Interview with Carl J. Workman Army Sergeant 27 th Division

THIS INTERVIEW HAS NOT BEEN EDITED FOR CONTENT, LANGUAGE OR HISTORICAL ACCURACY.

Rick: When you were in basic training in Alabama , did you know whether you were going to Europe or the Pacific at that time?

We never knew until we was on the ship, and maybe a day before we knew where we was going to fight or what we was going to do.

What were your thoughts about the Japanese versus the Germans? Where would you have wanted to go?

I'd rather go to Japanese than the Pacific.

So that was your desire?

I'd did it, yeah.

So on your way to Hawaii you knew then that you were going to be in the Pacific and can you tell us a little bit about what your thinking was regarding the Japanese, what your feelings were?

Oh I didn't know, you know. I went to school with a Japanese person and the family worked on the section on the railroad and I liked him very much and I would see him on my tie for unions when I would have it, but the Japs to me and people there the same as I am. I treat people any black or white or whoever they are the same.

So how long did you spend in Honolulu ?

Four months.

You were there four months. After that you went to Saipan, tell me when you first knew that you were going to go to Saipan .

I didn't know until, like I say, the day or two before. We just jumped off the ship, we were on the ship and we didn't know anything.

What kind of training did you have in Hawaii ?

Oh we went on these landing crafts, we went over to the eastside where all the waves were over there and did a lot of landing on different places of the island.

You were in a mortar company; tell us a little about the mortars and what kind of training you had to go through to fire those mortars.

We trained a lot in Alabama before I started and you had certain things to do, you had your job. If you were loading or you had on the site or whatever you had, you'd done your job – that was your job. Ammunition we carried the plates, the pipe or whatever it is, what we called the stovepipe. And we carried that and we carried the base plate, ammunition, and the rest was brought up to us if they could get up to us, it depends on how the weather was, how much rain, we had rain everyday, especially Saipan. We'd dig our foxhole; the water overnight would come up to the top of the hole. We had our ponchos and our guns and rifles underneath the poncho so we wouldn't get wet. Sit there waiting whether the Japs was going to crawl up to us or not, that's when I was in the hole at the front.

Let's go back to the ship going over to Saipan .

I was seasick.

It was pretty rough?

Yeah, waves a lot of times, the first time I've been on a ship and you get down and the waves peak and then you go down in and you'd see – just like a mountain and I went in on with an old cargo ship LaSalle, the ship was called LaSalle. And with the only ship there we took a 7-day and we zigzagged to go to the submarines to get, we didn't know whether we'd get hit or not; and that was the only ship that I saw when I was on the ocean. It seems like a long ways and I was sick 7 days, I got seasick and that's the worst thing you can have is being seasick. You'd try to go down and eat and everybody else would get sick and then you'd get sick and back up the top you'd go and I drank Coke and stuff like that whatever we could get a hold of, that's what we had until I hit Hawaii. And when I saw Hawaii I could run across the run across the water to get off of that. I was tickled to death to see land. It was rough coming across.

Now heading for Saipan what have you heard about the Japanese fighter and what were your thoughts prior to landing on Saipan ?

It didn't matter whether they were Japs or German, we were trained to defend ourselves and that was what we trained for and to think of the Japs or the Germans, they were just another person. When I hit Saipan I didn't want to kill anybody, you seen Japs that are dead, I've seen them dead before I saw any alive, so it was pretty hard to know what – 19 years old you didn't want to hurt anybody. But I had a job to do and all of us went in there to do it.

Tell me what it was like getting off the boat, I guess then you got on a landing, one of those Higgins boats?

We landed on the Higgins boat . We waded through water on coral rocks up to here to get on shore. It took us about 1,000 feet or so off of the ship so it wouldn't get stranded on the island, they stopped and we waded the rest of the way. And we got on the ground and we walked for half a day I guess, just slow going up toward the front and then we went up so far, we dug in. That night we was bombed by planes that came from Japan and if it had been just seconds sooner I would have had a shell in my foxhole. They just went right in line, 3 of them went right in line, and none of us got hit that night, but we could have been. It sounded like, that bomb, you could here it coming down and you didn't know whether you was going to get it or not, you feel like your going up in your helmet trying to hide in that hole.

When you first got on the beach prior to walking, tell us what you saw – what it was like and give us some detail about what that beach looked like.

It was well torn up and I remember a sugarcane factory there, we went by that – it was pretty well riddled too. And what was our most problem there getting up to the front was it was so hot and we were so thirsty we only had a canteen when we went in there and it was so hot that we had to get sugarcane and suck on that to keep our mouths moist. I had to give lots for a drink of water, we couldn't drink the water there. We didn't dare to drink it because we didn't know whether they poisoned the water. We were told not to drink the water and things like that. So we sucked on sugarcane until we got mostly through the field cause they had to bring a water treatment plant in to get the water. They had some water but they still had to have a water treatment plant to make more water from the saltwater. They brought that right after we came in, the whole reserve brought stuff in like that or food, waters and ammunition and stuff that we needed. They followed right through. Thousands of ships out there, hundreds of ships out there bringing equipment in.

Now when you dug in that first night, how deep was your foxhole?

We dug as deep as we could. There on Saipan , every time we'd dig we'd have blisters on our hands we dug so many times, that's why I say going up through the mountain up the top we dug in, it seems like we dug in maybe every hundred feet. We'd pin down so much that snipers fire and then these caves, it was just like going deer hunting; you couldn't see the deer but the deer could see you – just like the Japs. They could see whatever movement we made that's why we had to go slow. The army is trained slower than marines and stuff. They have different training than the army does. They were for beaches and stuff like that but we all worked together. The marines all liked the navy guys, when I was on the ship they treated us good. We had good food and when we hit Okinawa we had cater rations and it was rough, cater rations isn't much to eat and we were hungry. They wouldn't give it to us a lot of times and we'd just take what cater rations we had. A lot of cater rations we'd keep in out pockets, one night a Jap we were getting out of a cave, we let him surrender – he come out and he had hand grenades around his waist. As he came out of the hole he pulled all the pins and the guys that was closer to him, one of them got killed, one got wounded, and I got a little shrapnel through the cater ration box. I was thankful to have and it just barely stuck in, so that was the only wound that I had during the war and I was thankful for that. We had to really watch them because the Japs would come out and surrender but you still had to watch them. They'd fix things, the bayonet's and stuff like that they had up there, sabers and swords and stuff they had on the dead Japs. We had to watch that because they were booby trapped. They'd booby trap, they'd kill one of them and put it on one of their Japs that was left that got killed, they put them on the Japs that had died and put a booby trap or a bomb under there. Guys would be around there looking at it and they'd touch it and it would blow up, it was several times that way. You'd try to get into these caves, they could see you in those caves. One lieutenant I was with had to get around the caves and talk them out, we had interpreters there to talk them out of it but he just happened to be in the wrong place and he got it right smack in between the eyes and he died there and there was several that same way; you'd try to get them out of the caves, want to save them, we had geisha women about 30 of them come out of one cave and some children came out of one cave and we took them back and put them in the camp there. They didn't give us any trouble. It was just the soldiers in some of the caves that we had to go in from the volcanoes and places that were developed in years, they had big decays of rooms in there that you could go in. After we mopped up the island we went back and looked at some of the rooms and they had enough food and water in some of thosr cavities in those caves that could last them a long time.

Then I went over the top, we went down and we had this attack and imagine about 4,000, I don't know everybody were coming, children-women, men, soldiers, coming down this east or westside of this island shooting and they just kept coming. And we had our guns wide open, I had mortars going until we got put at red-hot and we stopped them. That was our second run, I think the marines got into the first one before I got on the island with tanks and stuff like that; they destroyed a lot of the tanks. After I came over the mountain and down toward the bay we ran into this flat area where in about an hour or so they had that attack, thousands of them came down and we killed most. It was a slaughter and we had a lot of our men killed. The bullets would snap as they went by you and we'd stay down as low as we could. We weren't even dug in then we didn't expect that because we just got down off the mountain and came into this valley and we supposed to be still in line with the line. And they had to take a tractor to clean up the mess, after the battle, but there was a lot of them killed there. Who didn't get killed they ran back and went up to the mountain at the end of the island. I thought it was around the 4 th of July but of what I've read in the books it was about the 7 th of July, so I thought it was the 4 th of July that we had that attack but it was I guess the 7 th of what I read in books.

Were there civilians in that attack?

Civilians, yes.

Tell us about the weapons that they had.

They had clubs, they had everything. They had rifles, they had sabers they had swords, they had things like that when they came to attack us. It was our last push. They got orders from higher up that if we'd taken Saipan, that island, their main island or the main country you know in Japan would be more threatened because of our planes. That's why we took those islands. So the pilots and the airplanes to get closer to Japan, because we didn't have enough fuel to go from the United States to Japan with what we had at that time. Tinian was right next to the island that they took and where the atomic bomb was taken from into Japan. The first atomic bomb was taken from Tinian to Japan, and then they used the island of Tinian, next to Saipan, for attacks. We burned Japan, we burned Tokyo, and we burned the island with fire bombs from that island.

Let's get back to Saipan for a minute. You had two close calls, the bomb and then the bullets going by and the shrapnel from the Japanese exploding themselves are there any other close calls that you had?

Well I had a lot of close calls when we were on top and trying to get into those caves there were hundreds of times that I was shot at and the Japs would come out and we'd fight, I didn't fight but the guys right in front of me were fighting with them. But they didn't get right to me. They happened to have fights with this one guy who was in some of the pictures that I have. He had to have a fight a lot of times.

Tell us about the Japanese committing suicide and what you tried to do to prevent that.

Well after this sack attack we went back up to take the rest of the island, we hadn't got to the end of the island to secure it yet so we went up to the up on top and cut into a lot, there was a lot of stuff we had to cut through, it was pretty thick up there. We went through here and through the top and hit the end. There was a lot shooting. We took a couple days to get up there. When we got there we got into this bench where you could see where the Japs were dug in and had moved out. They moved more to the end of the island and the civilians, a lot of them were left up in there and a lot walked over to the end toward the eastside of the island and we saw these women and that was not too far and we could what they was doing. We had interpreters talking to them trying to surrender, not only the women and children but the soldiers and everyone else we tried to get them to surrender but some of them wouldn't, they'd shoot. Then we had interpreters go over there and watch them try to keep them from jumping off. There were a lot of them that didn't jump there was a lot of them did; they'd jump down into the rocks a long ways down.

When the prisoners that you caught realized that they were going to be treated humanely, what were their feelings and do you remember any of those experiences?

Yeah, a lot of them came out of the caves and they was scared just like I'd be scared if I'd been captured or anything like that. They were scared and we had the interpreter talk to them and tell them that they were going to take them back. We took them down, I remember going back on the island where I saw some of them and I went back to the end of the island where I came in and they had them all fenced in down there. They had the women, the soldiers in different barricades and we'd go down there and I saw some of them but I couldn't talk Japanese but they'd wave, and they appreciated us for saving them I think. When you're 19 years old you're scared all the time, I was scared every minute of the day, night and day are the worst night is you get in your foxhole on the line, and it would rain every night. You'd dig a hole and the water would come up every night. That was the only time you had a bath and you'd listen all night, it was pretty hard with the rain coming down because those Japs would crawl in there and throw hand grenades, which they did in some of the holes, I was lucky that I didn't get one thrown at me. We had to watch for that at night, they'd have flares go up every five minutes that would light up and then you'd look around and see what's coming and hope that you didn't see anything. Then you'd listen and a lot of them would be ahead and you could hear them digging, to put in landmines and stuff right in front of us there; we had to watch for landmines.

Did they ever yell anything in English to the troops or did you hear any of those kind of noises?

Carl: Yeah we heard noise a lot noises at night. But we didn't hear too much, we tried to be as quiet as we could and we'd just listen to what area they were in so we'd know about where they was digging the holes. We couldn't see at night it was pretty dark and you could hear them digging but we couldn't see them. And the next day we could see where they had been digging we were watching for booby traps.

Anything else on Saipan that you'd like to share?

Just after I'd seen them jump over the cliffs we still had a job to do. There was still another airport to take down on the end of the island, so we went down that way and circled around and it was all cleared out. So we had that airport and we went around and dug in down there and stayed that night and part of the next day then we moved back toward the southern part. We had a lot of ack-ack guns coming from Tinian that would shoot over us, that was kind of scary that day and we – its been so long ago its been 60 years.

Tell us about what the mission of the Army was versus the Marines.

I think we had all the same job to do, the Marines we tried to take the island. They were on the right, second Marines port Marines, on the inside the Army went through the middle we all had the same job to do but we were a little slower because of the terrain that we had to go over and the Army and the Marine Generals had a little difficulty in getting along and knowing what the score was. You had to be there before you knew it. If they were up there and seeing all the caves that we had to go through and the snipers and stuff that held us up and the things that we had to go through, that's why we were slower. It wasn't the Army's fault, we were doing our job the Marines, I got nothing against the Marines they done their job as far as I know. We were all there to take the island, we were there for our country.

So the enlisted men and the fighters didn't share that animosity that the Officers maybe had and the two Generals?

Yeah I don't know where the Generals were, but we had Officers right next to me and they were good. We fought, we were just like it wasn't a General or a Private or anything. We were all human, we were all fighting for the same cause. It wasn't because of your rank we was people and we fought for ourself and tried to survive through the fighting with all of us working together. It wasn't only me and the Marines it was all of us and the Navy did their job and bombing I had seen coming in. I saw the Navy and all of them.

Go back to that statement.

The Marines and the Army should work together, the Navy, we're all in the same boat and we're all fighting for the same cause, for freedom. Our freedom is the most important thing in life, we can go home, feel the salvation and you know you're safe. People in these other countries, they're not safe as we are in the United States but we fight, we have different lives, different style. We can't change their style over there and I don't want them to change our style here. We should let the people who are over there do their own living, their own religions, their own different because there are so many religions over there that we can't change their lives or I don't care what they do. If they come over here and try to change mine I'd have the same attitude. They couldn't change mine. I would do the same as they doing over there. But we're trying to get over there to get them civilized, they believe in freedom and stuff that we believe in and we'd like to do the same as we have in our United States .

You saw a lot of flamethrowers being used; tell us about your experiences there.

We used flamethrowers on Saipan and most of the islands. We used Bazookas and shot down into them caves to try to get them out. They wouldn't come out so we had to use flamethrowers to bring them out, that brought some of out but a lot of them cooked. Iit was hard to do things like that but that's war. When you hit war you got to do your part and try to win your side; it was either he kill you or you kill him. But its best to have peace so you wouldn't have to do things like that and we did that to get them out and try to secure the island and go on and do our job and live in peace and what we could do?

How long were you on Saipan ?

About 25 days.

And then you went to the New Hebrides to train?

Then I went to New Hebrides to recruit more, we lost quite a few men on Saipan and we went to New Hebrides to train more recruits coming over just like I was when I hit Saipan . We went down to train them in the jungle of New Hebrides way down south, took a ship back we got through Saipan we went down there and we trained them; there were rivers, big wide rivers we had to swim across – I was a good swimmer and I had a lot of that and taught a lot of them how to swim because we didn't know whether we had jungles or what we had in the next fight. I didn't know about Okinawa where I was going to go next, I didn't know I was going to go there what we was going to do. So we trained them in the jungle, we'd take a compass and take about 5-10 men and go out through the jungle with a compass and try to get back. We had wild boars, we had big snakes that we had to deal with, we slept in the jungle stayed there about four or five days and came back with our compass. We found our way back and we trained that way, we trained in different with mortars. We trained a lot of new men and stuff like that with the new people. It was hot down there and we'd get jungle rot and had to put this blue ointment all over our bodies from the jungle rot down there.

How about Malaria?

Malaria, they'd give us Atabrine pills.

When did you first hear that you were going to Okinawa ?

Just before I got off the ship.

On the way to Okinawa they told you?

Just about. They didn't want to give any men; we didn't want them to know where we were or what the mission was that we had to go. We didn't know, the lieutenants and all the staff higher up knew, but if it got out then the Japs would probably have known that we were coming. We went in there, and knocked out most Japanese fleet.

Give us as much detail as you can upon landing and going into Okinawa .

Going into Okinawa it was about the second day I think we went in. And there was a lot of stuff that had already been brought into Okinawa. There hadn't been any firing. At that time I went in there was a lot of firing but when the first wave went in. They let them on the island and then they brought the artillery out. The artillery was like rain, I mean when we went in there and right on the line the artillery was terrible. The mortar fire was knocked out. We had the next company in line next to us. We'd keep our mortars behind. The mountain artillery would pass over us but the mortar that I was firing, I'd zero in on a target. And then the second round I'd have put it in your back pocket. That's how accurate the mortars are and they're deadly. We had mortar shells that would go off at the surface and we had mortars like pillboxes and that and we'd go down and they'd go in the ground and then blow up and that was the mortars that we had. And we fired quite a bit and we fired at everything but we had a hard time on Okinawa too. They had their artillery on tracks, push it back in the case, we had the Air Force coming over bombing them, we had artillery bombing us and we couldn't knock them out. There at night they'd have these sacky attacks every night they'd come and we'd kill a lot of them, they got a few of us but they'd have these attacks every night. Then when I was on Okinawa it was a place that we had to get across when there was open water, kind of a bay. The engineers that night were down there putting the bridge pontoons across so we could get across. He would work at night in the dark and the next day we tried to get across which I did, just barely got across the bridge where a big parade of artillery came down. They knew every bit of that island, where to drop them and everything like that. They had it pinpointed before we got there. They had all that artillery down in the caves, they would push them back then bring them out, we couldn't knock them out and we had to finally we got across this bridge where this capital town we went by and we took that and there was an airport we was supposed to take, we went toward that airport and that's all I remember on the island on that and fighting there. A few days and we fought, it took us days to get up there, days and I think it was over two months to take that island. But it wasn't easy, we dug in and we moved up maybe a few feet and we dug in and done it as fast as we could and we had to watch for our self or we couldn't go out there because they so much fire powder and their artillery was more powerful than ours was at that time; it was like rain, artillery I don't know how, that's why there so many killed. And as I was up on the island I was watching the suicide planes on these carriers and on these ships right on the coast, I was right close to the coast where I could see all the ships being suicide planes coming down, knocking them out. I would like to have some of them sailors come over there and get in some of my holes; they didn't have no place to go. Them Navy boys they done a good job out there and I sure wouldn't want, I'd rather be in a foxhole in the mud – we had lots of mud and I'd rather have them there with me than on that ship. I wouldn't want to have been on the ship because they had – that ship when it blows up they got bomb, they got fuel, they got airplanes, they got all that stuff to blow up, they ain't got a chance they was worse off than we were.

Did you actually see Kamikaze planes hit ships?

Lots of them. And then after the battle after we'd taken Okinawa I got on one of the ships and they was still coming down. I got on one to go to Ishima, I went over to Ishima we had these B51's coming in from Yora* that they had that we didn't them fast planes during the war but we had them at the end. And we went over there and they'd already, the company had already taken that island and the CB's and stuff had already been in there to make the landing for the planes and that to come off and we went over there and we guarded the island and we guarded the planes and stuff like that. And then after that we was called, we went to Japan .

Let me ask you again about Okinawa, did you have any real close calls while you were on Okinawa ?

It was all close calls, there was a lot of artillery there was guys next to me within maybe 20 feet he got a direct hit with artillery. When you get a direct hit there's nothing left of you, we found I think it was about nine in that trench along there, we found a few with a foot in it. You ain't got much of a chance when you got that artillery, just shoot you up. We had lots of calls like that, everybody, they guys that were more at the front when I was up there serving you had so much fire and Japanese coming to you attacking you all the time. You see them down there with your glasses and stuff like that, bringing their guns out, you'd try to fire at the time that they come out they'd take the gun in and you can't knock nothing out – you just got to wait until a certain time to fire. Because you had to get your ammunition up there and it was hard to bring equipment up there, I didn't have much to eat up there they couldn't bring it up because of the mud and the rain and stuff that we had, we had to stay up there and fight with what we had. I remember they had these little weasels that was the only thing you could get around, I don't know if you remember weasels they called them weasels just like a jeep only it had tracks on, that's the only thing that brought our food and stuff that we needed there at the last.

Was there anything to eat in the jungle, any fruit or coconuts or anything like that?

No there wasn't much of anything, it was all blown up. I saw some garden lettuce and stuff like that but we didn't dare eat it, we didn't dare to eat anything that wasn't ours and things like that we just…

Did you have contact with any civilians on Okinawa ? Or did you see any?

There at the last yes we saw, they surrendered they came back to the lines and they came over after we'd taken it they'd come after that. They were in caves, but we got them out of the caves and then they surrendered, nobody surrendered while we were fighting. It seemed like that they would have to kill them, we'd take a gun and destroy the cave and go up, it was one after another, ravines and caves and stuff like that we had to go over. Go up and set up our guns and dig in and go a little bit farther, it took time, the mud slowed us up, the rain was bad – mud up to your ankles and trying to get up to the front.

Did you fight alongside the Marines on Okinawa ?

Yeah we were fighting right along with the Marines. I didn't know whether it was a Marine or a soldier. We were all the same. The way I looked at it the Marines there were doing the same job I was doing and it didn't matter to me whether it was a Marine or a soldier – they were American, and were fighting for the flag of America.

Were you aware that the war was nearly over when you were on Okinawa ?

No. When I went to Ishima I figured we were going to be ready, and were bringing new troops on the island where we were getting trained at. I thought maybe that'd be our next jump. I went to Japan on one of the first planes landed in Tokyo. There wasn't anything thing left but Tokyo. It was just as flat as the ones that were bombed with the atomic bomb.

Tell me where you were and what your thoughts were when you first heard that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima .

I was on Ishima with 51 planes and we were guarding the island after we'd help take the island of Okinawa . The guys that were left on Okinawa were doing the mopping up and we were standing over there on a ship on Ishima. I think was only a mile off of the shore off Okinawa, northwest of Okinawa.

And how did the word get to you?

Officers, our commanding officer told us. We went over there, we had little tents. We didn't have much equipment because a lot of it was still on ships. We just lived day to day with what we had. We'd build our little tents where we'd fix us a bed and we went as guards and went around the island and protected all the airplanes we had there and we were just more of a policeman then. We had to all work together.

Now you didn't have any idea what an atomic bomb was or hadn't heard of it. Did they just say a super bomb, or how did they explain that to you?

I didn't know anything until they dropped the bomb then we was told, the commanding officers told us what had happened. We didn't already know. We could hear Tokyo Rose sometimes. He was still trying to discourage us to quit fighting, they weren't going to lose and we couldn't win, that they were going to win. If the war had lasted any longer they had stuff that was better equipped than what we had. They had these jets just like the Germans. After the war we found out. But at that time on Okinawa they'd sent some of that first class information on the battlefield which tried to knock out some of those ships. They came so fast, they'd go about 600 miles an hour into a ship and blow it up. That's what a lot of that off Okinawa was blown up with the new technology that they had to blow up some of our ships.

When VJ Day occurred and you heard that the Japanese, tell us were you still on the island of Ishima ?

I was still on the island of Ishima , yeah.

And what went through your mind when you heard that they had actually surrendered?

I was tickled to death, I was glad and I was going to get to go home but I didn't have enough points. Some of the guys who were with me on that island had enough points to come home; I didn't have enough points to come home so they sent us as occupied force to our companies in Japan . I blew off Okinawa just before the tornado hit. There was a big tornado right after I'd left. It destroyed a lot of ships and destroyed a lot of the island. I got on the plane, (the first time I'd ever been on an airplane) it scared me to death because the wind was so strong I thought the wings were going to come off that airplane. We took off towards Japan and it was calm, it was nice when it hit Japan , it was calm there; came down, flew over Japan , flew over most of the places that were bombed – you saw it down there. Landed at Tokyo which was burned up. They weren''t just kidding, what they could find with the destroyed that they had buildings and stuff like that they would build little shacks to protect them out of the rain and the storms, and that's how they lived.

What was your feeling, has your feeling changed about the Japanese towards the end of the war or were they still the same?

Myself, they was just like me, we were called in to do our duty and the Japs were the same way, the Germans were the same way. You either had to go in there or they'd make you go in so we was in the same boat and I met the Japanese people over there. I met people that was born in Ogden, Salt Lake, they was in Saipan, I mean in Japan. There were a lot of my interpreters there to help me secure this town of Shibata where I was trained. I was also in charge of the town with those P's that I trained. They'd send one of the Jap policemen with one of my MP's and we'd go around the town and then I would send them to a certain place in this town, secure this certain place and I had a jeep driver that took me around to go to each one of these MP's and each places where I had it set for security.

Is there anything that you left out about Okinawa or Saipan that you would like to…

Interviewer: Can you describe the cave situation of Okinawa ?

The cave situation was pretty well secured you know. They werer safe in the caves. It was hard to knock anything out, and after we did you could get up there and knock the Japs and the ones who was running the caves out of the caves with flamethrowers and stuff that they had and we would secure that cave and then we'd move up to the next hill, the same after that until the island was taken.

Rick: Were the caves the same on Saipan as they were on Okinawa or were they different?

They were a lot different.

Rick: How'd they differ?

They had more artillery in these tracks and caves with big artillery, they'd go back in they didn't have the same, they had artillery but with more on the surface where they'd fire on the surface.

Okinawa had the deeper caves then with artillery?

Yeah, Okinawa was more secured. You had to have a really big bomb to knock them out, a lot of them were quick and we'd knock out some of the guns before they got back in the tracks, which we'd destroy and then we'd go in and get the Japs and stuff that was in the caves and then work up to the next ridge.

Interviewer: Were you surprised about how little assistance there was when you first hit the beach in Okinawa ?

I didn't hit the beach the first day; I think it was two days before I hit the beach. The Marines hit the beach, they all went in there and they were surprised that there wasn't anything. They was in there awhile and then everything, they let them come in, get all the supplies get all of the stuff to get in there, get all of our equipment and they'd get artillery mortars. It was bad then. Everything was knocked out. Alot of people got killed that day because they was in a bunch, they didn't know what was going on, we never did have an island that we went into that didn't fire at us as we'd come in. But I was never fired at or anyone was never fired at when I would come in they would have a lot of artillery, a lot of fire. We had to go in and catch up with our division, the division that we were told how we were supposed to be on that island and what position we were going to be and what we was supposed to do on the island on Okinawa.

Interviewer: I'd like him to reflect on WWII and what it has meant to this country over the years.

WWII. I think we brought peace to the world. We got the dictators that we fought. We figured that if they had of been rulers of this country we would have been slaves. I think we American people and the English and all that fought with the allies, I think we did a victory by having peace within the world which we had at that time and I think today we've got more of a peace by having that war and having that fighting that we did on Okinawa and Germany and all of those countries. This was a fearful war, it was a bad war before we got into Germany with the prisoners and the prisoners suffered so much and they starved so much. We didn't treat their prisoners like they treated our prisoners. I had a buddy in Oakley, Utah that I'd go hunting with. He was not one of the prisoners in Germany who dug tunnels. You've probably seen the show where they dug these tunnels to get out. Neil Frazier of Oakley, he was a prisoner there and he didn't escape, he stayed.