I'm Richard Meisner, and today is July 21st, 2003.
I'm interviewing Mr. Ivan D. Hazelby, H-A-S-E-L-B-Y,
at his home at 3282 South County Road 200 West,
Winnemeck, Indiana, 46996.
His home phone number is area code 5749463992.
This interview is in support of the National
Museum of the Pacific War,
Center for Pacific War Studies,
for the preservation of historical information
related to World War II.
Ike, I want to thank you for taking time to do
this interview today.
That's alright.
Let me start by asking you, where were you born?
Grass Creek, Indiana.
And what year were you born? 1922.
And what day?
October 27th. Alright.
And did you have brothers and sisters?
I've got four brothers and five sisters.
And then a pair of twin boys died at three or
four days old.
premature. Now of your four brothers were any
of those in the service? All of them, all four
of them. In World War II? Yeah.
Did they all come home? Well, two of them was
in the Korean War. Okay.
Did they all come home from the service? They
all came home from the service, yeah.
Born in 22, so the Depression was going on at
that point. What effect did it have on you and
your family?
Well, we were poor, that many kids, and we
didn't know we were poor.
We lived, we had a good time, played together, and
and got along real well. I had enough. Dad
lived on a farm I broke once and
started up again with my granddad's help. Had a
few cows and chickens and hogs and
that's that's what we made a living. Wasn't
farming that much, but enough to
buy our groceries and live. What was your
parents names? Furman and Hazel, Hazelby.
okay. Now what year did you finish high school?
1940. Where did you go? Star City.
I'm sorry? Star City. Now what did you do when
you finished high school? Well dad
was a farmer and I was farming and helping him
farm. I was going to get married and stay on the
farm. I got a farm deferment and then my
brother just younger than I am he got
old enough for the draft so they said well one
of you have to go so I went and
served. Well I worked on the farm with my dad
from the time I got out of high
school in 1940 until I went in service in 44.
Okay and December 7, 41 of course Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor. Right. Do you
recall where you were when you heard about it?
What reaction you had? I was in my
girlfriend's house on Sunday morning after
church just sitting on the
davenport there on the edge of the davenport
talking to her folks. Yeah I
remember that that's where I was at. And what
how did you what effect did you
think this would have on you? Well I figured in
I'll probably have to go to
service for Wisconsin because I wasn't married
and even though I had a farm
deferment I thought well it's somewhere down
the road I'll probably have to go.
My two brothers, older brothers, they both
enlisted. One of them was a
enlisted in the Air Corps and the other in the
Army. I figured eventually I'd probably
have to go. So, but it wasn't, it didn't seem
to affect me too much. I don't think I worried
too much about it. So three of you were in the
World War II then? Yeah.
Then when did you finally go into the service?
1940, July 6th, 1944. Okay, and
which branch did you go into? I just went into,
it was an infantry branch, just an
infantry training center at Joseph T. Robinson
in Arkansas. Okay. And I don't
I don't think there's any-it was just a
replacement center training that I did for-
Were you drafted or did you volunteer?
No, I was drafted.
I tried to get in the Naval Air Corps, but my
eyes wasn't good enough back then to get in.
But later on, my eyes were good for another 25
years, I guess, or something like that.
But I got turned down from the Naval Air Corps
and so then I just waited and was drafted in
the Infantry, is actually what I was in.
And when you were drafted, were there other
people from Blastack County that went in at the
same time?
Yeah, Bill Wagner, for one. That's the only one
right now I recall, but he went in at the same
time I did.
Did you both go to Arkansas for training together?
No, he went to Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania,
and I went to Fort Joseph T. Robinson.
How did you travel to Arkansas?
Train. Went by train, troop train.
How was that trip?
Well, it was boring.
Anytime they had a freight or a passenger
train, we had to
we was on the siding some place. We didn't go
straight through.
And what town in Arkansas is that near?
Little Rock.
And what were conditions like there?
Well, they were just barracks. They were just
bare barracks.
When it was hot, it was dusty, and when it
rained, you'd be walking in about six inches
of mud.
It was a good place to take basic training.
I was pretty tough.
I was born and raised on a farm, so I knew what
hard work was, as far as that's concerned.
I survived all right.
How long was that basic training?
I was in there for seventeen weeks, I think.
I was an enlisted man from July the 6th of 1944
to May the 21st of 1945.
Then I was discharged to accept a commission,
and I had taken officer's training during
that period too.
Let's go back to your basic training.
What all did your basic training consist of?
It consisted of rifle training and bayonet
training, grenade launch training.
basic infantry skills. We don't know tank
training or anything like that, just basic
infantry and a lot of physical education, a lot
of physical training, marches. I
think we spent a week in bidwack or two, maybe
a little over a week in bidwack,
living in tents and stuff like that. And never
got any passes. You could call home
once in a while, but you never got out of the
camp for that instance.
Do you remember what your pay was when you went in?
Well, I think at that time it was $21 a month.
I had a first sergeant and he
lined us up to a building there and he said,
you guys, you're not forced to take out insurance,
you're not forced to take out a war bond, but
when you come out
the other end of that bill and you have both.
So I just, you know about how that goes.
Yeah. So that's what we did. So anything in
particular you recall from your time in basic
training? No, just when we did get a plan to
get a weekend off, we kind of enjoyed that as
far as
that's concerned. All I remember about Arkansas
is either dusty or mud. You're walking in dust or
you walk in the mud when it's hot. So I went in
there in July and was there until I think
November, October, November until I went to
officer's training school.
Then you started officer's training school as
soon as you finished basic?
Yeah, probably within two weeks. I mean, I had
applied for
parachute training and officer's training and
then it come up I would have had, if I hadn't
applied for either one of them I could have
stayed there as a cadre, a training
cadre, which is what I wanted to do and they
said no we can't now you're one of
these two you've got to go to and officers
training took precedence over
everything else. What were the qualifications
to go to our officer
training school? I really don't know for sure
just I think you had to be, show good
leadership amongst you. I was a squad leader in
basic training, and physically
had to be pretty much physical as far as that's
concerned, and I think them was
too the most. I don't know what my score was on
my scores and my tests, but
they must be pretty good as far as that's
concerned. Was any college required or
anything? No, no college. We didn't even have
to, I don't think, had to have a high
school. I had passed some written tests and
stuff like that that I did in
physical, but there wasn't any qualifications
back at that time.
And where did you take this officer training?
Atlanta, Georgia, Fort Benning.
Well it wasn't Atlanta, Columbus I guess. Fort
Benning, Georgia. And how long
was OCS? It must have been from about November
till May because I got
discharged in May and that's when I got my
commission. Okay, now tell me about
getting discharged. Did you, one minute you
were out, the next minute you were sworn back
in or what?
Right, they give me just, here's my paper, they
give me my discharge
from that. Okay. From that and it says right
down at the bottom so I can go
back in as a commissioned officer. This is the,
that's the officer, I think this is
That's the one there.
Okay, this is to certify that Ivan D. Hazelby,
1st Cav. Division, 8th Cav. Regiment.
This is the one here, this is the one I
discharged out of the Army to accept my commission.
Oh it is? Okay.
So it's right down in that bottom print down there.
Okay. Oh yeah, okay.
So I stopped, they just gave me the paper and
that was as soon as I graduated class and
pinned my bars on.
and then the next, I don't know whether it was
that same day or the next day,
well then they give me, they issued this as far
as I know.
Okay, honorable discharge to accept commission. Yeah.
So then you were, and you were discharged in Arkansas?
No, no, Fort Benning.
Fort Benning, okay, and then one minute you
were discharged,
then you were sworn in as an officer.
Right, yeah, I was close to that, you know,
they had a regular ceremony before you
graduated, just like you were from high school.
and get your pin on your bars, get your suit
on, pin on your bars, and pick up
both certificates, I think, about the same
time, that's what that consists of.
Then everybody in your OCS class that
graduated, they were enlisted men before they got...
And what rank did you have as an enlisted man then?
The biggest rank was just private first class. PFC?
Yeah, the class I ever got.
Okay. Now what all did OCS consist of?
Just about like infantry training, except you
had a little more map work and night classes
and stuff like that.
Still a lot of physical education, a lot of
physical training.
And you had what you called a, well, I don't
know, now I can't remember what I call him,
but he had, he was in charge of the whole
platoon that he was with.
And he rode up to critique each guy every day.
And if he thought you was a little short on
something, well, he'd call you and talk to you.
And eventually, if they didn't make it,
they could either drop back or they'd
transfer out of the service into something else.
And it just consisted of a lot of field work,
a lot of classroom work, as far as I'm concerned.
Was there leadership training?
Leadership training, weapons training,
and a lot of night classes, a lot of night work,
night marches, battlefield conditions, and
stuff like that.
Anything in particular you recall from that time?
No, just Fort Benning is about like Arkansas.
Of course, it's down there in the wintertime.
And of course, every place I've ever went, you know,
it's always been the coldest one we've had in
20 years.
So that's what they told us down there.
And how was the food in both places?
There was nothing wrong with it, I don't think.
It was good, as I recall.
I mean, we got all we wanted to eat.
Sometimes it had some fuzz on the chickens,
which we didn't necessarily like.
But it was good enough food for that concern,
being cooked by guys as regular cooks,
as far as that's concerned.
Any particular friends you had from either place?
I had some friends that I served with for a while
In this, when I was first in basic training, I
corresponded with two of them for a long
time and they finally died and I still
corresponded with their wives, but I haven't
heard from
them now for a couple of years.
And then in the service, in my infantry
training, commissioner's, officer's training, I don't
have any friends from that era at all.
I mean, I had some that I got acquainted with
overseas that I kept in touch with.
And then when, especially, you know, the ones I
got called back, when I got called back in for
the Korean conflict,
I kept in touch with them a lot longer than the
rest of them.
But I just got a couple wives yet from World
War II, their husbands are dead.
I still hear from them at Christmastime. We
exchange letters or Christmas cards at Christmastime.
And a couple of guys that I was in the Korean
War with, I still hear from before I get to see them.
Anything funny or comically recalled from
either Basic or the Officer Seath kind of school?
No, not that I recall. My mind's not as good as
it used to be.
I'm getting up there in age. I can't recall
anything funny that happens from that age.
Okay. Then when you got your commission, what
unit were you assigned to then?
I went to Camp Walters, Texas, at Mineral
Wells, isn't it? Yeah.
And I was down there, and it was just a basic training
replacement camp.
And me and another captain was in charge
of guys that were court martials.
They had to go overseas and come back,
and they put them all in one unit down there.
And we was retraining them and making sure
that they understood the laws of the Army and
all that stuff.
And I was down there then from 45, yeah, to May
of 45,
till I went overseas in about July, I think.
I started overseas in July of 45. OK.
Let's back up a little bit.
In April of 45, President Roosevelt died. Right.
Do you recall hearing about that? Yeah.
We thought we were going to be some of the
honor guard for it.
We were opposed to go, and then they changed
their mind
and sent somebody else, as far as that's concerned.
At that point, you were still in OCS.
Right, right, yeah.
And then in early part of May of 1945, Germany surrendered.
And any particular reaction to that? No.
Celebration or anything?
No, that happened right after I was commissioned.
Right before.
I was in Texas when I was commissioned.
when the war was over.
Well, when Japan surrendered, you were in Texas.
No, no, you were going overseas.
I was on my way overseas.
I thought I was in Texas when Germany surrendered.
But you say not, huh?
You say it was when, early May?
Yeah, May 3rd, 4th, 5th, somewhere along there,
as I recall.
I swore I was in Texas.
Well, whatever.
Must have been. OK.
But I was on the way overseas when Japan surrendered.
Now when you started overseas, had you been
assigned to a unit at that point?
No, we were going to go to Okinawa.
We were supposed to go to Okinawa and on the
way over, then the war ended and
we landed right in Japan.
It was part of the occupational forces of Japan.
Now when you went to Okinawa, y'all getting
prepared for the invasion?
Right, yeah.
And then the war ended on the way over,
so they shipped us right into Japan.
Any celebration when Japan surrendered?
Well, just on the ship.
So we didn't do much celebrating.
There wasn't much to celebrate with.
What kind of ship were you on?
It was just a regular troop ship.
I think the name of it was Robinson 2, if I'm
not mistaken.
I don't remember.
I forget how many guys was on there,
but we just had one little place to sleep, and
that was it.
Spent most of the time on deck, as far as I'm concerned.
I come back the same way, by the same kind of
troop ship, as far as I'm concerned.
Was it an APA?
Was it called APA?
Probably was, I don't know for sure.
I don't remember all that stuff.
Where did you sail from?
Sail out of San Francisco and then come back
into Seattle when I come back.
And on the trip over, how long was that trip?
I think 10 days, I think, if I remember.
I'm pretty sure it was at least 10 days.
Any seasickness?
No, I wasn't.
There was a lot of guys that was, but I was
never seasick.
Now, the plan to land in Okinawa,
you were just going to be a replacement when
you got there?
Yeah, we were going to be a replacement troop
when we got there.
To get into some units that had probably
had quite a few casualties and were ready to
regroup and do
some more training before we hit the shores of
Japan. You were supposed to invade in
November of 1945 when the invade was supposed
to be. Right, right.
Okay, then where did you land in Japan? Tokyo.
We were stationed right downtown Tokyo
in one of the marine barracks at the Garden of
the Emperor. I was there for probably a week
and then they sent me out on the Chiba
Peninsula and I stayed there a month just occupying
and investigating schools and stuff like that.
Then they had a, north of Tokyo about 75 miles,
they had a camp, a tank camp, a whole tank
company was and the tanks were still there and
I took my platoon out there to guard them tanks
or take to make sure that they wasn't
taking over the Japanese I guess you might say.
These were Japanese tanks? They were Japanese tanks.
Now had you been assigned to the first cav at
this point? Yeah, I was assigned the first cav
within a week after I hit Japan. Do you
remember what day you landed in Japan?
No, I don't have any idea. Does any of that
show? No, it doesn't show. The official
surrender on the
Missouri was September 3rd. Yeah, I was in
Japan before that. Before that? Yeah. Okay.
I must have been in there around August
sometime, around the first of August or
something like that.
The 14th was the official surrender when Japan surrendered.
So I must have hit Japan about the 1st of
August or the middle of the 10th of August in
that area someplace in there.
Okay. What was the reception when you got there?
How were the people?
They were calm. They didn't give us any trouble
at all.
I mean, we were probably one of the first troop
ships that landed there.
I mean, there's other guys that went in as far
as that's concerned, but we was probably one of
the first replacement ships that landed and
they was just like going on like life and been
that way for all their life as far as that's concerned.
No, no hostility on the part of the Japanese at all.
Any that I ever dealt with as far as that's concerned.
Now when you landed, were you, had your weapon
with you?
No, we just had our duffel bags.
Duffel bags, okay.
Yeah, we didn't have any weapon.
And you spent about a week there in the Tokyo area.
And then I went to Chiba, the peninsula.
I was there for, oh, I expect three or four months.
And they sent me out north.
And I spent north of Tokyo, about 75 miles,
guarding this camp.
They finally sent a guy out and cut the barrels
in two.
We shipped one tank back to the United States.
I don't know what they'd done with it back there.
We had to load it on a freight car and ship it back.
And then I had about a 50-square-mile area
that I patrolled that I had to check.
I didn't patrol it.
I was just checking the schools and the factories
and everything else, make sure everything
was going the way it was supposed to go,
as far as I'm concerned.
Now, when you patrolled around, did you
have some other people with you?
I had an interpreter and a jeep driver.
I ran an interpreter.
Were you in charge of a platoon or anything at
this point?
Yeah, I had a platoon out there, and guarding this.
Well, we had just a couple of guard stations
around us, tank, compound.
I expect it was probably eight or nine acres
with barracks,
and mess hall, and officer's quarters, and all
that stuff.
Were there more than your platoon there?
No, just me.
Just my platoon and myself.
How about a cook?
Did they have one?
Had our own cooks.
And one of my platoon sergeants acted as first
sergeant or something
like that, took care of the duty roster, and training,
all that kind of stuff. About how many people
in your platoon? At that time out
there I had about 40 guys. Had four squads and
about eight, nine squads, people in squads, as
far as I'm concerned.
And this first cab at this point? I was still
in the first cab. And what weapons did y'all
have at that point?
We just had Jeeps and we got a couple Japanese
trucks and each guy had his
We didn't have any heavy weapons or anything
like that. I had a sidearm .45 and they all had
M1 rifles.
And your troops carried what, the M1?
Yeah, they carried the M1.
Now, these tanks, had they disabled them anyway
so they wouldn't run or anything like that?
No, they could run. My guys would get them out
and run them a little bit around the camp.
But they weren't disabled. Half of them would
run, I suppose.
And if you had gas, it was pretty hard to get gas.
Then I said, like I say, they finally come out
and cut the barrels in two with a torch and of
course that disabled them and they wasn't any
good to anybody at all anymore.
And I got shipped back to, they left, I left,
they got short on officers back in Tokyo.
So I left my, that particular camp and started
with my first sergeant and I went back and took
over a company back in Tokyo.
I wasn't only there for probably three weeks
and then I got shipped back to the States.
When did you come back to the States?
September of 1946.
Last of September of 1946.
So you were there over a year then? Yeah.
Back in the last of July, you know, and back in
August or September.
So you were there a little over a year. Yeah.
Anything particularly you recall from your time there?
Just that one thing I was telling you the other
day when we went out to investigate the death
of Prince Kanoi,
he was a five-time Premier of Japan, he was
supposed to report the next day to start
serving his prison term.
He'd been convicted of war crimes.
And we got word that he'd committed suicide.
We had to go out and investigate.
And like I told you the other day, the only
reason I went, I think,
is because it was a big football game between
the 1st Cavalry and the 101st Airborne.
Everybody wanted to go to that.
So I ended up me and another captain, me and a
captain, had to go out and investigate.
We were the last two down on the line, and so
we went out to investigate.
He was, he'd committed suicide, but had taken poison.
He didn't commit heroic error, he'd taken poison.
And that's how I got my picture in Life magazine.
Tell me about that.
Well, we just was there, and all kinds of
photographers, of course,
and we had one guy wanting me to kneel down and
look at him,
and I had my shoes off, of course, and I did
and he took a picture and it showed up in the
Picture of the Week in Life magazine.
I had it someplace. I can't find it anymore.
That was in, I think that's January of
1946 in Life magazine.
Now when he committed suicide, was he in prison?
No, he was at home.
His own house, just all laid out, just
arms crossed like he had never had any pain,
just went to sleep. So I don't know what he took.
But no, he was supposed to report the next day.
Now, your investigation, what did the
investigation consist of?
Just make sure he was dead, I guess, and make
sure it was him.
That's all we had out there.
I suppose if he wasn't, we were supposed to
take him in, I guess. I'm not sure.
Any reason why you all did it, rather than a
judge, adequate general, or somebody like that, MPs?
No, I don't know. It's just that the First
Cavalry was in charge of that area.
I see. And so I suppose it just came down from
the top. The First Cavalry was supposed to go
out and check it out, so why they picked us, I
don't have any idea.
And how did that football game go?
I think First Cav won that year, I'm not sure.
I think they won it.
I guess it was a good game, I know that, but I
didn't particularly like football anyway
at that time, so it didn't bother me too much.
That's about all I told you, I think, that they
got everything on there that I did.
And then I got, after we got discharged in 46,
I went into reserves and I just had never
took any, never joined any unit or anything
like that.
Just like we was talking, they give you a big
Spiel, you know, you don't have a job,
they give you a little bit of money and all
that stuff.
But there was never any unit around here close
that I cared to bother with, and I got a job
right away on the railroad, so it was pretty
hard to make any kind of commitment on weekends
or anything.
So I just kind of let it ride, and I only had,
I think, 30 days to go, and I'd have been out,
and then they got a call back in during the
Korean War, and I don't think I got any papers back.
Well, I don't know where you put it.
My friend wore it all. I couldn't find it. That
was from October of 1950 to February of 1952.
And you were in the States the whole time?
spent all that time in Fort Leonard Wood,
Missouri. I don't have any record of that at
all. I can't
find that anywhere. It might be down in my lock
box. I didn't look. I got this out. I went with
the VA with my medicine. I had to have this for
that. I probably might be something else on the
Korean War and my lockbox, but nothing exciting.
I was just in the basic training and replacement
camp at Fort Huntsville, Missouri. I was in
charge of weapon training, light machine gun training,
and then they was getting short of officers,
and so they put me in charge of the company,
training company, and I had that for about
eight months before I got discharged.
When I first went in now to Fort Lonewood in
North Korea, I was working on the railroad and
I had asked for a deferment,
and so they said not to report until they acted
on my deferment.
And so I was turned down, and by the time I got
there, the guys, about 100 officers reported there,
and there was only about five of them left. The
rest of them were shipped right straight to Korea.
They said they'd been looking for me, but out
of the five that remained there, a
couple of them got discharged, a couple of them
went overseas, but I never got any
papers to have to leave for and get in there.
What was the highest rank you got to during
World War II? First lieutenant in
the infantry. Same thing in Korean War? Yeah,
well, no, second lieutenant in the
World War II and then First Lieutenant. I got
discharged as a
and made First Lieutenant as soon as I got out
of World War II and now as a First Lieutenant
when we're back in the Korean War.
Okay. What ribbons and medals did you get?
They're all on there. The only two that's not
on there is a good conduct medal and an
infantry badge.
The rest of them are there.
Yeah, American Theater Ribbon. Right.
The Victory Medal. Right.
The AP, that's the Asia Pacific Theater Ribbon.
Right. Occupation Medal of Japan and one
overseas service bar.
When you got back into Seattle what all did you
do there?
Wasn't there very long. I was there about 24
hours. Then I got on a train and I
went back to the Great Lakes in Illinois.
That's where I was discharged from.
Sheridan Hill, Fort Sheridan Hill. I was there
a couple days and got discharged and I
brought a quarter bus back home. When you got
back home did you tell much
difference, much change in this country at that
point? Oh yeah some not too much
I mean it hadn't changed all that much I didn't
think in the two years I was gone.
Now when you were in Japan did you have much
interaction with the Japanese
people? Yes, quite a little bit because I was
inspecting the schools and factories and
and when I was out on Chiba, they had these
caves full of torpedoes and bombs and I was in
charge of loading them up on
barges or on railroad cars and then they
shipped them to the ocean, took them on ships
and take
them out and dumped them in the ocean and I got
real good acquainted with a couple of
the higher-ranking officers in the Japanese
Navy. They were in charge of
doing all that stuff. And by interviewing
schoolteachers and all that stuff, I had a
pretty good repertoire of all of them. Did you
learn any Japanese? Yeah, but I forgot it now.
I could count and say please and thank you and
all that stuff, but I can't
I don't remember any of that now. Dozo's,
please, but I had one interpreter, he told
me the inflection of the voice and I thought I
was just cussing him out once and he's
sitting in the front lot later just saying
please all the time. I don't know, he's trying to
pull my leg, what he's trying to do is for nothing.
Now your interpreters, had they been in the
service? No, no, they hadn't been. In fact,
the one interpreter I had that belonged to was
a lady. She had been a school
teacher and the Army hired her to be an
interpreter. And how was their English? It was
real good.
The ones that could speak English was real good
as far as I can tell. Hers was
excellent as far as I can tell. And where had
they learned their English? I suppose I don't
think they'd ever been out of Japan. So they'd
had to return to some college in
Japan. So the one I had, I know she had never
been here, never been in the United
States or outside of Japan at all. So she must
have had some college education and
must have been taught teaching English there at
that time. Did you have any, ever come
across any of the ex-Japanese soldiers? No,
never did. Not that I knew, you know.
Like I said, they were all pretty well-behaved
people. I mean, they didn't give us any
problem, not like they're having over there in
Iraq now, so that's an issue.
And of course I think part of that was because
the emperor,
you know, told lay down their arms and we're
done, which that didn't happen in
Iraq, and it may never happen, I guess, and
and they did. In Japan, was there a lot of
destruction, a lot of? Yeah, quite a little bit.
I never did get out to where they'd dropped the
two atomic bombs, for as long as I can remember.
Tokyo itself had some buildings that were
pretty well shattered, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, they had had the big fire raids in Tokyo.
Yeah, and out north, when I was out there, you
couldn't tell that there had ever been a war
going out there.
They had that tank camp out there.
I didn't know it was there or something,
because it was pretty well shaded.
But the countryside wasn't that tore up or
anything like that.
Were the people pretty well-dressed or pretty
raggedy clothing?
No, they were normal dressed, I think, as far
as that's concerned.
I mean, they didn't wear nothing fancy anyhow.
They didn't look raggedy or clean or never seen
any bums or anything like that around,
where I was, anyway.
And how about food? Did the Japanese have
enough food?
seem to have, I mean every little patch of
ground that's farmed, I mean that they
hold human waste out from manure, and every
little patch of like in the
corner of a railroad or corner of a road, it
had some kind of garden, some kind of
food to grow in there. And I don't think they
ever ate too much meat back
then, maybe they do now, but they've been back
mostly fish and seaweed and stuff
like that, rice, we grew a lot of rice. Did you
eat much of the Japanese food?
We wasn't supposed to, but we did. We ate a lot
of cucumbers and stuff like that.
We wasn't supposed to eat, but we did.
Primarily, where I was stationed out
there by myself at that time, we got hooked up
with a cook in the Navy,
and they had all kinds of fresh food, and so we
got a lot of food from them.
We had, they had an ice cream maker and we got
a lot of ice cream mix but we couldn't
use it.
So we'd take it in there and give it to them,
they'd freeze our ice cream, they'd
give us about once a week, we'd have enough ice
cream for the whole camp then, my platoon.
We got a lot of fresh food from them, I mean,
it was wrong, but we buried a lot of stuff
because we was getting fresh food from them, we
had to make arrangements, had to do something
this can of stuff we was getting from the army
all the time, so we buried a lot of that for
the war.
That's just for fruits of war, I guess, I don't
know what else.
So you never had any problem, no incidents with
the Japanese people at all?
No, I never had any trouble with them.
Anything funny or comical you recall from your
time in Japan?
No, not right now.
I'm like you, that's a long time ago.
your people give you any trouble you presume?
No, no. Yeah, I had one guy that
was in Fort Linwood, Missouri and I don't know
how you feel about
Masons or anything like that but he thought I
was a Mason and he wasn't
doing just right and he said, well if one Mason
is better than the other, you ought to treat me
better than that and so
And I said, no, we're reporting to the old colonel.
And the colonel come out and talked to him.
And he just seemed to have told the colonel to
go to hell.
And the colonel didn't pick him up.
He just said, get in that truck.
And he told the guy next to him, he
said, put a bullet in that rifle and put it to
his throat.
And he said, if he makes a move between here
and camp,
shoot him.
That's all he said.
That was one of your enlisted men?
One of the enlisted men, yeah.
But in Japan, no problem then?
No, no problem, they were all pretty good
soldiers over there.
Did you ever have any
USO shows, any USO shows anywhere?
I never did see any, as far as I was concerned.
I'm sure there was, closed, but
I never got to see any, as far as I was concerned.
And how about the Red Cross, did you have any
experience with the Red Cross?
Yeah, we had the Red Cross right in our unit
in Japan
And had good repertoire with them.
They took good care of us, as far as that's concerned.
Whether they gave you coffee and donuts?
Coffee and donuts.
And I got some guys that couldn't write.
They'd make sure they wrote letters home for them,
and stuff like that.
Did you get your mail regularly over there?
Yeah, in Japan we did.
Pretty regular.
Did you have to censor the letters that the men
were writing?
No, I didn't.
I didn't have to censor them.
They were done that at the Central Post
Officer, higher up than what I was.
I didn't have to censor any mail.
How about souvenirs?
Got on with any souvenirs?
I brought some swords home with me, but I don't
know where they're at, and a pistol.
I got the pistol out here, but it's a Belgian pistol.
It's not a Japanese pistol.
But all my Samari swords, I don't know what
happened to them.
They went to my brother-in-law, and they
disappeared someplace.
I don't know where they're at.
And I brought some kimonos and stuff like that
in there at my daughter's house up in
the attic.
She still gets them out once in a while to show
to the people when they want something
to do with Japan or something like that and
their kids are in school.
And some rings, I brought some ruby rings back
with me for that concern.
Have you had any reunions? No.
Well, yes I did too.
Our reunion was stationed in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
They started one up about ten years ago, and I
went to about five or six of them,
and three of the main guys died, and I don't
think they have it anymore.
I haven't heard anything from them now for a
couple of years.
Down to us, only about four or five of us
showed up anyhow,
and to start with, there was about twelve, I guess,
and it was just one company I was in charge of
when I was in Fort Leonard Wood.
It went on for about five years with most of us
around Kansas City because that's where all
them guys were from. They got, they're just
like I have, they got called back in
service from World War II. They'd went to the
Reserves and they hadn't done any training or
anything else, but they all got called back and
reported back to Portland,
Woodland, Missouri. And they all knew each
other, so, all their life. So then we
started to have a reunion and that was all just
about four or five years kind of
died out. Now the 1st Cav, you have not been
into their reunions? No, I haven't been in
there, okay.
Three weeks. They had little railroad cars,
went back in there,
would bring out one at a time. They were big
bombs, I mean, they were great big things.
For about three weeks you took them out of
there, huh? Yeah, at least three weeks took
taking them
out of there every day. Now had they planned
those, to use those to resist our invasion or
what? No,
I think they were planning to bomb otherwise,
as far as that's concerned.
When you went into Tokyo, could you see much
defense they had set up in case we were trying
to invade?
No, I didn't see anything like that.