Nicholas “Nick” Zobenica Narrator

Thomas Saylor Interviewer

September 26, 2002 Nicholas Zobenica home Chisholm, Minnesota

TS: Today is the 26th of September 2002 and this is the interview with Mr. Nick Zobenica. First, Mr. Zobenica, on the record, thanks very much for taking this evening to talk with me. After speaking with you for a few minutes I’m looking forward to talking to you a littleI more. From talking with you already, just to summarize, I know that you are one of six children.

NZ: Seven children. GenerationPart TS: Of Serbian immigrant parents. Your folks came to the U.S. in 1909, you said. Your dad ultimately ended up in Coleraine, here in northern Minnesota, in Itasca County. That’s where you were born, on the 18th of December 1924. You attended school in ColeraineSociety until you enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942. After service you came back and finished high school in 1946. Were you the oldest student in your class? Project: NZ: Yes. Greatest

TS: It must have been difficult to go back, was it, with kids who were younger than yourself? Historical NZ: No, it really wasn’t. The thing that . . . when I left for school none of those teachers really paid much attention to me. But whenHistory I came back in my Marine greens I was tutored like I was the only kid in the school. They appreciated me being in the Armed Forces. They just sat by me. “Is there anything we can do for you? Is there anything that you don’t understand? Any time of the day, call us.” They Oraljust worshipped me because I enlisted in the Marines and fought for this country. Minnesota's

TS: How did that make youMinnesota feel?

NZ: I was so proud I couldn’t believe it. Then I would always press my shirt the Marine way and put my field scarf on. I always looked sharp. They just couldn’t get over it.

TS: Did you wear your uniform to school sometimes?

NZ: Just the shirt and the green pants. Not the blouse. No ribbons or anything.

TS: But you were proud to have been a Marine?

9 NZ: Oh, yes.

TS: You went in the service at the end of 1942 and ended up in boot camp out in San Diego. Let me ask you if you remember how your folks responded when you told them that you had enlisted in the Marine Corps.

NZ: They responded proudly. They told me that it was so nice that [I was] going to go defend this country, because we compared America to the place they were raised or born, Yugoslavia. And they said, “You fight for this country. You don’t know it, but you’re living in heaven. So you must go and defend it.”

TS: Who was more worried about you going, your mom or your dad?

NZ: I think my mother was. I TS: Did she say something that let you know that she was concerned about you?

NZ: When I went in I came out of boot camp I had a furlough for ten days. And I remember she was hiding in the cornfield there. She was crying and sheGeneration said she wasPart so proud that I was going to be in the military, and, “Would you pray to God and St. Nicholas and please,” she said this all in Serbian, “be a brave warrior.” Society TS: Did she normally speak Serbian to you?

NZ: She didn’t know how to talk English. NeitherProject: did my dad. Just a few words. Greatest TS: You grew up speaking Serbian around the house?

NZ: Yes. Historical

TS: Did your folks ever learn English?History

NZ: Very little. All broken. They got along, but there weren’t any high-class words or anything. Just get along. And all Oralour neighbors were from the same part of the country. Minnesota's TS: So you grew up with kids so you could speak other languages than English? Minnesota NZ: Yes. Just English and Serbian. Then there were Italian places. There were Finnish. But the Serbs were in one area. They all communicated there.

TS: Was Coleraine a place where a lot of Serbs had come?

NZ: Yes. Coleraine-Bovey. For the mining [iron ore mines in the Iron Range area]. Because there was no education to work in the mines. There was track gang, and it’s hard work. All manual labor. You didn’t need anything. All you needed was a strong back.

10 TS: Is that the career, is that where you could have seen yourself going if you hadn’t joined the service? If the war hadn’t come?

NZ: Probably yes. Because the mine paid good compared to others. You can’t believe the money these people made. With no education, no college degree.

TS: It wasn’t easy to earn a living in those days.

NZ: No.

TS: You had one brother and five sisters. Where do you fall as far as who’s the oldest and who’s the youngest?

NZ: I was the youngest. I TS: Did your brother or any of your sisters join the military?

NZ: No. I was the only one. GenerationPart TS: Your older brother, was he too old to join? Too old for service?

NZ: No. He was a plumber. I think he was too old at the time. I don’t thiSocietynk he had any physical difficulty. He worked at that . . . what’s the name of that place where they made munitions south of Minneapolis there? Project: TS: Down by New Brighton? New BrightonGreatest Arsenal?

NZ: Yes. He worked in there, in the arsenal during the war. That place is still surviving. Historical TS: So he left the area during the war. History NZ: Yes.

TS: Did any of your sistersOral leave the area? Minnesota's NZ: No. They all lived here, throughout the whole war. Minnesota TS: California. That’s pretty far from Minnesota. Was that the first time you had been so far from home?

NZ: Yes, that’s right.

TS: How was that, being far away from your whole family?

NZ: Unbelievable. I never saw a two-story building until I got down there. I couldn’t believe there were skyscrapers, streetcars. Never knew what a motel was. Never heard of a motel. Never

11 ate in a café or restaurant. Everything was new. They say, “You’re going to stay in a motel.” What’s that? I tried it. Why not a hotel? Finally you see a motel. Unbelievable. You go in a restaurant. I didn’t know how to order.

TS: The stuff we take for granted nowadays, isn’t it?

NZ: That’s right.

TS: How did you get out there, on a train?

NZ: Train. We enlisted in the Federal Building in Minneapolis. Then we took the Sioux Line, the Rock Island Line, and took it right to San Diego.

TS: Were you in uniform going out there? I NZ: Oh, no. Just some civilian clothes. Then we got our issue of Marine clothing at boot camp.

TS: Why the Marine Corps and not one of the other branches of service? GenerationPart NZ: I just wanted to be the first one to get in. I wanted to make sure I got into combat. I really wanted to go into combat. I wanted to be the first to be in there, and that’s it. Society TS: And with the Marines you were sure to be doing that?

NZ: Yes. Project: Greatest TS: How do you explain that, if you can? Why was combat important to you, do you think, at that time? Historical NZ: I don’t know. I just didn’t feel that I wanted to go doing any cooking or cleaning or being a guard. I just wanted to be there andHistory fight for my country.

TS: California is far away. How did you adjust to not being able to see your family? Oral NZ: I adaptedMinnesota's real good. As long as I had something to eat. They knew I was eating good. Good place to sleep. They used to worry about me up to the time I had to go overseas, but I don’t think they took it too hard at firsMinnesotat. Until I got over there.

TS: Did you take it hard being away from them?

NZ: No. Everything was so new. You’re just a young kid. You just adapt to that.

TS: Age helps, doesn’t it?

NZ: Yes.

12 TS: Basic training. What kind of memories do you have of basic training?

NZ: I was in Platoon 382. I wish I could find some of those guys now. I went to Camp Magenta. I was an expert rifleman. I’ll never forget when we went to training for swimming, there was a kid from Coleraine, and he and I were the only guys in that platoon that knew how to swim.

TS: The rest of them could not swim?

NZ: And they figured, “How could you swim?” And I said, “Well, I came from northern Minnesota, where the Iron Range is, and the mining companies built all the schools. Every school up here has a swimming pool.” And these other people from Kentucky, Tennessee, wherever, nobody could. They thought it [northern Minnesota] was just mines. Ours were all ceramic tile, beautiful swimming, diving boards. Beautiful ceramic showers.

TS: You had that in Coleraine, too? I

NZ: Yes. Coleraine-Bovey. They all got swimming pools. The mining companies were good to these people. They were really good. GenerationPart TS: So you knew how to swim and they didn’t.

NZ: Yes. Then they all had to learn. Society

TS: How do you teach them? Was it a crash course in swimming? Project: NZ: Yes. Greatest

TS: How did they do it? Historical NZ: They put you in the water and showed you how the strokes were, and you just better make sure you swam. Then when you learnedHistory how to swim you went into abandon ship drill. You jumped off with your full pack, minus your helmet and rifle, from a twelve-foot tower, a twenty- two foot tower and a thirty-three foot tower. Oral TS: With Minnesota'syour full pack?

NZ: And you land. You holdMinnesota your nose and down here. And you hit that pool and then you have to swim the whole length of the pool underwater and when you came up you had to splash the water in case there was burning oil.

TS: That’s tough.

NZ: Oh, you have no idea what a Raider [elite special forces unit] training was. When I was in boot camp then. Then the Raider training was . . .

TS: You said eleven-foot and I thought, “Oh, boy!” Then you said twenty-two feet!

13 NZ: And then thirty-three feet.

TS: If a ship was sinking, it could be that high, couldn’t it?

NZ: Yes, sure.

TS: Was basic training tough for you, Nick, or did you find it not such a big deal?

NZ: No, it was tough, but I fell right into it because of the way I was raised in Bovey with livestock and track and all that stuff. You’re always running around hunting. I think the way I was brought up helped me through combat a lot, because we used to kill pigs, cows, chickens, rats, woodchucks and everything. We just kind of adapted when it was a man being killed. But the stress was there.

TS: Did you meet people from different parts of the United States in boot camp?I

NZ: All over. From practically every state.

TS: Were there differences with people from different partsGeneration of the countryPart that you met?

NZ: At first. Once we got into combat, everybody’s different. There’s none of those cocky sayings like, “They’re better than us.” Everybody’s equal because they Societyknow what could happen to everybody. No arguing. Everybody was friends. There was none of this, “You’re a Serb,” or, “You’re goofy.” Or you’re a Dago [Italian] or a Finlander or something. It’s all, “You’re Marines.” And the discipline in the Marine Corps Project:was perfect. That’s one of the reasons I’m glad I joined. And another reason I’m gladGreatest I joined the Marines, no matter where I go, I’ve got my license plates, “U.S. Marines, Combat Wounded.” No matter where I go, somebody sees that, and if he’s an ex-Marine he’ll stop me and talk to me. Never fails. I put that Marine hat on. “You were in the Marines!” And they just want to knowHistorical everything about me: when I went in, where I was. Ninety nine percent of the time I even practically know somebody he knows. And they’re so proud that they were in the MarineHistory Corps.

TS: Is that esprit de corps different than other branches of the service? Oral NZ: Oh yes,Minnesota's I think so. But another thing was, we only had six divisions. Actually five up to about the end of the war, then we got the sixth division. But they’re so closely knit. Like downtown, or anywhere I go.Minnesota “Oh, really?” I went over to Grand Rapids, [Minnesota] one day, about five or six years ago, to see a show. This boat coming down the Mississippi River, and all the local talent from Grand Rapids gets on that boat, and they sing and they dance.

I’m sitting in that bleacher and I look behind and I see two couples walking behind the bleacher there. I told my wife, “I know that guy there.” So I jumped down and say, “Hello Chuck.” And he says, “Hello, sir.” I said, “You don’t have to call me sir. It’s really nice to see you.” He says, “You’ve got me mixed up with someone else. I’m not from around this area at all.” But I said, “Your name is Charles Smith?” “Yes, there’s a lot of Smiths around. I’ve got to go sit down.” “No,” I said, “You can’t go sit down yet. I’ve got to talk to you.” His wife grabs him by the arm

14 and says, “Come on, Charles, we’ve got to go have a seat.” I said, “No, I can’t let your husband go.” I said, “I’ve got to talk to him.”

I said, “There’s two questions.” I said, “Look me straight in the face. Study me out real carefully, and then tell me truthfully you never saw me before in your life.” And I said, “Take your time now.” And his wife is holding and trying to pull him. And he looks at me and says, “I’m sorry, sir, I never laid eyes on you in my life.” I said, “Okay, after this one you can go take a seat. What did that guy look like that was in the foxhole with you for two months on Okinawa?” He says, “You’re not Nick from Bovey?! You’re supposed to be dead.” He started crying. He couldn’t control himself. And I said, “How could you forget me?” I went overseas 198 pounds. I came back 120 pounds. 78 pounds I lost. Then I used to shave my head because it was all salt water and there was no liberty. You didn’t have to dress.

TS: He thought you were dead. I NZ: Yes. We didn’t even stay for the show. His wife went and sat. Him and I sat in the car and we talked about the war.

TS: You hadn’t seen this guy since Okinawa? GenerationPart

NZ: I hadn’t seen him for about fifty years. Society TS: How did you pick him out, Nick?

NZ: He never changed at all. He had this kind of .Project: . . we used to call him “Chowhound.” Every time we’d get shelled, he always pulledGreatest a book out of his pack and he’d study accounting. I said, “How could you study with this?” He says, “It’s better than whatever is happening around here.” He just retired a few years before that as a CPA for the Highway Department. Certified Public Accountant. Historical

TS: You picked him out after all Historythose years.

NZ: Yes. Then he was saying, “Remember the wise remark you said to me. After we took Naha [the capital of Okinawa],Oral then we took Sugar Loaf [Hill], then there were a bunch of dead Japs around there.”Minnesota's There were hundreds of them. We knew we had to bivouac there. So we got in parties of two and we’d take these shoulder straps and tie them around their ankles and pull them away from the coral rock. MinnesotaOnce we got them on th e flat we would have this Sherman tank, this [American] medium tank with a blade, and put them all in one big pile. Then my buddy by the name of Lieberman, he’d run up and down the bodies with fuel oil and we burned them all. You should have seen that fire. Anyhow, this same kid I met in Grand Rapids says, “Isn’t that too bad. All that meat is going to waste.” I said, “Well, go cut off a sandwich.” And he never forgot it. But you know, when you’re eighteen, nineteen years old . . . I don’t care. You can read all the books about different nationalities, but you take an American at eighteen and nineteen years old and if he’s trained properly, there’s no better warrior in the world. I’m telling you. You take those guys on Iwo [Jima] and that. Nobody turned and ran the other way.

15 TS: Nick, you finished basic training and volunteered for, I think you said, the 4th Marine Raiders.

NZ: Yes.

TS: What prompted that? Was it the Marine Corps wasn’t enough? You volunteered for the Raiders.

NZ: Yes. This commanding officer in boot camp came to me and said, “Any of you guys planning to go into combat sooner that the rest of the others?” I said, “Yes. I want to go. That’s what I came in here to do. I came here to fight and I want to volunteer for the Marine Raiders.” He shook my hand and everything and put me on that bus. There must have been, in two companies of men there were only three of us that volunteered for the Raiders. There was a guy from Brainerd, [Minnesota]. His name was Alghrim. And a guy from South Chicago, Rukuyzo, and I. Alghrim was killed on Okinawa. This other guy died. After he got out heI had a heart attack and died.

TS: Survived all that stuff and died when he got out of a heart attack? GenerationPart NZ: Yes.

TS: Nick, what was the training like for the Marine Raiders? Society

NZ: It was something you never believed. You know, how you have a machine gun fire and other outfits will have these machine gun sandbagsProject: so they could just hit a certain level? Greatest TS: Yes.

NZ: I said before, this major says, “You’ll never geHistoricalt anything out of it doing that, because they know that the shells are going over their head.” He took the sandbags away. We’d be crawling . . . peppering alongside us. You couldn’tHistory believe it. You’d get in the sheds where you’re going, the shells were blasting that thing. Sliding down these cliffs and ropes.

They’d get about ten guysOral and grab a couple dozen guys and put a big telephone pole on your chest and Minnesota'syou had to do pushups with that. And you should see the rubber boat training, that’s another thing. No matter what the sea was like, those waves would be—people here just won’t believe it, but those wavesMinnesota were higher than this house here. You’d hit that wave with that rubber boat and it would throw the whole bunch of guys back to shore. We used to tie our weapons to right the boat . . . and you’d watch those breakers coming and you’d paddle and get in there. Practice landing. Then we went down in a submarine, but we never did go down in a sub. But we went down into one to see what it was like in case we were going to hit some of these islands as a battalion, like they did at Makin Island [in the Central Pacific].

TS: And you never did actually work from a sub?

16 NZ: No. We went on LSTs [Landing Ship, Tank; naval vessel used for support of island invasions] and amphibious tractors.

TS: The first time that you were in action then was at Emirau [Island].

NZ: Yes. About a thousand Japs were on that island. And the reason I think we hit there—I still think to this day the only one that saved us was Tokyo Rose. Tokyo Rose said either tomorrow or the next day the Marines were going to land on Truk Island. The Japs thought we were going to hit Truk, and they were prepared to defend Truk. I saw just a few. Not too much rifle fire. We shot a few.

TS: The Japanese had a big base on Truk, didn’t they?

NZ: Yes. Tokyo Rose said, “When the Marines hit Truk, they’ll get the surprise of their lives.” And that was an island with coral reefs all the way around there. They would haveI really wracked us up. I think that’s why we took an alternate and hit Emirau.

TS: Truk remained in Japanese hands the entire war. GenerationPart NZ: Yes. We didn’t touch that. We just bombed them and kind of starved them out.

TS: But the Japanese stayed there until the war ended. Society

NZ: Yes. Project: TS: Do you remember, Nick, going toGreatest Emirau, what kind of thoughts were going through your mind when after all this training, finally you were going to be in action?

NZ: I don’t know. It just seemed that we adapted toHistorical that because of the training. In fact, when we left Tent Camp 2 by Santa Onefre, by San Clemente, [California] we were just dying to get into combat and get out of that training.History That’s how bad the training was. It was seven weeks and I’m telling you, it was training. Every other day was practically twenty-four hours. The guys that really were—they taught us judo and all this stuff. Jujitsu, we called it. Now they call it martial arts. And we trained withOral British commandos in California. Minnesota's They were getting ready to hit Dunkirk, [Belgium]. That’s why they came to train with us. And they were all these guys calledMinnesota Bobbies. I think they were policemen at one time. All, every one, I don’t think there was one under six feet. All big, husky guys. That’s where I learned how to drink tea. From them. We used to train with their Bren gun [submachine gun]. Fire on the range. You had to qualify with that. Take the barrel off [of the machine gun when it got too hot to fire] and throw another one on. Intense. You had to know what was going on out there. We had night combat, where you’d have to know how to kill a Japanese at night. You never cut his throat with your knife. You always stuck the knife right in here and then you twisted, because if you cut his windpipe you could hear it for miles. So he said, “Put the knife down through the collarbone and down into the heart, and then he bleeds internally.”

17 TS: At this point, this is training that could lead to killing people in hand-to-hand situations?

NZ: Oh, yes.

TS: Did that bother you or make you nervous at all?

NZ: Not a bit. I was just glad that they were training me to do that, to understand. I never really did it with a knife, though. Just with rifle fire.

TS: But you had to be prepared just in case.

NZ: Yes. In case you run out of ammo or . . . like those poor guys on Bataan [Peninsula, Philippines, captured by Japanese forces, April 1942]. What they went through [marched as POWs after being captured at Bataan]. My buddy from Crosby, I went to see a guy that was right next to me and got shot and he asked me to take care of him. He says, “I’ve gotI dizzy spells.” I said, “What are you talking about?” And I crawled over to see him. It was just about an hour before I got shot. And I went to check him out and he had his face down and I looked at the back of his head and he had more than a silver dollar size hole. Ricochet blew part of his skull off. So I put a bandage on there and called a corpsman and they Generationhauled himPart out of there. His name was Eddie Quinn. I’ll never forget that.

Then after I got back to the States somebody told me he was at Great LakesSociety Naval Hospital [near Chicago]. So I go over to see him and I see this guy laying there. I asked the nurse where he was. She pointed. I said, “That’s not him.” I went back, and the next time and his eye opened up and he says, “It’s me.” They were putting a silver plateProject: in his head. And then they put some type of medication so his head swells way up,Greatest and they put the silver plate [in] and he goes back to normal. He was just as normal as could be. Then after I got done talking to him I see this one guy his name was Dobervich. He was from Crosby. He was a Serbian guy, too. I says, “Where are you from?” He says, “I’m from Crosby.” “Where wereHistorical you?” He says he was captured on Bataan and all that. He was a major. I was looking at his hand and I said, “You sure had fungus bad.” He said, “That isn’t fungus. The JapaneseHistory pulled all my fingernails off.” Yes.

TS: Actually on Emirau, were there Japanese there? Oral NZ: Yes. Minnesota'sVery few. Like I said, about a thousand. We secured that in a couple days. Most of them tried to escape, and the Navy caught them with the destroyers. They would try to take off in boats and the Navy caughtMinnesota them in the water. They were all done.

TS: So a number of them tried to flee

NZ: Yes. They didn’t expect us. I think there was enough land there; they made an airport out of it. That’s why we wanted the island.

TS: You mentioned that there really weren’t ports of call. Did you have leave at all?

NZ: No.

18 TS: So when you went overseas to when you came back it was—?

NZ: No liberty. That was it. When I got back to the States, when the ambulance picked us up in Seattle at Puget Sound, I looked around that ambulance and thought, “How come all these people have colored clothes? Where am I?” I couldn’t believe it. I never saw civilians. Everything was all dungarees. They had sweaters on. Red ones. Pink ones. I thought, “Holy cripe!” You know, you forget all about that.

TS: For years you had seen the same color stuff all the time.

NZ: Yes. All the time. Then you come back Stateside. All that stuff. Oh, was it beautiful to be home.

TS: It had been a couple of years by that time. I NZ: Yes. About twenty-seven, twenty-eight months.

TS: You were in the Pacific, and it’s clear you were part of the war effort against Japan. For yourself, how did you perceive the enemy, that is, the Japanese?Generation Part

NZ: How do you mean? Society TS: What kind of images did you have in your head as far as what kind of people they were?

NZ: I always thought that they were . . . I don’t know,Project: after I saw some of these . . . especially on Guam [in the Marianas Islands] whenGreatest they were yelling banzai and charging at us…

[Tape interruption] Historical NZ: And I see them charging us and yelling, “Banzai! Banzai!” Coming over that hill. They didn’t care anything about their lifeHistory. Then I watched the kamikazes [Japanese suicide aircraft] hit our fleet there. How could they do that? They’d have to be squirrelly. So that’s why we turned out to be ready for them. We didn’t trust any of them. We had a commander, his name was Colonel Alan Shapley. OralIn northern Okinawa the noncommissioned officers were having a meeting andMinnesota's this Colonel Shapley came over and he says, “What’s this meeting about?” And they said, “We have to find a password for tonight.” The password had to have an L in it because the Japs couldn’t pronounceMinnesota Ls. This Colonel Shapley says, “You guys were trained in the Marines? You were trained to kill these Japanese. I want every one of them dead and I don’t want anybody challenging them at night. If I hear one challenge, you’re going to get it.” You could hear them, the Japanese [makes talking noises]. You couldn’t fire at night.

TS: You could hear them then.

NZ: Yes. This was on Okinawa. You could hear them. [Makes knocking noise] Hitting sticks together. Trying to keep us awake, and get us to fire a shot and see the muzzle flash. Then they could throw a grenade at us.

19 TS: So you couldn’t fire.

NZ: No. You couldn’t smoke. They could smell that smoke, too. He said, “Kill every one. No challenges. That’s what your job is as Marines. Every one.” And we had a major, Cold Steel Walker was his name. Colonel Walker. You know what he’d do? He’d come at dusk when it was getting dark and say, “Any guys want to go out tonight with me and look around for Japs and kill them?” You’d be surprised at guys. I said, “I just survived today. I’m not going.” He’d get volunteers, and the next morning they’d come back carrying each other. Fighting all night with the Japanese. You talk about courage. You can’t—you can’t even explain it. I wouldn’t go out there. I said, “What the heck. Today I just about got killed.” It doesn’t matter. You never know. He said, “That’s okay.” You’ve got some guys that are built that way. They wanted that combat.

TS: Do you recall, was the landing at Guam, was that an amphibious landing as well?

NZ: Yes. Amphibious tractor, it came out of the LST. It was July 21, 1944. I

TS: Do you remember the actual heading for the beach, or heading for the island of Guam? Do you remember that, Nick? GenerationPart NZ: We got out of these amphibious tractors and we rendezvoused about two miles out. We went right by these cruisers and battlewagons [battleships] shelling the beach. We had a number of ships off shore. A lot of ships. You have no idea what that’s like goingSociety past the bow of a battlewagon, when he’s got a broadside going. Those cannon [the ship’s guns] looked like big telephone poles out of canoes. When they let go the broadside you can actually see that ship move backwards from the recoil. And the noise! YouProject: couldn’t believe it. Greatest We come into the beach, and you’ve got machine gun fire from the little island. It looked like it was about half the size of this room. They cut loose with these machine guns and a destroyer came back and fired [makes shooting noise], you coulHistoricald see the Japanese bodies flying in the air. Holy cripe! Perfect shooting. Nobody better tangle with us, you know. When we hit Okinawa, first we went to—before we hit OkinawaHistory we hit U lithi harbor. We never hit Ulithi; it was just a place where we would rendezvous before we hit Okinawa. We even joined the British fleet. Because the war was almost over in Europe. You’d swear there wasn’t enough water in that ocean to float these boats.Oral Battlewagons, carriers, destroyers, cruisers. Anybody tangle with us, they’re allMinnesota's done. You can’t believe it. Unbelievable firepower. Unbelievable.

TS: When you came to Guam,Minnesota were you on an LST or a small amphibious—?

NZ: An LST. And we got about six amphibious tractors in there. They would lower those in the water. Then you open the big gates in front and that ramp comes out.

TS: Then you go right down in the water.

NZ: Yes. When that thing is in . . . and you know, by the time we’d go out, those big diesels are running. It’s been fifty-seven years ago, fifty-eight since we hit those islands. And that smoke inside that ship, that diesel, you could hardly wait to get out of that thing. We were all sitting in

20 there. And you got your suspenders and your helmet loose and your cartridge belt and all the rest of the stuff. And when it hits that water it actually goes under water and she bobs up. You can’t believe what that’s like, what goes through your mind.

TS: What does go through your mind?

NZ: I’m done.

TS: Because you’re in the water.

NZ: Yes. But anyhow, then we had those Mae West life vests. It goes right around your stomach and those belts go [makes swoosh sound]. So you could save yourself that way.

TS: When you’re in there and the amphibious vehicle goes into the water there, can you describe getting to the beach and what you first did when you got there? I

NZ: When we went, like I said, we got hit about a hundred yards out by this big gun, and it knocked our right track off. So we had to swim to shore. GenerationPart TS: There were no casualties from that?

NZ: No. Other boats, there were hundreds wounded and killed. If you tookSociety a direct hit, you were done. You could see . . . they [Japanese] hit six or seven of them. You could see just the bodies blowing up. When the shells would hit the water that concussion felt like you were getting electrocuted. Your knees would kind of numb up. Project:Just the shells hi tting the water near us, it just about paralyzes your knees. It just feelsGreatest like, like you’re getting an electric shock. Finally made it to shore. Then I fell down when I hit the beach. My muzzle of that rifle was full [of mud]. I finally found a way to clean that thing and just got up there and they [Japanese] charged us yelling like crazy. “Banzai! Banzai!” I got hit afterHistorical the third wave came through. There were twenty–two dead or wounded out of thirty-six of our platoon in about fifteen minutes. History Then this one kid, this Jap came after him. And I know he must have hit him I don’t know how many times with that Garand rifle, that M1. And that Jap, some way or other, I couldn’t get a shot. I was going to shootOral over a couple of my buddies. And that Jap got him right through his stomach withMinnesota's a bayonet.

Then when I got hit there wasMinnesota a Sergeant Mike Dunbar. He was from California. I say his name every night before I go to bed, in my prayers. Anyhow, he picked me up and was taking me to the beach. He was dragging me, really, because my whole side was paralyzed. I couldn’t see with one eye. I never had control of my eye because of that wound in the face. Dunbar was hauling me down to the beach and a sniper cut loose and hit him right here [points] and hit that artery. And my right hand wouldn’t work, so he pulled his pants up and I grabbed that artery and I stopped that bleeding. Just about then two corpsmen came by. They were going to pick me up. I said, “No, pick him up. He’s bleeding bad. I’m not bleeding that bad.” So they took him off and then they came back and got me. I was evacuated.

21 Then when I got into that Higgins boat [small landing craft] being evacuated, this Sikanen, that was his name, the guy that got bayoneted, he was right next to me. They brought us up to the hospital ship and they put those rings on the stretchers and they’d hoist you up on deck. Then they were putting the rings on me and I looked at him. I said, “Take him first. He’s not going to make it.” And he died right there. But the funny thing, they put me up on that deck and I was looking down fifty, sixty feet. I hope those rings don’t slip! Funny thing I had happen to me. They put me on that deck right next to that winch, and it says St. Paul Winch Company.

TS: Small world, isn’t it?

NZ: You’re a kid. Eighteen, nineteen. St. Paul Winch Company?! How did that winch get way over here? They bring you down in that ship and get down those steps, oh! See the guys coming in without an arm, without a leg. Crying and screaming. Just unbelievable.

TS: It must have been hard. I

NZ: Oh. [Pauses] That’s when they took us to New Caledonia.

TS: Can you describe the noise and the chaos on the beachGeneration on GuamPart there when you got there?

NZ: Well, you couldn’t believe it. From our planes strafing and that napalm and our battlewagons, it was just . . . You couldn’t believe. You couldn’t hear anything.Society It was just [makes explosion noise] massive. Then we got up to the beach. We got in about a thousand yards just before I got hit on Guam there. You looked back on the beach and you’d think we were there for a year. You should see the ammunition and theProject: food. Ships were bringing that stuff in. And piling it up on the shore. You’d thinkGreatest I was there a week already.

TS: How long were you actually on Guam? Historical NZ: We landed about 6:20 in the morning and I got hit about 11:00 in the morning. So fewer than six hours. History

TS: Can you describe when you were actually hit by the grenade shrapnel? What sensations you had or what actually happenedOral to you? Minnesota's NZ: First, as soon as I saw these two grenades here, one was here, and there was two here, so I got right in the middle of them.Minnesota I put my helmet on. Blew my helmet off.

TS: So the grenades were thrown, and you could see them at your feet.

NZ: Yes. They were right there. I couldn’t move. They were going off. I didn’t want to get up because once I got up, they were going to nail me. They just blew . . .why they didn’t blow . . .I don’t know why I didn’t get hurt worse, because they blew my cartridge belt off. Those magazines were twenty rounds. They didn’t go off. When I was laying there I couldn’t move. I thought, “Awwww!” [Pained sound] I couldn’t see. My face was bleeding. I could kind of see the blood squirting out of my gut.

22 TS: Bother your hearing too, or not?

NZ: Yes, a little bit. But it never . . . even to this day I don’t have any hearing loss. Then machine gun fire started. After we stopped the third wave, I believe it was. I watched. There was a Polish kid by the name of Chuck Jendraziak from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was going to go over and contact George Company and the Japanese fire caught him and rolled him just like a tin can. Over and over. Geez! And he was going—he was in the seminary to be a Catholic priest, and he felt guilty about not going. But he got killed.

Then all that machine gun fire. There was a Catholic priest by the name of Father Paul Redmond. He crawled up to me and he said a prayer. Every day I think, “How did he ever survive getting up to me?” You should have seen the way the guys were dropping. And he came right to me and he was saying that prayer to me and he says, “You’re a brave Marine. God will take care of you. Your wounds will be healed.” And then he took off. And that’s when this one guy pulled me by the ankles and down that hill that Dunbar carried me back. I

TS: Laying there, Nick, were you scared?

NZ: Yes. I was scared, but not a yellow scared. I was just,Generation you know,Part I was just kind of, “Why did this have to happen?” I thought I was lucky I was living. I was thinking about this side [of my body]. I wondered how bad that is. “Am I going to be . . .?” Every time I would breathe it would squirt up. But it turned out good. Society

TS: So you were evacuated quickly enough? Project: NZ: Yes. Greatest

TS: Did you stay conscious the whole time? Historical NZ: Yes. History TS: So you didn’t lose enough blood to pass out.

NZ: No. Oral Minnesota's TS: You were evacuated to a Higgins boat and then to a larger ship. Minnesota NZ: Yes. Big converted transport. It was a hospital ship. And from there to New Caledonia.

TS: That’s pretty far.

NZ: Yes. I went there. That’s when they awarded us guys the Purple Heart [military award for wounded in action]. And I was in the hospital there for about six, eight weeks. Something like that. Then they said, “You’re going back to the States.” I said, “No, I’m not.” They sent me back to Guadalcanal [in the Solomon Islands, Southwest Pacific]. I just couldn’t seem to leave these

23 guys that I’d trained with. The Raiders. They were so closely knit. So I went back to Guadalcanal.

TS: Did you have any lasting results of the injuries that you had suffered on Guam or were you able to get along okay?

NZ: I got along good. I really did. For years after I got out I’d be shaving or something and I’d start bleeding and I’d go to the doctor and he was always cutting and pulling little chunks out of my skull. Chunks of shrapnel.

TS: They were still in there?

NZ: And then when I went to . . . in fact, in 1995 I went down to Rochester [Minnesota]. I had prostate surgery. And the doctor says, “What did you do for a living?” I said, “Electrician.” “You weren’t an electrician.” I said, “Why?” He says, “You know, there’s so much Imetal in you, don’t even think about . . .” What do you call that test? An MRI. “You’ve got too much steel in your body.” And it’s still in there. I find it here [points to hand] and then it disappears. Then I’d find one here, it would disappear. GenerationPart TS: It moves around?

NZ: Yes. And you know, the reason I don’t get infections, they were redSociety hot when they went in. So they’re sterile.

TS: I guess there’s a blessing in that. So you haveProject: little bits of shra pnel that came out or are still in there. Greatest

NZ: Yes. There’s three big ones right in my gut here [motions to midsection]. They can’t take them out. Once in a while I get pain but it disappears.Historical

TS: How big are these things? History

NZ: About the size of a nickel. There’s one that’s supposed to be oval shape. Oral TS: You decidedMinnesota's to not go back to the States. That may have been your ticket out, you know.

NZ: Yes. There was no questionMinnesota about it. Just go back to the States. I said, “No, I’m not going.” So I snapped out of it and went back to Guadalcanal. The guy said, “You idiot.” But I’m glad I went back. I wasn’t glad at the time. But after we hit Okinawa and all those guys were killed . . . They were just really . . . and you could just see in that one book. That other book I got out. This one here [indicates a photo book of Marines on Okinawa].

TS: You trained on Guadalcanal, then, before you went to Okinawa?

NZ: Right.

24 TS: The invasion of Okinawa, I want to ask you to speak about that a little bit. When did you learn that you were going to Okinawa? When was it common knowledge to the troops?

NZ: About a month before July. I would say about June they said we were going to take one more island. But they weren’t sure if we were going to hit Formosa [now known as Taiwan] or Okinawa.

TS: Okinawa was the 1st of April [1945]. So February or March they must have told you this.

NZ: Yes. We kind of figured it might be Formosa, because we were pretty close to Japan there. And for some reason or other they said we did need Okinawa. It would have been a lot better. So we hit there. We hit right by Yontan airstrip [near the middle of Okinawa], and we took the airstrip the first day.

TS: You weren’t part of the Iwo Jima attack [in February 1945], but you certainlyI must have heard by this time what was going on with those guys.

NZ: Oh, yes. We heard about that bloodshed. They were just . . .everybody’s attitude kind of changed before the war ended, because they really got hitGeneration bad there.Part

TS: How did that impact you guys? In a sense you’re waiting for what you know could be just as bad. Society

NZ: Yes. Everybody started talking different. They’re getting silent in their talks. It was . . . we heard about Peleliu [in the Palau Islands, western Project:Pacific; captured by US forces 1944] and Tarawa [Atoll, captured by US forcesGreatest 1943]. That’s one that shocked us mostly, when they hit Tarawa. We just about lost a whole regiment of Marines before they got one guy ashore. And what gets me is, they understood that. They really never needed to take Tarawa because the Philippine airport was closer to what we needed thanHistorical Tarawa. So there was a lot of military blunders I think. History TS: And a lot of guys died because of it.

NZ: Yes. Oral Minnesota's TS: Marines spearheaded both invasions, didn’t they? Minnesota NZ: Yes.

TS: April 1, 1945 was the landing on Okinawa. Can you describe from your perspective what that looked like, and what you experienced?

NZ: It was April 1st, April Fools Day. Well, you’re coming in to the beach there. So we got the 3rd Marine Division south, and they made two or three fake landings and the Japanese fired at them. So they moved all the troops down there. And we came in to Yontan airstrip [in the middle of Okinawa] without any opposition. On the China Sea side. We couldn’t believe we took that

25 thing. They called them revetments. There’s walls and they put their Zeroes, their fighter planes, in there, and our Air Force wiped them all out in there. There was nothing left.

TS: A lot of guys had feared a bloodbath.

NZ: We thought we were going to get hit as soon as we landed. But no, that 3rd Marine Division, when they made those fake landings, they drew them all down there.

TS: You got ashore with minimal casualties.

NZ: Yes. There was only a few. I don’t know how they ever got in. I saw a couple dead Marines. Then we cut the island in half. But that night, I’ll never forget—a Zero came in and landed [at the airport we had captured]. He didn’t know we were there, and as soon as he parked it regimental weapons [company] wiped him out with 37mms. I TS: The Japanese pilot actually landed the plane?

NZ: Yes, he landed. He didn’t know we took the airport. We cut the island in half, then we headed north. Then we hit Mount Yaetake, Wildcat RidgeGeneration up there. PartThat’s where I was a point man with my BAR [Browning Automatic Rifle]. I never thought of anything. He said, “You take the point.” So I took the point and went up there. I’m about a couple hundred yards ahead of everybody else. I’m going up there and keeping off the trail and keepingSociety my eyes peeled and there was a Polish guy. He was connecting file and I said, “I don’t hear nothing. There’s no Japs. I don’t know where . . . whatever happened to them?” Then I went back, I was going to talk him, and I just turned to walk away and a sniper nailed Project:him right in the right lung. And that thing hit just like you hit him across the back withGreatest a boat oar. That slap.

TS: Really. You could hear that sound? Historical NZ: Yes. Then the corpsman came, and that Polish guy went back to the States. Then I was moving out again and then G CompanyHistory was comi ng up. They used to call me Greek because I used to shave my head. “Come on, G Company’s going up there to bivouac.” And I said, “We’ll see you later,” or something. Haaa! Just about that time, maybe fifteen minutes later, after I saw the last guy in that companyOral go, boy did they cut us up. Oh, yes. They were right on that Mount Yaetake, rightMinnesota's on that ridge. You couldn’t believe the casualties. I remember them carrying these guys in stretchers. Then I was down . . . we were breaking over this hill and the machine fire was so intense you could just seeMinnesota the grass going over. It was trimming the grass.

So we got over the top of that hill and we had to get across this clearing, so one Marine ran across it. He got cut down right away. So they started putting us in parties of four and I had the Browning Automatic. We ran across that, and for some reason, nobody shot anymore. I dove into that trench. I bet it was ten feet deep. I landed right on a bunch of rocks. It never hurt me at all. And then the mortar fire started coming up, so we scattered out of there. Went up the hill there. They were just dropping Marines like crazy. That evening I went back to pick up rations. There were dead Marines everywhere you looked.

26 TS: How did that impact you? You’re as close as possible, there’s death all around you. How do you internalize that?

NZ: You know what really got me wasn’t being killed. I didn’t care if I got killed. But how are my parents going to take this? That’s what bothered me the most, I think. What if I don’t get back? My mom, I know she’d go crazy. My dad, too. They babied me. I was the youngest. That’s what bothered me the most, seeing those dead Marines. Telegrams to their parents and where they came from, and the stories they told me what they were going to do. This one guy, his name was Williamson, William Williamson, and he was from Oregon, and we used to study how we were going to buy two Indian motorcycles. And I would meet him in Oregon and we were going to go to South America. He was killed, so that was the end of that. Guys all over. They had their stories, and it was all over.

Out there you just live from day to day. Just watching all that. Everyday somebody getting killed and just hoping it’s not me. A lot of guys . . . I heard this a lot of times, “I wishI I’d get killed. Who wants to go through this every night?” That artillery fire. Then artillery fire quit at night because somebody figured out a system. They call it a flash bang system. When you’d see the flash of an artillery, Japanese artillery, the muzzle blast, you see the bright, then you time it from that time to the time you hear it. They figured with some Generationkind of calculatorPart how far he was and [makes blast noise] that’s the end of them. Then no more artillery at night. That saved a lot of Marine lives. Society TS: This sweep through the north of Okinawa, you covered a lot of territory.

NZ: Yes. Project: Greatest TS: The north was cleared pretty quickly wasn’t it?

NZ: Yes. We went through there. Really moving out.Historical We got rid of all the Japs. There were Japs piled up, I’m telling you. I’m not exaggerating. There were—for two square blocks there was no place—especially where the 29th MarinesHistory went in, there wasn’t a place where you could walk unless you walked on bodies. It was just . . . I don’t know how they hit them so bad. They must have been marching through there or something. And then what they did, they took flamethrowers, and theyOral burned them all. They were all smoking. Their clothes were burning and everything.Minnesota's

TS: The stench must have Minnesotabeen horrible.

NZ: You can’t . . .the stench, it’s not as bad, though, as you think. It’s a sweet smell when flesh is burning. I thought it would stink, a stench, but it wasn’t. It’s a sweet smell. When we piled them up with that Sherman tank we could smell them, but they weren’t . . . sickening. When they decomposed, that’s when they stink. But when they’re burning they don’t. So then we got down that way and relieved the 27th.

TS: An Army unit you relieved?

27 NZ: Yes. Then we went down by Naha. And just before we hit Naha we had a bivouac where we burned all those Japanese. This night it started raining. Waiting there. Trying to get out of the rain and find—this kid, his name was Louteneau, he was from Detroit, and he was on the amphibious tractor, the one with the turret on it. And I think they have a three-inch gun in there on that one. I said, “Why don’t you straddle my foxhole so the rain stays out?” He says, “Okay.” So he straddled that thing. And I think it was about one o’clock in the morning and it stopped raining. The moon was out and I could hear him tapping on the side of the tank. He said, “Greek, get out of here. I might have to pull out. There’s a bunch of Jap reinforcements coming in.” So then we got out of there and shared a foxhole with some other guys. The word came out, “Don’t fire until you see the flares.” The reinforcements are being flanked by a destroyer and a cruiser. And here comes those Japanese in boats. They figured we killed twenty-four hundred Japs there. And when they came in…

[Tape interruption] I NZ: The Japs came in and we started cutting loose. When you looked down the line . . . we always carried air-cooled machine guns, not the water-cooled, because they were too heavy to carry. And we were moving too fast always, and you could see they looked like fluorescent light bulbs from the machine gun fire. Then these amphibious Generationtractors, theyPart went out there and they fired what they called a canister. Ever hear that? A canister is made like a pot of plastic, and there’s all kinds of metal and lead in there. As soon as it leaves the barrel it expands. Society TS: So it covers a huge area right in front of it?

NZ: Yes. So the Japs are all over. And the amphibiousProject: tractors are going and blasting machine guns and all that. You could see the bodiesGreatest get caught in those tracks. Just ground them up. We’d kill all of them. Then all night we’d see one trying to get up. Splash him with your M1 rifle. [Makes shooting noise] He’d be gone. You’d see another one. Picking them off. Historical TS: Was it hard at all to know that you were aiming at someone and killing them? History NZ: No, didn’t bother me at all, because I knew they were trying to kill me. I just thought I’d get him first. No sympathy here. No. Just keep blasting. That’s the way we were trained. You’re not going to kill them, get outOral of the Marine Corps. That’s one thing I learned about being trained properly. Minnesota'sYou had the officers that were boxers, judo experts, and they’d already been in the Corps ten, fifteen years. Those guys were trained. That was their life in the military. And they trained us. There were no ninety-dayMinnesota wonders [rapid ly trained junior officers] that came and told us anything. Those guys . . .

TS: You guys didn’t have ninety-day wonders like the Army and Navy?

NZ: No. They did, but we didn’t. These guys were really . . . and when you made a mistake, they called you on it. “Where are you from? You idiot!” And boy, you miss a target on that rifle range, they’d ream you out. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you blind?”

28 TS: In a sense though, I think I’d rather have someone like that if my life was going to be on the line.

NZ: Oh, yes. I never took that. He says, “Take a breath.” You’ve got that pith helmet. It was painted green. We’d look in and stare at it with our eyes. [Makes shooting noise] Green cleared the eyes.

TS: Were you a good shot?

NZ: I was expert.

TS: Sweeping to the north of Okinawa and the south, too, you must have encountered civilians, the civilian population.

NZ: Yes. There was a massacre on them, too. We sent out pamphlets for themI to stay in their caves and their homes at night, and they’d wander at night, and I remember that we cut the island in half there. I don’t know how come I was in the foxhole by myself. I could hear something coming up. Pretty soon machine guns along the road cut loose. There were about a dozen women there and all night there was a little newborn baby [makesGeneration crying noises].Part That’s always—the next morning we picked up that baby and gave it to some Seabees [Navy construction engineers] that came through there, and they took the baby to the hospital. All dead. Society TS: Was that hard? Because those were all civilians.

NZ: Yes. That was awful to see that. But they wereProject: so aged. And then there was such a propaganda with the Japanese. I got hitGreatest before we completed the whole mission there. They were jumping off these cliffs, committing suicide, because they [the Japanese] said we were going to kill them all anyhow. A lot of them died. We had no intention of doing that. Historical TS: Did you have any personal contact with them? History NZ: No. We couldn’t understand them anyhow. They had their own language. But I know when we were marching, we would see them in the rice paddies. We tried to figure out which ones were male military men.Oral They were kind of spying on us. “Go check them out. He’s military age.” Minnesota's

TS: So you couldn’t trust theMinnesota civilians?

NZ: No, you couldn’t trust them.

TS: Were any prisoners captured on Okinawa? Were there any military prisoners of war?

NZ: I knew they captured two or three, our outfit did. Just my outfit. But I knew that other outfits captured more of them. The way the saying was going, they were going to take them somewhere by a jail or out to an impoundment. They shot them before they got there.

29 TS: You mean the Marines shot them?

NZ: Yes, that was told to me. Because they said they’d never make it back if they took them that far. But anyhow, I know there’s a lot of them captured, but not in our outfit. We never—and they told us, “If you’re going to take a prisoner you have to feed him out of your own rations.” Why should I?

TS: People can become callous after a while.

NZ: Oh, you’d be surprised how callous. You see those dead . . . I remember in northern Okinawa I was at the point, and I saw a Jap laying there. And I told my buddy, “Look at the length of this guy. How tall he is.” And I laid next to him. He was just as tall as me if not a little taller. He was an Imperial Marine. I said, “He’s dead.” Because I kicked him. He had rigor mortis and everything. He was killed. Dead maybe two or three days. There were a lot of bugs on him and everything. Anyhow, there’s no wounds on him. I can’t see any. I didn’tI want to touch him. Every Marine that went by him went [makes shooting noise] and gave him another one. He must have had so many slugs in him by the time we finished walking by there. You just get so calloused and so sick of them. Every night you can’t sleep. Laying in the rain and you’re not eating properly, diarrhea. Everything. Jungle rot. On GuadalcanalGeneration I Parthad jungle rot. A sore about that big [indicates size of a half dollar], about that deep [indicates a half inch]. It wouldn’t bleed, it was just seeping. Society TS: Liquid or something?

NZ: Yes. So this one doctor says, “Go down to MaProject:tanikau River, and fill that thing with that mud and bandage it up and forget it about.”Greatest I did that and that thing disappeared. With mud right in there. He served in the Philippines, and that’s where he learned it. He says, “Mother Earth cures.” Right by the mouth of the Matanikau River I got a handful of that mud and [slap] I put it in there. He said, “Don’t take it out. Let the bandageHistorical rot off.” It hardly left a scar. Then your toes. Sometimes your toes would be so bad you could just about see the bones in them. The doctor asked me what kind of an upbringingHistory I had, what I ate, because I never had malaria. Mostly all my buddies had malaria. I never did have it.

TS: How did they explainOral that? You just didn’t get it? Minnesota's NZ: I just never got it. We got cows, chickens, pigs. I ate all that stuff. A lot of garlic and everything. I remember I usedMinnesota to crave, I used to fill my pockets full of raisins. I used to always eat raisins. I don’t know, maybe that had something . . . but I never had malaria. A lot of guys had Dengue Fever, yellow jaundice. It’s also called hepatitis. Then every night getting shelled like that. You get so hardened.

TS: What’s it like existing on not much or no sleep?

NZ: Your youth is it. You’re young. You could never do it now. Then it rained, and you would be shaking in that foxhole.

30 TS: After the north was cleared, the Marines were called upon to move south.

NZ: Yes.

TS: And that’s where most of the Japanese were.

NZ: Yes. We hit a big mob north of Mount Yaetake and we secured that. Then we moved and we wiped out Nago, that submarine base there. Blew up everything. Then we moved south and took that one Army Division out of there, and we started going to Sugar Loaf.

TS: That lasted for days and days.

NZ: Yes.

TS: Can you describe your time there and how that all appeared to you? I

NZ: The Sugar Loaf Hill on the north side was the one that they [US ground forces] took three times, but the south side, I think we took it right away. That’s where we lost E Company. They were really concentrated there. There was machine gun fire.Generation But therePart wasn’t even a weed left standing. Everything was blown out.

TS: How was the weather by now? Society

NZ: It was nice and sunny. Warm. Project: TS: So the rainy period was gone? Greatest

NZ: Yes. Up in the northern end it was worse. It was raining all the time. There were times . . . if you look in that book [on Nick’s Marine Corps uniHistoricalt in Okinawa] you see some of those scenes. You can’t believe it. It’s hard. Some of those things, it’s been fifty-seven years ago, but . . . History TS: On Sugar Loaf, you were in foxholes there?

NZ: Yes. Oral Minnesota's TS: What’s it like in these foxholes where you’ve got decomposing bodies and horrible conditions? How do you dealMinnesota with that?

NZ: I don’t know how you do it. I think it just has to be the way—you’re tired. You’re just sick of the Japanese. You’re sick of the weather. You’re sick of your diet. You’re sick of this and you just . . . everything just falls in place. You figure you’re not going to make it anyhow, so why should you care?

TS: Did that thought cross your mind? I’m not going to make it?

31 NZ: Yes. Oh yes, many times. One of those shells would hit; it would bury me. The dirt and the coral rock. Land on top of you. Oh, cripe! You know. And then the next one would hit. Just like this John McCormick. He was the one who was a professor at the University of Alabama. He was in the foxhole. I’m up here and he’s down there with a guy by the name of Mosley. And one [mortar] shell came over. [Explosion noise] And then the next one. And the next one. I said, “Mo!” (I called him Mo.) “Mo, get out of there, you’re bracketed [enemy mortar adjusting range to zero in on the position].” He said, “How do you know?” I said, “I’m telling you.” And he got out of that foxhole, and they came and jumped in mine and landed right on my back, and the next shell hit. Direct hit. It blew his weapon and every pack out [of that foxhole]. And every time we’d have a Marine Raider reunion he’d always come up, “Thank you. I made it back through you.”

TS: You saved his neck.

NZ: Yes. Yes. He always used to watch it when they’d bracket. There’d be a longI one [landed behind the position], then a short one [landed in front of the position]. Then you’d cut it in half. Then they had you zeroed in [had the exact range determined]. You better get out of there.

TS: You had a number of close calls that you’ve describedGeneration already. PartI guess it would have been tempting to think that, eventually, you were going to get it.

NZ: Yes. Society

TS: And eventually you were wounded on Okinawa. Project: NZ: Yes. Greatest

TS: And can you describe what happened to you? Historical NZ: I got wounded. When I first got wounded there was a guy by the name of Sergeant Brown who was killed. He was going to Historylook at my leg, and he got shot right between the eyes and fell right on top of me. So I pushed him off of me. And this other guy that’s already got a silver plate in his head and I’m sitting there . . . Oral TS: WhereMinnesota's had you been wounded by the way? You were wounded in the leg?

NZ: Yes. And I’m sitting thereMinnesota before I got wounded and I had my BAR in there. This [Japanese] machine gun fire is coming this way toward me. I was just going to hit the deck and oop! I go downhill right on my back. So I just sat up like this and [the Japanese firing at me] went around this leg and he peppered about a dozen rounds in between my legs. That sand was hitting me in the face. I could feel that leg bone when he hit it. He chipped the bone. Then I saw blood. Then I hit the deck.

TS: So one round hit your leg.

NZ: Yes.

32 TS: But this was a fifty-caliber round.

NZ: Yes. About fifty-one. I had a hole like that [indicates half dollar size]. This is all dead yet [without any feeling]. [Slaps leg] So anyhow, then they bandaged me up there and I was talking to the guy. I said, “This is Purple Heart number two. I’m going back to the States.” Because I knew this wasn’t going to heal. And I started going down, limping, down there. My boot was full of blood there.

TS: You could limp on the other leg?

NZ: Yes. Anything just to get out of there. I hear someone yelling, “Greek! Greek!” What the hell are they yelling? I looked back, looked behind me. That same [Japanese] sniper had the machine gun, and he came and I hit the ditch and I pulled my shoulder and my heart down and I laid down like—and that machine gunner, he tore the pack right off my back. So anyhow, then he came and I’m not watching. I laid there for a while, laid there and laid there,I and my leg is aaach! Is burning, oooh! So it’s no use getting up until something happens. So then I lit a cigarette. I used to smoke then. And I laid there and laid there.

Finally I crawled and I wentsomehow I got fouled up andGeneration there wasPart some kind of three walls. And I got in there and then [the Japanese gunner] started peppering that, and the cement started coming back, hitting me in the face. I backed out of there. Then I laid there maybe for fifteen, twenty minutes and I said, “If I can just get over this little hill,”(it was justSociety a small knoll), “then I’ll be out of it.” Then I made up my mind to get up and I took off and I dove and he never did fire again. My buddy, he was from New Mexico, by the name of Jim Gardner, he picked me up and took me down to a sickbay. And there was a sickbay,Project: a canvas over a bunch of coral rocks, and that’s where they bandaged me up.Greatest Then they took me with a recon up to the airport, to Yontan airstrip. And then they flew me to Guam [to a hospital facility].

TS: Were you out of there the same day? Historical

NZ: Yes. History

TS: Were you, in a sense, relieved to know that this wound was going to get you back to the States? Oral Minnesota's NZ: Yes I was, kind of. I knew this was going to be tricky, because I had a plastic surgery on it. I knew it was going to take tooMinnesota long. But I never thought that when I was in Seattle. And that’s when they dropped the atomic bomb [in August 1945]. Then we knew for sure.

TS: So you thought even in Seattle that you might—?

NZ: Be back again. Yes, because we were losing men, quite a few.

TS: After twice being wounded, how was it to think, “Oh, my God. I might not be done?”

33 NZ: Yes. I was thinking, “Don’t tell me.” The good thing about the nerve that was shot was the doctor said it was going to be a while before I had plastic surgery. Then the war was going on. Then that typhoon even hit. Remember that typhoon? And I got back to the States just in time before that. And it took us something like . . . from Guam, I bet it took us fourteen to sixteen days to get back. And then there was a guy next to me. His name was Schofield. He had a phosphorus grenade that we used to throw in the caves, and a sniper hit that and it burned him. Can you imagine, every time the ship would rock? Aaah! [Pained sound] And I remember, I’m reading him different stories and books and everything to see if he could . . . and he survived it. I met him in Great Lakes [Naval Training Center]. He came up to me and wanted to read me a story. I says, “What do you mean?” All they had to do, they were working on his nose yet. The rest was pretty well fixed, but they were rebuilding his nose.

Another thing I got asked when we were in northern Okinawa there. We had these flamethrowers go in there. The Japanese would come out of those caves with their skin and clothes and everything burning. We’d pick them off. We just . . . it was like an amusementI park. It was fun killing them like that. And they’re coming out of there, trying to put themselves out and [makes shooting noises] we just nailed them as they were coming out. You get hardened. You just . . . you have no sense of . . . no sympathies at all. GenerationPart TS: How do you get rid of that sense, that feeling or that callousness once you’re a civilian?

NZ: I can’t understand that. It didn’t bother me at all. I never wake up atSociety night with any nightmares or anything. A lot of guys do. A lot of guys won’t even talk about it. And it doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t know why. I think it was just the way, I was telling you, I was raised in Bovey with shooting this and that. Killing those bigProject: bulls with a sledgehammer and cutting their throat. A lot of guys didn’t do that. TheyGreatest didn’t do any of that stuff. Some guys down south, they put on boots, that was the first time they had shoes on. There was a lot of destitute people when they went in the Marine Corps. Historical TS: So for you, you feel you were able to come back and, in a sense, shed that personality with the uniform. History

NZ: Yes. Oral TS: That Minnesota'swas something you did, and now it’s the past?

NZ: Right. I just never getMinnesota up at night thinking about it. The only thing that bothers me is all my friends that have died. Why did they have to die? Why do they all have to be gone now? That’s why I’m kind of a loner now, because there’s nobody that I can go with, nobody that has anything in common like I have.

TS: The Marine Corps combat veterans that really shared what you went through, there aren’t very many of you guys left.

NZ: No, there’s not. They’re dying fifteen hundred to two thousand a day now.

34 TS: I’ve read the paper, the Star Tribune, read the obituaries, and I must have counted six veterans just today. I wanted to ask you, when you were overseas and you were overseas for a long time, how did you stay in touch with family and loved ones back home?

NZ: Writing letters.

TS: Were you a regular letter writer?

NZ: Oh, yes. They always used to censor them.

TS: Did you self-censor kind of what you wrote?

NZ: I just told my folks what was happening. I didn’t tell them what island I was on, because they [the military censors] would have cut that out anyhow. I just would write maybe once a week. Then I’d get a lot of letters from home. I

TS: Did you like getting letters from home?

NZ: Oh, yes. GenerationPart

TS: Why was that important? Society NZ: It was something different. What’s happening? What’s the weather? It’s about twenty below today at home, and here I’m in the jungle. Cripes, the coconuts are falling on me. You couldn’t figure out how could it be so hot here and it was justProject: freezing at home. It’s December and you’re playing in the ocean trying to soak yourGreatest feet or something.

TS: The weather would have been a real change. Historical NZ: And you know, when I was on Guadalcanal and I was on this boat hauling garbage out into the Coral Sea, and you know that Historywe parked and we dumped garbage a little beyond there. But we parked and that guy that drove that boat said, “Do you know what’s right behind us? The USS Juneau. That’s where the five Sullivans [who were brothers] died, in the [Battle of the] Coral Sea, on the USS OralJuneau. Sunk right there.” Can you imagine that family when they got the telegram?Minnesota's That’s when they changed the rules—no more family on one ship.

TS: All five of them were Minnesotalost, weren’t they?

NZ: Yes. Then we used to watch when we were going to Okinawa and we saw the USS Randolph, the carrier, and one more, the USS Franklin. My buddy from Marble, Minnesota was on that. That thing was listing so bad, and you know they got that thing back to New York. All the way back.

TS: What could you see? You were on the island. Could you see the ships off Okinawa?

35 NZ: Oh, yes, you could see. We were down by Naha and you could see the kamikazes hitting our carriers and battlewagons. You would never believe, you could see the bodies flying off the decks. Then when we were on northern Okinawa, there we finally took our shoes off after about three or four weeks, and we were in this one creek. I was just going to show you the courage of American troops. And we were sitting in the creek, and all of a sudden I could hear regimental weapons [company] cut loose [begin to fire their weapons]. They had us in the water [makes shooting noises]. And here comes a [Japanese] Zero [fighter plane] right over this hill, and everybody scattered out of that ditch, and he sprayed that riverbed, that creek bed. Never hit any of us. Somebody got on the phone and called the Yontan airstrip and they got this Marine aviator with a Corsair Vaught F-4U Corsair, single engine fighter plane], that fighter plane with the inverted gull wings. He came up there and we’re watching the Zero, he’s looking for a target. Here comes that Corsair. Pretty soon [makes airplane noises] and he looks like a fish hawk up there. And he spotted that Zero.

TS: You guys could see all this from the ground? I

NZ: Oh, yes. Just like watching TV. He came and he spotted [makes airplane noises] and he dove and he nailed him [makes shooting noises]. The Zero started burning and he was falling. Burning and burning. The wing was burning bad, and to Generationsee that pilotPart trying to get out of there. He wasn’t even moving. I think he was already dead. And that Marine pilot followed him all the way down, until he blew up. Then he [makes airplane sounds] went around in a circle, wiggled his wings, opened up his canopy and waved to us, and took off back to theSociety airport. “Anybody else bothers you, let me know.” Talk about courage. He never thought anything of it. Must have interrupted his coffee hour or something. Project: TS: Good friends to have around aren’tGreatest they?

NZ: [Nods head] Historical TS: Did you make lasting contacts during your time in the Marines? You’ve talked about a lot of people here in the last hour. Did youHistory make contacts with people that you stayed in touch with after the war?

NZ: Oh, yes. I call oneOral in Alabama. I call one in Texas, and Seattle. All these places. Minnesota's TS: So you had a number of people that you sort of got close to. Minnesota NZ: Oh, yes. Really close. You see them at the reunions. That’s a gift. You don’t see them for years and you see them. We’re talking and, “Who are you?” “What do you mean, who am I? You know.” You never see them for forty-five, fifty years. It’s just, “I remember you. Oh, yeah. Remember that night you just about got killed, Nick?” “Yes, I was right near you.” You forget all these little details until someone remind you. But you go to the Marine Raider reunions, there’s hardly anybody left now.

TS: Have you been going to these reunions for a long time?

36 NZ: I used to, but then they had them in San Diego and down in Florida. They had a couple in Minneapolis, but I don’t want to go as far [as California or Florida]. And then another thing—I wouldn’t mind if they had a reunion, just talk about where we were, but then they have some kind of a golf tournament or something like that. I’m not a golfer. I’m not going to be in it. I don’t want to go that far for that. But it’s nice. Then this guy I met in Grand Rapids. He’s from Clearwater, down by St. Cloud. Do you know where Clearwater is? His name is Charles H. Smith. The one I met in Grand Rapids that I recognized.

TS: You stay in touch with him now?

NZ: Oh, yes. Every once in a while I call him. He was in the same foxhole. He was wounded.

TS: I think everybody was wounded, it sounds like.

NZ: Yes. Everybody was wounded. Everybody was shot. I

TS: I don’t know how you can do that day after day, like you said, and stay sane. When you went to those reunions, Nick, what prompted you to go? GenerationPart NZ: I missed the guys. I know everybody was getting old. Dying of natural causes. Got to see them before they die. There’s a lot of them that can’t make it. It’s just too far. I don’t want to go on a plane. Society

TS: You don’t want to go on a plane? Project: NZ: No. Everybody looks like a terrorisGreatestt. All a bunch of freaks.

TS: You were on Okinawa on April 12, 1945, the day President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt died. Historical NZ: Yes. History TS: Do you remember how you reacted when you heard that news?

NZ: Oh, everybody wasOral so sad. You can’t believe it. I remember it like it was yesterday. “You hear RooseveltMinnesota's died?” Everybody was silent. Everybody was just, oh cripe, they couldn’t believe it. But the big news is . . . when did that war end in Europe? Minnesota TS: May 8th.

NZ: Yes. We figured May the 8th, now the war’s going to be over here, too. Then we got so much battle to go through yet. Okinawa was the last one though.

TS: Did the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 make much of a difference to you guys?

37 NZ: Oh, yes. We started getting more troops, more ships and everything. You watched that British fleet coming in there, and all of their battlewagons and destroyers and everything. You could see the difference in their makeup compared to us.

TS: You could tell.

NZ: The British, yes.

TS: That’s interesting. So you could see all the ships, couldn’t you?

NZ: Oh, yes. You could really sightsee. Then we watched the battle. There on Okinawa, laying on the beach, watching the battle of Ie Shima [a small island lying right offshore of Okinawa]. We watched them. I remember laying on that beach watching that firefight. That was Ernie Pyle [US war correspondent] up there. I didn’t know him, but you could see them. He got killed on that island. I

[Tape interruption]

TS: That was Ie Shima. GenerationPart

NZ: Ie Shima, a little island. Off the northern part there. Society TS: You were back in Seattle in a hospital when the war against Japan ended.

NZ: Yes. Seattle Naval Hospital. When it was over.Project: Greatest TS: It did come rather suddenly, the end.

NZ: Yes. After that bomb it was really done. [TheHistorical U.S. dropped atomic bombs on August 6th on the city of Hiroshima and on August 9th on the city of Nagasaki.] History TS: Yes. How did you react to the news of V-J Day?

NZ: I went out of my mind,Oral I was so happy. Oh! Everybody was, “We’re going home. No more going backMinnesota's there.” Everybody thanked God that we had President [Harry S.] Truman to make that decision. Minnesota TS: What’s interesting is that when you were wounded on Guam you could have come back to the States, but wanted to go back out. The second time you were wounded, I’m not hearing you say that you wanted to go back again.

NZ: No. I don’t know. It just seemed like I was run down. It seemed like . . .then when I saw my leg was blown like that. “I can’t stick around here any more. I might as well get me out of here.” It would have been different if I had just a little hole in me or something. I was still a Marine, though. If they would have told me after that to go back, I would have gone back.

38 TS: But your own desire to, your own being anxious to go back, that feeling had changed.

NZ: Yes. Because the hole was too big.

TS: Your leg wasn’t functioning right?

NZ: No. I hadn’t walked on it.

TS: Was there any kind of an impromptu celebration or party or something in the hospital where you were?

NZ: Oh, yes. There was no drinking or anything, but everybody went to the Beer Garden. I’ll never forget that one. Then I had my leg in a cast. The plastic surgeon took skin on there. This kid, I forget his name, he went on liberty one night after he got back from overseas and he got drunk and he fell crossing a railroad track and a train took all these four fingersI off. Then he had the plastic surgery growing skin off his chest on his arm. He took me to the Beer Garden with that cast on. He was a big guy and he pushed me. We went to see The Phantom of the Opera first, then we went to the Beer Garden. Then on the way back he was drunk. I wasn’t. He pushed me down the hall—D North was the name of my ward—andGeneration he pushedPart me and he tripped and he let me go. My cast got caught in between the bed and broke my cast off. All that new surgery was gone. I got an awful infection. Society TS: So you have something to remember V-J Day by, don’t you?

NZ: Yes. [Both laugh] Project: Greatest TS: One of the reasons the war ended so quickly was the use of the atomic bombs. At the time, did you feel our government was correct to use atomic bombs against Japan? Historical NZ: Yes. Every household—in this Marine magazine I got it says that every household in Japan had a weapon. They said if we wouldHistory have landed troops, we wouldn’t have had anybody left. Because they all had hidden weapons. And we went through there, they knew the land. The casualties would have been just . . . you know. Unbelievable. Oral TS: CouldMinnesota's have made Okinawa look like nothing.

NZ: Oh, yes. Minnesota

TS: How have your feelings changed on the atomic bomb question since 1945?

NZ: I don’t know. I just felt it was all right to use it at that time because of how long this war took. But now knowing that Iraq might have it [the interview took place prior to establishing that Iraq did not have such weapons], it kind of changes my mind about it. Because if it hits here, this is going to be . . . I think we believe in [President George W.] Bush and our government and they do what they think is best. I don’t think they should be laying back listening to these people who say, “We can’t go, we can’t go.” Once that bomb hits, it’s too late. And I think we made a

39 mistake when we were there the first time [during the Gulf War of 1990-1991]. We should have gone right to [Iraqi leader] Saddam [Hussein] and got rid of him.

TS: Nick, in December 1945 you were discharged.

NZ: On December 16th. Two days before I was twenty-one.

TS: You had a lifetime of experience, and not even twenty-one.

NZ: Yes.

TS: What was your initial reaction to being out of the military?

NZ: With the war over I had no reason to believe I should be there. That was the end of it. I did my duty and I’m going home now. I

TS: You had a number of months that they made you wait though.

NZ: Yes. GenerationPart

TS: How did you kill time all those months? Society NZ: [I took] 52-20 [unemployment benefits available to discharged service personnel; $20 per week for a maximum of 52 weeks]. Took unemployment and finally got a job here and there. Everybody wanted to use it up and just relax. Project: Greatest TS: So after you got out in December, you did use some 52-20 money.

NZ: Yes. Maybe for half the time. Then I got a jobHistorical serving grocery stores and creameries.

TS: You mentioned you worked aHistory number of jobs before you got in at Minnesota Power and Light in the early 1950s.

NZ: Yes. Oral Minnesota's TS: What was the first thing you did when you were out of uniform as a civilian? Minnesota NZ: Went back to high school. Finished my senior year there. Straight As. Why I didn’t go to college, I’ll never know. I just . . . that group of people you bunked with. There’s nothing upstairs. And I could have gone on the GI Bill [education benefits available to discharged service personnel]. Disabled veteran. I could have. I never asked for it. Everything would have been paid. It was: get a job, get some money.

TS: So you second-guessed yourself on that?

40 NZ: Yes. That was the biggest mistake I ever made. The thing is to get [a college education]. Even when you go in the military. Get a couple years—even now, get a couple years of college and you got it made.

TS: I guess it would be easy to say it doesn’t matter, but you’ll admit that you made a mistake with that one, by not going to school.

NZ: Yes.

TS: How was it to come home and see your family and your brother and sisters again?

NZ: That was really something.

TS: Do you remember the day in December 1945 that you arrived back? I NZ: Yes. They picked me up in Duluth with a 1937 Packard. They brought me home. I still had my leg in a cast. And you know, another thing about before, the thing that really was the hardest for me. When I landed in Seattle the Red Cross would let me talk by the phone. Before when I came home on furlough, there was a guy by the name of GenerationBositch fromPart Nashwauk, [Minnesota] that was killed. We went to visit them when I had my uniform and they showed me a Purple Heart that he got. He was killed in action. I think he was killed on Guadalcanal. That was a battle that was fought before I got there. So anyhow, I called from Seattle andSociety my mother saw that Purple Heart. My oldest sister says, “It’s Nick. He wants to talk to you.” “No, he’s dead.” I said, “No.” I got on the phone. And you know, I had to discuss all the baby talk that I learned when I was just a kid in Serbia to her before she would believeProject: I was living. I had a hard time convincing her I was alive. Greatest

TS: Your poor mother. Historical NZ: Yes, because my voice changed when I went over. It was kind of high when I left and it dropped. History

TS: It was a couple of years you were gone. Oral NZ: Yes. Minnesota'sShe couldn’t believe that I was living.

TS: It must have been somethingMinnesota when they met you at the train station in Duluth.

NZ: Yes. It was really something. My brother was there and my sister-in-law. Then they hauled me all the way from Duluth to Bovey, in the car. Everybody was saying, “Oh, my God, whatever happened to him,” because you should have heard my vocabulary. Every time I got shelled I’d swear in Serbian and in English. And we’ve got Serbian words that it’s even hard to translate, that they’re so terrible. And I was using all those terms. And I never knew I was saying it.

TS: Talk about adjustments after the war. That was one of them—cleaning up your vocabulary.

41 NZ: Yes. [Both laugh]

TS: You were in the service; you were in some serious action on Guam and Okinawa. When you were there, when you thought about the war, what did the war mean? What was that all about when you were in the middle of all that?

NZ: It was just like my dad says: looking for our freedom. I didn’t want anybody tangling with this country. I had a beautiful life as a child and I didn’t want that interrupted no matter what I had to do. For the rest of the family, I said, “I’m going and that’s it.”

TS: Was it difficult to keep that focus when you were actually there?

NZ: No. I had that focus all the time. I said, “If I ever live through this, I’ll still come back to a free nation.” And you know what bothered me a lot of time, if we had lost the battle of Midway [Island, 1942], it could have been really bad here, because we weren’t preparedI for this World War II at all. They just had guardsmen or Reserves. In Seattle, at Fort Lewis [Army facility], those guys had obsolete rifles. What they had down at Bataan and Midway, on those islands, they didn’t have anything. They didn’t have any new weapons like a Garand or M1 or the Browning Automatic [various rifles introduced during theGeneration war]. TheyPart didn’t have anything. The war progressed, and you should see how we came about.

TS: With weapons, you mean? Society

NZ: Weapons, ships, Liberty ships [American pre-fabricated transport ship]. They were making a plane, every day they would make a brand new airplane.Project: They were building those Corsairs, one a day. If not two a day. Greatest

TS: When you think back on the war now, as you’ve said, it’s been fifty-seven years now, what’s changed in the way you understand what theHistorical war was all about?

NZ: I think the technology mostly,History what it’s going to be. It’s going to be, if we do have another, it’s going to be the same way. We’re going to have the Marines getting in there. You’re going to have to have ground troops. You can shell, you can do anything you want, bomb, firebomb, but they’re still there until Oralthe troops get in and dig them out. That’s what we found out. The technologyMinnesota's is different, but they’re going to have to go in there and dig them out. They’ll do it by their plans and that, but the enemy is still hidden. Minnesota TS: Does that worry you when you look at the situation in Iraq today [in late 2002, prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion]?

NZ: Yes. I think of the young guys that are going to get hit. I don’t know, to me it seems like they’re not . . . maybe the Marines are okay, but these other [service branches], I think they’re a little bit too lenient. You go into those countries . . . you went over there for a reason, to get rid of them. Get out of there. That’s the way we were. Finish them off. Just like that, who was that American guy that they brought back from Afghanistan?

42 TS: John Walker Lind [arrested in Afghanistan with the Taliban, 2001].

NZ: Yes. Blast him. What do you want to bring him to trial for? He’s the enemy. Get rid of him. When you go and meet the enemy, get rid of him.

TS: What’s the most important way that your war experience changed your life?

NZ: How would I ever say that? I know I was a good soldier. I was courageous. And I was proud of my country. And I’m proud and I’ll fight for the country . . . I’ll even go tomorrow, but I don’t want anybody touching this country. This is, like my dad said, this is it.

TS: How has your life path, do you think, been different because of the fact that you were a Marine in World War II?

NZ: I feel as though I’m so elevated and proud for what I did compared to ninety-nineI percent of the guys, because there were I don’t know how many millions of people that were in the Armed Forces. There were less than a million in combat.

TS: That’s right. Most people never got into combat. GenerationPart

NZ: I go into different clubs and that. I don’t know where these guys are hiding. How many wars have we had since World War II? They all figured a way to get out of it,Society and I never had that in my mind. I’m going to battle to protect this country and that’s it.

TS: Do you feel angry at other people who sort of,Project: in your opinion, ducked service? Greatest NZ: Yes. What good are they? What did they do? Do you think their life is any more valuable than mine? This woman, this mother lost her son. This other woman’s son that ran to Canada, do you think his life is better than the other guys? No,Historical no. I don’t. I can’t stand a draft dodger. Like they say, what do draft dodgers talk about when they have a reunion? They said there’s whole towns made of deserters up in Canada.History You’ll he ar from me if I know a guy is a draft dodger.

TS: Anything else you want to add, Nick? Oral NZ: There’sMinnesota's one more thing that I do. I [sing at] basketball games. I’m a soloist. This is on tape now? Minnesota TS: The tape’s running.

NZ: [Sings “God Bless America”]

TS: Nick, thank you very much for this interview.

NZ: You’re welcome.

43