Authors: Yasuo Takata and Raymond Nosaka, Company B
Title: The Secret Mission of the Third Platoon, Baker Company
Publisher: Puka Puka Parade
Source: Puka Puka Parade, March-April 1980, Vol. 34 No. 2
Intrigue! Suspense!
So it was on a cold winter morning when 25 bewildered men of the 100th Infantry bade farewell to their comrades at Camp McCoy. This is the story as written by Yasuo Takata with additional remarks by Ray Nosaka.
On November 3, 1942, Major James Lovell, Lt. Rocco Marzano and Lt. Ernest Tanaka with 24 members of the 3rd Platoon Baker Company (Robert Goshima, Masao Hatanaka (KIA), Noboru Hirasuna, Tadao Hodai, Masami Iwashita, Fred Kanemura, John Kihara, Tokuichi Koizumi, James Komatsu (KIA), Katsumi Maeda, Koyei Matsumoto, Toshio Mizusawa, Taneyoshi Nakano, Ray Nosaka, Seisho Okuma, Tokuji Ono, Robert Takashige, Seiji Tanigawa, Billy Takaezu, Takeshi Tanaka, Patrick Tokushima (KIA), Yasuo Takata, Mac Yazawa, Yukio Yokota, plus Herbert Ishii of Hq. Co. left for a destination unknown. We were secretly loaded into a transport plane. After we were airborne for several hours, we knew we were heading south following the Mississippi River.
Finally, we landed somewhere down at the end of the “Big River”. Nobody was allowed out. Big Army trucks, completely covered, backed up right to the door of the plane and we jumped off into the trucks with our barracks bags. We saw no one, except the driver. As we drove off, no one could be seen, the airport seemed abandoned. We ended up on a pier where a boat was awaiting us. Nary a person did we see except the boat Captain and his two crewmen. As we left the pier we could see the people coming out of the warehouses onto the pier. We were asking each other “Why all the secrecy?” Nobody knew. Even Major Lovell would not tell us when we questioned him. He smiled and told us that we would enjoy the place we were going to and that it will remind us of home. Too, we were wondering why we had to answer the numerous pages of questions about our lives before embarking on this mission. After a smooth overnight journey on the boat, we finally arrived at Ship Island about 20 miles off Gulfport, a small flat island about 2 miles wide and-l0 miles long with a nice sandy beach and fish galore. At first glimpse, we thought we were going to settle in old Ft. Massachussetts. No, we pitched in and cleaned out a barrack type building next to the Fort. This was to be our home for the next 4 months. At last our secret mission was revealed. We were to help train “Dogs!” For most of us the next four months were spent with dogs – Bouviers, Shepherds, Labradors, Retrievers, Russian Wolfhounds, Pointers, Collies, Bloodhounds, Boxers, Irish Setters, Airdales and Great Danes. These were to be trained to become scout, messenger, trailer, sentry, suicide, and attack dogs. After several days of goofing off, exploring the island and fishing, boating, swimming, the same boat came back early one morning to take us to Cat Island where the dogs were kept. This island was different from ours which was bare compared to the dense foliage we found here. It was sort of a jungle. The main growth being palamettoes and swamp infested with mosquitoes and alligators.
There we met the chief trainer, who was a rather old man of Swiss descent who spoke with a distinct foreign accent. There, most of us started out by training scout dogs. Five of us went to the mainland to train sentry type attack dogs. In the beginning, training scout dogs was fun. All we had to do was to hide ourselves in the jungle with a jar of horse meat. Each dog trainer then sent his dog out to find us. When the dog spotted us, the trainer would fire a shot and we would drop dead with a piece of meat held in our hands in front of our necks. The dog would eat the meat and lick our faces. I don’t know whether the dogs smelled the meat or our “Jap blood”. When the dogs became too friendly, we used our whips, slingshots and rocks to chase the dogs away~ so that they would not come too close. Some of the dogs were beautiful such as the red Irish Setters and the Collies. This training continued each day as long as the boat came to get us. When the weather was a little rough, the boat wouldn’t show up. So the Brass decided to get their own boat. How they selected the captain from the Cat Island dog trainers was to pick the dirtiest guy in the bunch. Man did he stink and his clothes looked like they’ve never been washed. As far as seamanship, he must have rowed a boat around a small lake. But we had the best able-bodied seaman, for our Billy Takaezu became the one and only AB seaman in the 100th Infantry Battalion. The first trip we took on our (Ship Island) boat wasn’t too bad. Our dog trainer captain put the boat on the reef several times but we were able to get off. For a while though we were wondering if we would have to swim to Cat Island. We finally got there.
On our second trip, it was fine going to Cat Island because we had a Coast Guard pilot with us. But on the way back to Ship Island, the engine conked out on us and we were stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead of drifting in, we were drifting out and it was getting dark. Since we had no radio, Billy, our AB seaman, climbed the mast to burn his red flares. We must have started a submarine alert! Pretty soon, we had one Coast Guard picket boat standing along side. We asked for a tow. No dice, they claimed that they were on “Alert” therefore, radio silence, and all they could do was standby. Meanwhile, everybody was getting seasick. The 2nd picket boat appeared, then another, and another. We were surrounded by picket boats, but nobody would give us a tow. Talk about Army snafu, I think the Coast Guard was worse. About an hour later, the “All Clear” signal was given and we were towed to Ship Island, by that time most of the gang were so seasick, we were just throwing up. That was the end of our special dog trainer’s beat, the Q38. The old boat, the J-79, with civilian Captain came irregularly with supplies. During the days it didn’t come, the Coast Guard picket boats took us to Cat Island.
One day, when our supply boat came, we had a 60-70 mile gale blowing, and the civilian Captain refused to dock at our pier. He made motions for us to. meet him on the other side of the Island. So we carried one of our row boats to the other side. In the strong icy wind the boat with the Colonel on board waited about 50-60 yards off-shore. James Komatsu rowed one of the boys to the boat successfully, but when he tried to row back, he could not make headway against the stormy wind. Every time he raised his oars to take a new dip, the winds blew him back. We waited on shore with the wind blowing the stinging sand into us. Komatsu kept struggling, but he was being blown farther away from the boat and the shore. First, we waved to the boat’s Captain to go and get him but he made no move. Finally, Taneyoshi Nakano who couldn’t stand watching Komatsu drift away, stripped his clothes and dove into the cold water and swam about 100 yards to Komatsu, climbed in and helped him row back to shore. Since Nakano had no clothes except his BVD’s, he was shivering so badly and turning blue, we rushed him to a hot shower. For this bravery, Nakano received the Soldier’s Medal for heroism.
Time was running short, so finally most of us were transferred to Cat Island to pollute the Island where the dogs were, with the smell of “Jap” blood. Later results showed that this did not make any difference. There, we still trained with the scout dogs for several days by going to the training area with a barge driven by an out-board motor . Since the boys were grumbling about wading into the water, one day, Yasuo Takata made a driving run for the shore on full power and broke the shear pin of the propeller. That was the end of scout dog training for most of us. Only Pat Tokushima, Masao Hatanaka and Koyei Matsumoto were kept.
We then started training with attack dogs and bloodhounds as trailers. Some of us – Tadao Hodai, Yukio Yokota, Tane Nakano, Bob Takashige, Ray Nosaka, Toshi Mizusawa had been sent to Gulfport to train attack dogs under Sgt. Pierce. On Cat Island, we were farmed out to the different types of dogs. Attack dog: The German Shepherds – Komatsu and Takeshi Tanaka who was the official attack suit armorer later joined them. The Labradors and Chesapeake Bay Retrievers – Hirasuna and Kihara. The Russian Wolfhounds – Toshio Mizusawa and Robert Goshima. The Bouviers, Seiji Tanigawa and Takata. The Airdales – Fred Kanemura and Seisho Okuma. Koizumi was the number one attack suit patcher. The trailers: The Bloodhounds – Katsumi Maeda and Ray Nosaka. This left three of us on Ship Island. The caretakers were: Lt. Ernest Tanaka, Chief letter censor; Herbert Ishii, chief cook and Mac Yazawa, assistant cook.
For German Shepherds, Labradors and Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, we were live targets. While for the Russian Wolfhounds, dummies dressed in Japanese uniforms were used. To train attack dogs to hate us, we began by beating one dog at a time chained to a tree, with a knotted burlap bag. Can you imagine the dog growling, snarling and springing at you everytime you hit him with a burlap bag! It didn’t take too long before the dogs were growling, and pulling on their chains when they saw us coming. Going thru this process we had no protection except our fatigue clothes.
In the next process, the dogs learned to bite the knotted burlap bags. This time we used a helmet with a neck guard, face mask, and hockey gloves. We held the knotted burlap in front of our neck, then at the trainer’s command of “Kill, kill”, the dog would rush a t us for the knotted burlap a t our neck. The dog would hi te it and try to rip it away. There was one dog among the Bouviers who was very bright but tame (Dingo). I would hold the bag above my head and he would jump for it. But we had to watch for the wild ones, they were sneaky. Instead of going for you they came for your legs. You had to punch them or kick them away. It was ‘ like sparring, only you had a dog on the other side.
They then trained the “arm” dogs next. This time we also were the top half of a heavily padded attack suit. The burlap bag was looped from our right wrist and the dogs were trained to attack the right arm. When both dogs were ready, they learned to attack together. Since we were being ‘attacked by 2 dogs, we wore a full attack suit. Although we did not receive any bites, we felt the bite through our suit. It was like a plier pinch. With Bouviers, the trainer had a long chain, to which he chained the necks of 9 dogs, and we had to go down the line before training with burlap bags, wacking [sic] the dogs. As you came to the first dog, you had the whole pack straining at their chains to get at you. This was the worst part of the training. You get scared because you have only your fatigues on and 9 dogs roaring to jump on you to tear you apart! Sometimes, we wondered, “What if the long chain should break?”
Thank God it never did happen. The dogs were just beginning to get the feel of it when the training was stopped.
An Army inspection team came when we had only one day of training with the dogs to attack in packs, with the assistance of a scout dog to spot us. The Wolfhounds were trained to slash at the throat, however, since they were big dogs, dummies were used. Mizusawa and Goshima set up the dummies with a piece of meat tied to the neck about 70 yards away. At the command: “kill” the dogs raced for the dummies and slashed the meat away from the necks of the dummies. Nosaka and Maeda started training Bloodhounds by dragging a piece of meat all over the Island. They knew every nook and corner of the Island. The Bloodhounds were intelligent because by the end of our training, they were able to trail them without the meat, anywhere they went. Sometimes, they tried to fool the dogs by going through water but the dogs were able to pick up their scent when they came back on land.
Although we were not used with them, other dogs were trained to become messenger dogs, and suicide dogs. The Boxers were used mainly as Suicide dogs. Dummy explosives were tied to the neck of the dogs and they were trained to enter dugout or a foxhole. The explosives were then detonated by radio.
We had better than bankers’ hours during those dog training days. For those who did not want to eat breakfast, they could get up at 9:00 a.m. Then go out and train with the dogs for 1-1/2 hours and come back for lunch. In the afternoon, we trained with the dogs at 1:00 p.m. for about 2 hours and quit for the day. The gang was getting fat, what with all the eating they did and the beer they drank. When we came back to Camp Shelby, we were in no condition for infantry training.
The Cat Island was supposedly stocked with beer for 3 months, but the supply ran out in 3 weeks. Incidentally, the reason why so much beer was being consumed was that the drinking water was brackish, sulphur taste and smelled like rotten eggs.
Even when we took a shower, the soap wouldn’t even raise a bubble. Lt. Marzano was the supply officer. He managed to get us enough for the rest of the training period. Another thing was the coal for the boiler. Guess the Army didn’t figure that we buddaheads took a bath every night so the coal supply ran out also. The CO, a southerner, informed us that since we had used up the coal, we had to furnish a wood detail. We scrounged the island for dry wood and logs. We learned to turn over a log before we picked it up because sometimes you found coral snake under it. They were about a foot to 2 feet in length with beautiful colors. We Hawaiians have a natural aversion to snakes so no one got bitten. We were told that the coral snake had a deadly poison. We also carried buckets when we went to our training grounds, to pick up pine cones for our pot belly stoves to heat up our tents at night.
Alas, the training was coming to an end. According to the Scout Dog baits, their dogs could search them out anywhere, even in the trees. The Bloodhounds had the Japanese scent down pat and could trail Nosaka and Maeda anywhere. The attack dogs were just beginning to understand their mission to kill when the head trainer, the old Swiss, was asked to leave the Islands after the “Big Shots” from Washington inspected our program. They chose to continue the program under Sgt. Pierce for another month with 10 of our boys. Sgt. Pierce was a sentry dog trainer of many years and brought his own trained dogs with him. We felt sorry for the Old Swiss because he had some good trainers while others had experiences only with a pet dog at home. The dogs also were untrained and had to be taught from scratch. Although he had the best dog “baits”, it did not help much.
At the end of the extended dog training period, the 10 men returned to the outfit at Camp Shelby where Yokota and Hodai received the Legion of Merit for courageously fighting dogs under Sgt. Pierce’s supervision. The high command finally concluded that the Buddaheads from Hawaii did not secrete a peculiar odor of their natural ancestors. They forgot to feed us “chazuke, koko and takuwan!”
Sports – Recreation and Incidents –
Of course we have to mention the most sensational one first. Practically every night we had an “up-up” game going and all night since we didn’t have to go to work until 9 o’clock, that is, if one didn’t want any breakfast. The winners bought cases of beer for the rest of the gang and the serenaders and Ray with his guitar, had a bunch with him drinking beer with “pulehu” fish and oysters on the half shell for pupu.
They, Ray and his gang, sounded good at our Christmas Party. Kihara was the hit, though, with his hula. He danced with a hula skirt made from a type of “pili” grass. The main dish was the roast pig which had been faithfully fed and fattened from the day we had arrived on Ship Island. I didn’t see Herbert Ishii kill the pig, but I heard that someone went over to the Coast Guard to borrow some 30 caliber shells. We all had our rifles, but no ammo. “Auwe, de no trust us Buddaheads.” I almost forgot the bucketful of shrimp which we got for half a buck. The Colonel, Lts. Marzano and Tanaka enjoyed the tempura style fried shrimps and didn’t think anything about it until the CIA and Secret Service came to investigate the reports of strange soldiers stationed on Ship Island. After a thorough investigation, though, they found out only that two Hawaiians had rowed out to a shrimp boat to buy shrimp! Ono and Takata couldn’t tell them we were Buddaheads training dogs, so we told them we were Hawaiians, naturally. The secrecy was so rigid that all the letters written could not mention “islands,” “dogs,” or anything sounding like it. Lt. Tanaka being the censor, practically spent all his afternoons censoring letters. Too bad he didn’t understand Latin, for when I came home, I found out that he had blacked out a Latin phrase. Tokushima, Iwashita, and Takashige really kept the censor busy. He must have enjoyed it, though. I could hear him chuckling while reading.
The best sport was fishing. There were fish galore like old Hawaii. “When the boat no come no mo kau kau, you get the bamboo pole, catch some Fiddler crabs for bait, go down the pier and catch fish for kau kau.” There were a couple of nights when all the gang, even the up-up gang, went fishing. “The white trout dey run like hell. No nuff poles for everybody, so dey take turns with the bamboos. No need bait, too. You just put white cloth on the hook. About 2 bags dey catch. But dey no forget da boys in Camp McCoy. Dey work hard to clean and dry 2 boxes of fish. Da dry fish pass the censor OK and on to Wisconsin.”
There were plenty of mullet too, but they weren’t biting. We used a 3-prong stick hook for awhile, but the fish got wise and wouldn’t come close to shore. Then Slim borrowed a net from the Coast Guard, and caught the mullet by the bags. “Den one day, he see snake in da mullet pond. Pau, no mo fishing in da pond. But the good days no pau, yet.” Komatsu, Tanaka and Kanemura found an oyster bed and brought some back. The oysters didn’t have a chance to get to the kitchen. A fire was made immediately and the oysters were eaten on the half shell. “Numba one pupu, dem! Just go slurp, slurp, slurp.”
When the bed in Ship Island was cleaned out, they found more oysters beds on Cat Island. “Brudda, dem buddaheads tink they get the Hawaiian Luau feet, but one time on the oysters beds, pau. Auwe, the Luau feet all cut up. The next time dem bruddas all got GI shoes on!”
With the wide blue Gulf of Mexico all around us, we transplanted Hawaiians naturally went swimming. The water was rather cold, but invigorating. The haoles thought we were “pupule.” They warned us about Stingarees, but we never saw one. We looked for “tako” (squid) [sic] nary a one. The Coast Guardsmen told us there were flounders, but we couldn’t find any either. Maybe we missed them because we didn’t know what we were looking for–a fish with two eyes on the top and usually lying in the sand. Maybe if we had a torch, we could have found them! But we were not permitted to do that.
We had a “little Pearl Harbor” at Ft. Massachusetts when we first launched the boats to go rowing. One by one the boats sank. Sabotage! Thanks to our master ship-fitters or boat fitters, Komatsu, Ono and Tanaka, the boats were fixed to remain afloat. But, there always was a gallon can in the boat for bailing, just in case! Not that we didn’t trust the workmanship of our ship fitters, but the materials they scrounged to caulk the boats with were in doubt!
The first thing we did when we landed on Ship Island was to explore the old fort. Although my memory fails me, I believe the “Man without a Country” was imprisoned in the dungeon first, until taken on the ship. There were stories about treasure that the old pirates buried there, but no one was interested. However, we did explore the fort and dug around a little and came across a small ditch running underground. We were puzzled by it, but finally concluded that it was their sewage system!
We had electricity most of the time from a Diesel engine generator, except when it broke down and our ace diesel mechanic, Hirasuna, took it all apart. But when it came time to put it back, “Pau Kahana.” No can do. We had to call Gulfport for a repairman to fix it.
The highlight of the dog training session came when we were given tickets to the Sugar Bowl game at New Orleans. They were good seats. The game was won by the Tennessee “Vols” over the Tulsa “Hurricanes.”
The game was good, but the chop suey we ate before the game was “mo betta.” On the way to the stadium, we spotted a Chop Suey joint, so we made the truck driver stop. When we went in, Ishii took over. He made the haole waitresses join tables to make one big one. Then, he told them to call the number one Pake boss-man. When the boss came, Ishii told him to make us a family style Chinese dinner, never mind the cost. “Da boss alee samee ‘Lau Yee Chai’ say me fixie numba one Chinee dinner.” I don’t remember how many courses came out, but we sure whacked a meal. The haole waitresses and the other patrons watched with big round eyes ready to pop out of the sockets! The waitresses said they never served that kind of dishes before and didn’t know how to charge us. But, no sweat, Number one boss he fixed us up and it was very reasonable.
There were many more incidents that happened, but time and space prohibits mentioning any more at this time.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?? We heard that there were many dogs used in the Pacific Theater of War. Whether the dogs we trained with were sent over, we were never told.
–End