Copy of Transcript by Emma Peterson
http://youtu.be/rmNjp69G-hQ
Interview Transcript

Time Code

Speaker

Narrative

00:00

Emma

(pause) This is an oral history interview conducted for the Witness to War: Serving a Nation project at Nauset Regional High School on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. For the sake of this interview, please state your full name and community in which you now reside.

00:18

Mr. Brandolini

Well I, my phone number I don’t have.

00:22

Emma

Your full name.

00:23

Mr. Brandolini

Oh, Enzo E-n-z-o Brandolini B-r-a-n-d-o-l-i-n-i.

00:34

Emma

(pause) And the community in which you now reside?

00:37

Mr. Brandolini

Well I reside here.

00:38

Emma

Which is...

00:40

Mr. Brandolini

Oh I don’t even know the name of it.

00:42

Emma

(laughs) The Liberty Commons?

00:44

Mr. Brandolini

Huh?

00:45

Emma

The Liberty Commons?

00:45

Mr. Brandolini

Oh yeah.

00:46

Emma

Yes, that one. (pause) Alright. So, the first question that we would like to ask is, (pause) um, what, what war were you in?

01:02

Mr. Brandolini

I was in the Fourth Division.

01:04

Emma

In...?

01:05

Mr. Brandolini

The Marine Corps. We go in the Pacific (pause) fighting the Japanese

01:15

Emma

But what war were you in?

01:17

Mr. Brandolini

The fourth war!

01:19

Emma

The...What general war?

01:23

Mr. Brandolini

Japan.

01:24

Emma

Which was in?

01:26

Mr. Brandolini

The Pacific Ocean.

01:29

Emma

(pause)(chuckles) Okay.

01:30

Mr. Brandolini

That’s alright. That’s alright I know what you mean.

01:35

Emma

Um, what was it like growing up for you?

01:39

Mr. Brandolini

I don’t know, I just roamed around ‘til I was twenty-five years old. And I went and joined the Marine Corps.

01:51

Emma

(pause) Why did you choose to live on Cape Cod?

01:55

Mr. Brandolini

On Cape- well, well my brother lives here with his wife and two kids. (pause) So I used to come here from California visit in October (pause) I spent the week with him and then he uh, I go back home. That’s where I went from there to Pendleton, the marine base, so that’s where I spent my time. (pause) (leans forward) Is there anything else?

02:29

Emma

(laughs)

02:30

Mr. Brandolini

Just ask! Don’t be bashful! (Julia and Emma laughing) Just ask, I don’t care.

02:33

Emma

Alright. Um, how did you end up in the military?

02:38

Mr. Brandolini

Well, I was (pause) I had a shoe repair shop in Walpole and some of the guys were talking about joining the Marines. They want to go to Boston, so we went to Boston that’s where I joined.

02:55

Emma

And you enlisted?

02:56

Mr. Brandolini

Yes.

02:58

Emma

Can you describe what a typical day in training was like?

03:03

Mr. Brandolini

Well, for days we gen(erally) get up in the morning to go to work and go take a shower and all that, then you go to breakfast, then you fall out with your uniform

03:16

Emma

What does that mean?

03:18

04:26

Mr. Brandolini

You cha-, you march all over the place that’s what you do. And then, march off through the camps, see, and then after that they have, they have um, the schooling of rifling, how to take care of your rifle, and then from there you go march again then, then you go to school again. And I went to (coughs) Infantry Weapons School. Learned all about the, my rifle, and all the guns that we (pause) use. I come back when I pass that, then I went to (pause) Heavy Weapons School, which the Rezur Reynold’s School. And I, I come out of that at 92%, so if you were at 85 [percent] you were out, so I got I got 92%.

That’s what’s a, what’s a (pause) 17 foot long rifle fire a bomb with it, and they shoot down your airplanes from your shoulder and then other guns you got 50 caliber guns and you got other heavy weapons: flamethrowers, and bazookas, stuff like that. All the heavy weapons stuff, the, the, the regiment uses. We also used that once in awhile. When we need it we’ll send one of the boys out with a crew and they’ll go out with the weapons. That comin’ out all right?

05:15

Emma

So um, you said you were deployed in Japan. Correct?

05:20

Mr. Brandolini

I was deployed in what?

05:21

Emma

In Japan?

05:23

Mr. Brandolini

Yes I was

05:24

Emma

So (cuts off)

05:25

07:30

Mr. Brandolini

I was employed in California. That was our base. That was our home front. From there we would go to Japan go through Mex- go through Japan, then we go out into the Pacific and that’s where we started to fight. By that time the company already has the agreement on what to fight for. So we go in and we’ll fight, we’ll assemble offshore and part of the troops go in and I stay aboard. That’s our, our jeep drives so I stay there, so then when they call me out I have a trailer full of ammunition, and uh I have water coolers, I have uh, gasoline and I have ammunition and stuff that the company will need when we get there. See, so then I go in first, I go in second with my jeep and trailer. I get off at the ocean and I, my jeep goes into the ocean from the, (pause) from the small (mumbling), smaller jeep which you call a… (pause) ship’s ashore that’s it, I’ll go in the jeep and they drop me into the ocean and I, I go into, to the ocean toward land. Then what happens is something sparks my jeep up, I stop and it won’t go so the (pause) I’ll think of it (pause) the guy comes down onshore of the island with a tractor and comes into the water, hooks me up and takes me into the shore, which I get it started again and I go back to the company. (pause)

And I land near the airport which they make a dump out of it, the ammunition dump and all that. So I unload and I, I load up the stuff that I need like food and uh, gasoline and water and guns and stuff. Then I take my troops will need when they come in. So I pull in, I, I ride out to the island where they’re fighting. So we go through their campground and their CP where they have the two guards there and they load up my jeep with the stuff that they already spe- use and I unload mine (pause) for the new business. So part of that division from say, a troop part, will go out for dinner and they’ll stop and they’ll run back to us and eat their dinner, 10:1 rations. And there’s everything. There’s beans, there’s um, red meat, everything, all the gallons. It’s just for you something to eat. And then you go back to your company and the other company comes out and eats. So we change you see, like this. (makes rotating motion with his hands) And that’s how we do the fighting.

09:06

Emma

What were the people like in Japan?

09:09

11:10

13:24

Mr. Brandolini

Oh they were horrible. Japan, you couldn’t trust them. With you now, they would do everything illegally. They, they start a fight anytime, night, day (mumbles). They’d lie to you, and then we go out after that, the fighting and get the people. Go out into some of the farmhouses where the people tend to the cows and stuff. We asked them if they would like to come down to our (pause) health resort, more or less. Well they come down to stay with us during the war so their father couldn’t fight us, they could kill her. The father would come and search the village and everything for food, and dig the grounds up for something. So we’d, we would have American food and we have some of the Japanese food. And one of our drivers happened to find a Japanese cave which had all the food and the stuff in it and the guns and stuff. So they had a couple of trucks, they load them up, bring them down to our place, and they give ‘em out to the farmer’s wife, (pause) and the children. Well we get these large tents, (pause) we build about three of them. We happen to have two families, one family with a baby and two children and a girl, the other family had a couple kids, had a girl, had, we (pause) fix up the tents so there’d be rooms. And, have a room for the two boys, the mother, the daughter, and the uh, other family, the mother, the daughter, the boys in the other room. Fix the tent up with the four different raisings.

And we’d have the, we’d have the chow outside the tents where we had gasoline run (pause) stoves and we’d cook, we’d, they’d ask what they wanted, American food or Japanese food. We give it to ‘em. They’re not paying for it. And then we have a couple of nurses who work on the ships, they’re hospital ships. They’ll come out and they’ll help the women how to cook some of the stuff. They don't know, the mother doesn’t have the charge to be able to feed the baby so I give ‘em the canned milk that you mix it, you know what I mean? She didn’t take it so I jammed a hole in it and I drank some and I gave her some. She drank it, thought it was alright so she took it. I gave her another can, uh two can, when the nurse comes to (mumbling) I said, “She’ll show you how to do various things. And if you ask her to do some things with the baby, she’ll help you how to (pause) feed the baby. And that came out of the prisoner’s jam. They came out alright, the little boy, he came home and they went arou- went around buddy’s shawn day calf, about a five year old calf and they skinned it and everything else and back in, in the base they would dig a hole, build a fire, and we’d cook the whole calf and we’d sp- cut it up and split it with the parents and what was left they could have, so they took that at home and they chopped it all up and everything and cut it up in pieces and they wrapped it up and put it in cans so they could hide it from their husbands or their, any troopers that might come in.

And they would have something to eat and the little boy after a month or so, I saw the little boy in town all dressed up with a little coat, a nice coat for the winter. Oh how thankful he was to get it. And they were all nice kids. I suppose they follow you around and everything you know, do what they had to do things, ‘cause they like you. They’d follow you around. And that’s what they did with me. I was in passers. That was part of it, see. Uh, is there anything else you want to know? I’ll tell you.

14:06

Emma

What was the happiest moment while serving?

14:11

Mr. Brandolini

Nothing could be happier while serving. Troops coming in, that you have to replace, bring forward, dead men coming out, you have to watch out for them and uh, you’re always watching out for things like that. I got stuck one time with the tanks and the railroad was too narrow the tank got the whole railroad. I backed my jeep up to the hill like that (makes a hand gesture showing how he backed up to the hill) They gotta, gotta to pass me by and then I take out and go back to my place. My fu- my, my dump, see. That’s when I unload and I load up again with good stuff: food, and water, and gasoline and guns that go back to the servicemen Rick set up at the camp and made sure the flamethrowers are working and all are working we go back to the company and change the food, change the guns over again. That’s how they, they usually change, then at nighttime it’s the same thing only they use the heavier guns they use the 50 caliber. We have more of the shells (pause) than what we need. Got anything else?

15:41

Emma

What was the darkest moment while in the military?

15:47

16:51

17:37

Mr. Brandolini

The darkest moment was when you pull into a camp and it’s an enemy camp. You pull up to ‘em, machine guns coming at you, you have to come back. Turn around and come back as fast as you can or the sixteen, sixteen millimeter gun that just blown in on us. And in the day, the guns didn't go off, they were loaded up. I went right over the guns pushed down over, went over the wall like this. (makes hand gesture showing how he went over the wall) Yeah. Get away from that. It was one of the, one, most, most express that you ran into, that you would run into when you would run into an enemy holdout like that. (pause) They’d be off the load a little bit. They’d fire away. (motions with his hand) You’d go into the road and see the tanks, you’d turn around and come back. (pause)

And they’re constantly firing at you, course they’re, you get away you’re all right. And then when we come back we ran into two corpsmen who were walking the wounded man who had his stomach blown out. Machine gun stomach. And we put him in our jeep and he sat in the backseat and, and we brought him to the hospital. We had hospitals all over the place. These are (pause) (clears throat) field hospitals. Every man that gets shot gets to a field hospital to get, they find out how bad he is, put him in another, another car and he goes to the, goes to the ship, goes aboard ship. And then they take care of him there.

It just happened this boy turned out alright, I saw him full stomach, I saw him a couple of months later and he was well. He went all right. But the ships on, on the ocean they’re for hospitals. They’re hospital ships. They’re like big ships (gestures); they’ll hold 14-1500 men. There’s third, there’s the third marine division hospitals of, fourth marine division hospitals, the fifth division hospitals, and there’s a sixth marine division. Each one taking care of their own island, see. They’ll take anybody but they have to fall in, but they’ll take, they’ll take their own mens. And there the, uh, that ship taking on five or six doctors. Help, help for anything. And they’re full of nurses. Take care of the troops that are aboard the ship. They’re sick and they’re unable and they’ll have a few that’ll die they’ll have a burial in the ocean.

18:52

Emma

Now, Enzo um, what, what did you do if you caught the enemies?

19:00

Mr. Brandolini

Well we have to shoot ‘em! Now we’re going up a hill and there’s about, five guys up on the hill coming down shooting at us. We just turn around and shoot ‘em. We have a BAI, you know what that is? (Emma and Julia shake their heads) Well it’s a long rifle, it shoots up twenty rounds and we just shoot at ‘em. There they turn around and run. Well we may hit some of ‘em. Some of them may get away with it, but that’s it, that’s, we just, long as we get ‘em outta there. Some of them we shoot, they just lay there, we go by pass them. (clears throat) We get by them and we go through our place see, there’ll be, there’ll be MPs around all places, going all over the place. They would, guys rolling around other, other troops rolling around. Spot these guys and catch ‘em. They take ‘em in. We won’t bother with them once we get them outta the way. (pause)

20:09

Emma

What moment has stuck with you or has made the biggest impact?

20:16

Mr. Brandolini

Well, well I told you about this family, three families that we picked up, come and join us. Leave their homes in the farm in case they get bombed by the enemy. They come and live with us in these tents. And that’s where they fixed them up, so they can, so they will be alright, and you know apparently they would be alright. Have a room for them. And we’d have a couple of nurses from the ships that come and help.

20:47

Emma

How did it make you feel when you... rescued them?

20:54

Mr. Brandolini

We don't feel at all anything. We just dont, dont think or feel anything. We just doing our jobs. Doing what we have to do. That's what we do. It's the same time for the account of the other people. They are all long their own part and we have to shoot at them. (pause) So all this gets mixed up you know all the troops coming in and out. (pause)

21:27

Emma

So now we’re gonna ask you about the medals. Um... Now what… Do you want to hold them up so we can see them?

21:40

Julia

I can hold them for you.

21:42

Mr. Brandolini

This medal here were combat medals. When we hit the island, we hit the island 1, 2, 3, 4, medals 4 islands. So we got 4 medals. And these here (pause) these here are the islands that we hit.

22:06

Emma

Which islands?

22:08

Mr. Brandolini

Well that's the Chinese, Chinese islands. And the other islands I don't remember. They gave them to me I don’t know which ones they are.

22:18

Emma

(laughs)

22:20

Mr. Brandolini

This one here is my medal see, it's because it’s my outfit. This here is where we shot our rifle. This is some of the troops we got. And these here are all the medals we got from different cities we fought, fought too and got captured. This here is a.. how many times we were in the service. As a 4 as a 4, 4 years apiece, see. 4 years a piece. One on each sleeve. I guess that's about it.

23:05

Emma

What do the medals mean on the bottom, along the bottom?

23:09

Mr. Brandolini

These are the cities that we fought, went through and get from the cities. And uh they're all written up see. So uh that was Japan and uh, different, different, different types. And this is uh, China (pointing) and some of these are uh I don't know I'd have to read them. Uh I’ll have to look em up and read them see. And this here stripes what we got, I got stripes. And I joined the uh Guadalcanal and this is the Fourth Division and we fought, all together, we fought about 5 islands, different troops and our company fought five islands.

24:06

Emma

Do you remember their names?

24:09

Mr. Brandolini

Hmm?

24:10

Emma

Do you remember their names?

24:10

Mr. Brandolini

Oh my islands, Saipan, Tinian and Tarawa. See those were the islands we fought, other companies fought on other islands basically where they were. They fought other islands I don't know which ones but different islands. You got the same stripes for these (points) where they fought see and rifle shots, I was bad at rifle really, but they put it down just the same. So that's all.

24:50

Emma

Which medal has the most significance towards you?

24:53

Mr. Brandolini

Oh this, this one here (points) and I actually, I actually have (pause) four or five islands cavalry went in I went in and then I went into another company after they got out and fought another island. That was this company (points) And I got a medal for that. (pauses to locate metal) Could be one of these islands (points) one of these islands. And that was about all I know about that.

25:37

Emma

Alright well I have more questions that I was going to ask you.

25:40

Mr. Brandolini

Oh that's all right go ahead and if I can answer I will

So now my nephew is a lieutenant colonel in the army he made all of this up for me, in Washington D.C. he made, made the whole picture for me.

26:02

Emma

If you had the chance to go back to Japan, would you?

26:08

Mr. Brandolini

(thinks) Well, (pause) there's no reason to go back to the lot of it, a lot of islands so you meant to folks, you passed the folks, but you didn’t meet any of the folks except the folks that we helped,got in touch with, they were good folks. They were folks who were battered against the Japanese against the shore of the island. A lot of them were killed, we went back and parked the Japanese aboard the ships. We fought from the islands. We saved a lot of them’s lives, and a lot of them got away. Saved a lot of babies. We had to fight back too.

27:04

Emma

How does it feel to have a nephew in the army, and do you have any advice for him?

27:13

Mr. Brandolini

We all fought the same fight, so what we have to think about is what was it about. He was there to protect me, I was there to protect him. Sometimes I’d be behind him sometimes forward from him or he'd be along side of me. He’s have to watch out, if I had to use the BAI, I would have two members next to me. They would each have a load of ammunition and I would have a load of ammunition. So when I was firing the ammunition I’d get my two men giving me ammunition. They carried big drums like that. They were on the shoulder or carried it on their arms. That's how I fought them, but I didn't fight too much with that. That's when I was put into a jeep and I was a jeep driver. But I was an instructor for the BAI.

28:16

Emma

How did the war change you?

28:20

Mr. Brandolini

Ah I think I was again going to now like “there now what do you think”.

28:29

Emma

Well, why did it not change you?

28:34

Mr. Brandolini

I don't know why, we came out, we came out and I came home. It was all just the same, forgot the war and everything. Come the San Diego aboard ships. And we’d meet our wives come out to see us, you know. Then we’d go, go to the cab. It was all right, I never felt anything wrong.

29:04

Emma

If you could go back in time and do it again, what would you do differently?

29:10

Mr. Brandolini

I don't think I would do anything differently what I already done. I’d just do my job. I’d get off the ship, get on the jeep, come aboard ship, come ashore and join my company. And then I’d get...get...get to my...my company dump, unload my jeep, load up the stuff I’m going to trade for, go out to the company. (pause) There would be a couple of guards at the, at the company office, keep an eye out for that. Unload the...unload the jeep with a ten to one rations food, gasoline and extra pumps and stuff and extra guns and we’d give to the troops when they come in.

30:18

Emma

So what was it like at the end of the war? How did you feel? Was there any...

30:24

Mr. Brandolini

Go home.

30:26

Emma

Go home?

30:27

Mr. Brandolini

Everything was right. Everything was fine. We get out, get off… off camp. Get in our truck and drive home. (Laughs) Packed four trucks you know, big heavy trucks. And they’d arrive sometimes they’d arrive. We have movie stars coming down to San Diego and down in Palm Springs. They’d pick us up and take it to them. We enjoyed that. Yeah. We’d have uh parties and get togethers at hotels, and we’d have all the movie stars come, and we… we’d have dinner. You know, we talked special talk… like you were asking (laughs) That's all we could do. Well I hope it's interesting. You got some things to see in the book here. If you want some pictures in the book. (Opens book and turns pages) See this is the parts of the camp, these are the campgrounds. This is one of our buildings. These are all buildings. Troops were all in the buildings. (Turns more pages) See this is the war you wanna read the books you know, you got, you got, see here's the whole war, the war war, the Saipan Tinian war. It’s all in here.

32:29

Emma

And you were in the Saipan Tinian War.

32:33

Mr. Brandolini

Oh yes, I was in this war too. (turns pages) See I fought at this one, Saipan, Tinian, and Hiroshima with the big dead flag ya know.

32:47

Emma

Wait you were at Hiroshima?

32:50

Mr. Brandolini

Yes ma'am, I was in 4 hours that's the stars I got there.

32:56

Emma

Was that before the bomb was dropped on it?

33:01

Mr. Brandolini

Oh after the bomb was dropped on it.

33:03

Emma

After? What was that like?

33:05

Mr. Brandolini

Well, were aboard ship we don't see. We see these planes go up, they fly over the island. They shoot at the island Saipan even more. Drop their bombs, then they wait, we’d wait till they get through bombing then we’d go into the island, fight the island. That’s where the difference is, fighting you see. We stop we fight we stop right up on a hill. Right around a guy get killed you see. So there you are takes over. (opens book again)

33:43

Emma

And the last question that we have is what advice would you give to your grandson or granddaughter if they ever decided to enlist?

33:55

Mr. Brandolini

I don't say nothin, let ‘em go where he wants to go. Got a brain of his own. A boy like that talks about the war, he wants to join it, I say “Oh you wanna join, I'll recommend somewhere to join, you know the Marine Corps that's all right, you like the Army that's okay too, I got three brothers who were in the Army. And if you wanna go to the Marine Corps you go to, go to Boston, go to the Capitol Building, join ‘em up. They’ll, they'll take you, put you in a hospital room, take you out to dinner, they'll tell you already have four or five guys already joining you see. They go, you go out to dinner and the next they take the train, whip, out.

34:59

Emma

Alright Enzo, well thank you for letting us interview you.

35:05

Mr. Brandolini

Oh that's alright anytime you want to know I'll give you what I know.

35:10

Emma

Thank you very much.

35:12

Mr. Brandolini

It's not that I shot anybody, see I did shoot one Jap. He was having dinner up against the tree and I was in the bunker in front of him watching him. I watched him while he ate his dinner then I shot him, shot him in his full stomach, it’s the only thing I could do. If he’d finally got up he would've shot me. But… that's the way things went. But I'll admit one thing that's about all I did. Otherwise I just drove all over the islands in various spots.

35:58

Emma

But did you, how did you feel when you killed him? Did you feel regretful or…?

36:03

37:30

Mr. Brandolini

No no, no I didn't feel regretful. I felt I had to shoot him. One time it just… well here goes. Well I let him eat first, then when he lit the cigarette took a couple puffs then I shot him. I figured he was satisfied. One time I went up to my buddy, who was manning the machine gun on the trail-trailer. We went up, giving, we went away from the company, we were getting ammunition, we were running out of ammunition, and we were coming back and the Army lieutenant stopped us, we were on a tank, he wouldn't let us go by. I said “You better let us go by or we’d shoot you.” In that time a colonel came by wondering what was going on and I told him “Colonel, lieutenant says is that right lieutenant” so he said “Lieutenant that's alright that's okay you just report back to the company.” They fired him. I heard him when he said to the sargent “Sargent you're a lieutenant take over”. “Yes sir”.

Those are incidents that happen you know. And a, another time we were going to the island, had to go down to get some water for the, for the company, had to take a bath. “You sick?” he said, I go down by the river. Down the river all of a sudden three bombs come in, two big bombs all of them were duds. Boy did we get out of there oh we never left the jeep. We went back and got it and got home, we said that they understand what goes on. So we out of his ship, and Pete stands on top of the food carrier for the ships, they're coming ashore bringing supplies for the, for the troops, they're gonna stay there. He said “We gotta leave pretty soon”. So they ask us while we were fighting “Guys stay away from this ship, keep outta here” we said “We’ll keep up, you better watch out or 250 men will end up there, we’ll show you through” (laughs) Little stuff like that, you joke around. So you know we’d get these little happy laughs, all of them joke, they mostly joking around.

39:01

Emma

It's… it's good to have stuff like that in a war you know, it bring some lightness.

39:08

Mr.Brandolini

Well you know through all that, when you go through the hardships and you go through, the happy times it's a… all happy and go lucky yeah.

39:22

Emma

Well on that note I think that you presented a very good interview, um, but that's all the time we have for today.

39:33

Mr.Brandolini

That's all right.

39:35

Emma

Thank you very much Enzo.

39:37

Mr.Brandolini

Anytime at all just walk in.

39:39

Emma

(laughs) Okay thank you.

39:41

End Of Video