<Begin Segment 18>

AC: So what kind of training did you help, I mean, this is field medicine, so what kind of things did you do to train and to help train other medics?

JS: That's all you do, is kind of train, it's training wounded, wounded soldiers, and training to do everything you can to save the life of wounded soldiers. You learn how to splint when people have a broken limb, or to stop the bleeding of wounds and give 'em first aid, enough to get to a company aid station or back to one of the hospitals. And you have to learn enough to be able to have an idea of what this person is suffering from. They're not all, not all battle wounds either. Out in the field you have psychiatric problems and you have people who have afflictions sometimes. And they, and I've had to dress down a rifle company, non-coms, because they'd lose their heads when they had a patient... I can't even think of the name of the condition now, when they, you see somebody start to wiggle and you have to watch so they don't bite their tongues. These kinds of conditions happened to soldiers, so they're not just all physical, they're mental also. And people, we have to be trained enough so we're not endangering that life, that person's life more than we're helping him. We don't, probably don't, most of us didn't get the, reach this status of people on battleships or navy medics, who under certain conditions maybe even did some surgery, out in emergencies where they didn't have a doctor aboard ship. Naval corpsmen have been known to do surgeries, pretty much by the book or what they've seen. Of course, these things, today you don't know whether a medic would want to do some of the things they did because there are news media following you all over and if you make a mistake you're dead. Not the patient, the person who tried to help the patient. That's a difference, of course, between now and then. I only saw one people killed in an accident, and that was on a firing range. When they were clearing their weapons somebody had a round in his gun yet when he was, when it was supposed to have been cleared, and it fired. I was the senior medic out on the field that day, but it was just a hopeless case. You don't know what a, unless you've seen one of those, it's... a wound from one of those shots entering a person is a kind of a horrible thing to see, because you don't, you see, when a bullet enters a body, all it does is leave a little, like wound mark where it went in, but when it comes out it's, it just tore everything up on its way out. But this is an accident that happened. It shouldn't have happened, but accidents happen. So if you were in actual combat, these things would be going on around you all the time. You expect it. In our day, I don't know what they tell the soldiers now, but in our day, why, you could just practically feel the feeling when you know that maybe half of you weren't gonna come back. But those things happened during World War II and it happened probably in other battles too, but today, with all the news media following you around, it must be tough to be a commander in the field.

AC: How did you feel when you were the, the chief medical person right there on the spot when this accident occurred?

JS: Well, you better, you better not get too numb, 'cause you have to do something, whatever you can. We tried to stop the bleeding, but there's no way to stop a chest wound except just pack, just keep throwing patches at it. When your guts are blown out there just practically nothing you can do. You see these scenes in battle pictures; they're built around fact. Some of the people resent it when they have to see it in the movie anymore, like Saving Private Ryan, but that's the way it is. And the landing on Omaha Beach and things like that, horrible things to see, and to think that our leaders knew that there, when they sent a whole fleet of air ships, ships out to sea, and they knew that a lot of 'em weren't going to come back. I can't say how those guys felt 'cause I wasn't there. I can never say "I know just how you feel" because I wasn't there. But I can imagine. I've seen more on the relatives of those survivors of, family survivors of victims, 'cause I didn't know how the victim felt. You do have an attitude, I think, when you're a combat soldier. You do have this attitude. They may not make it, but goodbye. "If I make it, I'll see you." And I think that's what develops that close fellowship. Even though you don't spend very much time together.

AC: Did you know the boy who was shot?

JS: Pardon me?

AC: Did you know the boy who was shot?

JS: Not very well. He was a lineman, and there, you got several hundred people around there. You can only know so many people. If he wasn't a patient of yours or if you weren't a medic in that particular section, why, no, I didn't know him personally. But I can tell you of an incident that affected me real, pretty closely. One of the, when we were training replacements, of course, I was only responsible for the medical areas, but one of the company, one of the boys in the company just graduated, just come out of Delta, Utah, the camp there. And he finished high school in camp, I think, and I don't know whether he volunteered, whether he was drafted, but he was eighteen years old. He was so serious about his practice. I can, the last scene I can remember of him was out there after dinner, he was out there in the area, rec area, bayonet practicing by himself. And I don't know whether it was his first combat or one of his first times in combat, he got killed. And of course, this one leans in -- I don't like to talk about this one very good. I can't help but talk about it, but it makes me emotional, when I think about this eighteen year old kid, just finished high school in camp and had everything, all the bad things that could happen happened to him. I never did meet his family, but I still, those things, some things affect you more than others. But Bill Nakamura, from Seattle, who was, who got the Congressional Medal recently, I knew him. He was in the 1st Battalion before he shipped, moved over to some other outfit and moved over, to go overseas. But he got killed in one of his early engagements. You try to, you just try to imagine with an outfit the size... you know, Congressional Medals aren't given that easily. And just recently, to have the Congressional Medal given to close to twenty of, men of our unit, is a, is really a tremendous thing to say. Ever since that happened, I've been thinking, by gosh, we're just, we just were being sent to slaughter. Our unit, that's what our unit was, being sent to slaughter. But we asked for it, because we wanted to prove that we could do it. And so if you really get the feel of this, you can make pretty good speeches about it. I've made quite a few talks. I filled the pulpit of a church or two when I came back from service, and held the floor of other groups. I'm alright if I don't get too emotional. But I've had my, a lot of opportunities to do this, and I never feel bashful about it when I'm on projects in my community and I push myself, I push myself through the years to get these things fixed in people's minds, even of our own people. And I've really been successful in this way, that the Japanese people in this area have backed me a hundred percent, I guess, in my pursuit of getting the rest of the community acquainted with what our people did.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.