Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:19 | Pat Cassetta describes his life before going to war. He was born in Italy, and when he moved to the United States he had to conjure up a way to get into the Marine Corps. A few months later he was training at Parris Island where a drill instructor mispronounced his name. Cassetta looks back upon the event and his training positively.
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Cassetta’s unit landed in Sing Tao, China to keep peace between Mao Zedong’s Chinese and Chiang Kai-shek’s Japanese. The two armies would not cooperate, and the Chinese army even kept active in the middle of the night to ensure the Americans did not advance any farther in their land. Cassetta also recalls the devastation China suffered at the hands of the Japanese at both Peking and the Great Wall.
While returning and regrouping from Okinawa, a man on the ship came down and told Cassetta’s unit that the war was over. They did not immediately celebrate, but once everyone realized the truth of the matter, everyone was very grateful.
Cassetta tells a humorous story about playing Italian love songs on a guitar during his unit's down time. When the men requested that he play Hank Williams, Cassetta's true Italian roots became impossible to deny.
When Cassetta and his unit arrived at Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped, the civilians were in awe of the technology the Americans were equipped with. Cassetta goes on to describe the wreckage and devastation that came as a result of the atomic bomb; it was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
While in Okinawa, Cassetta and his unit were hit by a monsoon. The weather was as treacherous as the fighting. And once they moved to Kyushu, even the children there were trained to fight the American army off the beaches.
