Old Not So White Men of World War II

A Facebook friend shared this. Of course I had to snarkily respond with my "Just to be clear" rejoinder
about how the old white man most often hated on,  never served due to "bone spurs" in his feet and how only a few of "those old white men" from WWII are still around,and that many of them were not so white.
I do, however, have some stories of my own about some of the old men, some white, some not so white who played a part in WW II efforts to stop the Germans and Japanese. Some I met, some I only heard about when I was in the military from 1966 to 1969. 

The Sergeants 

Arriving at Fort Leonard Wood Mo. for basic training (boot camp) I was  in culture shock, or so it seemed to me.  The army of the 1960s was racially diverse, but having lived in North Minneapolis the previous year, there was nothing shocking about that. I just did not take easily to the strict military structure and discipline. After several close encounters with the Draft Board, I had enlisted in an Army plan where I would receive Medical Lab Specialist education, as the recruiter said,
   "You won't have to kill anyone, You won't carry a rifle but you may have a sidearm (pistol) for self protection."
He made it sound more like a civilian job than an army camp. Next thing I know, I'm standing naked with a couple hundred other recruits and draftees while a doctor pokes and prods and tells me to turn my head and cough. Then after a couple days on a train and a bus, I land at 'Fort Lost in the Woods' and a sergeant is shouting at me. At that point, I  just wanted to make it through boot camp and then get on with my Medical Lab Specialist training.

Of the four platoon sergeants shouting orders at everyone, one was black, one was Filipino and one was of ambiguous mixed race; I heard that a nosy trainee asked him about his race and his answer was something like,
   "Stand at attention Private! I'm your f***ing sergeant and that's all you f***ing need to know!"
Unfortunately I cannot remember any of their names, except of course their first names which were 'Sergeant'. They each appeared to be in their forties, so in 1966 they may have been veterans of either WWII, Korea or both.

The one Caucasian sergeant was a sergeant first class and outranked the other two staff sergeants. and one buck sergeant. He could say "ten-hut" loud enough to make a dead man stand at attention, at least that's how it seemed at the time. He was also the sergeant who led training out on the rifle range. I always liked the firearm training because it didn't involve climbing over a wall on the obstacle course, also it was something I was good at. Like most farm boys, I had some experience with guns. I got mine at age 12, a single-shot 22. I honed my marksmanship by shooting tin cans on a fence post and the moving blades and vane of the windmill. I was surprised to learn that some of the new soldiers were afraid of guns. Our first time on the rifle range, the sergeant demonstrated the M-14 rifle by firing a couple shots downrange with the butt of the gun stock on various parts of his body. Then to assuage any remaining fears about this rifle, he placed the gun stock on his crotch saying,
   "Now I am going to fire a round from the 'family jewels'."

The African American sergeant somehow worked the phrase "your ass" into nearly every sentence. If a trainee did something that displeased him he would shout in a southern drawl,
   "I oughta haul yer ass over to the Captain and have him court martial yer ass!"
He was the only sergeant who openly talked about his combat experience. One day of bayonet training we were charging at straw filled dummies with 'fixed' bayonets yelling "keee yaaa". One of the trainees, not realizing he was within earshot of the sergeant, said something like,
   "This is sooo Mickey Mouse."
I expected some sort of mayhem, but the sergeant just remarked how he had similar thoughts when he was a trainee, then,
   "Son, that bayonet saved my ass in combat. Now! Lissen up platoon! Y'all get down and give  me twenty-five*."

The most memorable sergeant was the Filipino. The other trainees talked and joked about his poor English skills and his thick accent and that he lived in a small room in the same barracks with the basic trainees. He was short, slim, skin like shoe leather, tough as nails, and strong as an ox. He had trouble pronouncing the F sound. I remember him counting off ranks of trainees saying,
   "...thirty-eight, thirty-nine, porty, porty-one, porty-two..."
When a trainee failed to complete something he would say,
   "Seeeee godammit aaah, you puk up more time you recycle."
To be recycled meant repeating another six weeks of basic training. I did not like basic training and lived in constant fear that I would fail at something and get recycled. When not shouting commands he was very quiet and kept to himself  He had been in the Filipino resistance during the Japanese occupation and came to the U.S. on a special immigration program for those resistance fighters. One weekend there were only a few trainees hanging around the barracks. I walked by his room; he was sitting there with the door open so I said,
   "Hey Sarge."
He asked me if I had a cigarette, I gave him one and lit one myself and we talked briefly. An American flag hung on the wall in his tiny room, there was some kind of U.S. commendation in a frame on a night stand.  When I asked him about the Philippine Resistance, he opened up a little, talking about how very hard it was. He had been up in the mountains, and there was very little food and much of the time he was all alone.
   "You soodjers have so easy, you eat all you want."
I didn't think about it at the time, but later I came to understand why he lived in the barracks when he could have had and apartment in NCO housing. I had a lot of respect for him and it was hard not to like him, but then again, he was my basic training sergeant.

Soldiers and Sailors

Only one other trainee in my basic training company was a South Dakotan. He was a Native from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the fastest runner in the company in the one mile qualifying run. In a different platoon I only talked to him a couple of times. He was quiet, reserved and soft-spoken. During one of those conversations he told me his father had been overseas in the military during WWII. I asked him where his father had served, expecting to hear Europe or the Pacific. As I remember his reply was something like,
   "He won't tell anyone about coat talk."
Later I would hear about ‘Code Talkers’, at the time, I had no idea what he meant.coat talk." 

Don Komoda, a surgical tech with the 2nd Evac Hospital where I was assigned, was from Hawaii. When some of the guys would rib him by calling him,
   "Hey Chink."
He would respond quickly and emphatically,
   "I am not a Chink; I'm a Jap."
Don was proud of his Japanese heritage and his family who had been Hawaiians for generations before Pearl Harbor. Komoda's father enlisted in the U.S. Navy after Pearl Harbor and had been wounded in a kamikaze attack.

* Army talk for "Do 25 push-ups immediately."