Oral History Program Dennis Kida Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 23 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dennis Kida Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 23 June 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Kida, Dennis, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 23 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Dennis Kida at 442nd Regiment, WWII circa 1940s Dennis’s wife, Chika Kosuge Kida, Lt. Army Nurse, WWII circa 1940s Dennis Kida 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Dennis Kida, conducted on June 23, 2017 in his home in Roy, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Dennis discusses his life and his memories involving World War II. Sara Kamppi, the video technician, and John Matina were also present during this interview. LR: It is June 23, 2017. We are in the home of Dennis Kida in Roy, Utah, talking to him about his life and his memories of World War Two for the World War Two in Northern Utah Project at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands conducting the interview, and Sara Kamppi is with me, as well as John Matina. I just want to thank you again, Dennis, for your time and your willingness, and start with when and where you were born? DK: I was born on the big island of Hawaii, in a little town just outside of Hilo called Wainaku. It’s a little village down there, on February 8, 1922. LR: Alright. So you said the big island. What is the name of the big island? DK: Hawaii. LR: I wish I knew Hawaii better and I could have told you that. DK: Have you gone over there? LR: I’ve been to Oahu. I went over there with my husband so I can say I’ve been to part of Hawaii. What was it like growing up in Hawaii? DK: Oh it was fun. We were barefoot kids. We were at the elementary school, but we never owned shoes. Where we were, the town there grows sugar cane, and our school is surrounded by sugar cane. As a kid, we’d go to 2 school barefoot, and nobody wore shoes. We did everything barefooted, swimming, fishing, we went dive fishing, and we did surfing. You can’t afford a surfboard, so we’d bodysurf a lot. Then one day, one of the fellows got a little ironing board. In those days, the iron board was made of wood, not like todays just kind of steel, and we took it surfing. The boards not big enough to stand, and we never used a board before, we had only bodysurfed. We had a lot of fun. We did fishing, spear fishing. Those days, we can’t afford any goggles, just your bare eyes, and we make our own spears. In the big island there is a lot of bamboo, so we cut bamboo and the rim of your tires were made of inner tube rubber, so there was your elastic. The steel, we went to the sugar mill, they had a sugar mill, and looked around. We’d find steel, sharpen it, and we’d go down spear fishing small fish. A lot of fun in those days! Going back, after elementary school, go to junior high school. It’s called Hilo E Intermediate School, and most of the people still go barefooted in those days. I had a Portuguese friends, you know Hawaii, just multi-nationality there. Every Thursday, somehow, we’d go out for lunchtime in the yard, and my Portuguese friend and I would trade lunch. The Portuguese made Portuguese sausage, and it was really delicious homemade stuff. He liked rice balls, so every Thursday we’d trade 3 lunches. He liked rice balls and I liked the Portuguese sausage, homemade. In 1941 I graduated from Hilo High School, and after you graduate there’s no jobs around. It’s a small town, and the only job available was in the sugar cane field. Who wants to work in a cane field? It’s hot and, kind of dirty job. At that time, the local people were going to Honolulu because they’re talking about a war with Japan, so they were doing a lot of defense building in and around Pearl Harbor. So after graduating High School, I went to Honolulu and got a job there. Right in Pearl Harbor. I worked with a pick and shovel. The submarine base was in a lot of swamp land, and what we had to do was fill it up so they can build what they need to do there. I think there was fifteen in the workforce there and one day the foreman says, “When we haul supplies it takes so long for us to get it, so why don’t we get a flatbed pickup truck so we can go pick up supplies and we don’t have to wait so long.” So next day, he got a flatbed pickup truck, and then he got the group together and asked, “How many of you got drivers licenses?” Out of the group, there were only two of us that had driver licenses. In Hawaii, in those days, a thirteen year old could get a driver license. So at thirteen years old, my older sister told me it was time to get my driver license, so I got my driver license. Anyhow, the foreman picked me his driver, and he gave me the key and I went to the truck. 4 Funny thing, as soon as I got in the truck, and tried to put the key in, another man came in. He opened the door, and closed. I didn’t know what his name was. He didn’t give me a name or anything like that. First thing he said, “I was born in Minneapolis in Minnesota and just outside of the city there. My parents emigrated from Sweden, and there were a lot of Germans there. He said, the Germans call us square-heads.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Because we Swedes are Hardheads.” “What do you call the Germans?” “Round heads.” “Why?” “Because they are so smart.” I guess we got along, it was funny. He didn’t tell his name or anything, he came with me to the pickup truck, so supposedly he’s my helper. He’s an older guy, must be about forty I think, something like that, and I’m just an eighteen year old kid. He was a good worker. We’d go to someplace, pick up supplies, and he said, “I’m your helper, you’re just supposed to drive only.” Then every Saturday after work, it was payday, and in those days you’re paid in cash. Can you imagine cash? Every payday, cash! Then one Saturday he said, “We’ve been working eight days a week for several months, we’re going to take tomorrow off.” Guess what Sunday was? December 7th. So we didn’t come to work. We’d take our regular bus, our bus came right to the job. We had an id badge. Then someone said, “I heard a lot of gunfire going on,” and we thought, maybe, military was having another maneuver. Then somebody outside yelled, “Look at all the 5 black smoke outside towards Pearl Harbor!” So I went outside and went to the sidewalk and I looked at that black smoke, and I saw a plane diving down towards Pearl Harbor. Then all of a sudden I saw a plane flying really low, and under the body, on the wing was a red ball. So gee, that must be a Japanese plane flying there. I didn’t know right up in the hill, they had a battery of anti-aircraft guns. Bang, bang, bang, you could hear it all over the city. All the anti-aircraft guns burst in the air, and a lot of them didn’t burst in the air, they came down and burst around the city, and there were a lot of casualties. They hit a house, burned it down, cars, and the people there. There was an elementary school that got hit and burned to the ground, cause all the emergency vehicles were going to the military base like Pearl Harbor or Hickam Air Base. As we were watching everything going on, all of a sudden, behind us, the neighbor’s house, you heard an explosion. Boom! I said, “Oh boy, what was that?” We look. One of those anti-aircraft shell that didn’t burst in the air, came down and hit the house right behind us. If it missed the house it could have gotten us. It was really scary. Then we went back to my house. I was staying with my older brother then, with his family. The military took over the island. The governor, he quit his job so that the military took over and declared martial law. You know what martial law is? Everybody on the street after six o’clock will be shot. No questions asked, they’ll be shot dead. You just 6 have to be careful. We had a big black out. You had to put your curtain on the house so there’s no light showing outside. You can’t even smoke outside, and that was all rough. Then after a while, we had to have our gas masks, even kids. You carried it wherever you go. Then, to be safe, everybody has to dig your bomb shelter, like a foxhole. Of course, to dig it deep enough you’d have to get together with the neighbor, then you have to supply water and food in there. When it rained you had to build it so that water didn’t go into there. Course you need to have a blanket so you can survive if there’s another attack. It was rough. Then things started to ration. All the stores were running out of toilet paper! Can you imagine? Good thing we had newspaper. After things cooled out a few days later I thought, “Maybe I can help at Pearl Harbor.” So I took the bus and at the gate we all had to show our id. When they saw my ID they said, “Get off the bus, and go to the other bus.” There were a couple of other guys that were there. “What are they going to do to us? Well, we’re Japanese, they’re probably going to shoot us or jail us in a prison somewhere or something like that.” After a while they told the bus driver to go ahead. He just started moving, and we don’t know where we’re going. Fortunately, he went straight back to Honolulu, so I got out of the way, but boy, it was scary. LR: I’m going to take us back a little bit, you said you were born on the Big Island? 7 DK: Big Island of Hawaii. LR: Where were your parents from? DK: They were from Japan. LR: Did they immigrate to Hawaii? DK: Yes, to Hawaii. At that time, a lot of them would immigrate because sugar mills and sugar cane fields, and they grow a lot of pineapple too, so they need workers. So they get them from Puerto Rico, Spain, some English, came all the way to Hawaii to work. LR: So, how many brothers and sisters did you have? DK: Well, family of nine. Three girls, and six boys. See the boys on there? We were all in the military. LR: All six of you were in the military? DH: Yes, and those four joined during the war, and the older brother, they wouldn’t take him because he had a family. The younger one was too young to get in the military, so he got in after the war. One of the brothers was with me in Italy, with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. One of the brothers was in the Pacific War, and the other one was in the Engineer Corps and stationed in Hawaii. He wanted to join the army, but they said, “No we need you here instead of going to the war.” He wanted to go because he said they work their butt off. No time off, working eight days a week, almost all around the clock. I think he did have one job to put barbed wire on the beaches, in case Japan invaded Hawaii there. 8 LR: That makes sense. Do you remember the name of your elementary school? DK: It’s Wainaku, but it’s called Ha’aheo School Elementary. LR: The names are so fascinating, that I was curious. What about your Intermediate school? DK: They called it Hilo Intermediate School, then Hilo High School. LR: So you graduated in 1941, and you just happened to take that day off. DK: Then went from no jobs around, because small town like that, unless your family had owned some kind of store or job or something, no jobs. At that time they were talking about the war with Japan, thinking its maybe just propaganda, we don’t know. Just a lot of jobs, people came from the mainland to work there. Our job was at Pearl Harbor, and across the bay was called Ford Island, and it’s where the old battleships were parked. It seemed like every Monday morning, the whole fleet would go out to the ocean to maneuver. It seemed like every Friday, they all came back, because if a ship goes, we’d all stop working and watch. Foreman said, “Hey guys, keep working!” LR: So the sugar cane field that you were working was by the bay? DK: No, the sugar cane is all over the island, just about. On the left side, corner side, you had Kona Coffee. That’s what they make there, lot of coffee. Good coffee. 9 LR: When you went to go help, they put you on the bus to go back to Honolulu. At that point, what did you decide to do? DK: Well, I looked for some job to do, civilian job. I worked at the tire shop cause my Dad owned a gas station. I fool around too, because in those days, you had the inner tube. Now these new tires are tubeless, they call it. So the inner tube was made like a rubber band, so a big slingshot that you could aim at the birds for target practice. In those days you can’t buy new tires, I think you have to work in some sort of category, then you’d recycle, put new rubber around it. Working at the tire shop, one day, there was a military man, I think he was in the air force. He bought a couple of new tires and I said, “Where did you get it?” “One of the islands, Japan owned islands,” and you know what the name of the tire was? Bridgestone. I said, “Bridgestone? You sure it’s not a Firestone tire?” “No,” he said he picked it up in one of the islands in the Pacific. So, Bridgestone tires. So, now any of you hear of Bridgestone tires? Being Japanese, that kind of surprised me to. LR: When did you decide to join the military? DK: Well, maybe about a year after Pearl Harbor. There were enough Japanese, and some of the High Schools, and the University of Hawaii, had what they called ROTC, they wanted to put a lot of pressure on the military because the Japanese Americans wanted to join the military too. We have been taught we are American citizens, so we finally okayed to 10 form a regiment. No, one platoon first, it’s about 1500 men, just one platoon. That morning, my older brother and I, on our way out to work, we stopped at the elementary school to sign up. We got there and we were surprised, because people were waiting in line from the building, over past the campus, and down the sidewalk. I couldn’t see the end of the line. We waited there a little while, the line slow moving, and my brother said he had to go to work. I said, “I’ll wait and see how fast we move.” So I asked one of the guys, “Is this the line where you sign up for the military?” It was to form the 442nd Regimental Combat team. He said, “Yeah,” so I said, “Well, I’ll come back after work.” After work, I came back on the bus, and it was like the line didn’t move. Same thing, line up, down the campus, down the sidewalk, and I couldn’t see the end of the line. Then I look at my watch, martial law, so I debated whether I wanted to be shot. I figure I was about six blocks away from it, and I didn’t want to stick around and be shot walking home after signing up, but I felt sorry. A year later, I got drafted. Our draft card, in those days, were 4-D. “Enemy aliens.” Can you imagine? Enemy aliens. So I got drafted, and the draftees were all a mixture, Hawaiian, Portuguese, Caucasian, Filipinos, Chinese, Korean, or whatever nationality, were mixed there. They had basic training while we were in Hawaii, then we heard rumors that we’d be sent somewhere. Sure enough, we were all sent to go on the troop ship and we went to San 11 Francisco bay, Angel Island, they sent us to that island there. We got off the boat there, and we were there for a couple of weeks, then we got on the train, and went down to the town, Monterey, but anyhow it’s not too far from San Francisco. We were stationed there for a little while, and every morning there’s a fog till ten o’clock. We could get a not pass to go to look around the town. After a while, we’d come back on the train, “Now where the heck we going?” The whole Hawaiian troop, we went on this train, and we came all the way to Ogden here. They were stopped first at the Union Station, and it was a, “Keep your shade down on the train, you can’t lift it up to take a look.” Boy, a lot of military men in those days on this station, on the train. We crossed the old track, the Great Salt Lake, and from Ogden, we went to Salt Lake, then the train took us to Denver. “Where the heck we going?” Nobody knows. We ended up in Texas. But we stopped at maybe it was Oklahoma, and the train stopped there for a long time. There’s a little store there a block away, and they said they had watermelon. So we get the people who were working the train, this was a black man, we put some money as he came by. He took the money and went there to buy us watermelon. It took him a long time. Train took the horn several times, we yelled at him and he still didn’t show up. Finally, the train blew the whistle again and we started moving, then he came running out with two 12 watermelons under his arm. We just waved him goodbye, cause we couldn’t help him. No watermelon. We ended up in a town there called Tyler, Texas. It’s about one-hundred miles east from Dallas, Texas. We had basic training there with all the navy guys, and boy we had a lot of problems. They’d call us Japs and stuff, and a lot of fights. All the Hawaiians stuck together, no problem there. We couldn’t even go to the PX. Can you imagine? Because we were Japanese. We’d complain about it, and then the colonel got us all together and told everybody, “We don’t want any more fighting here,” So they opened the PX to us. Then on Christmas morning, it gets cold in Texas. We were all having to get our stuff and line up and we’d march about ten miles to one of those fields where you have to crawl under while they fire live machine guns over your head. Raining and through the mud, but for dinner we had turkey. Guess what for dessert? Ice cream. Pitching a two man tent, trying to eat ice cream in the cold. I said thanks a lot. They cut our basic training short. Normally it was nine months or so of basic training, cut us short, and on this day, we were given our pass, you have to report to Fort Meade, that’s in Maryland. They gave us ten days so that you could go anywhere you wanted to, but be sure you report to Fort Meade on that particular day there. So, this Hawaiian friend and I, we said we were going to Florida. I had a brother in Florida, basic training, too. So I thought maybe we better go see him, we may never see him 13 again. So, we went on a train and stopped at Memphis, Tennessee. There’s two other guys that didn’t know where to go, so they came and joined us. We go from the train and take the bus ride. When we take the bus ride, we sitting in the back seat. The bus driver, “You can’t sit back there, move up front.” “Why?” “It’s supposed to be for the black people to sit in the back of the bus.” But this Hawaiian guys got dark skin. “Don’t worry son, you’re from Hawaii. Come up front.” So we had to move up front. We stopped at Memphis first, then we stopped at the next city there, Atlanta, then went to Jacksonville, Florida. It’s a bit down, it’s near the camp that’s there. Anyway, I saw my brother there. Just told him where we were going, and his basic training was about overdue. Then we heard about this fountain of youth. You heard of the fountain of youth? LR: No. DK: So, we took a train down to Jacksonville, Florida, on the East Coast, where my brother was in basic, and the fountain of youth was further down, so we got on a train there. Took one of those horse and buggies, and went to the fountain of youth, where Ponce de Leon came, and we drank from the fountain of youth. LR: Did your brother go with you? DK: No, he had to stay in the camp. He’d been there. After that, we reported to Fort Meade, then we got our passes, we could go into Washington, D.C., 14 Baltimore, even New York City because military get free rides there. One day at Fort Meade, somebody had measles, and there was an epidemic of measles, so we were quarantined for a month. A whole month, no pass, nothing. So after the quarantine we went to New York for education before we go to Europe, and measles again, believe it or not. As a kid we had already had measles, even we can’t have a pass to New York City. We heard that the Italian prisoners that were taken prisoners to the camp, called Ja Grand Camp, they had passes to go into New York, and we can’t even go to New York City! They said as long as you have a family, the Italians, you can go to New York City with a pass. Anyhow, after that we went to New York, got on a troop ship, and we saw the Statue of Liberty there. Then we’d go on our convoy, take us two weeks to go to England, anyhow. Some of the guys, they went on the Queen Mary, it took them three days to go from New York City to London. LR: It was like three days, we interviewed someone who mentioned the Queen Mary could do it in three days. DK: We saw a destroyer going in and out through a submarine, and then finally we look at the side over there, it’s all white. “Hey, it’s the white cliff of Dover!” LR: That’s cool. So where were you stationed first when you got to England? DK: Well, we didn’t stop in England, we went to France. This was after the D-Day invasion. 15 LR: Okay, so where in Northern France did you first go? DK: It’s a small port town, and from there we hop on a train, they call it 40 by 8 train. You know sort of train? LR: Heard that too. DK: Supposedly, some hay in there, we covered a hole with it. But anyhow, we all went down to Paris, and we saw that Eiffel Tower. The, the local people call it the “Awful Tower.” Have you heard that? Not Eiffel tower. Then from there we went down to Marseilles, France. There, the 442nd Regiment was called back to Italy again. Because of the epidemic of measles we had, we didn’t get to see action in France. So from there we went directly to Livorno, Italy on the LST. You know what an LST is? Landing Ship Tank. Flat bottom, I tell you, it had a bunk bed, and you think the bunk bed would stay still? You try sleeping there when there were big waves, you’d go over. You couldn’t sleep. We come there the next morning to Livorno and catch up with the regiment there. It was a disappointment I couldn’t be in the original regiment. LR: Why were you disappointed? DK: Because I couldn’t join the original. I went in as a replacement because of the martial law. There were some guys drafted later that was in the line to sign up. I didn’t ask them a question, and I don’t know if they sign up or they took off home. Curfew, they didn’t want to be shot. LR: So once you get to Livorno, Italy? 16 DK: Well, because there are so many of us, the First Battalion was all the way up on the hill already, and they were out of supplies. They needed more men to carry the supplies, so they chose us to carry supplies. Heavy ammunition, food, whatever, and it’s not just a hill. The hill is so steep we have to crawl on our hands and knees, grab the hedge, and the tall grass to go up there. It took us a long time I’m sure to get up the mountain. By the time we get up there, the Battalion already moved to the next mountain. I thought we were going to have to climb another mountain. They said, “No, just leave it here in the valley,” so we left the supplies in the valley, and coming down a steep hill, that’s rough, it’s harder than climbing up. My friend, this is a sad story. I couldn’t see him and I thought, “What happened to him?” Once we got down to the gathering place, I saw him near the headquarters. I said, “Where were you?” He said, “I took a shortcut coming down, the other way, and we were caught by German troops.” They thought they were going to be shot, but no, the German had to go on patrol. There were only like four or five guys that tried to take a shortcut coming back down, then they were caught by the German troops. So German troop left two guys, and I think they were young kids too, and they let them talk. The kids just wandered around there, and the guys talk about overpowering the kid Germans. So when he had a chance, the German kids left a rifle by the tree and kind of wandered around there. 17 Then all of a sudden they attacked the two Germans, and then they came down. I asked, “What happened to the Germans?” He said, “We shot them with their gun.” After the war ended, we were discharged back in Honolulu, and he asked me, “Are you going to re-up? Get back in the army?” I says, “No, I’ve had enough of the army.” He said he’s going to sign up, because he has family in Japan, so he was going to check up on them. At that time, you can go anywhere you want to if you re-up, so he wanted to go check on the family in Japan. So he went to Japan, then when the Korean War broke out, the United States Army got involved in the Korean War. He was the first troop to invade the Inchon, and he was shot there. What a sad story, I can’t get over that friend of mine. By the way, my brother in law, he was shot in the spine, he’s still living, and he’s got the bullet in his back. They couldn’t operate, it was a sensitive area. LR: You’re in this valley, you’ve just dropped off your supplies, where did the regiment go from there? DK: The rest of the army invaded there. While we were there, just out of one town, the Germans were evacuating, retreating. They shot those big sixteen inch guns all night long. Can you imagine hearing that explosion, forcing you maybe just a block or two out of town, but some of the company I joined were in the town, but good thing nobody got hurt or killed. You could hear the artillery coming in from miles away, then boom! 18 Everything shakes. Sixteen inch. Explosion, and all night long. It seems like a long time. LR: How long did you stay in Italy? DK: A couple of years. LR: Okay. So were you in Italy when Germany surrendered? DK: Oh yeah, until the German surrender. LR: Let me ask you this, when did you actually get to come home? DK: We came home after the war, 1946, I think. But on the way home from Italy, all the regiment came home together in a troopship. People who were in the regiment longer, they got to go home before that. The Mediterranean Ocean is really rough, and we had a windstorm in the Mediterranean Ocean. When dinner time comes, they say dinner’s ready, nobody went. You could hear dishes falling down. Then when we get to the Atlantic Ocean, got a little calmer. Couple of guys, the moment they got on the ship they were sea sick. The boat hadn’t left, it was still in the harbor, and they already got sea sick. So we tried to help them, bring food, whatever they wanted, help to supply them. We went to New York, then from there, we went to Washington, D.C., the regiment paraded before the President. President Harry Truman, I think, at that time. Can you imagine? He awarded the Regimental Combat Team some kind of banner, so we all went to the parade for him at the white house. From there, let’s see, people were on the mainland, 19 they were going home there, but I thought maybe we would take a train and go to San Francisco or LA. But no, we got back to New York, got on a troop ship and from New York we went down into the Caribbean, the Panama Canal. That’s something to see, the Panama Canal, then to the Pacific Ocean. Once you got in that ocean, the Pacific was much calmer than the Atlantic Ocean. Then once we got out of the Canal, I went on deck by myself, looked around, and there I saw a huge kite fish or a stingray. It flopped in the air, and when he landed in the water, a big splash, the sound must be, oh, several blocks away. But, it was such a huge stingray that I had never seen anything that big. Stingrays small, but this one was a huge stingray. Finally, got to Honolulu, got our reception there at the harbor, then we paraded at Waikiki. LR: When did you meet your wife? DK: Well this was after the war. My wife was in the Army Nurse Corps. She was still in training in Colorado Springs, then after she graduated, still during the war and that, she joined the Army Nurse Corps. I hate to say this, but when she went to join they said, “Sorry, we don’t take Japanese. We don’t want you.” So couple of months later, a nurse at the hospital said, “The Red Cross is taking nurses,” so she went there, applied, and she got accepted right away. She ended up in the Army Nurse Corps. Went to the regular army, basic training, seven or nine months of basic training. You go under barbed wire, live machine guns shooting. I can’t 20 believe that. Then they assigned her to Denver, to Fitzgerald Army Hospital. She wanted to go overseas, but they said no, we need you here. The wounded come from the Pacific and Europe here. After the war ended, I didn’t know her at that time, but she and some other nurses liked to travel. So they went to Chicago first, spent a few months, and then they mentioned going to Hawaii, to Honolulu. So, I was a patient at the hospital, and she wasn’t my nurse, but I saw her only one time, making rounds there. I think she took over the nurse in that area there. I think it was a Sunday, the regular nurse couldn’t come, so she came into my room, first time I’ve seen here. I didn’t even get her name, just a short visit. I went to the office and I asked, “Who was that nurse?” She told me, “She said she was going to the dietician. She is from Seattle, so they are friends. So that’s where she should be.” I didn’t see much of her there, then after I got discharged, I dated her, no problem. LR: When did you two get married? DK: In 1951, on my birthday. I was going to school, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, the radiologist school. I was working for several summers when I first came out, took the test, passed it, and what does that mean? At the Army Barracks, at the warehouse, that was a boring job with three other guys. In fact we took turns sleeping. Nothing much to do. I said, “I am I going to do this the rest of my life? I have to get in some kind of trade.” I didn’t want to spend too much time going to college, I was 21 about twenty-nine years old already. So, I enquired about working in some kind of a trade, and thought, “I’ll go into the medical field.” I applied to several places in the mainland. Then Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, Maryland, accepted me. By the way, she, my wife, said she had to go home to Denver before that. So she went back home to Denver, and on my way to school, I stopped at Denver, and got married. Spent a few days in Chicago, then I kept going to Baltimore. She came back to Denver because she started working for a doctor just recently, and she didn’t want to quit too early. In June she joined me in Baltimore. LR: Okay. How long did you stay at Johns Hopkins? DK: Well, it’s a two year school for radiology, and after a year and a half they asked me to join the staff, become a student staff. I said, “Student staff?” He said, “You get paid, not as much, it’s a hundred dollars and staff got two-hundred dollars.” I said, “This sounds great, what room number?” He said, “Room six.” “Room six? That’s a specialty room. What about the older guys in there?” He said, “I want you in there,” because as a student, I used to do that, angiocardiography. You know what an angiocardiogram is? All those special procedures. So he wants me, the student, working in room six. I almost fell down. “What about the other old timers?” “No, I want you in there! We’ll pay you a hundred dollars a month, but don’t tell anybody.” Six months later, I graduate, and the pay was two-hundred and ten dollars. 22 I worked there a couple of years in special procedures, then National institute of Health, NIH, that’s a government medical research center, the radiologist came. I didn’t know he was a resident there, and I didn’t really know him. He offered me a job to go to NIH. I hadn’t heard of NIH, but the pay was better. I had to quit Johns Hopkins, went to NIH, worked there, and did the special procedures because I could do it. Then another radiologist came. He had spent some military time and they paid him to go to some kind of school in the military. He was from Philadelphia, and he wanted to go back after he served his time. Then at Philadelphia, the Thomas Jefferson Medical College Hospital, there’s a radiologist from Chicago, normally. So he talked to him, Dr. Nichols, talk about me, and he came all the way to Washington, D.C., talked me into becoming a technician over there in Philadelphia. I went there, at Philadelphia, become chief tech. I have to accept students, and I have staff and I had to teach them. One of them, Wanda I think, we still exchange Christmas cards. 1960-2016. LR: You were there for a long time. DK: Dr. Nichols, because of the politics at the Philadelphia hospital, he quit his job and then came back to Ogden, because he liked the west and he liked small hospitals. So he came back to the Dee hospital. Do you remember the old Dee hospital? LR: I know where that was, but a little before my time. 23 DK: He came all the way to Philadelphia, talked me into joining him over here. Me, from Hawaii, my wife from Denver, it’s at least closer for the drive. Two days to Denver to see her family, and closer to Hawaii, too. LR: What was your wife’s name? DK: Chikase Chika. When we had our wedding, we just had her folks and her sister and her husband. Just four at the church over there, not a big wedding. This was in February, on my birthday. That’s my wife right there, she died and that’s the flag. She had a military funeral. LR: Let me just ask this final question, how do you think your time in World War Two shaped and influenced your life? DK: I got a lot of backflash, I think about the war and how the heck I came home alive. Artillery. In one of the towns there, up on a hill, we captured it from the Germans, and they assigned me and another guy to go to the other town. It’s kind of a one horse town, or village, no paved roads. In the village they have brick walks, just row houses on both sides. They wanted me to go to the end of town, to one of the houses, and see if the Germans were going to attack. In the meantime, the town got an artillery barrage. Bang, bang, bang. They wanted to go to the end one, but because of the artillery… So we picked the third one in there of the row houses, looked out the window, and the trail steeps down going down there. Then a couple of days later a guy came looking for us. When he found us he said, “There’s only one wall between you and nothing?” One wall went to one of 24 the three houses down. He said, “Headquarters wants you right away,” ASAP, they called it. So I took off with my rifle to report. On our way down, I heard a woman cry. I said, “There were no civilians in there.” As I keep going, the crying gets louder and louder, then just outside there’s an older woman facing the house, crying. “What she crying for?” I look, and see her husband slopping on the steps there, blood flowing from the forehead. I said, “What the hell they doing here?” Maybe they were down in the basement, I don’t know. She was crying, come to me, and I couldn’t understand Italian, and she doesn’t know English. So I had to use sign language. “You wait here, I go to headquarters and get you some help.” So I went there, to headquarters, told them about the woman. I felt sorry for her. But what the heck they doing in the town? So, talked to headquarters, and they didn’t have time to explain what I needed to do. “Just go with the other guy here, he’ll explain to you what it is. Go to the next hill, down the valley. There’s a platoon waiting,” because one of our platoons run into trouble. So as we were walking behind the hill, and he explained to me that. Finally the hill stopped going uphill, and then there is no trail going there, all the way. Just bushes, sticky bushes too, so we debated what to, where we could go, because we need to get the reserve up there. “Well, let’s go.” When we got to the top of the hill you can see for miles. So can the Germans and from there, a whole artillery going. You can’t see the gun, 25 they are so far away, but you can hear. I don’t know who’s firing where or what. So, we kind of debate, “We can’t stop here. Well, let’s take a chance.” So we went to the top of the hill, and as soon as we got on top of the hill, this artillery caught us. So we hit the ground. It was behind us. Two. We said, “Well, let’s get up again.” We got up again, and then hit the dirt coming. Two of them, not just one. He said, “Boy I’m scared, let’s go back.” I said, “We can’t go back. We need the reserve to help our platoon down there. I’ll lead, you can stay further back. One of us got to make it.” I took the lead, started walking, then I heard the barrage coming. Shooting two guns instead of one. Bang, bang, behind us. Not too far behind us, it shook the ground. So I started walking faster. Then he heard the artillery coming, bang, bang. Then we got up, I started running. Then I all of a sudden, I stopped, because my combat shoes were making too much noise, and the rifle, water, and two hand grenades, making too much noise, you can’t hear it coming. So I stop, and just as soon as I stop, hear two more artilleries coming in. I hit the ground, it was in front of us. Lord, this guy, he won’t stop. We got up, and only thing I can do is change my pace. So, walk fast, slow, stop. Run, stop. But they still keep firing in front of us, behind us, in front of us, behind us. I don’t know how many rounds they fired, dozens at us, for sure. Hit the ground, dig the ground. So I kept doing that, changing my pace. 26 Finally started going downhill, and that’s steep, but slowly going downhill, then when we were close to the bottom there’s a big tree there. He said, “Run under the tree.” I said, “Oh boy, it wouldn’t be good to go under the tree,” because the worry would be a tree shell. The artillery would hit the tree, and it would rain down. So I said, “Really, get out of here.” Good thing they quit firing, then a little ways down, there was a guy waiting there. He asked us, “They firing at you?” I said, “Yeah.” He shook his head, because he could hear all of the fire there. I said, “We came for the platoon.” He said, “Oh, they left a little while ago.” “They left? Where?” “To the forest.” Boy, we were going to get lost, we couldn’t find them in the forest. The other guy asks what we going to do? Well, we made it down here, let’s go back the other way. You would have made that choice? So we went back that same way back up the hill, when it was open, walk fast, but they didn’t fire at us. But boy, we made it all the way back to headquarters. But it took us so long, anyway I tell you, we should have been blown to pieces. I can’t believe it. So here I am still! LR: There any other stories you’d like to share before we turn off the camera? DK: Well that’s about the worst one I can think of. When the war ended we were close to the city of Milan, and this time we were riding trucks. Germany was retreating so fast, so we switched over. So they come to talk down off, what the heck the town name, Genoa, birthplace of Christopher Columbus. I said, “What the heck is the sign doing out there?” 27 Must be the Italians, not the Germans. So we came upon Genoa, it’s a port town. We stayed there a little while. Germany surrendered while we were there and we went to a little town, it’s an airfield. There we processed all the German soldiers, take their guns, ammunition, knives, pistols and anything they had before we could send them home to Germany. We stayed there several months. This is a picture over there. LR: Okay, you were in Company K? DK: Company K. LR: Of the 442nd? DK: Yes. LR: Alright. Dennis, I want to thank you for your time and your willingness to share your stories, I appreciate it. Is there anything else you would like to share before I shut off the camera? DK: Can’t think of anything right now. LR: Well thank you.