<Begin Segment 31>

RP: This is tape three of a continuing interview with Russell Demo. Russell, let's just backtrack to, I want to ask you about the medals that you received for your action overseas. Can you tell us what medals you were given for your service?

RD: Yeah, I had the Bronze Star medal and the Purple Heart.

RP: And the Bronze Star medal was for what specific action?

RD: Well, the night I was on patrol, and I don't know. Huh? Oh, there was a victory medal and one I couldn't understand why I got it, and I said, "You guys made a mistake." They gave me the good conduct medal. But you don't realize, you've been in the hospital for over six months or so, and your time over in France, 'cause I got in trouble in France, that didn't count against me. So I'd been good for a year, I guess.

RP: Did you receive any kind of commendation for your military police service at Manzanar?

RD: Not that I know of.

KP: Can you tell us the circumstances under which you got, finally got the Bronze Star? Richard?

RD: Oh, I don't know why they delivered me the Purple Heart while I was laying in the hospital there. The chaplain brought the Purple Heart to me, and then I was, I was fighting with the VA trying to get my pension upgraded, and I've been fighting with them for years and I was always taking my discharge papers up there, and I got the, it was, I don't know, back in '98, I guess it was. And I was looking at my discharge paper, I read it a lot of times and it said Bronze Star medal on there. So I asked, I took it up to the service officer up there and I said, "Does that mean what I think it means?" And she said, "Yes." So she sent a query to it, so in the mail they sent me the Bronze Star medal and a copy of everything else. I talked to the sergeant and they said, "Yeah, him and Wells were presented theirs." And to me, I don't know where I got lost in the shuffle there someplace. 'Cause I read in the VFW magazine where they discovered some guys later on in years, fifty years or so, had a medal coming and they had generals and everybody else presented it to him, I got mine in the mail.

RP: Russell, if you can hold up a couple of these pictures of us so Kirk can kind of zoom in on 'em. These are photographs of you in the camp.

RD: [Describing photographs] Well, we were just joking around, I think that was Bob Soames, and I think Bob Havilla sitting in the jeep, and I'm standing there pretending he's arresting me, you know. He's got the MP sign on his shirt there. We were just joking around, and the gun wasn't loaded. That's me and all my muscles. This is me on a horse pretending I'm a cowboy, I guess, I don't know. I never was a horseback rider. What I was doing on a horse, I still don't remember.

RP: Wasn't that your mounted patrol duty?

RD: [Laughs] I don't know. I assume this was taken there in Manzanar someplace. Probably in town there, somebody had...

RP: Had some horses?

RD: Had some horses, we took it.

RP: Maybe you went out and took that picture.

RD: This is a picture of the 319th MPEG company that I think they took just before we left and everything else. And I'm in there someplace. I think that's me right about there. And on the back, I have the names of most of the guys who were in the outfit on the background of our barracks.

RP: And the mountains in the back.

RD: Hmm?

RP: The mountains, you can just barely see the mountains.

RD: Oh, yeah.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.