tied and hung up to dry. So I peeled the persimmons, I hung 'em up to dry, but I couldn't wait until it was completely dried before it was, you have, I had about a dozen in my pup tent. But before I could get it dried, and when they became edible, I ate it all up. But it was really good. Somehow, I don't know, how come the persimmons, how the French people prepared it? And we didn't get to talk to too many French people. Because it was just a matter of going down, overnight visit down to Nice, and it was maybe once a week or something like that, we had these passes, they're going to Nice. And one of the things that I remember, significance of Nice is that there was a small little photo studio called Erpe. I remember the name distinctly because I have copies of the pictures. Almost, I would say eighty, ninety percent of artillery boys got their pictures taken at the studio in Erpe. It was a small little dinky little studio, and it was very nominal, the price for taking pictures. But all of us who had their pictures taken came out looking like movie stars. They were really experts in photography. And I believe eighty to ninety percent of the artillery boys got their pictures taken.

WN: You have your picture?

KM: I have my picture.

WN: I gotta see this.

KM: Yeah, I look completely different in that picture. Later on we found out, sure enough, movie actors and actresses, French actors had the pictures all taken by Studio Erpe. It was a well-known studio.

MN: Was that studio owned by the Millau family?

KM: I don't know, I have no idea. It's Erpe, E-R-P-E, with an apostrophe as I recall. But I do know that almost all of our boys have a picture by, taken by Studio Erpe.

WN: These are like formal photos, you know, with your uniform and everything?

KM: No, no, no, it was just casual. But the picture was like a portrait, it came out like a portrait.

MN: You know, when you were in like Italy and France, did you have a camera?

KM: I never did, but they were, Sus Ito, the biochemist from Harvard, later on, he was a lieutenant in the artillery. He had a camera, small little camera, and he took a lot of pictures. Today, copies were made and a lot of the boys pass it around among themselves and all dubbing that was done. And that's how we got a lot of the pictures, up front pictures. And one of our boys from Wahiawa, Takamori, Noboru, he was a photographer, and he had a camera. And I think you should find out from the family what happened to his archives?

MN: This is Noboru...

KM: Takamori. In the Fire for Effect book, most of the pictures in there is by Takmori.

MN: And then, you know, before we leave the Nice Menton area, the Champagne Campaign, during the Champagne Campaign, were there Germans shelling, and you folks returning to the line?

KM: Menton was just on the border between Monaco and Nice, smaller place. We did receive some shelling from the Germans, but nobody got hurt. But it was a nuisance fire, it wasn't that frequent. But I guess he was just an erratic, hit or miss kind of a thing because it didn't seem to have any direction and nobody got hurt.

<Begin Segment 12>

MN: And then I know that after France, the 522 was detached from the group. And then you folks went to southern Germany. If you can tell us about...

KM: Not southern Germany, we went to what was called Dusseldorf, right near Dusseldorf, which was on the western edge of Germany. From there on it was what we call Bavaria of Germany, and we broke through the Maginot Line in that area of Kleinblittersdorf, Kleinblittersdorf I think. And from there we got into the battles of Mannheim, and I think also Frankfurt and Heidelberg and Stuttgart, Ulm, Augsburg. And then in the vicinity of Munich, we got into what we think was the main camp of Dachau where we opened the gate, one of the forward observer group opened the gate to one of the... we think it was the main camp because there has been testimony by so many others. But I have to explain the nature of battle in that, at that period. Once we broke through the Siegfried Line, it was a rat race. In fifty-five days, we traveled some six hundred something miles. Remember in Italy was yard by yard, also in France, but in Germany, in fifty-five days, from March 12th to May 6th, when officially in our area, the war ended, we traveled how many?

WN: Forty towns.

KM: We traveled, fifty-five days, we traveled 617 miles, actually. And during that time, we fired some fifteen rounds. fifteen thousand rounds. And so the type of battle was... and we followed General Patton's 6th Armor, we followed them all the way, basically all the way through Germany. Once the breakthrough was done, what happened was that the armor would pursue the retreating Germans, and the fighting invariably would be at the outskirts of various small towns or cities, whatever, along this route, as we mentioned. And because the armor was chasing after them, the artillery was depended upon to come in the vicinity where the Germans were pinned down by the armor, the tanks, we would come over and take over the armor by pinning the Germans down. Invariably the defensive, what you call, was very restrictive, small areas. And then our trucks will go back and pick up the infantry, pick up the inventory and come back to where our guns are located, we will drop off the infantry, and the infantry would wipe out the resistance, and then we'd catch up the armor again. And this is indicative, because in that fifty-five days, we had fifty-two displacements. Let me explain what a displacement is. In fifty-five days, we had fifty-two occasions when we had to set the guns, then move again. So indicative of the kind of happening, almost every day, we were moving from one area... and as I said, we traveled six hundred, over six hundred miles in that fifty-five days. So we were constantly in front of the infantry. Because the infantry had to walk, unless we went there to pick them up, to bring them over there to wipe out the resistance. It was always small pockets of resistance. Patton's armor would come, locate, get in touch with the resistance and pin them down. They would make contact again, but in the meantime, we would take their place and pin them down without guns. And our truck would go back, pick up the infantry, and then we'd drop them off, and they will catch up with armor again.

And so looking back, the 42nd Division and the 45th Division claimed that they were the first unit to liberate Dachau. But Dachau was a major camp. The main camp of Dachau had about thirty or thirty-five thousand inmates. Alongside of Dachau, along this highway, what we called "Death Corridor" on the outskirts of Munich, were about eight or nine sub camps, sub camps where they had five thousand, normally five thousand inmates per camp. And there was what we call a feeder camp to the extermination camp, which is the main camp of Dachau. But the diary kept by one of our boys indicated that on April 28, 1945, which is supposed to be the same day that the 42nd and 45th Divisions claimed that they liberated Dachau, was the day that we opened the gates to a camp of Jewish inmates. And we were so involved with moving from... and in that area, I think we stayed about two or three days. But until... from Dachau to where we ended up, further down south of Munich, there were eight or nine other sub camps, and thousands of these inmates were on the road, starving, dying. This was our experience just at the end of the war. And we kept quiet because the word was we had violated orders in opening the gates, as I understand it. And so those who opened the gates were under orders to keep their mouth shut. And we were not... most of us who only saw the freed Jewish inmates didn't know about the opening of the gates. What we saw, we saw these decimated zombies walking the streets and dying on the streets. And this was our experience with Dachau, for the majority of the artillery boys. But we've had testimony, various testimony from different individuals. One significant one is that he was in Dachau, definitely in Dachau, and was rescued by soldiers, Oriental-looking faces. And this is in the testimony by our Hawaii Holocaust video that Judy Weightman did, and quite significant, that. But I guess it's recognized by the Jewish Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian, but beyond that, our own boys, individual records. And then there's just a few of them who went into the camp per se, at that point. We saw the results of the liberated, the bulk of us, only the liberated inmates, but just a handful of them actually went into the camp at that time on that, before the end of the war.

WN: And what did you folks know about the concentration camps?

KM: Very little. You see, we didn't know what it was. And besides, they didn't speak English, none of them. All we saw was these zombies on the road, and some of them dying, and we did whatever we could. Against the orders, we gave them all the c-rations that we had. And then for a few days, for about one week thereafter, wherever we moved from, there were these group of starving people who would wait at the end of our chow line, waiting for the scraps. And, you know, we had difficulty eating because we see these starving faces waiting for us to come to the end of the... at the end of the chow line, we have a little sump and into this sump, it's a garbage sump, we would dispose of our uneaten food. But these people were already there waiting for us to discard the food into their hands and whatever they had to catch the food from. But it was really an awful sight.

WN: So you weren't aware of what Dachau was?

KM: Very few of us. I don't think we knew about it. Even the Germans didn't, supposedly, even the Germans didn't know about the existence of, you know, the camp nearby where they lived. Because one of the first things the American general did was to order the German civilians to walk through Dachau and the camps, especially Dachau, before it was all cleaned up. And I think in some places, they ordered some of the civilians living in that area to come in and clean up the camps. I think the Americans had done that, but we weren't ordered to do that. Except the Stars and Stripes showed pictures of what was found. Tadashi Tojo, who lives in Waianae, is, I think, of those who really went into the Dachau camp. He's still around. He should, maybe you should get his oral history because Tadashi is one of the few boys who recall vividly what he did. He was one of those forward observer groups from A Battery.

<Begin Segment 13>

MN: So in terms of your actual presence in the area, about how many days do you think you were in that Dachau area?

KM: Our record, see, we have a daily record of where our headquarters spent the night all the way from March 12th to May 6th, and April 28th to the May 6th, that whole corridor that we passed through, from the 28th to May 6th was what we called the "Death Corridor." These people were all on the road, and it took a while before our voices could� corral and I really don't know how they did it. But besides the Jewish, bulk of the Jewish inmates in Dachau, the other camps were labor camps where people from... and I vividly remember that one camp that we met with inmates. The best we could get was they were Ukrainians, and I don't know whether they were Ukrainian Jewish people or not. You know, we talked about Dachau, but I also remember, before we came to Dachau, there was one town that we had, we were passing by, we had some time. And so my friend and I, my scrounging partner, every chance that we had, we would go looking for chickens or eggs or whatnot. We came across one town where we got into a gymnasium-like building, went down to the basement., and lo and behold, we found a bucket full of eggs. And these eggs were preserved underwater in a bucket. There was a, I don't know, about probably two dozen eggs, and the bucket filled with water to preserve it like a refrigerator. But I remember that it was this town that we came across some civilians in what was obviously prisoner garb. Not olive drab, I forget the color of this uniform with a painted P on the back. And in the front, I think it was the Star of David. And my recollection is that -- and this is before Dachau now, way before Dachau -- and my recollection of these people, the ones that I met were young, pretty girls, around maybe eighteen-, nineteen-year-olds. And I wish they could have spoken English or I could have spoken German because they were obviously prisoners. My guess today is that these were domestic servants that the Germans used for all type of special category of prisoners, because clearly there were big Ps on the back of the uniforms. And I recall some Star of David on the front, so they were evidently upper level prisoners, we'll call it prisoners, or Jewish members, as compared to the inmates of Dachau. Later on, when I thought about it, I recall that I did say, and I would estimate, I would guess that these were, very little has been written about it, but I recall someplace that there were different categories of Jewish, what you would call prisoners.

MN: And this was before...

KM: Before Dachau, before Dachau.

MN: And then when you were in Germany, were there other occasions where you were in contact with civilians?

KM: After the war, we were occupation forces, yes, we were. After the war, we occupied this little town. We were in the vicinity of Dachau, I mean Donauworth. Because Donauworth had a bridge crossing the Danube River, going from south to north, especially from Munich, Augsburg, up the road to Nuremberg, this is the main highway. And the bridge crossing the Dachau at that point was damaged and destroyed during the war. And so there was a temporary bridge for a thoroughfare from Augsburg to Nuremberg, which the German civilians had to utilize, going from north to south, south to north. And our job, primary job, was to guard this bridge and control traffic. And sure enough, within the first month, I recall within the first month of our occupation there, from the south of Augsburg... no, no. �In the vicinity of Munich, after the American forces came in, an art dealer or something that was released, the people in charge of the camp wanted to have him come back again for further investigation. And so there was a bulletin out to look out, on the lookout for this particular individual. And one of our boys who was on duty looked over the wanted individual list, to be on the lookout for so-and-so, the character. And sure enough, that same day, somebody happened, came by and looked, this guy thought, wait, wait, this is probably the guy. So they stopped him and then turned out that he was the individual they were, the army unit down in Munich was looking for. And the net result of it, the rest of the story is that the 44th "Ack-Ack" Brigade was in charge of some prison camp in the vicinity of Munich, and the 44th "Ack-Ack" Brigade, previously, in southern France, when we were in France, was attached to the 522. The "Ack-Ack" Brigade was attached to each battery of the 522, some anti-aircraft unit, they're anti-aircraft guns, they gave us protection, supposedly, from possible enemy aircraft attack. And so throughout our four months' stay in southern France, we had this "Ack-Ack" Brigade boys attached to each battery. And the commanding officer of the 44th Brigade, when it looked at the report, that the wanted individual was caught by the 522, suddenly recognized the 522 and said, hey, that's the outfit that our boys were attached to. And at that point, the 44th "Ack-Ack" Brigade was in charge of rest and recuperation camp down south, which was called Koenigssee. Koenigssee was the, before the war for the Germans, it was a very high class resort area in the mountains of Bavaria. And the general said, "By the way, got in touch with Colonel Harrison, and I'm in charge of this, resting camp, R & R camp, and you boys will be more than welcome to spend three-day furloughs over here." So this was very early on our seven-month occupation that we were privileged to... and we were outside the zone of the 44th but we were, we had three-day passes thereafter, and I think I went to two different, two three-day passes to Koenigssee. It was a beautiful, beautiful resort area. And the lake that's up there, Koenigssee is supposed to be the deepest inland lake up in the Alps, near Berchtesgaden. But the A Battery boys who captured the wanted individual were given a lot of praise by the rest of the battery because we ended up with three-day passes.

<Begin Segment 14>

MN: And then besides the guarding of bridges, what else did you folks do during your occupation duty?

KM: Every once in a while I recall there was an unannounced... we would, I remember once or twice that we went to one of the hamlets, those are real hamlets, German villages, not villages, hamlets, households of maybe ten or fifteen, tilling the land right around them. And even to this day, the same type of farming goes on in Germany. But we went looking for, I don't know what, but for all of the years in the war, the Germans were prohibited from hunting. And so all of these farmlands where they had wooded areas and preserved a lot of reindeer, little deers, and when we found out that there was deers all around the place, that's when we started to have a beer bust once a week. Our officer would not allow us to go out, only once a week we would go out and hunting for reindeer and have beer bust, a beer ration came once a week. And so we would have... a lot of us put on a lot of weight the seven months that we were there.

MN: Your beer, was it German beer?

KM: German beer. In fact, when we occupied, the little town that we occupied, we occupied the brewery house, which was a hotel as well as brewery that we occupied. And four years ago when I went back to Germany to look up my "laundry family," the house was still there, but converted fully to a hotel now, the brewery is no longer there. But I went back to Germany four years ago to speak to the 3rd Army Unit. The 3rd Army Unit happened to be the first American unit to go into Iran after 9/11, but just before they went to 9/11 I was up there giving them a talk about the Pacific, you know, this ethnic study group that we have, this month was Germany. Black month, last month, May is going to be Oriental ethnic studies and so I was invited over to go to Germany and give a three-day visit. And then I looked up my own "laundry family" who was not there, but I met up with a lady that used to be the daughter of the family. It's a story in itself.

MN: You called them your "laundry family"?

KM: During occupation, even though hostilities all ended, we were still attached to the 3rd Army, which was one of the requirements was they do have a very rigid once a week inspection. For inspection we had to put on a fully starched khaki uniform and spic and span, polish the boots and buckle and everything else. This is what you call a requirement by 3rd Army, Patton's. And so we couldn't do it with our quartermaster because they're far away. So we had to either do it our own self, or as we all did, we adopted a family, German family, to do our laundry. Because once a week, we had to have this stiff. And so all of us had a German family who would do our laundry, and we would pay them with cigarettes. So I adopted a family. And when I went back in 2001, I tried to look up the family. And you'd be amazed, the hamlet itself, the small little town was the same way it was in 1945. But I couldn't find the house because the bakery that I knew was no longer there and they had a little kiosk gas station where the bakery used to be located. And when I went into there and asked the lady over there, "Do you know," it was the Hirsch family. And she said, "There's nobody there by that name now." Over two thousand people maybe in that small... two thousand, two thousand five hundred. "No, there's nobody here by the name." And says, "Wait, wait," and she spoke a little English, she told me that she'd been to Hawaii ten years ago, and so she spoke a little bit of English. And so she picks up the phone and makes a phone call, and then she drops the phone and she makes another phone call. And then she gets through and she tells me, "Just the other day where you are standing, there was this man who had been visiting Mertingen," again, Mertingen's a small town where we were occupying. She says he was there visiting friends and he used to live in Mertingen. "And he tells me that he remembers his mother doing some laundry for some American soldiers right after the war." And so he gave this lady his sister's telephone number. And he talked to the this lady, that was the second phone call, and the lady says, "Oh yeah, my mother did some laundry for some Japanese American soldiers," and got a phone number. And she was living right below Munich now. And so the next day, this tour guide, sergeant of mine, we drove all the way down to this little town south of Munich. And sure enough, this is a lady who was a fifteen-year-old girl when my laundry was being done by the mother. Unfortunately, I was scheduled to leave the next day, so we spent, we had lunch with her before I had to go back to Frankfurt, and that's all the way from Munich all the way back to Frankfurt. So we had a nice visit. And in fact, the army news wrote up about it and a big article about it. It was a pleasant experience. And today, to this day, I still communicate with her, I send her Christmas things. But a very interesting reunion.

MN: It seems like, you know, even during the war years, you were able to make some contact with civilians. And I guess especially in this case, there is this tie that that continued, yeah?

KM: After fifty years, we got to see each other.

<Begin Segment 15>

MN: And then, you know, I forgot to ask you, you know, when VE Day came, Victory in Europe Day came, how did you feel?

KM: You know, for us up there, it was just another day. There was no joyous celebration. But the only thing is that thereafter, we would go and see movies in Augsburg, I remember. One of the, not a joke, but before the end of the war when we were riding the trucks, the driver just drove the way it was, reckless or whatever. But as soon as the war was over, everything was caution, caution, you know, "Hey, take it easy. Drive slowly, don't drive too fast." We want to go home. That's the kind of reaction we had. Everything was caution now, before, we, devil may care, we were carefree and happy go lucky. But a great many of us took extra precautions in whatever we did.

MN: When the war was going on, did you think you were not going to return? What did you think?

KM: I don't think we gave much thought about that. When we left Hawaii, it was a total unknown. We didn't know where we were going to go, we didn't know what we were going to do, whether we're going to be really in the army or what. So it was... what shall I say? Accepting things as it happened day by day. You live day by day. You didn't think of the future. You had a learning experience every day and you live for the moment. Remember, in my case, like before we, before we joined the army, before 1941, our experience basically was with Japan. We were very close to our family in Japan. We had, I had family still in Hiroshima. And so I was still going to Japanese school, and within the Japanese community, we did a lot of support for the war effort in Japan. Because at that point it was not because we were dual citizens or anything like that, but because our parents were Japanese, and it was their obligation to support their family members. And so old clothes and things like that were being sent out there to Japan. The one thing I remember was that, as I said once before, I think the cigarettes in those days had aluminum covering. And there was a big fad of collecting this aluminum into balls, and the bigger the balls, the better it was for shipping back to Japan. Aluminum or lead, I think it was lead. I think the cigarettes were packed in lead. Yeah, because it was... so the fad was to... And then in Japanese school, we would sing Japanese war songs and things like that. And we would hear stories of Japanese heroes. One outstanding story that I remember is this incident in Manchuria where the three Bakudan Sanyushi, they used to call it, and this was duplicated in the Normandy landing, where to break through the barbed wire encroachment, these three Japanese soldiers had to sneak up to the obstacle with the bandoliers. And I think they lost their lives in putting through the bandoliers through this barbed wire object and then blew it up. And the same thing that happened in �one of the movies. But this was one of the favorite stories in Japan, of heroism of the Japanese soldiers, you know, things like that. And so the Japanese community was involved in that respect. Although, as individuals, we did not think of us as being, you know, possibly involved with them, it was a matter of the community getting involved in something that their relatives and the sons and whatnot in Japan was involved with. But this was our exposure, and the Japanese stories were all, well, guy going off to war, and then he doesn't expect to come back. So there was a certain amount of that mentality when we volunteered. Then Oriental background, our mentality was that we are going out, don't expect to come back. I think all of ninety-nine percent of the boys that left Hawaii, left with the idea that, worse comes to worst, we're not coming back. We didn't burn our bridges, but still yet, the unknown factor was the greatest thing. And as I said, I think all of us lived for the moment, and day by day, accepting what new experience was coming as being something that there's very little we could do about it. We do the best we can under the circumstances.

WN: So on VE Day, nobody said, "Whew, we made it"?

KM: Oh, yeah. Well, except we were proud of the fact that we had the [inaudible] being published at that point, and Tanaka made a special edition. And I guess we were, as far as we were concerned, for us, that was the first news of any kind of publication about the end of the war, our own publication. But there was no joyous celebration or anything like that. It was very subdued, subdued to the effect, oh, well, it's finally over and we get a chance to go home.

<Begin Segment 16>

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.