<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So Joe, I'm going to now really push forward, because I know from there you got Newport News, you went across Europe, you...

GS: Took us twenty-eight days to cross.

TI: Yeah, twenty-eight days you landed in Oran, then you went to Naples, did more training.

GS: I didn't tell you about the submarines.

TI: Tell me about the submarines.

GS: Okay. So I get on board ship, every time I was down below, I'm seasick, and I can't see, so I always had to stay on top of the deck. So we was always laying on top of the deck or doing something. When we were down on the deck, nights, we would look up and says, "Oh, we're going northeast." And the next night we look up, "Oh, now we're going southeast." Then we started off with five ships, next time we got fifty ships, next time we got a hundred ships. Well, it's kind of boring sitting up on deck, you have a fifty cent piece, so we stick it onto our part of the deck and got a tablespoon and hit the top edge of that fifty cents and flatten down, and keep turning it and flatten it down a little more. Then it got down to this size and we cut a hole, had a silver ring, so we made rings.

TI: From fifty cent pieces, you could do that? You could just, you have to kind of...

GS: Flatten the edges down, hit the edges down.

TI: And then you would kind of...

GS: Turn it, keep turning it down.

TI: ...drill a, drill a hole there.

GS: Then it's, the flat part is like this and then the rest of the coin is down here, and the flat part of the rim is like this, but the middle part is open. Then you cut the inside out, and then flatten out so it's the size of your ring finger. If you want it a little smaller, you tap it a little bit more and make a smaller finger. But this tapping noise, tap-tap-tap, pretty soon you're seeing the convoy ships going back and forth, and sirens going off, depth charges going boom. And the ships that were sitting low in the water indicating they had tanks, heavy equipment on that ship, transport ship, so three of those ships got sunk, torpedoed. Holy cow, our tapping, the sonar picked up our tapping noises, plus the engines, motors from the boats. But the submarines looked up and see what ship had all the heavy equipment, so they torpedoed those ships that had, low in the water.

TI: And you, and you think that tapping noise sort of...

GS: Sonar picked up, they have equipment that can hear the tap-tap-tap.

TI: And so did you guys get in trouble for that? Did anyone kind of tell you guys to stop doing that?

GS: We quit making 'em. [Laughs] No more rings. We learned, we used to cause all that, and oh my god. But the sonar picked up the engine plates, too, but they knew these tapping noise also attracted the submarines. So then we finally got to Oran and went to Italy.

TI: Yeah, Oran and then Naples.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.