<Begin Segment 19>

AL: So can I be direct with you?

AN: Well, so far.

AL: So let me ask you, how did you feel the first time you took another life?

AN: First time?

AL: That you killed somebody.

AN: Well, I don't know if I killed anyone. To this day, I do not know if I even killed one person or not. Because we're in combat, I don't know if my bullet was one of them that killed the enemies. We're attacking. I'm not picking just one and shoot, pick another and shoot, no. My experience in combat was not that way. In fact, all of us were, very few had that opportunity. When we were fighting en masse, en masse. Okay, here are the enemies, we're confronting a whole bunch of enemies, and we're going to go over them. And so where our bullet lands, on who, or which bullet killed, them, all we know is that we ran over them. That means we were more effective in fighting than they were. And come to a point where, a time where they'll give up. But initial was that we fought. So here we are, for me, I was blasting away like the rest of them, I'm leading my men to go blast away, but which one? Whose bullet killed who? I don't know. Some may know it, like some, when they attack a machine gun nest, some of the people have gotten... then you, because they will, two, three of them that went and did that. But generally, when we fought, I cannot say I killed that one, I killed. So I don't know. I never counted. I can't count.

AL: How did you feel the first time you lost a man who you were responsible for in your platoon? Do you remember who it was?

AN: Well, sure. Of course, I felt, I felt real bad. The first thing came to my mind was that, well, I thought about their family. However, said, well, this is what we came for. But yes, I felt real bad. But we also know that was our mission, so be it.

AL: Do you remember the circumstances of his death?

AN: Well, yeah. It was strictly combat by enemy fire. Enemy fire showered upon us, yes. Fortunately for me, I don't know why, but I didn't see too many of my men being killed. I've seen many get wounded, but being killed, very few. Although I knew they were killed, but I didn't see that. So my witnessing of my men being killed was very few.

AL: Could you give us just the chronology of the battles that your unit was in?

AN: Oh, I cannot...

AL: Or maybe not chronology, but I know that you were, you fought in the Vosges Mountains, Lost Battalion, Po River, Arno, could you just tell us some of those?

AN: Well, which one? I mean...

AL: Any of them. You tell us just some of your recollections.

AN: Well, the most fierce and the most, shall we say, the most roughest one was in the Vosges Mountains. And that was a battle; that was really a battle because of the terrain that we fought in, we had to go to the Vosges Mountains, black, dark forest.

AL: This is the rescue of the "Lost Battalion"?

AN: Yeah, yeah. That's the campaign that followed. So that was really a rough one for us.

AL: How come?

AN: Well, because, first, number one, the weather, the terrain, and the enemy. There were... they had the battalion, the Lost Battalion, I'm talking about, pretty well surrounded, and we had to break through that. I wasn't one of them that break through that, it was the 3rd Battalion that broke through them. It's just different locations we were in. And so the 3rd Battalion's the one that really broke through to save the Lost Battalion, where we were on one side and the 100th was on the other side ready to move in together. But the 3rd Battalion had the brunt of it, and they're the ones that really went in and suffered a lot. Their loses were... well, they lost nearly every man in that outfit that went in. That was a fierce battle. We didn't, we went up to a point where we were gonna attack the... of course, they're fighting up to that point, yes, we were, but actually, the rescue of the, the last push was the 3rd Battalion, company that went in.

AL: Do you think it was worth it to take eight hundred and something casualties to save two hundred men?

AN: Well, that remains to be judged by...

AL: How do you judge it?

AN: Of course, when you talk about numbers, I don't think it was worthwhile. But yet, at the same time, no matter one or ten or eighty, we still were trying to save our people. So it's just that maybe the way we were ordered to do it, I don't know. But anyway, at that time, our commanding general was not too popular with us.

AL: Is that [Dahlquist]?

AN: Yeah.

AL: Why was he not popular?

AN: Well, I didn't have any personal contact with him, no, but got close to. But the way he ran the whole outfit, the whole 442nd, we didn't like it. We felt that we were expendable. It didn't mean nothing to him for us to... he just wanted to get that. And we also knew that he wasn't really a combat general. And so we didn't have too much respect for him.

AL: What was his background?

AN: I really don't know. As far as I'm concerned, he was nothing but a pencil pusher. And so anyway, maybe he was right, maybe that's the reason why we were able to save them. But that was a very, very expensive battle for us. We lost a lot of men. So that's one of the toughest battles that we ever fought.

AL: Why do you think it was that the 442nd was able to break through when so many have tried and could not rescue them? What made the 442nd get through?

AN: Well, we always had, shall we say, the fighting spirit that we... when they gave us a mission, we're gonna do it, no matter what. And that's the thing that most of the unit didn't have, the Americans. We were a little different. Like I say, we had reason to fight. And so we didn't question any mission they gave to us. They want us to do this, impossible. But they want us to do it, we're gonna do it no matter what it is, okay? If they want us to, we're gonna do it no matter what. And that's the attitude, and that's the spirit that we had. That's why were able to accomplish so much. Because that's the reason why we kind of did so many Purple Hearts and all that, too.

AL: Where does that spirit come from, though? Is that what they call yamato damashii, the Japanese spirit, or is it "go for broke"?

AN: Yeah, in a way, but I think it's a... shall we say, I hate to use the word pride, but like I said, that's the whole thing that we had in our heart, was the unity, because we had sound reasons for this. And the main reason was not just the enemy, but because of racial prejudice. We wanted to kill this once and for all. We didn't want this to linger on anymore, because we grew up with it, and now we see what had happened in reality during World War II, how the family was treated on the West Coast, I mean, this is it. We're not going to stand for it anymore. We're going to pull it one way or the other, and that was our mission. So I guess we fought differently than an ordinary unit trained. And we were well-disciplined, too, because of our upbringing. One thing, Japanese Americans, our upbringing was good. Our parents brought us up properly. Not like American families. American families there was a lot of freedom and, and there's nothing wrong with it, but I think we were more disciplined by our parents, so our upbringing was different, too.

AL: A lot of people talk about, that it made them angry that the military units were segregated at that time, again, African American, everything before the military was desegregated, do you think the 442nd would have had the record it had if it had been an integrated unit, if it was not all the same?

AN: I don't think so. If we were integrated with other races, all that? I don't think we would have that unity, that spirit of what we were fighting for. Because the way we were organized, it was just one. One thought, one spirit, one mind. In fact, if we were integrated let's say with white people, black people, that would never happen, because they wouldn't understand. I don't think we would have the record that have right now.

AL: So you also, of course, went on to serve in the military until 1972. Did you see that difference in Korea and in the other campaigns once the units were all integrated?

AN: Yeah, I saw a little difference, yes, uh-huh. It was different than what the 442nd was. Yes, I did. It was, of course, after the World War II, even when the Korean War and all that going on, still, I think, the military wasn't what I'm used to. It was different. And that's one of the reasons why I went back and see how it is to serve during peacetime. But the peacetime didn't really come because of the different wars.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.