INTERVIEWER:   Do you mind if I call you Joe?

DIFEDE:   I’d appreciate that.

INTERVIEWER:   Joe, when did you go into the military, where did you go into the military and why did you go into the military?

DIFEDE:   Okay, December 7th, I was sleeping in bed.  I was 21, almost 22.  I just came home from a beer party, about 3 in the morning.  My dad wakes me up, “The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.”  Pearl Harbor, I said, oh my goodness.  Monday morning, I went down to Waghorse Street, that was in Brooklyn.  I stand in line five hours and I enlisted for six years in the Navy. 

They gave me a physical and they told me that they would get in touch with us guys.  “We get a couple of thousand guys at one time, we’ll swear you in at one time.  Go back and tell your draft board, you enlisted in the Navy.”  My biggest mistake.  I went and told the draft board.  They said, “Are you sworn in yet?”  I told them no and they said, “Well the Army needs you.”  Two days later, I get called to go in the Army. 

So here I am at Fort Dix.  I called my dad, it was after a week and I was sworn in.  Dad said, “What you do?  You got people looking for you.”  I went to my captain and told him and he said, “Are you sworn in?”  I said no, “I’ll take care of it.”  So I end up in the Army, which turned out to be the 3rd amphibian corps.  I spent more time on transports than I did on land.

In the Army, we had special training.  We trained, we had to learn how to hit a moving target at 500 yards.  That was something very important in my unit.  We learned a little judo, we trained how to use a knife and we trained how to use it.  I’ll give you an example of the type of training we had. 

One of our colonels was a graduate of the Commando School in Great Britain.  We trained in the swamps of Louisiana and then after that, when it got cold, we trained in West Virginia, climbing the mountains and then when it got a little warmer, we went to the desert in Arizona.

We trained in Arizona.  Then we had amphibian training off the Massachusetts coast, which was in the winter.  We had continuous training for almost two years, but our training was so severe that if I went out and we took an oath when we joined this outfit and we were told that if anybody wants to get out, all you have to do is apply.  So sometimes you go in a town, you have a couple of beers and you hear some fella griping, “I’m trying to get out of my outfit.”  I didn't understand because in my outfit all you did was ask.  “C’Mon you must be crazy.”  I said okay, drop it.

INTERVIEWER:   Let me ask you this.  When were you drafted, what year were you drafted into the Army?

DIFEDE:   Right at the…I enlisted in the Navy December 8th, 1941.  My birthday is January 3.  By the 20th of December, I was sent, the draft board sent me to the Army and I put in just about four years.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay, so you were in training in 1942?

DIFEDE:   Yes.

INTERVIEWER:   And part of ’43?

DIFEDE:   Yes, we trained for two years in this country in all type of training.  Everybody said we had to be on guard duty in Washington, D.C.  We knew right away we were special because Lord Montbatton____ to watch us.  Churchill was down there, Roosevelt was down there.  So I said, we had to be something.  We were an experimental unit.

As a unit, I have to say, we accomplished most of our action in little over a year in the Pacific.  Our first operation was in the Marianas, Guam.  Admiral Nimitz asked McArthur for an Army unit to help, but he didn't say he was sending a ranger outfit there.  So the Marine command said okay, you take the right flank, we’ll take the left, you have the easier beach.  But they had amtraks____ and we had the Mike boats. 

Now the tide was wrong and we got hung up on the Coral Reefs about 250 yards from the shore.  We had to wade in the water and mortar shells come bursting and everything, but we made it.  We got in there and we swept around, we counter-attacked.  We beat the Japs back and that’s where we got the nickname by the Marines, “Look at the old buzzards go.”  They thought it was a green regular Army outfit.

When that campaign was over, Nimitz asked McArthur for us again.  He said, no way, there are problems in the Philippines.  The Japanese were bringing in troops at Omak Bay behind the island of Leyte.  General Bruce had anticipated something like this.  We landed on Leyte and they gave us, believe it or not, pancakes and fried eggs.  So we thought, fellas, we’re in for something.  Early in the morning we left and Mike boats on the island and we had an escort up. 

INTERVIEWER:   You said a Mike boat?

DIFEDE:   Yes, these are the small boats.  We used to call them Mike boats, you know, that you hit the beach with.  Okay the front comes down.  Everybody had a different nickname for it.  The alligators were the ones with like a tank, all right?  That we didn't have.  Well we hit Leyte, Omak Bay, at 5:00 in the morning.  Everybody was sleeping and as we hit the beach, a Japanese transport is coming in with about 3,000 Japanese troops.  We only had two 57 – we had no artillery or tanks with us.  We only had two 57-antitank guns.

So we put them on the beach and we opened up on it.  We hit it below the water line and we hit the ammunition and it blew up.  The Japanese planes by that time came and they sunk our destroyers.  So here we are in these rubber boats fishing guys out from the water and everybody is oily.  Our guys kept pushing them in and if it was a Jap, we used to say “too small” and throw him back in.

We couldn't have…we were outnumbered by 6 or 7 to 1.  We needed that other 3,000.  After that, we had no way of getting off that island.  We had to keep moving ahead and we had rolling type CP.  Now when we hit Valencia, the airport of Valencia…

INTERVIEWER:   Locate me in time.  What year is this now?

DIFEDE:   Okay, this was December 7, 1944.  That’s when we hit the Omak Valley Bay and we were outnumbered six to one.  And we kept on and went into Valencia.  We took the airport.  When we took the airport, we knew the Japanese had a lack of communication.  So we went back to general headquarters.  We got pushed out of the airport and we suffered heavy casualties.  We were headed for the beach.

Manila Rose, they still had Manila and Luzon, so they picked it up.  What we did is, we had a lot of dead Japanese around us.  We got the smallest guys and we put on their uniforms and put Japanese flags all over the place and we kept…about a mile away, we see two columns of Japanese coming down from the mountain.  We’re waving a flag and they’re waving a flag and we got them in an open plain.  We knew a little about setting up an ambush. 

We had our mortars on the flank and our machine guns, one six inches, one 10-inches, and when they were about 70 yards away from us, we let our mortars go behind us and we opened up with our machine guns and I’ll tell you, in 25 minutes, there was a slaughter.  There was about 4,000 Japanese.  It had to be done.  It was something we had to do.  Right after that when we broke the back of the resistance there, we got called back.

By the way, we were supposed to…before this mission, we were supposed to go on some R&R, but they turned our transport around to go to the Philippines who were in trouble.

After that, March 27, 1945, this was December 7, 1944, and we left there about the end of February, so March 27, 1945, we headed for the Camarettas.  There was an archipelago that was near Omak and the Navy wanted a safe anchorage for their ships.  So we went by ourselves.  Now the main invasion of Okinawa is going to come April 1.  We were there March 27.

We hit these islands and we did a fast job.  One island looked too beautiful from the sky.  We hit that and they had captured 320 suicide boats.  These were motorboats that were about 40 feet long and they had a torpedo sunk in the front and they were going to ram our ships.  We didn't kill Japanese, we ______ their ancestors.  They never said thank you.  There were about 450 Japanese on the island and that’s what we did.  We ruined ____ with their ancestors.  Of course we disconnected and felt we saved a lot of lives.

Now then they had a problem, Ieshima.  Ieshima is an island that comes like this and they had a stronghold in there.  Now when they were going to invade Okinawa, they’d be on a flank so we had a few days to go.  We went to Ieshima and we hit the island and we took the hardest beach, where they couldn't see us, and we swept through the island and there was some bloody fighting, but it wasn’t that terrible.  We captured it and some of the people committed suicide.  They didn't know what we were going to do and we lost Ernie Pyle.

He was a famous correspondent in the Italian campaign.  He came to visit us.  He was the sixth war correspondent we lost.  We said, “Ernie, what are you doing here?”  He said, “I had to come.”  He looked around and said, “There are no front lines.  Where are the front lines?”  Well we sent patrols out so you can back clean.  He said, “Oh, well fellas I’m leaving tomorrow.”  The next day he gets on a jeep, two jeeps, we escort him.  All he had to do was go about maybe 500 yards to a transport.  We’re driving, a Jap sniper opens up on us.  We jumped out.  We said, “Ernie, get in that ditch and stay there.”

I went one way, my friend John went the other way and the others stayed with him.  We got this sniper.  We came back, Ernie was a crazy guy.  He stuck his head up and got hit right over here.  I’ll tell you, you never saw such a bunch of guys crying.  Here was a man, he was crazy.  He had to come back and he thought it was a premonition, that that was going to happen.

INTERVIEWER:   What outfit were you in at that time?

DIFEDE:   77th.  Here, the 77th division.  Now this is it.  In World War I in France, the lost battalion, we were part of it now.  Sueve more means follow me.  We were the closest to Germany in World War I, we were the closest to Japan in World War II.  Does that look like a coincidence?

Okay, from there we cleaned up in Ieshima and Okinawa has a bloody, bloody fight there and there was the 96th division who was taking a beating and who do they send on the line?  They put us in there.  Look, it was part of the job we had to do.  I mean that’s what we were trained for.  We went into that line.  Those guys were happy to get out of there.

INTERVIEWER:   They were the Marines, weren’t they?

DIFEDE:   No, no, it was an Army outfit.  There weren’t too many Marines there.  Now what happened was we had the heavy artillery, the big 240.  What happened, there were two transports that were sunk so we stayed there the whole campaign.  Thank goodness for the USS Carolina and a few other battleships that the Japanese had _______ surrey castle we called it.  We were on this side and there was a valley and it was a rock mountain and through the years, they had tunnels in there with railroad tracks.

They used to bring artillery around all over the place and they were tough and desperate.  They knew this was their last stand and they really put up a fight.  Thank God, you could tell.  When there was a green outfit on the line, you could tell at night, there would be a lot of shooting.  Well we were on the line, no shooting unless we saw them, you know.  The Japanese hated us, I don’t know why.  We used to send so many of them with their ancestors and they hated us.

So ungrateful.  They’re very ungrateful people.  One thing I had to have a lot of respect for them.  Now after the Battle of Okinawa …

INTERVIEWER:   Wasn’t there a typhoon at that time?

DIFEDE:   Yeah, no the typhoon came later.  It sunk, when the war was over, it sunk two of our destroyers. It just turned them over and when I came home, we got hit and I thought, don’t tell me, we’re going to end up in the water.  Anyway, when I was over there, we went to Sabu, an island in the Philippines, to get recruits because we were down to…there weren’t too many of us left.  We had a lot of casualties.  We were training them.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your job assignment?

DIFEDE:   I was combat intelligence, which means going behind the Jap lines to see what they’re doing.  The reason I was called bulletproof by my friends, after a big battle on Guam, I was so sick. We pushed the Japs back and everybody is digging their trench.  I’m leaning against this tree, I didn't care what happened.  On my right, there’s this big water buffalo and the guy says, we’ll dig a fort for you.

Mortar shells came in, landed on this side of the water buffalo.  The water buffalo tore every piece of it.  Another time, I’m up the tree to see if I could spot something.  They spotted me and I had these steel ____ on to climb and the first burst I went this way.  The second burst, I put my hand this way, hit the tree and this hand was full of splinters.  I came down, took the first aide kit, took all the splinters out.  They wanted to give me the Purple Heart.  I told them I didn't want a Purple Heart.  A lot of us that got wounded were little things, like this thing here. We’re fortunate.

Another time we’re on patrol, three of us.  Now when artillery is coming in, you could hear the noise over your head.  When they land near you, it sounds like a freight train, empty freight train coming down.  We hear this and we hit the ground and one of the largest shells landed by our head about 4 feet away, spun, kicked up the dirt and stopped.  The nose was bent, it was a dud.  We looked at each other, we were sweating.  “Fellas,” I said, “If I knew who put that together, I’d kiss that guy in Macy’s window.”  We laughed and walked off.  No sense running.  That was kind of close.

Another time we came back from a campaign.  We haven’t eaten and there’s a rock like this.  I’m eating and my buddy is eating.  So I go like this, I feel something going past my head.  He gets hit and a little piece of his neck, if it was me….I lost my mother when I was 10 and always felt like she was there with me. 

I’ll tell you, you get a little reckless sometimes when that happens to you, but I consider myself very fortunate.  The waste of life and what happened, there was no reason that the Japanese caught us off guard.  We had a big Army and Navy and Air Force and we’re sitting on our hands while people here were saying this was not our war if I remember right.

Anyway the only way we could prevent that was that we had to be on alert.  We have to be ready.  If people have missiles, we should have missiles because that’s our best protection, not a missile shield, have missiles.  If they send a missile, they get that in reply, they’re going to think twice about doing it.  Some of this people in this country think that war is a game.  It’s disgusting, dehumanizing and has to be done.  Sometimes I have a guilty feeling for a long time about the Japanese I killed.

I was honored at Fort Stuart for killing 400.  I always had a little guilt.  This year, Father’s Day, my granddaughter gave me a book called the Ghost Soldiers that’s an autobiography of American soldiers who were held captive by the Japanese in Bataan.  After I read that book, my guilt went away and I thought I wish I killed 800.

Anyway when the war was over, the total Japs we killed, and these are certified numbers, we killed 44,000 Japanese.  Don’t forget, we were only 10,500.  We captured 488, they were not combat.  They were Koreans.  We lost 2,000 killed, 7,000 wounded.  We had 93% casualties.  It was tough and I’ll tell you, I hope what’s going on today with the young people and I read about what’s going on, a lot is to blame on this country.  They let our military go down.

When I was honored at Fort Stuart, I was talking to a three star general and this is a few years ago, about three years ago, and they had to keep their mouths shut because they would get a letter from the White House saying that nobody in uniform must criticize our Commander in Chief.  It’s a joke.  They were teaching helicopter flying there.  They had two helicopters.  They had to cannibalize one helicopter to keep the other one going.  They couldn't get parts.

The trucks the same thing, the tanks the same thing and the tanks were rationed to how much gasoline they could use for maneuvers.

INTERVIEWER:   Let me take you back to your experience.  After Okinawa, what happened to you?

DIFEDE:   Went to Sabu, getting ready to invade Japan.  Our mission was to land there by submarines.  We were going to be landing in one place and the main forces, 2-3 days later, were to come around.  It was a diverting attack.  Then they said they were going to try to take us off in 72 hours.  Well I’ll tell ya, when the war was over, we were in Sabu.  You came into our camp, no shouting.  Other outfits that didn't see too much action were shouting and laughing and drinking.  You came in our camp, we were hugging and crying.

You have to have gone through it to feel it.  I hope that this country is never in a position where what happened in Pearl Harbor.  Somebody goofed up there because the English knew it was going to happen, the Germans picked it up too and I blame the guy sitting in the White House.  I mean that’s my opinion, I could be wrong.  Even if I’m wrong, why weren’t the commanders there alerted.  Why didn't they move the three carriers out of there.  Why didn't they alert the battleships with the poor guys in the Arizona who were sleeping when they were hit by torpedoes and bombs.  It’s hard to understand.  I don’t understand.  I guess we’ll never know.

INTERVIEWER:   But Joe, you said you got to Japan after the war.

DIFEDE:   Yeah, I was flown in to Okadu.

INTERVIEWER:   You and the whole division?

DIFEDE:   No, no, they came by transport.  We were sent there as an advanced force.

INTERVIEWER:   How many people?

DIFEDE:   Seven.  I feel that the people in Washington…there’s was only 40,000 armed Japanese there.  They treated us very good, very, very good.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your rank?

DIFEDE:   When I got there, I was a P5.  I used to be a sergeant, but after fighting, I was broken down to P5.

INTERVIEWER:   There were seven of you, you say?

DIFEDE:   Seven, yes.

INTERVIEWER:   How many officers, how many enlisted men?

DIFEDE:   None, just us.  All non-commissioned.  They took us to City Hall and this Japanese major came right to me and he spoke perfect English.  He graduated from Berkeley, California University.  He looks at my patch and says, “You are the butchers of Guam.  Let me shake your hand.  You’re like we are, never give the enemy a break.”  We became buddies.  From there, we had to find a place to live.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your assignment?  Why were you sent there, seven enlisted men?

DIFEDE:   I’ll tell you the truth, we had to find a bivouac for the rest of the unit and see the attitude of the people.  Don’t forget, we were the first to go there.  They were very respectful.  I’ll tell you, I fought the Japanese, but I had the greatest respect.  I was questioned about that when the war was over.  I said I have more faith in the Japanese than the Chinese, the Russians, the Filipinos threw us out and the French, who we saved their butt in two years, never helped us.  They said, “Aw, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Time did tell.

Today I think the Japanese are the best ally we have there.  Okay what they did was wrong, but their standard of living is so much higher.  Their homes are immaculate.  You don’t wear shoes in their homes.  When they’re in public and they have a cold, they wear a mask over their face which is something you don’t see too much of.  I got friendly with a Russian and one thing they have is freedom of religion.

There was a white Russian colony there, the ones that escaped the Soviet.  They told us that the Japanese, as long as they kept out of politics, there were Catholic churches.  They didn't bother with religious things because they’re religious people themselves.  Of course, they did some things that were terrible, but war is terrible.  I’m sorry that we lost Pearl Harbor, which was a big loss, but remember because we were sleeping at Pearl Harbor, we lost a lot of men.  It cost us a lot.

I hope that the citizens of this country never forget that and make sure that our leaders are always aware and alert.  This is America and people envy us because we have, we’re a free people.

INTERVIEWER:   Joe, how long were you on Okadu?

DIFEDE:   I was there for about three months and then they wanted to sign me up again and I said, no thank you.  By the way, the executives of the department stores really looked good.  On the upper floor, they had a department, beautiful; we took it over, seven of us.  You know bathtubs, you have two tubs.  First you shower and soak yourself, then you get in hot water and soak.  You don’t get in the bathtub dirty.  You have to wash yourself, rinse off and then you get in the tub.  They were very clean.

I’ll tell you something that really hurt me.  We had this old gentleman that used to clean up for us.  One day, he came in and had a black eye and was bloody.  What happened?  We had a warehouse where recruits were coming in from the United States, young kids who never saw action.  They were going to replace, they punched him and stole his watch.

So the next day, me and my friend John, we took him to a place and he pointed two of them out and you know what they said to me, “Are you a Jap lover?”  Well I’ll tell ya, he was not able to talk for a long time because his mouth got twice the size and we bloodied the other guys and we set the example.  “Leave these people alone.  The war is over.  If you were that anxious, why didn't you get in sooner?” I can understand, they were young and didn't know any better. 

About three months after that, I was on my way home and I had my girl who I met just two days before I went overseas.  I went to a wedding and I was supposed to leave on a Monday and the wedding was Saturday and this colonel gave me permission to go.  He was General _______ son-in-law.  I went to the wedding and I saw her there.  It just happened her cousin was married to my cousin and I said, “That’s the girl I want to marry.”

I’m dancing with her and I’m talking, she says to me, “You know you have the makings of a wolf.”  So we had a couple of drinks and Monday she saw me off at the train.  We wrote to each other and when I came home, she was waiting for me and in June, as a matter of fact, this June we were married for 56 years.  We got married and let me tell you, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.  See if I wasn’t in the Army, I wouldn’t have met her.

INTERVIEWER:   What did you do after you got out of the military?

DIFEDE:   Okay, after I got out of there, I was very good with leather.  I became a hand cutter and then I used to be a leather buyer.  I worked for one company, a big company, I used to buy about 8-9 million dollars worth of leather a year.  I was very good at picking out hides and telling you.... because you know leather, there’s top grain.  Full grain is the top, top grain is where they shave a little bit off.  There’s so many things with leather.  Now I’ve been retired for quite a while.  I’ve been away from that.

I also did electric welding.  In fact, before the war, I was one of the youngest certified welders and the company didn't want me to go, but I said heck with it, I’ve got to go, I got to go.  I’m not sorry I went.  There were so many of us.  Imagine four and five hours lined up and then I ended up not in the Navy, but in the Army and spent most of time on transports.

One thing I have to say.  The government was nice.  They gave me a tour of the South Pacific and they gave me a tour of Japan and they didn't charge me.  They gave me room and board and they even paid me.  You know of any other travel agency that would do that?  I think that’s great.  I’ll tell you, if anybody that wants to join the service, I recommend the Rangers.  The training is rough.  Twenty percent drop out, they can’t take the training, it’s rough.  But training is what saves lives.

INTERVIEWER:   And the tougher the better.

DIFEDE:   The tougher the better, yeah.  Of course you can get an easier job.  Now it’s known as the 77th group because my outfit, when I was at Fort Stuart, they deactivate the 7th Ranger brigade and now it’s the 307 Bushmasters.  Each division was broken up and the 307 Bushmen have their own tanks, artillery, helicopters and they can be sent any place in the world within 48 hours.  One thing about my unit, when they’re overseas, you know they’re there. 

The less the enemy knows, when I see a paper and see Bush wants to do this, he wants to do that – why must the newspaper print everything.  We took 2000 Marines home and sent 2000 back, why tell the enemy that.  I mean to print a story, what are you doing, you’re putting these lives in jeopardy where you tell them what they’re doing.  Nobody should print anything, but yet it’s in the papers.

INTERVIEWER:   Joe, what brought you to Wilmington?

DIFEDE:   Well my daughter…

INTERVIEWER:   Wait, how many kids have you got?

DIFEDE:   I have one, I lost the first one at birth.  We have one, I have two grandchildren and a great-grandson, Joey.  My daughter lives in Bayshore and we came here, we liked it.  We moved from Long Island and were living in Florida at the Hacienda Del Rio.  We loved it there, but my daughter says, “Mom and dad, they’re building some new homes here, West Bay Estates in Ogden.  Why don’t you come down?” 

So we said, “You like it?”, she said, “Yes.”  So we told her to pick it out, we would send her the money.  We came down.  It was a very nice idea.  I think Wilmington is beautiful and I’m not happy the way they planned the roads.  College Road is the only way to go across, but maybe some day, they’ll have sky hooks where they take a car and move you over (laughter) because I think that’s a boo-boo they made.  Traffic is really something.  But Wilmington is a nice place and the people are very nice here.

INTERVIEWER:   How long have you been here, Joe?

DIFEDE:   I’ve been here over 3-1/2 years.  You know when we moved in here, the neighbors put up a great big sign, There goes the neighborhood, what do they mean by that (laughter)? 

INTERVIEWER:   They knew you had a sense of humor?

DIFEDE:   I’ll tell you, without a sense of humor, you’ll go crazy.  One thing we learned in combat, you have got to find something funny in everything.  Otherwise…it’s unusual what your body can absorb, but you have to help it along because I used to see some of the toughest guys, they were really tough, after a campaign got the shakes and had to be taken away in a straight jacket.  They weren’t cowards, their body, their mind just couldn't take it anymore.

INTERVIEWER:   Joe, I’m going to ask you to look right into the camera.  Two things, number one, you will never be a day older than you are today, the tape will make sure of that.

DIFEDE:   Oh, that’s great.

INTERVIEWER:   From now on, whoever sees this tape will see you exactly the way you are today.

DIFEDE:   Great, that’s better than formaldehyde.

INTERVIEWER:   Oh yes, here’s the question.  I mentioned this before we went on camera.  All the years that you spent in the military and all the things that you saw, horrible and funny and tragic and stupid, boring, but what did you learn from that period of your life?  What did you learn from wartime, what did you learn from being in the military?  Pass this on to your children and your grandchildren.

DIFEDE:   You learn that you have to know what you’re doing, plan your future.  It’s very important.  Don’t say, well I’m going to do it next month.  If you can do it, do it now.  Plan your future because you don’t know what next month is going to bring.  You might have other problems.  Try and be ahead and up to date with what’s going on around you.  That’s very important especially when you go to vote, vote for people who you think are going to help you and help your country.

That’s very important.  It’s not which party, it’s the person because we had some people before World War II that nobody could come near us, it wasn’t our war.  Now it’s tragic because there are thousands of Americans with that way of thinking.  Be prepared, when you’re prepared, then the adversary will think twice before attacking or annoying you.  Make sure that your family is always protected.

INTERVIEWER:   Sir, does anyone ever win a war?

DIFEDE:   No, no.  The horror on both sides, what it does to people, humanity.  Mothers and fathers who lost their children on both sides – war is the most disgusting thing that could happen.  It’s degrading, dehumanizing.  Nobody wins at war.  The only ones that win a war are the people who start it or the ones that make money on it who sell the arms.  I think that a war is only necessary when we have to protect ourselves.

To prevent the war is to be able to hit back quick and fast and very strong and that would be the greatest protection you would have against war.