The Battle of Anzio: COL Young Oak Kim Part II

Ken Harbaugh:

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I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from COL Young Oak Kim, who served with the famous 100th Infantry Battalion in WWII. In this final part of his interview, Kim talks about the Battle of Anzio, earning the Distinguished Service Cross, and his feelings about the war.

COL Young Oak Kim:

Anzio beachhead, in which the left half of our sector was perfectly flat, almost like a pool table. And there was no natural physical barriers. To the right half, there was Mussolini Canal, which is a fairly deep canal, and very, very wide. At the bottom, it may only be 20 feet across, or so, but it's terraced in such a way that, when you get to the top, it must be a good 50 yards from one end of it to the other end. The thing was quite different. The other thing is that the fighting at Anzio had pretty much died down to where it was a holding action on the part of both sides. There was almost no activity at daytime, kept to the absolute minimum, because both sides were positioned to pulverize anything that moved. All activity took place at night. All our resupply, everything took place at night, including quite a bit of the fighting, because the fighting was primarily instigated by the Americas trying to catch German prisoners, trying to identify who was out there. Because everyone knew it was just a matter of time we're going to break out of that beachhead. The problem was to keep and identify who's where.

About four days before I went on that patrol, I, along with three other officers from the 100th, the battalion commander, myself, and two of the officers, were requested to report to higher headquarters. And we did. And it was at night. We eventually ended up at division headquarters, where we were sworn to secrecy. We were shown a map with proposed breakout for the Anzio beachhead. What it showed was, the Number One plan was to make the major breakout right where our left half of that front was. And the reason is, because it's flat like a pool table. But the allied forces had lost contact with, and didn't know the whereabouts of, the German tank division. And it would be foolhardy to make that attack, there, if, on the other side of that was the German tank division. They had to know who was sitting on the other side. All the time we were there, which had been for over a period of over a month, they had been harassing us to get prisoners from that left hand. And the pressure was getting greater and greater with every passing day. We had even sent out a company size patrol, reinforced those tanks and everything else, and still didn't get a prisoner. I had been studying that sector, because we had gotten pressure from the day we arrived there, because the unit before us hadn't taken any prisoners. No prisoners had been taken in that area. That's for over three months. I had stereo photos flown over it several times. I had various low-flying aircraft coming in at different angles to take different pictures at different angles, and whatnot. So, I had studied the area very, very carefully for any and all types of patrols. Finally, I came to the conclusion that, the only way we're going to get a prisoner is with a very small patrol during daylight. I came to that conclusion after watching our OPs work. I noticed that, over a period of time, like I say, anything that moved was pulverized by both the Germans against us or us against the Germans, which meant that each side is inspected in the opposite side very, very carefully, with powerful scopes and binoculars. We had a captured German scope. The more powerful the lens are, the more limited you are in being able to see a particular sector. It's not like the human eye, where you take in the whole field. It's not like a little wide angle lens in taking a whole lot. You're narrowed down to small, small little sectors. If you're covering the enemy very, very carefully, and very, very thoroughly, then you yourself are in a very limited area, very long. You're not looking down at yourself. The Germans are looking down at you. You're looking at them. My thing was, psychologically the Germans wouldn't be looking for us behind their own lines. They'd be looking for us from No Man's Land into our side, just like we're looking from our No Man Land to them, not to them. So I volunteered for this two-man patrol, particularly after I learned that that's what the reason for all that pressure was.

My battalion commander turned it down, flatly. Gordon said, "No. That's crazy. That's suicidal. I'd never authorized it." I said, "With all this pressure were getting, we got to do something." I didn't make my offer until after I went back to the rear and found out. When I went to the division headquarters, General Rider said the same thing. No. He wouldn't authorize it. But he said, if enough pressure came, he would send the plan up to Core. Core looked at it, and they finally said, "We'll authorize it. But we are sending the plan up to Army headquarters. And if Army has any questions or says anything, we're canceling it." And Army didn't. They were so desperate for prisoners, they allowed to happen.

I had, minutely and very, very carefully looked at every square inch of that ground. And I had briefed Sakae Takahashi on it, once the plan had been approved. In that particular sector, every evening, just as it got dusk, and dark enough to start to camouflage the movement, or just as it started to get light, but it was still dark enough to camouflage movement, we would pull our troops back, and the Germans would pull their troops back. And both sides would pull their troops back a good 100 yards or so from the front lines and into underground dugouts.

What happened is that Sakae Takahashi got three BAR men to volunteer to stay out there, to cover us in case we needed it. The other thing is that they were to cut the barbwire very, very carefully, not all of it, but just enough for us to be able to get through in a couple of spots. And they were to clear the American mines where the wire was cut. And it was agreed that we would cross at midnight. And Irving Akahoshi, with several members of my intelligence squad, had volunteered. Two of them who insisted, one of them was Irving Akahoshi, another one was Ginger Manabe, the section leader. I refused to take Ginger, because somebody got to run the place, in case we don't come back. So, Irving went with me.

We had to feel our way across the barbwire because, even though the wire was cut and American mines were cleared, the German mines were there, so we had to find our way across. We did that and we had to be very, very careful. We crossed at midnight. And when we crossed, we had to lay perfectly still, because we were within five to six feet of the Germans, who, by all purposes should be wide awake at that time of the night. We laid there until daylight. And when they pulled back, we moved with them, but we didn't stay that five feet. We kept a good 10 or 12 feet between us. But we moved with them to have their noise cover our movement. We stayed perfectly still while they went into their bunker. And we stayed there near their bunker, listening to them. And we could hear them eating and cleaning their guns, and doing all the different things that soldiers normally do. We waited until they fell asleep. And about 9:30, or something like that, they fell asleep.

Then Irving and I followed a path that we had previously picked out, in which we would go straight toward the enemy lines, and almost to the place where the hill started up a little bit. Anyways, we went way back. And then we'd circle around and come up to a dugout. We knew there was a headquarters dugout much further, but we would be coming from their side, not from our side. And we got up to the dugout, and we were on one side of that dugout, and we could hear the Germans. They were still awake in this dugout. What I motioned to Irving is that I was going to go around the dugout, and I would come from the other side. He went on this side. We had made plans how we'd drop a couple of grenades, and hope to get a couple of Germans, and whatnot. And as I started to crawl around, when I got to the front of the dugout, there was a shallow trench dugout, and lying there, facing each other asleep, sound asleep, was a sergeant and a private, German. I made motions for Irving, and it was confusing to Irving, because that wasn't part of the plan. But he finally came forward, and with hand and arm signals, we agreed. And we both put our Thompson sub machine guns into their mouth, they were both had their head back, mouth wide open, sound asleep. And we tried to do it simultaneously, so they'd both wake at the same time. We wanted the muzzle of the sub machine gun to wake them up at their throat. And both of the signals were quiet. And of course they readily obeyed. With that, we disarmed them, and motioned for them to go ahead of us, proceed us.

Now, from there, we made a straight beeline for the three BAR men. And we thought that maybe, at this point, we would be detected, but we weren't. And we went all the way back, right to where the BAR men were. And we had nobody else. All we had was my little Hamm radio set, which we had left there, or the BAR men had. And it was agreed that we would signal by just depressing it and releasing the signal, let them know we're back.

And then, we spread out and laid there. And it must have been shortly after noon when we got back to that position. We had to lay there until almost 7:00 that night before we can move, when it got dark enough. From there, of course, we went through a whole string of interrogation. One thing another. And of course, they didn't give us much information, but the uniform gave it all. They were not members of that German tank division. And that's where the main breakout was made for the beachhead.

The interesting thing is, I didn't get back to my battalion headquarters until close to midnight. And when I walked through the door, Gordon Single said, "You've been awarded the DSC." It's a Distinguished Service Cross, which is the second-highest decoration. And I said, "Come on. Quit pulling my leg." I says, "Something like that takes a ton of paperwork, and it doesn't happen overnight." He said, "No, no." He says, "I just laid the phone down with General Mark Clark. And General Mark Clark said to tell you, he hasn't forgotten his promise. This time, you're going to get the award you deserve. And he is making that award to you, and that it was up to me to put in the necessary paperwork. But he says it's already been made."

I really can't tell you how first combat changed the young men. I do know that we had a lot of the young men in fighting out Ansio. That was their first fight. They did very, very well and I think near as I can tell, the young men in the rest of the four 442nd fought well. I've never questioned their courage or their desire to win. I often felt sorry for them in the early days of the fighting because the 100th in the early days of the fighting of the four 442nd, the 100th is probably one of the best offensive battalions that existed at that time of the war. It was like a fine, fine piece of Swiss jewelry that it just worked to perfection, and we had gotten rid of all our weak links and everything else, and everything worked just beautifully. And they still were in their first battle. They were still having to get rid of their weak links and things like that, and they were still fumbling. And every unit goes through that. We went through it. It isn't like it's something special, every unit goes through it. And so I felt sorry for them because they took a lot more casualties than we did. And of course, if they were part of the 100th, I don't think they would've simply because our leadership's so much better in that stage of development. After all, we had nine months of combat.

I was disappointed, maybe even worse than disappointed, maybe dismayed upon learning that we had been attached to the 36th division. I don't know, maybe it's all wives tales or what, but there's always a old army saying that once you're a loser, you're always a loser. And the 36th division almost got kicked off the beaches of Salerno. They got clobbered at Casino, and I'm not saying whose fault it is, regardless of whose fault, and they had a lot of changes of command and all that. And then they didn't do all that well at the breakout of Anzio, although it was very, very, well, I think I could give them a lot of credit just from my watching them whatnot. To me that they did pulley at San Pietro and suddenly now we're going to be a part of them. I just felt why couldn't we be a part of the 3rd or the 45th or one of the other outfits that had a good reputation that did well? I just felt bad.

The second thing is that we were told certain things in the beginning that our objective was Hill A was just to the west of Brieres and then Hill C, which was to the western and north of Brieres and that we should veil a rich Hill A by nightfall the first day we should be able to reach Hill C by the second day and that there was nobody really out there in front of us.

Well, my feelings always was that seeing is believing, and so I was a battalion plans and operations officer at the time, and I got the intelligence officer to accompany me along with a couple of his enlisted men to go up and let's take a look and let's make a reconnaissance of the area that we're supposed to relieve. I can't remember the exact unit of the 45th division. I think it was the 179th, I'm not sure. Anyways, we went up there and we got up where we thought should be the front line. We didn't run into anybody until we got to the front line and we didn't know we were at the front line. But we finally found a dugout, was just a big hole in the ground, must have been about eight feet in diameter, about four feet deep, and in it was a terribly frightened second lieutenant with about five men. And I asked him who he was and what unit he was with and things like that, and he could hardly talk. He was so scared. He finally was able to tell me under careful questioning that he was a company commander, that he'd been up there something like seven or eight days. He was a new recruit. This is his first taste of combat, and then he had something like 25 or 30 men in his company. He wasn't sure. And that he got 15 or 20 every night, but he lost that many during the day. So his company never changed in size. I asked him, "How far have you progressed and how far do you think you'll go?" He says, "I haven't gone anywhere. I came here in this hole when I arrived and I've been in this hole ever since." And he'd all the time he tell me, "Quiet, quiet, quiet." He said, "The Germans are right over there, just right over there." He says, "Aren't you afraid of them? They're only five feet, 10 feet over there somewhere."

Anyway, after spending about 45 minutes with him, I began to realize that much of what he's telling me was true, because many times, I have to repeat and ask questions in different ways, particularly when you're talking to someone who is that frightened and that agitated and whatnot it's questionable whether he knows what he's telling you, if what he's telling you is factual. What you need is facts. You don't need his hallucinations. Anyways, I gather that much of the information I had gotten was fairly truthful. That is what I'm relating to you. I'm not relating all the other things you told me, but this much was pretty factual. I actually went to the left and to the right far enough to try to see what else was out there and what he is telling me was essentially true. I talked to a few of the men and I got the same story. I went back and talked to my battalion commander, Gordon Singles, and I told him, “That second lieutenant is really scared. I think what he essentially is telling us is truthful. If there's really nobody out there, I don't think he'd be hunkering down like that. And after all, I did hear German machine gun verse and they weren't that far away, and the fright of the other men of what they tell me, I think it's real. I think there are Germans out there 10 yards away or less." And I said, "The fact that the Germans haven't allowed the French out to cut the underbrush and that the underbrush is as heavy as it is, could well be that we're walking into a real, real, [inaudible]." I said, "It's hard for me to believe that a company of the 45th division would be held up this seriously for this long a week if there's nobody out there." I said, "I can't believe it." So he questioned me in great detail along with Jim Butry. And after questioning me all he could, he then said, "Let's go see the regimental commanders." So we always went back to see Colonel Pence. Colonel Pence asked his questions and we got done. He called the division commander, General Dahlquist, and Dahlquist said, "God damn, I told you the truth. There's no one out there. Are you going to believe some frightened little captain or are you going to believe me?" And I could hear Pence trying to be diplomatic, polite, tactful and all that and whatnot, but still he kept insisting that there was something out there. In the end we were told just shut up and go and not give all these reasons for not fighting. Our purpose was not to say we're not going to fight, but how we fight and how far we're going to go and everything else makes a big difference. We walk out there like there's nobody out there and there's somebody out there, then you're in for trouble. But we tried to make our plan somewhere in between the two, but more toward there's somebody out there. Well, there was.

We advanced 10 yards that first day. We didn't go that couple hundred meters like he said he was going to go. It was just a breeze just to walk. It wasn't that way. And that's all the answers we got from Dahlquist from that day on was that it was our lack of courage, our unwillingness to fight and our inability to tell the truth and whatnot that prevented us from doing more. And that was constantly the bone of contention between him and us was his contention was that there was nobody out there and ours was there was. On Hill A, we had a big fight with him about that, and he said there was no one out there. When we took Hill A, which taking Hill A was a key to Brieres falling because the people in Hill A could prevent people from the second battalion from making a funnel tackle on the city of Brieres. We took Hill A, we captured over a hundred Germans and captured over a hundred automatic weapons, and yet subsequent to that, Dahlquist claimed there was nobody there. So how can you deal with a general that's telling you there's no one there, even when you produce the evidence that there is. And that was always our fight with him, is that he never believed us. We never believed him.

We were told the original plan where we would take Hill A and then from there proceed on to C. And we took Hill A. As a reward, the 36th division told us that we would be going into Brieres for a three-day rest, but we got to Brieres and we bedded down around eight o'clock at night and at midnight we were told we would have to take Hill C and the attack would've to be lunched at nine o'clock the next morning. That meant we feverishly worked from midnight till 9:00 the next morning getting ready for the attack on Hill C, which I think is a stupid way to run a war because there's sometimes you have to do something in two hours or four hours or six hours, but why force itself to do that if you have 14 hours or 15 hours?

And so we take Hill C and we break through the enemy lines, we capture 50 Germans and we're fighting for Hill C and we've taken the top of the hill. We're clearing the bottom of the hill and the enemy's forming to mount a counter-attack, and we're waiting for them to come close enough so we can engage them. And also we want to wait until they get closer before we start calling artillery. Then we're ordered off the hill for no reason by General Dahlquist and we give the hill back to the Germans and then the 7th Infantry and third division had to take it away from them again. This time they paid dearly for it. That to me is uncalled for.

Dahlquist to me is a poor tactical general and he's only, from what I can tell, was only after his personal glory and that'd be the first one into Germany. I don't think he had any experience in World War I and the most experience he had between the wars was commanding maybe a company, in those days was practically nobody. And I think he wanted to make a big name for himself and he wanted to be the first one into Germany, and so he wanted to beat Truscott who commanded the Third Infantry and others.

General Dahlquist honestly had very little real experience in war, and I think he was a terrible tactician, but I think he was an extremely ambitious man, not a coward, physically courageous. I don't think he had any sense when it comes to tactics.

I don't think General Dahlquist had any affection or respect for any of, I don't think soldiers or casualties or anything like that meant anything to him. These were just things to be used to gain personal glory. So I don't think that he was, I say, personally prejudiced to do something for that reason for or against the 442nd or the 100th/442nd. But since the 100th and the 442nd were the most capable of his units, of course he used them to the excess. And I think in his own mind, the 100th/442nd was expendable just like any other unit, but it was more expendable in this particular case because it helped him get out of the jam of the Lost Battalion. But he was asking for the Lost Battalion all along.

A good example is that with the 100th in Biffontaine. After coming off of Hill C, by the time we got back to Bruyeres, it was quite late at night. We were told again we were going to get three days. We weren't able to resupply, that is with food nor with ammunition. At nine o'clock in the morning, his assistant division commander, a Brigadier General, burst into our command little building that we're in, little hut and orders us to hit the road and cross an IP, which is a quarter-mile, IP is Initial Point, in 15 minutes. Well, in 15 minutes you can hardly get people together. And when he's ranching and raving, I pick up the phone to call the companies. He said, "I ain't got time to make the calls," and that's really dumb. Here he wants a battalion on the road and he won't even let me make call to the company commanders. I mean, how dumb can you get? He says, "You've got to cross that thing." He says, "Get in your Jeep and go." And I felt like saying to him, "You dumb bastard, what am I supposed to do? Cross by myself?" So I do it on the radio. Radio takes twice as long, three times longer, and you never get as clear a message as if you do when you do it on the phone. So I leave that place without a overcoat, without nothing, and this is winter time. No food. There's just a couple of clips of ammunition from my 45 and that's it. And that's true with most of the people. The lead company. I asked Bill Pye to come with C Company as a lead company to lead this particular thing, not because he was a company that should do it, in essence because he participated rather heavily in the taking of Hill C. But he was the closest physically to be able to do it. So we crossed the point that the assistant division commander wanted. We crossed it about a half a mile and we stopped. We stopped for an hour trying to get the battalion together. It would've been a lot better if we stayed in a place and did it properly and try to get some supplies up. But no, we did it marching to take an objective. To me, that's dumb. His assistant division commander must have taken a half hour to forty-five minutes from wherever he was to us, probably longer. Even if it was so secret, they could have at least given us some kind of a warning to get ready so we would hurry up and get some kind of supplies up there. But as it was, we got nothing. We find a break in the enemy line, we go through the break, the whole battalion, and we're sitting behind the enemy on the high ground between the enemy and Biffontaine. And the enemy is below us fighting the 442nd.

So here you have a hill, we're on top. We spend a miserable night up there. We have a couple of little skirmishes with German patrols, but nothing serious. But we're hungry and cold. Come morning, nothing to eat. A German supply train comes through, and we're fortunate. We capture it. C Company, which was the lead company, captured it, and so they got most of the food, but there wasn't enough food for everybody in the first place. There wasn't even enough food for all of C company, but I mean at least there was something. And here we're sitting up there and we get a call from Colonel Pence. Now we can't talk to them by our infantry radio back in those days. It was beyond the range, the infantry radio. So we're using the fuel artillery radio, which has a longer range, but we can't even use the regular fuel artillery radio that we carry on the back of one. We have to use the one where you pump the generator. Anyway, so we're using the longest range radio we have to talk to the people there. We're beyond the range of all our normal communication means, and we get orders to take Bruyeres, I mean the Biffontaine. And I said, "No." I says, "No, we're not going to leave the high ground. That's dumb." I said, "There's nothing down there, nothing worth taking." Then we argued and argued. And finally I asked Pence, I said, "Is who I think is there with you? Just answer yes or no." He said "Yes." I said, "Well." I said, "That explains everything then." I said, "No." I said, "The moment we leave the high ground, we not only will be totally beyond all communications, we're beyond the range of any shelter from enemy and friendly fire." I says, "You know we're very, very low on our basic load." I said, "We don't even have a basic load of ammunition." That's what a soldier needs to fight a battle with. I said, "We don't have a basic load of ammunition." I said, "We don't have any food." I said, "That's suicide to go down there. They're not going to go down there."

And then some more arguing. Then they finally said, "Can you promise to have the 442nd on this hill by this evening if we launched the attack on Biffontaine?" And after a few minutes, came back to answer yes. I said, "I don't see how." I said, "I see a whole bunch of Germans between us and them." I said, "If we stay up here, I can see them coming up the hill and being here by night, but if we leave the hill," I says, "I don't see how it can be done." Anyways, finally we go ahead and take Biffontaine.

Well, we got down to Biffontaine. That's where I got wounded. But we got cut off and we fought with nothing. One of the reasons we were able to fool the Germans was that when the German tanks came in, they were all buttoned up and we threw flower pots at them and they thought it was dud bazookas. That's why they backed up. Couldn't tell the difference inside the tank. But that's the sort of stuff we were down to, firing their weapons and things like that.

And fortunately for us, two things happen. Partially the 442nd had a breakthrough and we were able to break out. But when you get to the Lost Battalion, they didn't have the strength to break out. And so our people had to go in and get them. But to me, I think it was just a matter of time and eventually Doc was going to put somebody out there beyond artillery and beyond friendly fire and beyond communications and everything, and we were just asking for it because he wanted to just keep going regardless of what it costed and whatnot.

Oh, I think we had high casualties for many reasons. I think there's a tendency to use units that you know can do the job. I know like at the breakout of Anzio, there was two actual breakouts of Anzio. The initial breakout was from the flat area where the Germans had constricted us. The second breakout was taking the surrounding hills because that's where the Germans felt that they could stop us. I know that in the case of this, we didn't participate in the first breakout. All we did was hold a position where the third infantry and the special forces went through, and I can assure you they took a lot of cas with those forces in that fighting to break out of that initial ring.

The second ring we were not going to take part in initially. The 34th Division had the responsibility of taking Lanuvio, which would've broken through the Albano Hills and allowed the 1st Armored Division to make its dash for Rome. The 34th Division committed two regiments to take town of Lanuvio, and they failed, and one of the regimental commanders was captured. Late that afternoon, General Ryder came down to our 100th Battalion headquarters and told us that he was committing us and wanted us to take the hill the next morning. And I, as still a first lieutenant questioned him. I said, "How do you expect us to take that hill? We're only a battalion when you just had two regiments fail." Two regiments are six battalions. And he looked at me, he says, "Yes, but you're one battalion that will be able to take the hill." I says, "Why don't you commit your other regiment? They've got three battalions." He said, "No." He says, "Because it won't take the hill." And he said, "Don't you worry." He says, "I'll give you a tank company. I'll give you an antitank company. I'll give you a company of engineers, a chemical mortar platoon. I'll give you all kinds of special things you need. I'll assign an artillery battalion just for your support alone, and I will give you all the support you want." And he says, "I know that you can take the hill." He says, "I don't know if my regiment can take the hill, but we have to have the hill tomorrow." So we took the hill.

I think that my proudest moment was when I got wounded the first time. Not when I got wounded, but just about that time, just before that maybe, when my little platoon with minus one squad was able to subdue or forced to either subdue or force the evacuation of five enemy machine gun positions, stay out there and ambush and successfully deter the attack of a German company. And took no casualties and ended up with fifty-eight German prisoners. And I don't know, it just seemed like everything went like in a dream.

One of my worst days was when I was leading the crossing of the Volterra River. I was a lead platoon, so therefore I was a lead person to cross the river. We crossed the river successfully and we were headed toward the objective. And we were stopped and the company commander stated I was lost and going in the wrong direction, and that he was going to have another platoon take over the lead. I knew he was wrong, but that was neither here nor there. I really felt bad because shortly after that, that other platoon sustained seven casualties from a minefield they blundered into at the direction of that company commander. That's the last time someone told me how wrong I was in combat. First and only time.

The Banzai charge, that's a big joke. That's something that even at the last mini-reunion up in Vegas came in for a long discussion in the hospitality room because some of the new recruits were asking about it. I mean they were young recruits back in those days and they missed it. They came in toward the end of the war and they heard so much about it that they were asking about it. And so some of the soldiers who were a part of B Company in the earliest days, they were explaining it all and it turned out kind of hilarious. What turned out, as I started to say earlier, is that Taro Suzuki was our company commander. He's the one that ordered the change, and then they ran into the minefield, and then after that he agreed that he'd stay out of it if I would lead. And so we were going where I wanted to go, but he was questioning all the way. We got to this road junction and he wanted to go down the road and I said, "No, we've got to go further." And so we are arguing there in the middle of the road, and then I climbed up the bluff to point out to him, and I asked to come up. So I was pointing out to him where the objective was, and while I was pointing out and arguing with him and yelling at him, the German machine gun, which was just a few feet away, opened fire, and they fired underneath the arm that I was using to point out where we were going to go and just missed me. You could see the traces going. And Taro who hadn't reached the top of the hill, he jumped back and ran across the road, back across the road. I did a backflip and ended up in the near ditch.

When Taro got to the other side of the road, he ordered a Banzai charge. And that was dumb because, even though there was this ridge on the other side of the road, which I was standing on top of when I did my backflip, and then on our side of the road there was a big hedge. It must've been six, seven feet high, very thick, about two and a half feet thick, and it's impenetrable. Well, according to Taro and the way it came out of the Reader's Digest and everything, it was the first Banzai charge. What they forget to tell you is that the men charged in the dark. They don't know. So they fix their bayonet and they charge, and they all run into this hedge. In the meantime, he also orders the machine guns to fire. Now you got a very dangerous situation. You got machine guns firing at an enemy they don't know where. And they don't know where the front line troops are that are charging with bayonets. And so you've got bullets flying over the heads of the guys making the Banzai charge that's ending up in the bush. And I'm on the other side of the road and I'm ducking because some of those shots are coming at me. I'm more afraid of the American guns, which are down at the road level than the Germans, which are at the top of the bluff.

Anyway, so while I'm laying there, I get a couple of concussion grenades out and loosen the pins, and as soon as the firing dies down a little bit, why then I pull the pins and throw it up at the German machine gun nest, and it knocks down the olive tree. So I go up to the top of the hill, the little ledge about 10 feet high, and my platoon comes rushing over to find out how I am. And we're all standing there talking and all of a sudden look down, I see a pair of boots, the bottom side. I kicked the boots and up jumps a German. We captured three Germans, and they were part of that machine gun nest. But it was the first Germans we captured in combat.

Oh, I think that the 100th had a tremendous influence on my life. It was under the 100th and because of the 100th that I was able to serve as a regular combat officer. I don't think in any other unit I would've. I'd have been a PR officer or something. But it was in the 100th that I was able to serve as not only a combat officer, but even as a staff officer. I was allowed unusual authority and activities that were almost unheard of in those days. I not only made the plans for the 100th, but I issued all the orders in conducting the battles for the 100th, which is something that is reserved. Ordinarily, you make the plans, you submit them, and the battalion commander decides what he likes or doesn't like, makes modifications, and then issues the orders himself. But in this particular case, I was able to make the plans, discuss it with him, and then actually physically issue the orders. So that in subsequent positions that I received, the first appointment when I arrived in Korea was given to me because I had been the plans and operations officer of the 100th.

Interviewer:

What do you think the 100th's legacy for Japanese Americans or since you're Korean American, for Asian Americans?

Young Oak Kim:

Oh, I think that they've left a wonderful legacy. It's a legacy. I say it's wonderful because there's many, many different things involved. Not only did they make a wonderful record for heroism and fighting in combat, and having fought in so many key battles, important battles. I think their conduct as human beings in war was one that's unapproachable. As far as I know, we never had a scandal or even a near scandal or anything. We didn't have any AWAs. We didn't have any cases where women were molested or children were bothered. The men were very generous with their food, with their candies, with everything. If the Italians could have had anything or the French could have had anything, they would've overjoyed to see them. And wherever they could, they paid for what they had to, or they gave. They shared and gave things away. I think that they're gentlemen, and that's often rare when you get people who are used to being brutalized in the front lines for a long time. I think the fact that they fought so well, that not only are they idolized and looked up to by the Japanese Americans now and future generations, but I think they're admired by soldiers from all walks of life from wherever, because I think, like I say, they conducted themselves well, both in combat, out of combat or even during combat. I'm talking about the non-fighting part too.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was COL Young Oak Kim.

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