Class Note 1943
Issue
September-October 2020
Coronavirus, shelter-at-home, social distancing—never in my lifetime (I just turned 100) did I dream we, as a nation, would be capitulating to an invisible disease. Education is at a standstill, bar exams have been postponed, first-responders are in need of personal protective gear, and face masks are required when outside. As one wag pointed out: “It’s better six feet apart than six feet under!”
Rewind to the summer of 1942. As seniors we all knew we were old enough to serve. After graduation on December 12, 1942, we scattered to all corners of the United States. We were worried and wondered what was in our future. WW II was No. 1 on everyone’s to-do list. No one knew where we would be next year or in two or three years.
In the summer of 1943, about 200 Nisei were ordered to Camp Shelby in Mississippi for three months basic training with the recently formed 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This was composed of Japanese American troops whose families, for the most part, were behind barbed wire in 10 isolated internment camps due to the executive order signed by FDR. I was one of six GIs who qualified as “expert” with the M1 Garand rifle.
In the summer of 1944 I was an interrogator of Japanese prisoners of war at the Allied Translators Interpreters Section just outside of Brisbane, Australia. The section was later awarded the prestigious Presidential Unit Citation for outstanding services rendered from 1942 to September 3, 1945.
In the summer of 1945 I was on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. WW II ended on August 15, 1945. More than 12,000 POWs and Japanese civilians were in stockades and ready to return to Japan. The landing ship tanks that we were to board for the invasion of Japan on October 1, 1945, were instead returning the Japanese to their homeland. Then, in early September, I got sick with a fever of 103.8. I was in the 24th Division hospital when a major told me, “George, you’re too sick for us to handle. We’re sending you by hospital plane to a huge Army hospital on Leyte.” I was admitted to the intensive care unit in the hospital on Leyte, another island in the Philippines, for 105 days. I really thought I was a goner. I was only 25, and I only wanted to see my Mary back in Los Angeles. More later.
Our class sends heartfelt condolences to the family of Robert “Bob” Bowman, who died on April 18 in Vero Beach, Florida.
—George Shimizu, 2140 Sepulveda Ave., Milpitas, CA 95035-6142; (408) 930-2488; marymariko@comcast.net
Rewind to the summer of 1942. As seniors we all knew we were old enough to serve. After graduation on December 12, 1942, we scattered to all corners of the United States. We were worried and wondered what was in our future. WW II was No. 1 on everyone’s to-do list. No one knew where we would be next year or in two or three years.
In the summer of 1943, about 200 Nisei were ordered to Camp Shelby in Mississippi for three months basic training with the recently formed 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This was composed of Japanese American troops whose families, for the most part, were behind barbed wire in 10 isolated internment camps due to the executive order signed by FDR. I was one of six GIs who qualified as “expert” with the M1 Garand rifle.
In the summer of 1944 I was an interrogator of Japanese prisoners of war at the Allied Translators Interpreters Section just outside of Brisbane, Australia. The section was later awarded the prestigious Presidential Unit Citation for outstanding services rendered from 1942 to September 3, 1945.
In the summer of 1945 I was on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. WW II ended on August 15, 1945. More than 12,000 POWs and Japanese civilians were in stockades and ready to return to Japan. The landing ship tanks that we were to board for the invasion of Japan on October 1, 1945, were instead returning the Japanese to their homeland. Then, in early September, I got sick with a fever of 103.8. I was in the 24th Division hospital when a major told me, “George, you’re too sick for us to handle. We’re sending you by hospital plane to a huge Army hospital on Leyte.” I was admitted to the intensive care unit in the hospital on Leyte, another island in the Philippines, for 105 days. I really thought I was a goner. I was only 25, and I only wanted to see my Mary back in Los Angeles. More later.
Our class sends heartfelt condolences to the family of Robert “Bob” Bowman, who died on April 18 in Vero Beach, Florida.
—George Shimizu, 2140 Sepulveda Ave., Milpitas, CA 95035-6142; (408) 930-2488; marymariko@comcast.net