Walter W. Bauer, Kanab, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, February 20, 2003: Saving the Legacy tape nos. 586 & 587

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W T RW.B R BR R 2 2 0 WWB: Y e , everywhere they did. They wouldn t urr nd r and w had t kill them. A a matter of fact there were very few urvivor o to peak. On Saipan, we ran into the Chamorro , the native people. We had to hoot orne of them up at night becau they'd run around and we couldn't take a chance. Mo t of them urvived. One morning a family came out, a husband, a wife and I believe five children. She'd been hot in the buttocks, badly. So the husband came out of the cave originally and said his wife wa wounded but he said there were Japanese in there and they wouldn't let there t of them out. We told him to tell the Japanese to let them go because we were going to kill them anyway. Finally, the Japanese let them come out. So we took care of them. That poor lady ... Oh! She had a horrendous wound in her left buttock. Hopefully she survived but the husband and kids were all in as good as shape as they could be in a war, living in caves and so on. But the Chamorros were mostly pro-Japanese because the Japanese had gotten those islands in the treaty agreement after World War I. Saipan was, before that, a German island and Spanish before that. WPE: So the natives there appreciated the Japanese there more than those Europeans? WWB: Well, I would say that they were brainwashed to appreciate the Japanese rather than actually liking them. They had to put up with them or they'd get their head chopped off. Of course, I ran into some people on Guam and this boy told me that at five years old, the Japanese made him, along with all of his people, go out and work on the airfield. He was only five or six years old. So the Japanese weren't nice to the natives by any means. There are some reports that on Saipan and the other Marianas that the Japanese military not only encouraged but forced the civilians to commit "suicide" along with them. 37