Test. Test test. Test test test. Much of that afternoon, i do not remember. Im positive that fear wiped a lot of that memory out. Im convinced of that. How did you handle the fear . It sayed with you all of the time i imagine. I dont think there was a time when there was not fear there. I cant answer that eblgs september to say that you come to the point that you believe you have a job to do for which youre trained. You have to do it for the people around you. For the other marines. They didnt have smokeless powder. It was curling out of the top, i saw the smoke coming out over the top. I didnt know what was up there, but it was back in the ground, and it was piled inside, and theyed that sand piled up, so i went up the side where the sand was, got up on top and there was a pipe. They cooked and named in there, so i just somebody said, i guarantee you i wasnt counting, but somebody said there was 17 in there. I dont know, i had no idea. But i knocked that one out. Another one i was approaching, another vivid memory, and some of them i dont even remember getting to them, and another one i approached they ran out of ammunition. But i was getting close enough that i could get my flame into the bill bpill box. They came charging around the side of the pill box. All i did is look up and here they are charging up toward me and i just opened up and when the flame hit them they stopped. It just took all of the oxygen out of the air and they just fell over. Those are the most vivid things i remember of that four hours. How many did you knock snout. Seven pill boxes i got that afternoon. In four hours. Dont ask me how i did it. I dont have any idea how i did it. And i never got touched. They never got me. The minute you fire it, you have smoke. You have a black smoke raise up. The diesel fuel makes black smoke. And the minute you fire it, you fire and you better move because if they have any mor tars or artillery, and they did, they would fire in there. I would so move and wait, because they didnt have a target when they didnt see any smoke they would quit firing. They had all they probably wanted. They knew they would eventually run out. What happened to the four guys with you. They were just marines in the unit. And i suppose that is true with every unit. You never get acquainted with all of the people. And sometimes you just call names. I was always willy. I dont care who he was, if he was a williams he was a willy. If he was macarthur and mcmurphy. Two of them got killed protecting my life. So as i said many times ever since i got out of the marine core, i would not be here, perhaps, if it was not for them. Tell me, what happened, you got hit and were you evacuated because of that wound . Or you left when the division left. I left when the division left. April first. The same day that okinawa was hit. Did you go back to guam . Back to guam. While we were gone to iwo, the engineered that stayed to keep the camp rolling, they built two false fronted buildings on what you would classify as a street. There is no window or glass or anything. After we got back i think they used up about everything you have. They gave us a couple weeks, all of the previous training was jungle warfare. And iwo was anything but a jungle. It didnt have a stick on it. No tree, no shrub, no nothing. These are the false fronted buildings, and we begin training for treat fighting. How do you approach a house. How do you get through a window and a door. That type of thing. And of course the scuttlebutt was that everybody in our outfit knew we were going to tokyo. Thats where you know, everybody thought that. Tokyo is our next campaign. Come to find out that november was going to be our next campaign and all six marine groups were going to kyoshu. Street fighting. And according to that information the japanese trained 250,000 people, 12 and 14 years old children and up. Mothers, uncles, aunts, they were to all have a weapon and to till americ kill americans when they arrived in japan. There was estimated a million casualties if we actually invaded japan. And of course we would have been, out of necessity, protecting ourselves and securing the war. We would have had to shoot everybody. What could you do . No choice. So i always said the atomic bomb saved miy life. I firmly believed that. Your odds run out after awhile. You can only do these things so many times. And somewhere along the way you will get caught. I never thought, it never entered my mind that the japanese were going to kill me. There was times i thought i would die, i did. But i would not let myself think it. When did you find out you were being awarded the congressional medal. About the 12th or 13th of september. The war ended on august the 8th. So the first var gent called me into the office and they said they want you up a division. And naturally i would say why, i didnt think i had done anything wrong, but i said why. And he said i dont know, they just called down and they said to send you up to division. So they called a driver, put me in a division and took know division. So the aid, i went to the co at the time, he met me and he said im going to take you to see the general, he gave me a little how to act, walk in, stand at attention until he gives you an at ease, protocol, he did that, and the general told me that i was being sent back to the states for an award. He did not use the word congressional medal of honor. He didnt say that, just said an award. I knew i would get the purple heart. I had never heard of the medal of honor. So the thought went through my mind about the purple heart. But that didnt make sense. We awarding purple hearts to guys in formations when we came out from iwo. I didnt know. And asthma reens, we dont do a lot of questions, but they gave me a brown envelope about that long and that wide, and it was sealed with wax. Have you ever seen one of these things . Every person at that time, authority at least, had a seal, and they put wax on the envelope if it was not to be opened by only certain people and a seal that has his initial or emblem in it and he would put that in the wax. Yeah. That was his signature. So he handed me this envelope and there it was, a piece of wax with a symbol in it. And he told me take this with you, dont open it, it is a courtmartial offense if you break the seal. So i was flying out the next day to go back to the states. So i am a lowly corporal completely out of my realm. I went down to the airport pretty early in the morning, the jeep took me down and i had this envelope, but i didnt insist on anyo anyone. I sat all day, they never called my name. I called the First Sergeant and went in their office and asked if they would call the First Sergeant for me, and i said First Sergeant, i thought i was supposed to fly out today. Im still here, whatever i said to him, and he said okay, i will send back and he sent the jeep back to pick me back up. I told him, i went down and i sat there all day and nobody said anything and i didnt know what to do. They assign priorities for p. O. W. S, first was general officers, and then down the line. They had four priorities. I had a first priority, i didnt know that or what it meant. So the next morning he called the aid at the Generals Office and told them what happened. So that time someone went with me. And that time they got me on an airplane. I went to Johnson Island. And changed planes there, and then went from Johnson Island to hawaii. They said when you get to hawaii, turni this in. So i went and turned the envelope, broke the seal, they said were going to send you out for a period of time until we can get you a flight to frisco. They said san francisco. So they put me in a jeep and sent me to a navy base and watched me for seven days. I was there for seven days and no one told me a thing, i was just going to chow and sleeping. I decided after seven days something has to give. Something has to happen. So a marine in a six by came by and i waved out in front of him and i said are you going downtown . And i said can i ride downtown with you. And he said i cant have any passengers up front. So i got in the back and he took me downtown, dropped me off near headquarters. I went back to the same place i reported into before, the same corporal on the desk, and when i walked in i said i want to see the First Sergeant, so he runs to the First Sergeants office real fast. I wont say what he said, it would not be nice. He wondered why i was there. I was supposed to have already been gone. So anyway. He finally got my orders straightenned out, got me straightenned out. And we were waiting for an airport that had an empty seat on it. All of them were full all evening long. And finally one came in that had an empty seat on it. It was coming from japan and i never will forget this as long as i live. It was loaded with our american p. O. W. S. They didnt even look like human beings. They weigh 150 or 170 pounds and now they weighed 70 pounds. They were bones with skin stretched over. They were terrible looking individuals. So i got on. And the reason i got that seat is as they were loading the airplane one of the p. O. W. S died. And they didnt have time to find another one, so i got his seat to frisco. And that was the happiest group of people i believe i have ever been around. They sang all of the way to san francisco. It was just the happiest people in the world. I thought about that a lot. You know we really do not appreciate our freedom until we have lost it. And there, those guys were, they got it back. What a happy bunch of people. My life changed at that point. My life changed as a result of that. I just have not been the same sense. I can see why. I can see why. So what does the medal represent to you . It really represents the free sacrifice that is takes to keep what we have. Something that most americans take nor granted until it is threatened to be taken away. America has never been a good aggressor. We just are not an aggressive sort of people. Were restorers. We want to restore things not tear them up. Its not in our nature. For us to go to war, to be an aggressor to go to war, makes it so much more difficult, i think, and i think it was difficult because that was the first piece of japanese land that we were really trying to tablg. The other places didnt belong to japan. His belonged to them. Those 21,000 japanese on that island, that was theirs, this is mine. And i firmly believe that if im going to try to take something from you, that belongs to you, you will fight hard tore preserve it than i will fight to take it. They knew they would die. I have trouble believing that every one of them want today die. I have to believe that there was a lot of japanese on that island that would have liked to have been home with their family as i would have liked to have been. Wanted to return to their family. They say it was an honor to die for the emperor. We say it was an on nhonor to preserve our freedom. But that is not our deepest human desire. Our deepest human desire is to live. That is what made the deferen difference. We wanted to live. They want today die. The same thing in the world in which were involved right now. Our people, our marines, our air force, nose iraq. They want to live and they will do whatever they can to keep that life. Those that strap things around their bodies and blow themselves up, i dont understand that. I just cannot fathom where it comes from. So this medal means those that sacrificed their lives did it perhaps not even willingingly but did it so that others could have what they valued. Didnt you meet general vanderesh . Yes, he did, and i guess that formed my thinking because he being a medal of honor recipient, although they said all of the time that he was on active duty, he never wore anything to indicate he had the medal of honor. I was in his office and he said to me, much of what he said i dont remember because i was as scared there as i think i was getting off of that ship. But he said to me and he sort of shorted me, that medal does not belong to you. And that shocked me, and then he wanted to say it belongs to all of the marines that dont get to come home. And then he said, and i dont know if he said to the other marines that day, i dont know what he said. They never thought to tell me. I never asked. But he said to me dont ever do anything that would tarnish that medal. Tarnish is a world we dont even use any more. I try to live up to that. Dr. Anthony fauci, dr. Redfield, will testify before the Senate Health committee. You can watch live coverage starting at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on c span 3, online, or listen live with the free cspan radio app. On april 4th, 1949, the north fra atlantic treaty was signed. Decade of nato, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the alliance by profiling the gog if i and member resources of the country. The United States army presents the big picture. Arm f