Oral History Program Ray Griffiths Robert Tesch 06 September 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ray Griffiths Interviewed by Robert Tesch 06 September 1971 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Griffiths, Ray, an oral history by Robert Tesch, 06 September 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ray Griffiths. The interview was conducted on September 6, 1971, by Robert Tesch. Griffiths discusses the war in the Pacific. He also talks about the fall of Corregidor and his experiences. RT: Mr. Griffiths, I understand from references here from friends here in the area and also from my reading and other sources that you served in WWII. RG: That's correct. RT: Maybe...could you start out by telling me a little bit about your background, how you got involved in the War? RG: Certainly, I enlisted in the Army on the 12th of February 1941. Incidentally, I enlisted at Fort Douglas, Utah, and was sent to Angel Island, that's in the San Francisco Bay, and then on the first of April of the same year I went to the Philippine Islands on Corregidor. RT: Now you were on Corregidor. Could you tell me a little bit about conditions on Corregidor? What you did? RG: At that time? Yes. First of all there was many, many hours of training early in the morning, late at night, and I especially remember arriving because everything was just brown. We hit there in the hot season and there had been no rain for months, and of course… I imagine the temperature was over a hundred degrees, and most of the time it was just out on the drill field, drill and command. Sergeants screaming all over, training us. I guess that's what they do to everybody. We had thirteen weeks of it. RT: How prepared do you think America was for war at this time? 1 RG: I feel that, as applied to today, most of the troops were ill prepared as far as equipment was concerned, though we had a lot of ammunition, but the weapons were not of real late configurations. They were of old. Real old vintage, these WWI types and the antiaircraft guns were… I think they were two and a half inch, and they weren't capable of reaching the Japanese horizontal bombers, and it proved it out when they came over Corregidor to bomb us. A lot of the ammunition was so old that it actually was defective, it wouldn't even fie and the hand grenades for an example, you might get a "kill" out of every five hand grenades. But it was real ancient stuff. It had been in warehouses since nineteen fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. RT: Can you tell me a little bit about your experiences on Corregidor? I understand that did receive a lot of action, in the course of the war. Fill me in on that a little bit. RG: Now just prior to the war actually started we were assigned, and incidentally I was with the sixtieth coast artillery and an antiaircraft unit, we were assigned to a communications position on the tenth and we left Corregidor on the third of December, 1941, and arrived on Bate Bataan, of course, the same day. It's only four and one half miles as across the bay. We took up positions on Bataan after we'd had taken & machetes and, big knives, and chopped our way into the jungle and made ourselves a home. We had to set up tents there. It was a few days. Well actually on the seventh of December when...In Hawaii, it was actually the eighth in the Philippines that our company commander called us together in the mess area and announced that we were in a state of war with Japan. My brother was in Corregidor with me and he was on Corregidor and I then was on Bataan. It was quite a state of confusion but the troops, the American soldiers were as well or better equipped to accept this then than they ever 2 have been since. And I rather imagine... really I think most of us knew it was coming, but we didn't know when. We knew that... well it was just a feeling, everybody, the people, had a different behavior. And the Soldiers seemed to just... well they were anticipating something, but they just didn't know quite what it was. RT: I see. Could you tell me a little bat about the fighting conditions and the fighting that took place on Corregidor before it fell? RG: Yes, you see the Japanese came ashore in the Philippines…and I'm trying… Subic Bay is where they came in. There were eighty transports & full of Japanese troops and that made the odds about 19-20 to 1 American. Though we had a lot of Pilipino troops, both the scouts and constabulary, they seemed to be rather inadequate because especially the constabulary. They were like a reserve force and they really didn't have adequate training. You know, General MacArthur started to train these people in something late in 1940, though he made a real effort in that short period of time, they just weren’t ready. And they, the scouts, were very valiant people. They tried hard but the constabulary, being just civilians brought into the military, they were frightened they were young and they weren't very well equipped. They had the old Enfield rifle. Of course we had the old Springfield rifle. Were out arsenals were full of the Ml rifle, the Garand modern rifle we still had the old Springfield bolt action rifle. These 80 transports of Japanese, of course our commanders tried to call in navy submarines, airplanes, and so on but it was futile because we just didn’t have them. The PT boat... the PT fleet tried to come in there and I imagine they were turned back because of the Japanese navy. But from there on it was a constant withdrawal down onto Bataan and we used to withdraw five kilometers at a time, and we were fighting on the front lines and then as things progressed the 3 Japanese kept advancing with superior air, superior artillery, superior numbers in force, not individual soldiers, more people than we had, we were leap frogging back. What we would do is dig in every five kilometers and then we'd go back and the fresh forces, the reserves would take the blunt of the attack while we dug in five kilometers to the rear. It was an effective method of delaying but people were already saying that the Philippines were…you couldn't defend them. They were claiming that Corregidor was impregnable. That remains to be seen as you know from history. But generally speaking, moral in American fighting men then…we were high…it was high, though later on when the food started to disappear we were fed twice a day, early morning and late at night with a can of water to survive on all during those hours. RT: I guess it's hard to take that? RG: N O . The Malaria then, dysentery, malnutrition, and things of this nature started to take its toll. Cholera I imagine, every kind of disease that's with a jungle, we of course would contract. RT: How many men approximately were…you said on this leapfrogging technique delaying tactic, how many men would you say that you had at that time? RG: Well, we had the 31st Infantry regiment, was a regular army regiment. And I would say that there was about 180 men in a company, and a regiment has three battalions and a headquarters battalion so that would b be about... incidentally, there was four...there were four companies to a battalion, about 2400 Americans. Oh, and then we had some more antiaircraft artillery, National Guard, and some armored National Guard troops. The 200th and 515th coast artillery came from Albuquerque, New Mexico area. We had some people from Wisconsin, I believe, National Guard. Armored, we had some light... 4 real light tanks, old fashion tin and then just before the war ended we got a transport full of new fresh people, and of course we had air force people there. RT: So could you put the total right around 3300? RG: In the Infantry? I would say so. This leapfrogging, see what they did they finally went down from Bataan and gathered up Medics finance people, ordinance people, quartermaster people, Navy, we had a navy battalion training as Infantry. They picked up everybody that they could and Air Corps, Army Air Corps people, gave them a rifle, minimum amount of instruction and then they became Infantry so artillery everybody went into their basic training and they'd already accepted and had Infantry basic training so those folks... all the people were put up on the front lines, most of them. So I think that generally speaking on the line I would say about 3500 people at a time was leapfrogging plus all the support units. The National Guard I'm sorry but the ...Constabulary, It would be like a National Guard, The Pilipino constabulary, they were a lot of those were there and a lot of them also were security forces on the beaches. You see we were vulnerable from all sides and while we were actually engaged with the enemy coming back down Bataan, a Navy Lieutenant find Japanese cave on the extreme south end of Bataan behind us, and which we had to go route those out. And Marines, fourth marines was there, so really it h became a real fiasco. We were having them come from all directions down and up and across ways. And they had superior air force too. We didn't have any birds up at all. We had to... I think we ended up with about twelve or less P-40 aircraft with the Army Air Corps, and they were our air defense and also our interceptors, bombers the whole thing. They did the whole job. And it was quite a tussle. 5 RT: Why don't you tell me a little bit more on this delaying technique? What...and tell me what eventually happened, the attitude of the men according to this or something like that. RG: Well, I think the thing that bothered us really the most was the fact that we didn't have enough niceties. We could live on rice and gravy and meat but we didn't have a can of beer or pop or…the cigarettes we wanted. All these things you had to find or catch up with. You could go out and trade, or for example, you could trade a carton of cigarettes for a brand new Garand rifle. This was a rifle that fired eight round semi-automatics, just as fast as you could pull the trigger. The Filipinos had these, we didn't have it. You could trade a carton of American cigarettes for an American rifle. This bothered us quite a bit. Also you could find food but we needed things like sugar, and we needed, well we needed better logistical support, food, cigarettes, beer, whiskey if you wanted it, things of that nature. We got soap, we weren’t actually filthy but we were able to wash and we ran our toothbrushes and things of this nature. But we had the staples, you know, enough to get along, but then came the announcer from San Francisco, telling the Japanese that you can't bomb Corregidor, it's impregnable. Go ahead and bomb them if you can get away with it and things like this. We had a lot of bad publicity. Well what I'm saying not bad really but it was publicity that we could have done without. Don't pick a fight for us fellows, let us pick our own fight, you know and let us do our own fighting. But sometimes things would break down, communications and from home. We love to hear the music and we like b hear the news, but we really didn't want anybody boasting about how superior we are when we were getting our tail whipped, you know. I think if they'd have told it like it was we'd have all realized the seriousness, and if we could 6 have got some support in there, we didn’t want fancy clothes or anything but we needed troops, good fighting troops with modern weapons and ammunition. If we'd have had up to date and latest configurations in weapons I really don't believe that the Japanese would have ever taken the Philippines because in March of '42 those people were ready to quit. They... we actually went out looking for them and there weren't any Japanese to be seen. They were all hid in Manila, in Barracks. They had taken a whipping. We really feel that, that the American soldier was superior to them and any tie we met them on equal ground whether it is rifle and a bayonet or whether it be a fire fight, it was…bullets, we always come out the best. Never ever did we have to run away from an equal number of people, but when the artillery and the airplanes dropped the bombs, these are the things that dug us out of our holes and these are the things that chased us back, superior firepower and aircraft. We really didn't mind going without food, but it was just the fact that somehow they could find bundles for Britain and a snitzel for Bataan, that's the way we figured it. RT: Was the attitude towards this type of thing like were you give the...you know there was an old saying were it said the Europe came first and so on. I imagine this kind of made feelings quite hostile for the Americans and Filipinos who were fighting over there. RG: Well, you know, most of the people though in them days were grateful and grateful for America. And I've referred to it as they came with patches on the pants and their heart in their hands because they loved their country and they were devoted and they were patriotic. We've stood in bread lines, or we've been hungry here in the states, we knew what it was in the depression to be hungry. Most of us were regular army soldiers, and most of us had taken an oath that meant more to us than anything else and I think if 7 Franklin Roosevelt had got on the phone and told us to dig in boys and stay there forever, I guess that's what we would have done. The officer was a better man and a better leader then than they were twenty years later when I got out. We had no fraternization, we had no buddy-buddy system, we…when a man stood up with a set of bars on his shoulder we saluted the bars because he represented a captain in the United States. We didn't worry about the body wearing the bars we saluted and believed and went for the grade, the rank, and that's what we, all of us every regular army soldiers out there would have given his life. I believe, I would have, if the man had said go, we'd have gone, and we did a lot of times. And I personally was in a hand to hand combat three different times, bay nets because my skipper told me. He said charge, and buddy you couldn't stop us. Because he told us to. And now he didn't stand back and ask, he went with us, he was right there with us. Because we had faith in our state department, we had faith., we loved our president, and I saw a lot of grown men die, crying…and a lot of them died, but crying when the Japanese pulled our flag down, and stomped on it, and spit on it, and urinated on it, and we stood and cried. After we'd endured all the hardship, we still loved our country. RT: This was at the fall of Corregidor? When they pulled it down? RG: That's right. But I believe, and I say this with all my heart, that if I had to go through it again I'd go. I guess maybe I'm different than a hundred... a hundred thousand other guys but that's the way I believe and my boys... this is what I've tough them. That your country is something that you've got to fight for. Anything good enough to have is good enough to fight for. That's what I believe. RT: What… At the fall of Corregidor, I imagine that they all retreated to Bataan, is that right? 8 RG: No, well actually happened after the Japanese broke through and came down from...I'm trying to think of a little airstrip where I was close to ... but anyway they were coming across the airstrip and it looked like ants crossing the side walk they were coming just as fast as they could come and we pulled the antiaircraft gun, drug them out with tractors and laid them on the road and just direct fire with antiaircraft guns and these things when they burst, they throw steel balls, flak, and we were busting these flak charges right over their heads about twelve feet off the ground and they were just knocking them down like flies and they come right across again, they just come in force, screaming Banzai. There’s a place called Takaitai Ridgeon Bataan that the American or the allied forces got credit for killing 35,000 Japanese in ten days, and they stacked up on double apron concerting fence and double apron barbed wire, entanglement. They bridged that wire with their bodies coming after us. They were screaming at the top of their lungs always. And after ten days we withdrew because a lot of it was the stench of the bodies of the Japanese, we couldn't actually stand the smell, you Bad to put your gas mask on to be able to breath and the huge blowflies and if you had a scratch on you your body, you had to get it treated so those blowflies wouldn't blow and get you a big... tropical ulcers and things. But it was a nightmare, then. We all earned our money we were getting 21 dollars a month you know, but it was a lot of people actually went out of their head they lost all control of their emotions. Of course they were wounded and hurt too, and they were sick a lot of them. They finally routed us out, chased us all the way down to Marleta. Finally we got the word that we were on our own, and we were to make our way the best way we could, individually or together, to Corregidor. And I...I was able to. I found a, two little nurses sitting in a small car, like a Datsun, I can't think 9 of the name of it, anyway they were beeping the horn and they were from the number two hospital Marvela’s was about fifteen kilometers down the switchback, a and all that switchback was full of busses and tanks and trucks and wrecked cars and everything was just jammed up, everybody trying to get down there so we ducked down through the jungle and we were able to catch an Army engineer boat and they gave us a ride to Corregidor. Then I came back to Bataan and then my unit sergeant Kates, and I and corporal Shell and our unit was able to take that same boat and then go on back over to.,, we was at the rock quarry at Marvela’s bay to Corregidor. And then we were assigned to battery way. Battery way was a twelve inch mortar battery, we'd never had any gunnery or training on those mortar batteries so with just a few hours training or first mission was a 48 round salvo.,, mission, 48 rounds and we had four guns, and we salvo’d twelve times these big projectiles to stop the Japs from advancing down Corregidor, or Bataan I'm sorry. But when we got on Corregidor we were then targets for the Japanese planes and artillery. Their cannon was only just a little ways about four and a half miles from Corregidor, and the Japanese had 105 artillery plus they had 240 mm artillery. Someone has said that... well they was fantastic numbers of tins of artillery shells daily that those people fired to try to get us out of there. It was a regular nightmare I tell you. RT: How long were you in this unit, this mortar? RG: In the mortar? From there then until Corregidor surrendered. That was from...well it was about 30 days really, or a little longer maybe 45 days. RT: From the time that the Japanese...? 10 RG: Right, you see, we only prolonged the capture about 30 days. Because Bataan surrendered and then Corregidor fell not too long after that. My brother was hit in...On the fifth of May he got hit with a bomb and he was injured quite badly. He was in the hospital... No, I'm sorry it was the fifth of April when he got hit. So of course he stayed in the hospital, and he didn't do too bad, they bandaged him up pretty good. He got home Ok, he got through. RT: Could you tell me what happened after the fall of Corregidor? What did the Japanese do then? RG: Well they... when we surrendered, we got the word that Corregidor had surrendered, you know, or would surrender at 12 o'clock. The Japanese on Bataan kept firing artillery at us, Beyond the deadline that they said they were going to surrender, and then when ... there was a 12 o'clock noon deadline, so then they marched us down to bottom side there on Corregidor there are three levels, the topside, middle side and bottom side. Bottom side was the docks of course, and the Melinda tunnel. The big tunnel that you probably read about. In the tunnel they had a hospital lateral, and they had ammunition and they had food and storages, Navy had a bunch of tunnels in there off to one side, they had a gasoline store tunnel also and people worried about that blowing up but they marched us down and put us in a big area and we really though that they were going to shoot us, they had machine guns set up and all. But we didn't realize that we w re waiting for General Wainwright to come out. When the general came out, I was the one that called attention and gave the man a hand salute and everybody else saluted and we almost got our heads knocked off for that because he... his head was down and he was crying and when I gave... called attention and gave him a salute, he popped his 11 head up and walked down here... he was pretty well... he was a beaten man. No, I really didn't understand that consequences. Had the Japanese elected to right there they could have done something to me, you know but they didn't. Then they put us down on a...they herded up into a barbed wire fence thing. Some of us who had tattoos, and I got a tattoo. The Japanese said that we were... they figured that we were gangsters from Chicago. They said Chicago, New York, gangster, you know, they... if you had a tattoo you were a gangster, that’s all there was. So they utilized us for burial detail and we had to bury the Japs that we'd killed coming in on Corregidor and there were Japs all over. Underwater laying on the beaches, all over the…all over... the east end of Corregidor. And I would safely say there were thousands of them. Seriously, I swear to God that I've never seen so many dead Japs in my life, and they were all over. So we had to drag them and pile them up and now this is running on the third and by this time, the heat and stuff, the sun and the weather had made things rather undesirable, but they then elected to take part of the man’s body and cremate it and it was a...there on. That was all they wanted. They had a ceremonial gadget platform built and the arm had to be amputated and burned and they put them in boxes. They'd put them in boxes and little bags and boxes and make something on them and that’s the way they did away with them and they burned the rest of them. Our troops, our American troops were thrown down a gully and gasoline was put on them and they were cremated but there was nothing saved. There was a number of those too. I'm not saying that ... there were very, very few Americans compared to the Japanese that were killed on Corregidor. I understand that General Homer had said that they was about to bypass Corregidor when we finally surrendered. They wore ready. And I think if we'd had a little more 12 equipment, we had the intestinal fortitude and the method. If we'd had the equipment to follow through we'd have chased them off, but we just didn't have it. Our country didn't have any to give us, except those rifles I keep bellowing about. That still stuck in my craw, because a lot of times, you know, you get up there with only five rounds to fire and if you’d have had an extra three you'd have got three more gooks. But we didn't have it. Then we were…a lot of people got real sick right after that. And they eat too much greasy stuff. We weren't on a very good ration, but what people did was readied the warehouses they raided the mess halls on the way on the way down and they would break open five gallon cans and make fritters. You know, a fritter is gob of dough and you fry it like a doughnut they swell up. So a lot of Greeks…their diet consisted of a lot of fried food and they then started…well they vomited and diarrhea real bad some of them figured that they were fortunate to find a lot of sugar and they made goopy sweet dishes and this bothered them too. Some of us who found…I can't think of the name of them…little wieners in a can. Somebody then must have sold the army a million of them because that’s all anybody could find, was Vienna sausage. And they were eating Vienna sausage. And they eat anything they could get their hands on, and this caused problems. Fruit out of the can, all kinds of greasy stuff. Nobody really cooked. T h e y didn't have a dietitian or a cook to give them any kind of…any…menu and they eat what they could get their hands on and it really bothered them. T h e y became violently sick. Aid then a few days later they brought ships, and then they loaded us on Japanese boats and took us out to the big ships. They took us then into Manila and about a half a mile off shore, or where the water was steep enough so that it wouldn't sink the ship, they made us get...make our way into land. 13 RT: How far was…? RG: I'd say half a mile, though the water wasn't too deep. A lot of the guys had a load of barracks bag loaded with contraband, or food. A n d , I'm sure that you realize, a week sick with a heavy load on their back, a lot of them drowned. They could have cared less, because in effect the Japanese didn't really do it, the guy drowned swimming to shore, you know. So, then we were put into Billaben prison. Now this prison is the government prison they used to put the Federal prisoners in, political and otherwise, in Manila. This is where the Japanese put all the people from Corregidor. And then they immediately stared details out of there took people in groups of five hundred or better, from there and put them into bigger camps and I went up to O’Donnell first and when we got to camp O’Donnell there was something like six to seven hundred Americans dyeing a day from malnutrition, starvation, sickness, all kinds of things. And then I was transferred down to camp one and the death rate stopped or lowered considerably but in this prison camp, we had a lot of people with diarrhea and dysentery, Malaria and things. And the hospital had a ward they called the Zero ward and when you were so sick that they Jap Doctor figured you were going to die, you went in to the Zero ward. Zero ward consisted of people almost dead. They were breathing but they were…they had dysentery. They were actually bleeding from every mucus forming membrane, and in that blood there was maggots, crawling from their anus and their mouth, they couldn’t eat, and they lay in there in defecation and blood and mucus, on a mat. And they…I was assigned to the burial detail that had to go in there and get those people. We put eighty in a grave, and the graves were about 28inches deep, with about twelve inches of water. And we put live American prisoners in their graves forced by Japanese bayonets. You had to push 14 them down with a pole to make them stay, and you dumped bodies on top of bodies until you had as many as them idiots wanted us to put in there and you covered them up with dirt. And that's the God's truth. So, I went on and on of course and then I…the second of November I left camp one on a detail to go to Osaka, Japan. We were put on a ship and we were something like sixty-two days from the Philippines to Japan, and we were chased all over the Pacific with American Bombers or torpedoes. We went into Formosa where no white people had been in. No Caucasians had been into Formosa for many, many, many years. We were the first ones in there, our shipload, and we saw Formosans and it was very, very beautiful. And then we only delayed for a little while. They took a detail out about 35 people; I don’t know whether they ever showed up again or not. Then we went from there over to Korea, and we were dropped off at Seoul and then we were marched through Seoul up to Cuosen reservoir area and all the way through the Koreans were spitting at us and throwing rocks and hitting us with sticks and we dropped off a detail there too that were digging a tunnel by the freedom bridge and there are graveyards up on top of that tunnel today. The highway 4x or I think it's 2x in Korea, finally we got to Osaka Japan, we got there on Thanksgiving Day in 1942. And the people were still sick, I carried a chief Petty Officer Burrden, was his name, almost 2 miles, to get him down to this camp, because he was so sick he couldn't go. And we were worked then from daylight till dark, in the Osaka Kekoshyo, that was an Osaka steel mill. They called it Yorugawa. That's a river. Yorugawa Sekoshyo. That’s another factory. We worked in factories, and we worked from a little after daylight to a little before dark. Security reasons, then we had a lait gunner, a Jap with a bayonet on us all the time. A lot of us worked rolling out armor plating, all hours of the day, 12 hours, and 15 they gave us rice and soup for breakfast, rice and soup for lunch, and rice and soup for dinner, and they might if you behaved yourself, you'd get a rice ball during the day. If you worked hard and you were on a hard working detail. They issued you ten cigarettes a month, and they paid you ten cents…that's not very much, ten cents. Your food was sparse, very, and we were fed sweet potato rinds, dried onion soup, fish heads, and it was a candidate for a garbage can, but we ate it and were damn glad to get it. We all suffered from malnutrition and Berri-beri. Polegra, we got big splotch that looked like liver splotches on our skin and our mouth and tongue and our throat. But then finally somebody discovered that if you ate the orange peelings for tangerines or limes, actually the stuff you make bread with, yeast, they got a lot of vitamin c in it, things like this we were you get rid of. So you'd see us all out there picking up orange peelings from the ground to get rid of the Polegra. RT: How long were you here at this steel mill? RG: I was in Japan almost three years. We were 42 months prisoners. I was in Japan actually about three years. RT: You were there at the end of the war then? RG: No, we were moved 89 days prior to the war becoming over. We were moved from there to Oyama. And there is where we were stevedores, on the ships as they came in, and there is where the American planes first appeared to us. And they'd come in and shoot those rockets and bomb those boats and blow hell out of everything and we’d just stand there and cheer, and the Japs would hit us on the head because we liked to see everything get blown up. But we were then, where I jumped the fence. Myself and little Alvy Eastman jumped over a fence and made our way to Tokyo, from Oyama. I rode a 16 train, and when I went into this railroad depot in Oyama I told them that I was a brand new soldier, and I was there as an I specter for General MacArthur. We'd heard by rumor that MacArthur was in Tokyo we didn't know. And a Kempae actually gave me his pistol and a box of food, and a bottle of Sake, and showed me what train to ride on. We rode up there with a company of Japanese soldiers with weapons, and a company commander who had moved all his troops back two seats, and made sure that these American Visitors from MacArthur’s Headquarters were safe. I lied to them through my teeth and took advantage of them everywhere I turned. We got to Tokyo finally and went into the headquarters and they... you see we jumped the fence the sixth of September... and they had established a headquarters in Tokyo, and when we went in we were greeted by American officers and we were talked to and we had to take an oath that we wouldn't reveal certain things, and Life magazine tried to interview us and they couldn't do that. And they fed us breakfast and they told us…they sent us on down to Yokohama. And the nurses then deloused us, and took us out... took all our clothes and put us in the…we got debugged, you know, sprayed and bathed and they gave us some new clothes, and then we were sent out to Kimpo airfield and from there we sent back down to Okinawa, and then from Okinawa we were flown to the Philippines and I was checked into the 313 general hospital. I had a lot of dental work done on me and plus I had Malaria pretty bad, and they fattened me up pretty good and gave me some clothes, and in the meantime my brother had flown back to the States. He was already through and then I followed on a vessel, I think it was the U.S.S. Gasper. The thing that kind of got to me, we went up into Canada, we had some Canadian prisoners and we got to Vancouver and every whistle and bell and every siren and the people were 17 screaming and waving and everything, and would you believe we ended up going into Seattle. And there was an Old lady on a fork lift and that was all that was there, for that ship full of American prisoners. I was like sneaking us in and there was nobody along the street that even turned their head and looked at us. And I wondered what the hell I'd gone through…and I didn't realize what I'd gone through until I went back to Korea. I served in Korea. I went to…I've been to Korea three times. I guess that's why I can set to here and talk to you because I figure I've earned my right, I've earned being an American and it might sound over patriotic or something but I believe... RT: How did you find... What were your feelings toward the end of the war? Like you say, you came home and there weren’t too many people to greet you. Did you…? RG: It bit you a little bit, but you know when I went to the hospital I was in the hospital for several weeks…at fort Lewis, and they had a recruiting officer come in to talk to the troops to see if anybody wanted to re-enlist, and I sat there and listened to him for a while, he was a first lieutenant, and there was a big room full of people, ex-patients, and I sat there with about three rows of ribbons on and a whole bunch of rows of stripes on my sleeves and overseas bars and all this other good stuff, and I said... I stood up and I said... Lieutenant, is there any way we can get you to quit talking a about it and give me the papers so I can sign up? Everybody just gasped. They didn't believe that I, after all that service, was ready to go again. And I had about twenty guys follow me. I at that time made up my mind there was no better way that I could help and serve my country than to prevent what we'd gone through, and to actually get in there with both feet and do her again. I must have been a pretty good soldier; I was a sergeant-major, Infantry Sergeant-Major for the last 14 years I was in. I was the senior NCO of second division, 18 the Fourth Infantry Division, I was sergeant-Major of the better regiments in the army, and I had first sergeants come to me looking to go to work for me because I was that devoted and wanted to help them that much. RT: Sounds like quite an impressive record. RG: I loved every minute of it, really. RT: Well this information you've given me is really very beneficial. Is there anything else you'd like to sort of conclude by? RG: Well I would like to say I think when people have faith in their country, faith in their State Department, faith in the president, our commander in chief and our leader, and try to weigh the things that people say about them good or bad, and try to get a real educated estimate of the situation and think about it, don’t just fly off the handle. First impressions sometimes are deceiving even in the human relations and I think one of the things that we really lack is human communications, relations with each other. Think! Listen! A lot of people ask a question and never listen to the answer. They listen so far and they turn you right off. They won't even listen. I feel if the man is a Republican or a Democrat he ought to be one or the other, not up the middle. If he's neither one then he shouldn't pretend either way. Ana I think if a man makes a decision, he ought to have guts enough to stand behind it. I don’t think he ought to make a lot of false excuses either, for his actions. I think he ought to be honest, basically honest and work hard to be honest. Contribute to the problems through work not just stand back and say go ahead Charlie, get it done. We got problems. Equal employment opportunity, discrimination problems we look at a black and think because he's black, he’s no good or look at one of the Brown Beret or just because the cats from south of the border if he's got brown 19 skin, that don't make him dumb. It doesn't make him ignorant. He's an American citizen and he deserves as much of the rights as he can get. I don't believe in giving them anything for nothing. I think that any man that gets something on earth then he ought to work the hard way to get her. I've never been given a damn thing as long as I didn't work for it or pay for it. And I don't think I went out after it with my hand out, begging for a hand out either. I may be forced into a situation where I'll need assistance, but on the other hand, I'm paying as I go. I'm fighting because I got a job. That’s the way that I look at it. RT: I would also share a lot of your sentiments. Well, I wish to thank you personally for spending an hour or so of your time and helping me out on this project and I'm sure that what you said, anyone else listening to it would find it very interesting, and find it very beneficial to them and also to a lot of other people. Thank you very much. RG: Well, you’re sure welcome. I appreciate the opportunity. RT: Okay, thank you. 20