page 4 of 8

Play Movie

Heading to Europe

Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org.

Talk about the transition from Camp Shelby to Europe.

Going from Camp Shelby to Europe, we first had three months training in what they called maneuvers. Maneuvers were in Louisiana in the winter time. That was probably the coldest winter I ever spent in my life, in Louisiana. When we came back from maneuvers, we were ready to go to war. Of course we weren't quite sure what we were getting into, but we knew we were experts at what we were trained to do. When we went overseas in May of 1944, it took 28 days to cross the ocean. We landed at a place called, some people pronounce it Bary, I pronounce it Barry, Italy. It's right near the heel, you know how Italy is shaped like a boot? It's right near the heel of the boot. That was an exciting thing being on aboard a ship that long and having survived the crossing, because our convoy was very large, we got attacked by submarines several times.

We never lost any ships and that was really significant. We went up and down the Atlantic Ocean a few times and then when we got into the harbor at Barry, Italy, the harbor was full of sunken ships. They were not all American ships, they were from various countries, you couldn't identify them, well I couldn't. We had to weave down through all these sunken ships and the captain misjudged his speed or something and he dropped the anchor. All the men were ready to disembark. We were all lined up with our duffle bags on our shoulders along the rail and the ship didn't stop. It ran into the dock. We almost sank! We hit the dock and scattered people all over. Some of the boys lost their duffle bags and everything overboard but we didn't lose anybody, but it was quite a shocking experience. I didn't know what I was expecting, because that was my first experience of crossing the ocean.and my first experience being to a foreign country.

We get there to Italy, and boy, it was all war-torn and the people were so poor. It was very difficult to deal with, seeing how poor the people were and how they were begging. Then we got on the train, this train was made up of box cars These box cars are identified as 40 and 8's. It's either 40 men, or 8 horses. This never was quite clear to me whether it was 40 men and 8 horses, or just 8 horses or 40 men, but it's crowded anyway you look at it! It was cold. It was so cold that we tore the floor boards up and built a fire inside. Our train caught on fire, but that was okay, nobody got hurt. We didn't lose anything.

We got into Naples, Italy and that was an experience. When we pulled into the train station—all these little kids, all these little guys were lined up along the railroad track—and they were singing. Guess what they were singing? Rum and Coca Cola. That was very popular then. Rum and Coca Cola.

Do you remember the tune?

Oh yeah, it goes, let's see, "Rum and Coca Cola. " I can't remember the tune. If I thought about it long enough, I haven't even thought about that. And then, the hard part to deal with was these little kids along the railroad track, at the train station. They'd learn to speak English real quickly. With broken English they'd say, "Hey Joe, Hey Joe!" They'd try to sell you something, but the hard one was when they'd try to sell you their sister. "You come to my house, my sister, she's very good." Can you imagine that?

How old were their sisters?

Anywhere from 10 or 12 on up

All of them were above 10 and 12, the sisters and the brothers?

Well most of the kids, that was one of the last things that they'd offer you. That was hard to take.

Did they want you to marry their sister for money?

They were pimping for their sisters.

Did some of the soldiers do it?

Yes, but we never did, I mean I didn't. I couldn't see that. But then, when we landed and assembled and they were trying to put our unit together, the infantry, the whole regiment, the combat team was being assembled near Naples at a place called Dagnoli. We had some time to go visiting along some of the villages, and one of the places that was popular was to go to a place called Pozzoli. And what I remember about Pozzoli was that it was a little fishing village. It was a real cute little fishing village where you had to go through a tunnel to get there. And then it was a very small little bay and we got there just when the boats - all these dories - were coming in with the fish and the banks were just lined with women.

What sticks with me was how tough these women could be. They would go up there and see a fish that they wanted and then if the other woman wanted that same fish, they'd get into a fight. Boy you talk about screamin' and yellin' and pulling of hair! It was really something. I could just see those scenes. And then, they had some boats that came in that had, I don't remember what they called them now, but they were these little tiny clams about the size of your fingernail. I don't know if their babies or what, but they were about that size and there were just baskets of them.

So my buddy and I went down along there and these two girls came along and they said, "Hey, Joe, Joe! Come buy me a fish." And they kept pointing at these baskets and they wanted us to buy them some of these little clams, or mussels, or whatever they were. And so we did, and then they said, "We'll go over there to the restaurant and we'll sit down there and eat them." So we went over there. You know, it's sort of like eating sunflower seeds. If you're inexperienced, at eating a sunflower seed, it'll take you forever to bite on it and suck on it and get the meat out, right? Well that's the way it was with those things, except if you're skilled at it, with Sicilian sunflower seeds, you know, some guy just flipping them just like that. Well that's the way these girls were, eating those little clams. And we sat there with this big pile of, you know, clams there, and we were struggling along, and we probably ate about 10 or so, I think. And by that time they'd eaten the whole basket full and they took off! And we were sitting there trying to suck on these darn clams!

When you say 'we', are you referring to?

My buddy and I.

When you say 'we,' when you were coming into Italy, was that before the 442nd Regiment? Who were you with when came into Italy.

Oh into Naples? Oh that would have been just the 522. I mean it would have just been my battery, even.

When you say 522, is that a segregated unit?

That's a field artillery unit—the 522nd Field Artillery Unit.

So it's diverse in regards to race? Is it segregated?

It's a separate—it's part of the 442 but it has its own designation. The 522 field artillery unit, or the engineers were called a 232, the 232nd.

Was it mixed Japanese and Whites?

No. We were all Japanese Americans. The whole 442 was all Japanese Americans. And we had some of our men that were not pure blooded. They were half Caucasian and half-Japanese, or something like that, but primarily were Niseis, second generation Japanese Americans.

What was it like to be segregated like that?

Well we certainly had our own identity. Well, the way in which it came about in America, was that, and this is a sad story, but the folks who were in the concentration camps, the men were given a choice.

The American concentration camps?

This was in America. They had a lot of concentration camps all throughout America. Most of them were on Indian reservations. The men were given a choice, and they came out with a document. The government came out with this document and asked them, "Would you be loyal to the United States Government? Yes or no?" And there were very few who said they wouldn't be. And so many of them, they were called the "yes yes" and the "no no's." The "no no's" were protesters and they got sent off to very strict concentration camps, like Tule Lake was one of them. But they never did find anybody that was subversive. When the 442 was formed, then a number of the ones that came out of the camps had signed "yes" instead of "no." And that was a pretty tough thing to do, you know, incarcerated and then asked you "would you be loyal to your government" when you were a man without a country. What government? What country?

Were you personally confused by that?

I didn't have to do that. See because I came from Montana. So that was a big issue. In camp, that was one of the biggest issues that they had to deal with. Would you be loyal to your government?

What did your normal rations consist of? section missing

Normal rations, it depended on where you were at the time. In combat, when you're on the line, we had what they call "sea rations." Sea rations came in little tin cans, the small ones about the size of small bean cans. The sea rations consisted of, in one can was dry biscuits, and cigarettes, and toilet paper. In the other can was usually hash, a kind of corned beef like hash. It was cold unless you heated it up somehow. There was what they called "Weenie Beanies", they were the best. They were like pork and beans with little hunks of weenies in there. Sometimes there were eggs. Then there was what they called a "K" ration. Now K rations, that was a little larger assortment of things, and it came in a little larger quantities because they were designed for when you were not in actual combat. Well, you were in combat, but not right on the line. They came in bigger boxes, or sometimes the cooks would even heat the "K" rations up if they had the time, and if the situation warranted it.