D. Clarke Evans Photographer

Charles Sagebiel

TSgt. Charles Sagebiel
1944-1946

TSgt. Charles Sagebiel
Fredericksburg, TX, 1946

The Japanese were in Korea for 42 years and a lot of them were born and raised there. It was our job to get them out of their homes, and ship them to Japan. There were older people. I didn’t like it. It was a sad duty.

I was born in 1925. My brother, myself and two sisters were adopted. I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could. I was six weeks old. I grew up on a ranch about twelve miles from Fredericksburg. I didn’t graduate from high school until I got out of the Army. I was drafted into the Army in 1944 and went to boot camp at Camp Fannin, Texas. There’s a memorial there that shows over 200,000 GIs were trained there.

I went to the South Pacific and it took 33 days to get to the Philippines. We took a zigzag route because of Japanese submarines. It was March or April, 1945. I was on the island of Luzon in the 6th Infantry Division, 63rd Regimental Combat Team. We had small skirmishes off and on, but I got to the real fighting somewhere in May or June. We drove the Japanese up to northern Luzon. Then we heard they had dropped the bomb. Everybody got a case of beer that day and we celebrated.

The 6th Division was shipped to Korea in October as occupational forces. The Japanese were in Korea for 42 years and a lot of them were born and raised there. It was our job to get them out of their homes, and ship them to Japan. There were older people. I didn’t like it. It was a sad duty. The only things they could take was what they could carry on their backs. Their money was totally worthless. You had a whole train full of Japanese packed in like cattle. Some were sitting up on top in the cold. That was heck. What happened to them when they got to Japan, I have never heard.

I was in Korea for eleven months and overseas a total of eighteen months. My best duty in the Army was when I made platoon sergeant. I had one guy picking on me and three guys reporting to me. Outside of being in combat, the only bad duty was sending the Japanese in Korea back to Japan.

We went home in October, 1946. My rank was Tech Sergeant. My uncle offered me a job and we moved to Nebraska for a year. I learned how to fly and got my pilot’s license. I always wanted to fly, so I got it out of my system. Then we came back home and I did some carpenter work, and then I had polio in 1950. After about 11 months in the hospital and rehab, I took the GI Bill and went back to school to Oklahoma A&M and got an associate’s degree in drafting.

At school, I played two years of wheelchair basketball. One of the coaches up there thought there was enough of us handicapped guys to play. We enjoyed it. Then when I worked for Texas Power and Light in Dallas, I was part of a bowling team. I started there in 1953 as a draftsman in the engineering department and worked there for 34 years. I was in the civil engineering section and became a section supervisor. I retired in 1987.

I like woodworking. I made many different things over the years. I built a deck in the back of our house in Dallas. It had a big pecan tree in it and I wrapped the deck around it.

I am absolutely proud of my service. I probably wouldn’t do it again, but I wouldn’t take anything for it. In combat infantry advanced training, everything was live ammo and the bayonets weren’t covered. It was dangerous. But we survived it. I wrote a book about my experiences–By the Grace of God. {03-21-2018 • Fredericksburg, TX}