Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George T. "Joe" Sakato Interview
Narrator: George T. "Joe" Sakato
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-sgeorge-01-0036

<Begin Segment 36>

TI: And so when you, when you got to the top of the hill, what did you see? What was the reason to take that hill when you got to the top?

GS: I was gonna kill the SOB that shot Tanimachi.

TI: No, but in terms of the strategic importance of the hill...

GS: Well, we needed to take the hill.

TI: And was it clear when you got to the top that it was important?

GS: We took the hill back, yeah. Well, the rest of the group went around and took the top of the hill. I just went as far as the ridge there where the machine guns were before, and I was able to clear the area, 'cause the Germans were starting to surrender. Even, we lost the prisoners that we captured taking the hill. F Company had a squad of men watching the prisoners, but every time we'd take a prisoner, we'd take all the ribbons and everything off of them. So when it got to the guys guarding the prisoners, they didn't have anything. So they were right behind us, actually.

TI: I don't quite follow. So when you took a prisoner --

GS: They were supposed to be two hundred yards behind with the prisoners.

TI: Okay, uh-huh. But they were, you were taking so many prisoners and it was getting so close?

GS: So close that when the counterattack started, the prisoners escaped.

TI: I see, okay.

GS: So F Company has to join us, jump in the foxholes, 'cause artillery's coming in, and then prisoners, they escaped.

TI: So you could actually even capture more, but then they would end up escaping in the chaos of...

GS: Chaos, we lost a lot of, lot of men and lot of, everything is going, you didn't know who was next, who was next, who was next with us. So we finally got to take the hill back, oh my gosh. But we took the hill and then orders were to go rescue the "Lost Battalion."

TI: Because now that the hill was taken, in that strategic sense.

GS: So we secured that hill.

TI: So before you took the, or the "Lost Battalion," did you have any chance to just, again, think about what had just happened? I mean, again, you had gone up the hill in this rage, at some point, when you just realized what you had just done, wasn't, didn't it dawn on you what you had just done?

GS: No. At that time I still wasn't in my, you know, right sense.

TI: Do you recall any of the other men saying anything to you, that they weren't surprised or anything, they didn't say anything?

GS: Somebody else would say, "What are you doing?" I just, I was gonna get the SOB that shot him or else die trying. So then after that, "Why? What'd I do?" If I was in my right mind, I don't think I would have done that. I'd have stayed in my hole and shoot, but then to go up and charge the hill was something else that I, I wasn't quite in my right sense of mind. But I was just mad, crying, I was crying.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.