Robert D. Shaffer, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, April 29, 2002: Saving the Legacy tape no. 448 and 449

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ROB RT D. HAFFER PRI 29 2002 BEC: Oh. ROB: And a young man by the name of Konishi was Major Matoba orderly. I've got a lacquer dish that Konishi won. He was a tailor and of course h was drafted in the Japanese Army and he was made an orderly and cook. But the night that they had the liver, Konishi left the camp, he wouldn't cook it, and I don't remember who did. Anyhow, the idea was that supposedly by eating part of the enemy, you would gain their spirit of ferocity or so forth. Anyhow, we hanged them both. But like I say, we rode out part of the typhoon and finally got to Guam and going in, we ran into a floating crane in the harbor. What had happened was that the officer who was the captain of the LST was a reserve and he wanted out so they let him out. And the fellow who was the executive officer took over and he wasn't as skilled a seaman as the captain had been, so we ran into the floating crane and sank it, in the harbor. BEC: ROB: BEC: ROB: You sank the crane? Yeah (laughs). We're here! (laughs) We're here! Absolutely. So then we unloaded, and there was a farm out there run by the government on Guam, by a man by the name of Swartz. It's where we took all the livestock and the horses. Swartz had a crippled leg; he was a government employee and how he got the job I don't know. But, anyhow, we moved into our camp and we held the trials on Mariana's Hill. And that's the only hill on Guam that's very high. Most of Guam is fairly flat. I went up to where the Third Marine Division Camp had been, after I got back to Guam, and the tents had fallen in, the growth had practically wiped out the campsite. In the tropics things grow like mad, Becky. Let's see, then, I 52