Bill Pastore, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Jason Hardy, September 20th, 2006: part of the Saving the legacy project

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people with so many points they re going home, and th y k pt th bird Marin in tact because they weren't real positive that the Japanese weren t going to tart aneth r war when they went into Japan proper. When the war ended, our assignment wa Japan. We were to land four days before D-Day and hold the beach. Now, when they first come out, there were seven division in this southern end of Japan. That's all that was down there, on this southern island. Well, the Japanese knew that's where we were coming. Nobody had made a secret of it, and that was the best place to land. They knew it. The Japanese aren't dumb, and they brought in, I think it ended up to be, thirteen divisions down there. They brought them in from China and Manchuria. These were hardened veterans. These weren't green troops, and boy, these bastards knew how to fight. They went all down in that southern area. So our marine division was the marine division that we was going to land three days before D-Day against thirteen divisions. Why, it probably would have been fun. It would have been interesting, I'm sure; and then the other divisions were going to come in. We were going to establish a beach head. It would have been a blood bath. We'd have won; we'd have taken it! We'd have won. That's the assignment they gave us. We'd have held that beach head if there 'd have been one man left; we'd still be holding that beach head. Then everybody else would have come in anyway. You know, that've been army, Marine Corps, everybody would have come in. But fortunately they weren' t. They didn't bomb the emperor's palace because had they bombed that emperor's palace-He isn't the president; he isn't the prime minister like the United States or Britain; he isn't elected. He's from God. He' s a direct descendant from God. So if you blew the 105