Oral History Interview with Henry Ricci Page: 1

                                
Interview With Henry Rficci

This interview is in support of the .Center for Pacific War Stuie Arhie forite NTatina
Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Parks and Wildlife, for the preservation of historical
informatio related to this site.
Side One of this tape was blank. The Interview begins with Side Two.
Mr. Ricci: My good friend Arthur Hantel, I first made his acquaintance in 1935 when we
joined the Army and woind lip in the same company. He managed to become a
lieutenant and then finally he received a battlefield promotion of captain. One day
a white flag was waved at one of the Japanese positions so Arthur, Art Hantel, with
three men, this white flag went up and some Japanese appeared behind the flag. So
Arthur went forward to meet these Japanese and they probably weren't maybe, I
don't know, twenty-five, thirty feet apart. Suddenly the Japanese whipped out some
weapons and without warning shot Hantel in the neck. He died almost instantly.
Well naturally, our men returned the fire and killed all four, three or four, of the
Japanese.
The fighting on Bloody Ridge was brutal. There were no quarters given, no quarters
taen. We seldom ever took a prisoner, only when we were requested to do so.
Mr. Cox:   Were there any incidents that you know of that you were probably hand-to-hand
bayonet type?
Mr. Ricci: There were numerous incidents where we had hand-to-hand bayonet combat. And I
shared a fox hole with another doctor, Lietutnant ____     _____  _?? I'm five
feet eight and    _       _    9??? was six feet one and weighed ahout two
hundred pounds, and I weighed a hundred and forty-five. So we shared the same fox
hole during the night. During the nightime, nobody moved. Anything that moved
got shot. It didn't make any difference whether it was, you think it was one of your
own men, 'cause it might have been a Japanese. But more likely if you were moving
around in the dark, it was a Japanese. So if you moved, you got shot.

The fighting was brutal. ...   __   _??? and I had shared the same fox hole.
We would take turns sleeping, two hours at a time. And the Japanese had a nasty
technique of crawling up to a fox hole and falling on top of the guy who was in the
fox hole and bayonet him or stab him to death with a trench knife. So the guy was,
Lieutenant _______________??l or I, the one who was awake, would lie on our back
with a trench knife in our hand pointed up and a forty-five pistol in the other. So in
case they did that, they'd fall on top of bayonet and we'd have an opportunity to
shoot 'em.