<Begin Segment 33>

TI: And when you say Masaoka, you're talking about Ben Masaoka.

GS: Ben Masaoka.

TI: So this is the brother of Mike Masaoka...

GS: Mike Masaoka's brother.

TI: ...who's well-known with the JACL.

GS: He was educated student, he knew how to write citations up, and he was writing up all this information, E Company, 3rd Platoon, how many this and that.

TI: And these were the citations that would then lead to medals later on?

GS: For somebody.

TI: For somebody, okay. And was that kind of his role in the unit, to kind of write up these citations? Is that what he focused on?

GS: Yeah. I guess, because he writes up the different citations.

TI: And would he be with more headquarters, like a headquarters staff?

GS: No, he was in our squad.

TI: Oh, he was in your squad, okay.

GS: Yeah, he was in our squad.

TI: Okay, so go ahead, so now, so Ben Masaoka's writing up the citation.

GS: Writing up the citation and the captain says, well, our platoon has got to go up and find this colonel and see where his men were. And we couldn't understand why we had to go up there, so we were in the resting area and we thought, well, we can, one guy was getting ready to cook a chicken, he's plucking the chicken, Yamada from Pearl City, he was plucking the chicken up and getting ready to put it on the stove to fry it, got to move out. [Laughs] He had the chicken plucked, ready to cook, and then, but we had to go on this patrol. So we get up on this hill and see this colonel, colonel says out here on this ridge is, I think his men are out here, could you go check and find out? Okay, so we go up two or three hundred yards, four hundred yards, and then we hear somebody chopping wood on this side and somebody chopping wood on this side of the ridge, and oh, they're chopping to cover the foxholes, you know. So then we get 200, 500 yards, and we see a group of men in their foxholes. And the lieutenant there says, "Could you go out and find out where the Germans are at?" Why telling us to go see? Why can't they go out?

TI: Now, was this a 442 unit that was telling you?

GS: No.

TI: This was a...

GS: Haole outfit.

TI: Okay.

GS: I don't know if it was part of the 36th Division, who they were. They're hakujin, haole.

TI: So why were they giving you guys orders to do that?

GS: That we couldn't understand. Why could we have to go follow, see where they're at?

TI: Okay. But you felt, still, that you should follow their orders and do this?

GS: Captain says for him to find them, and this colonel says, "Find where the men are at." So we go up and found, and then the lieutenant there says, "See where the Germans are at." So we go up another couple thousand, couple hundred, maybe about a thousand yards I guess, and we get pinned down machine gun fire. So I'm on the right side with the rest of the platoon, since I had the Thompson's, so I run and I hit the ground and I roll over, got behind the bush and the rock. George Futamata was on the other side, he hit the ground but he didn't roll over and get behind the bush. Ben Masaoka's on my right side, he hit the ground, but he didn't roll behind the bush. The guy named Friday was on the other side of him, I don't know why they called him Friday, I don't know what his real name was, but they called him Friday, nickname. And so first Futamata, he looked up, pow, a sniper with telescopic lens had us pinned down. And Masaoka was the next one to look up, went out the back of his helmet.

TI: Now, why would those guys look up if they knew that there was a sniper?

GS: They were trying to find where the Germans were at. So I was trying to look, look in between the things, but I couldn't see where the Germans were, where the sniper was. He either was in a tree and the machine gun was below him, and he had telescopic lens, so he could see. And so he opened, got our head up, so three of 'em got shot, and he's looking for me, but he couldn't see me because I was behind this bush. So I had to crawl backwards, got out of there, and I told the guy in the foxhole, "Why didn't you come up to help us? We were pinned down up there." They didn't have orders to do that. We had a forward observer with a radio called, and so we called headquarters, Captain Aikens said to come back, but we couldn't pick up these three guys. The next time that we went through there, we picked up Futamata and Friday, "Where's Masaoka's body?" It's not there. 'Til then, we never did hear where his body was. Years later, I hear that he was in Italy, found in Italy.

TI: His body was found in Italy, not...

GS: His body was found in Italy.

TI: Not alive, but...

GS: Not alive, but his body. That it could, how did it get to Italy? Unless he went through the south, Swiss border, went to "Lost Battalion" area and then crossed over into Italy, Monaco area, they can go into Italy there. But I don't know how he got over there. So we had to go back, and we lost those three guys. Just for...

TI: Yeah, I mean, so how do you feel about that? Because --

GS: Oh, we were mad. Takemoto, "Why they send us out on a patrol like that?"

TI: Right.

GS: Why can't their own men look for their own, see where the Germans were at? And why did the colonel have to tell us where his men were at?

TI: And so when, when the men, the 442 would talk like that? What would you, what would you think and what would you say to each other?

GS: "They're treating us like cannon fodder." We were just expendable. Why they send us through a thing like that, I don't know. So from there, we had to go to Biffontaine. So we get to Biffontaine area, I Company was in one unit, part of the Biffontaine, 100th Battalion was on the other side, and we were to take this one hill. G Company was with us, we're on the hill, this side of the hill, it's in that picture.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.