Drafted March 13, 1945

 I was drafted into the army on March 13, 1945 at the age of 18 and a half years old.  I was attending Snow College at the time.  My parents had seen my older brother Kennard go into the Army and they were saddened to know that another son had to leave for the army and after I went still another son, Austin, had to go into the army so it was sad times.

Basic training started in Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City, Utah and from there I boarded a train and went to Camp Maxy in Texas.  In the summer time if we were out on maneuvers it was so hot that it was said that if you had a flat rock you wouldn’t need to bring a frying pan to cook on.  It was strictly army, obey the command, be in bed when you should, etc.  Basic training lasted six months and then there was a short furlough.  I was sent back for advanced training to train for the invasion of Japan because the war had ended in Europe and most of the islands were being taken and we were getting ready now to invade Japan.  I was one of those who would go to Japan.  I reported to Ford Ord, got my shots and then boarded a ship with 4,999 other people and sailed to Japan.   We were in a rough ocean part of the way and it was very frightening because the waves were so high.  There were many ships that were sunk in this storm but we got along fine.  We pulled into the port at Yokahoma on the island of Honshu.  Yokahoma is seven miles from Tokyo.  One of my first impressions was that of an old lady with a little pan full of potatoes. She was selling those potatoes.  The young and the old were starved and in very, very bad shape.  After being there for a short time we went on to Tokyo.  As we went through Tokyo it will be something that I will never forget.  I will never get it out of my mind, the desolation.  It was just literally level.

We then went to the southern part of Hokaido to a city called  Hokodati.  There were about 500-600 soldiers.  We marched to a place where there was a big building, a school house and that is where we spent our first night in Hokodati, Hokaido. As we went through the door into the school house there was a little boy who appeared about 12 years old.  He was just bones. His eyes were sunken and he was starved literally to death.  We had to go by.  About all he could do was stare at us.  We went into the big room and laid our sleeping bags out to sleep on the floor.  We weren’t allowed to give the Japanese any food. We just weren’t allowed to do this.  If we were allowed to then someone would have given that little boy some food but we weren’t allowed to. We were living on k-rations then, a little potted meat of some kind and some crackers and so this is what we would eat.  We put our k-ration cans just outside the door and all night long I could hear those cans rattling a round a little bit.  He would try to get all the food that he could with his fingers and he got cuts clear to the bone but there was no blood and he was dead that morning.  This was my first experience with death by starvation.

We would get in our squads and our job was to cover every house in the whole city and take weapons of any kind.  We ran into all kinds of situations but we still had our job to do and gathered up all the weapons and took them to a military installation warehouse.  The town was right at the bottom of the hill that overlooked the ocean.  Up on the hill was foliage and a lot of growth.  In that growth they had many big guns in place there.  Anyway, we disarmed the army and took the weapons away from the Japanese people