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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whole war that's good! That's good. Rather the enemy than a marin . hat ju t h w I feel. If I had a chance I'd have killed every Japanese soldier. When they say "I nev r hated them," I hated them. I hated them and I still hate them. I don't hate Japanese that are born here, and I don't hate the younger Japanese. They had nothing to do with it. But the guys my age that fought us on Iwo Jima and fought us on the islands, I hate their guts. I wouldn't go back. They wanted me to go back to Iwo Jima. You know, they had a reunion. Now all of a sudden they are shaking hands, the Japanese soldiers. I said, "I ain't going back. I wouldn't shake hands with them, unless I had a knife in the other hand." I'd take him out then. Now maybe that's harsh. Maybe I shouldn't even be talking like this, but that's how I feel and that's how I felt. I don't have any remorse at all about it. My only remorse is that so many marines were killed. I feel sorry about that. That's where the word "raggedy ass marines" comes from. We didn't have nothing. We didn't have nothing. We had to steal half the stuff we got because the navy didn't want to issue, waste the money on the Marine Corps, because we were going to be dead anyway. If whatever they give to the Marine Corps that takes appropriations away from them. I guess that's all right, but they don't want to give a marine a mission and then not expect him to fulfill it, because they will! They really will! They didn't think they'd do anything on Canal. They thought the Canal was just going to be a diversion just to worry the Japanese, with their Truk and Rabaul and stuff, but they assigned Guadalcanal to the Marine Corps. Said we want Guadalcanal, so they took it. Took them over a month. Took them almost three months to take the Canal. That' s a fair size island, and the jungles are deep. In our camp, they built the camp right 120