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LT: Well, the engineers were particularly important during the Battle of the Lost Battalion.

KY: Oh, yes.

LT: When the 100th and 442nd was sent to France, first of all, can you tell us about the Lost Battalion, where they were and what had happened to them, and then talk about your role.

KY: The Lost Battalion was up in the hill, and the Germans surrounded this hill so they couldn't escape. The day before we went up to the, to get the Lost Battalion, we were on the line for over a month. We were tired, dirty and hungry. So we finally got (a rest), took a shower, got new clothes, new shoes, and had a hot meal. No sooner we got through, we got orders to hit the line again for the Lost Battalion. General Dahlquist had three regiments to do this job. He sent two regiments and they couldn't do a thing, so they finally asked us to do it. So we had to hit the line that very night, and we got all cleaned up and issued new clothes and (shoes). Then when we got to the Lost Battalion in the hill, the roads were real muddy, and then our trucks would sink, and the jeeps would sink, they couldn't go. So we got lumber and put lumber, three or four different layers on the tracks, and that was an all-day job. That was a continuing job, we had to keep on doing this.

Then at night, the Germans would mine, they'll sneak in and put some mines in this place, so guys were getting blown up with that, so we got that to contend with also. It was a mess. On that last battalion, they're on this hill, and I was on the bottom of the hill, about halfway through, one of the lieutenants hit an s-mine. S-mine has a tail, it makes a snapping noise. So he leaped to cover it, but the s-mine went up in the air before he could cover it. He got killed. Some of the guys behind him got hurt, and I was at the bottom of the hill so I never got hurt.

And I kept climbing and climbing, and finally got to this Lost Battalion on this hill. I was not in the first wave that went around. The guys in the first wave, after they got there, they had to secure the area. I was in the second round, I got in there, and those guys were happy as heck to see us. They hugged me and everything. And one guy handed me a sack full of cigarettes, and I don't smoke. Seven packs of cigarettes. [Laughs] So I took it back and gave it to the guys who smoked. The reason why I hadn't smoked, I mean, about a month before that, we were holed down in a foxhole for four hours, and Larry and I was in there. Larry was smoking one after another. I said, "Larry, you're making me nervous. Give me one of those damn things." He lit it up and gave it to me, I took a deep drag, everything started spinning. I said, if this is what cigarettes will do to you, I don't want nothing to do with that. That was my first and last cigarette. True story.

LT: So how did the Lost Battalion get access to all the cigarettes and other goods?

KY: Okay. (By air drops), we put 'em in our 155 cannons, 4.2 mortars, put it in this and blew, I mean, lobbed them into (their position). They had more food and more cigarettes than we ever had. No, we had ways to do that.

LT: So how many men were in the Lost Battalion?

KY: Two hundred and seventy-six. And our casualty was over eight hundred. It was real bad. Yeah, our casualty was much heavier than what we saved, two hundred and seventy-six (GIs).

LT: What is it like to risk your lives to be the third regiment to take on a task that seemed insurmountable, and then to succeed and to find survivors and to be able to rescue soldiers?

KY: I think I'm going to have to go back to our training. I think that made us better soldiers. And not only that, being all Niseis, you know, we don't give up. We never took trip back, we always went forward, never back, never retreated. Just like in the Battle of the Bulge, we were at the beginning, you heard of the Battle of the Bulge? And we were just replaced by three regiments, 101st, 102nd, the 103rd. See, the Germans were hitting to see where the weak spot is, they couldn't break us. But when we left, they broke that line. The 102nd, 101st, they got broke through. (...) There's a couple of guys who live here who were in the Battle of the Bulge.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.