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MN: Okay, this is an interview with Mr. Katsugo Miho on March 10, 2006, in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the University of Hawaii campus. And the interviewers are Michiko Kodama Nishimoto and Warren Nishimoto. And to start today's interview session, we're going to follow up on some items that we were covering last time. And near the close of our interview, you were sharing with us the Sospel incident where you...

KM: Almost wiped out Shadow and Najo and John Ushijima. What I forgot to mention the other day was that the road going up to the hill intersected two of our guns, number one gun and number two gun. So in other words, the drivers would have come between two of our guns, and from that incident they would, for about one or two weeks, they were always kidding us, yelling at us, and telling us, "Hey, after all, that's our boys up there. Don't waste your ammunition on our boys." And years later, after this thing was, came out in some of our talk stories, who are the drivers, said, "Kats, I was the driver over there yelling at you boys all the time." No kidding. And the person revealing this was Keiji Kawakami. Keiji Kawakami, who, after the war, became the owner of Iolani Sportswear, one of the biggest manufacturing merchants in Honolulu. And his right hand man, who designed all the outfit, was another 442 member, Jackson Morizawa, who designed all the artwork. Well-known artist, you know, on his own right, he's an expert in charcoal painting. And the person who was the fashion designer for Iolani Sportswear was the wife of "Halo" Hirose, my high school classmate from Maui who was an Olympic swimmer.

And by the way, there was an interesting incident that I should maybe mention about Halo. As we covered my brother's accident, where he got killed in an automobile accident, the 442 was guarding this Afrika Korps, German prisoners, Rommel's troops who were captured and brought back to the United States. And they were helping the Alabama peanut farmers harvest peanuts because there were no workers. Well, the prisoners, German prisoners were enclosed in a barbed wire enclosure, which, with the guarding 442 soldiers around the perimeter of this enclosure. And the story I remember is that Halo Hirose one day was called by one of the prisoners, called him over. And the prisoner was supposed to have -- as the story goes -- the prisoner pointed at Halo, and in broken English, was trying to communicate with Halo. And the best that we gather is that Halo said that the prisoner said, "Don't you remember me?" Because he remembered Halo, this prisoner, German prisoner. And it turned out that just before World War II started, Halo was one of the American swimmers that swam before Hitler in that last athletic meeting in Germany, and the German prisoner happened to be one of the German swimmers and he remembered Hirose from that time. And so this was his story, which was really a coincidence but happens. But that was the incident that I should have mentioned back in the Alabama incident.

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