Lazarick was born in Camden, New Jersey in 1923. In those days Camden was a nice city with many large manufacturing and ship building firms. His parents had a small dry goods store in South Camden.He is 1 of 8 children. He has 6 sisters and 1 brother. The family always lived in mid-size houses and there was frequent doubling up on sleeping accommodations.Lazarick's father foresaw the motion picture industry being the thing of the future and in 1929 he gathered together some money and built a motion picture theater.When the stock market crashed in 1929 his father lost just about everything. He got a partner who was a bootlegger and was able to complete the building and open his motion picture business.This was during prohibition; his brother, who became a pharmacist, made home brew and root beer. Lazarick's job was bottle washing and capping. In the theater his job was to pick up paper wrappers, polish the brass, and clean the glass. Everybody in the family worked.After his father's partnership spilt up, his family moved to Philadelphia and that's where he entered the service from. His brother had gone into the service before him. His brother had graduated from college and was a registered pharmacist and was a medic in the army. Lazarick was also trained as a medic.He took basic training as a medic at Camp Grant in Illinois. He was then sent to the University of Illinois where he took the tests to get into the ASTP, Army Specialized Training Program. He passed the tests and was sent to Kalamazoo College where he entered the program and he stayed until congress decided to shut down the program [Annotator's Note: the reason Lazarick gives for Congress stopping the ASTP is not correct. The program was closed because men were needed as replacements for units fighting in Europe and the Pacific]. When the program was shut down all of the guys at Kalamazoo were sent to the 96th Infantry Division except for two men who had an Air Force background.Lazarick did not have a choice of which branch of service he wanted to go into. Like everyone who entered the service he did what he was told to do and went where he was told to go.The first time he ever saw his father cry was when he waved good bye to him when he got on the train for Fort Meade, Maryland.When the war broke out he didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was. College courses were accelerated and no summer breaks were given so guys could get their degrees and get out of there. There was more hatred in Lazarick's family toward the Nazis. His parents were immigrants from Poland. He still had relatives there and even had a cousin serving in the Polish cavalry who was captured and spent a lot of time in a German prison.After the war Lazarick's mother would send packages to her relatives over in Poland because they had nothing. He remembers carrying the packages to the post office.[Annotator's Note: the interviewer talks about families being worried about relatives living overseas and how Lazarick's mother must have been doubly worried because in addition to her relatives she had two sons in the army].As time went on he was one of very few neighborhood kids who weren't in the service. There came a point where guys would leave the neighborhood for the service and would write to him.

Lazarick heard President Roosevelt's speech [Annotator's Note: Roosevelt's speech to Congress which he gave on 8 December 1941] in the auditorium at the college of pharmacy and science. The whole school was in there. The speech did not worry him at all but he was still a young kid. He had other things on his mind at that time.The basic training he took was infantry basic without a rifle. They learned how to bandage wounds, carry a litter, and dig a foxhole. They did not learn any infiltration but that was because not all of them were going to be company aid men.Company aid men are a breed all to themselves. They saw all that the riflemen saw and exposed themselves. There was a medical battalion in the 96th Infantry Division. It was a reinforced division and had its own tanks, artillery and engineers. There were never amphibious troops assigned to the division. The 321st Medical Battalion is where some of the medics were. Not all of them were company aid men. One thing Lazarick remembers is learning to fill out an EMT, emergency medical tag.Lazarick was at Camp Grant for about 15 weeks then moved to a STAR, Specialized Training and Replacement, unit. From there he was sent to an ASTP, Army Specialized Training Program, unit at Kalamazoo College. Duty at Kalamazoo College was tough because of all of the nice young ladies [Annotator's Note: Lazarick is being sarcastic] running around the campus.At Kalamazoo College he was with a mixed group of guys. There were guys from the infantry, from air force units, and even military policemen.Some of the guys with medical training were pulled out when they got to the 96th Division and sent to the medical battalion. His friend and roommate at Kalamazoo College, Stu Lindman [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], was sent to the medics and was severely wounded on Okinawa.In the army everything was done alphabetically.When Congress closed down the ASTP, 3000 ASTP men were sent to join the 96th Division which was at Camp White, Oregon. At that time Lazarick had not had any infantry training so he and those without it were given five weeks of infantry basic training.

Lazarick knew he was going to the Pacific. In March of 1944 the 96th Division was classified as an amphibious division.Some of the training they did was under the watchful eye of the US Marine Corps because their forte was amphibious landings. They practiced getting out of landing craft and running up the beach screaming like banshees.The Marines were rough. They didn't treat the soldiers with kid gloves. It was the job of the Marines to train them and they did it well.Lazarick sailed from San Francisco. While they were at Camp Stoneman prior to shipping out there was the explosion of the ammunition ship at Port Chicago. Lazarick and the men in his outfit were issued ammunition and put on trucks which took them to the town. When an officer realized that they were there he told them their presence was secret and no one was supposed to know that they were there.There was not much publicity coming out of the Pacific. It was referred to as the "other war." News from the Pacific was usually relegated to page 6 or 7 and was usually about the Marine Corps. The Marines were there at the beginning.MacArthur's [Annotator’s Note: General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] forces were army and there were about 20 army infantry division serving in the Pacific and no one ever heard of them. The 31st Infantry Division, the Dixie Division, was in New Guinea. The 32nd Infantry Division crawled over the Owen Stanley Mountains. There just wasn't any publicity.It wasn't until the Doolittle Raid that people realized that the Japanese were vulnerable. He met some of the veterans of the Doolittle Raid at a conference in Washington D.C. [Annotator's Note: Lazarick and the interviewer briefly discuss the Doolittle Raid].Lazarick’s first combat was on Leyte Island in the Philippines. His company was in the first wave to land. They went in on amphibious tractors which they had trained on in Hawaii.He believes that the Japanese knew right where the were going to land because they had set up coconut logs on 45 degree angles facing out into the sea. When the tracked vehicles got onto the beach they got hung up on the logs and were unable to deliver the troops 100 yards inland like they were supposed to [Annotator's Note: the landing beaches on Leyte were not obstructed].Lazarick's company's objective was Hill 120. In combat the men were usually only aware of what was happening right in front of them.At the base of Hill 120 were coconut log bunkers. They threw grenades into the hole and fired into the slits. At that time Lazarick did something very dumb. He had fired a clip from his M1. When he went to load another clip into it he stuck his neck out from behind the bunker and was shot [Annotator's Note: cannot clearly hear what Lazarick is saying. Do not know if he was shot by an enemy soldier or accidentally shot himself]. He had only been on the beach for 15 minutes or so. That was 20 October 1944.

The bunkers were made of coconut logs placed over a deep hole with mud placed on the top of the logs [Annotator’s Note: describing the invasion of Leyte]. Sometime direct hits by artillery would bounce off of them. The Japanese were experts at building bunkers and had had years to prepare their defenses. They did their digging with only picks and shovels.After being shot, Lazarick was put on a ship that had surgical facilities where he received advanced medical treatment. When the Battle of Surigao Straight [Annotator's Note: the battle took place on 25 October 1944] started, and order went out that all noncombatant ships were to leave the area. Even though he only had a flesh wound he was evacuated back to the Admiralty Islands then sent to New Guinea. He didn't get back to his company until 5 December [Annotator’s Note: 1944] by which time they had been decimated.Lazarick was glad to be back. He looked on the guys in his outfit as family. He was surprised at how much weight some of the guys had lost. The men were rather bedraggled and some were missing.One thing about Leyte that was interesting to him was that more men were treated for noncombat injuries and illnesses than were wounded. He heard that one of the battalions was down to 20 percent strength. It was a filthy place.The guys told Lazarick stories about what he missed when he was gone. The water table on Leyte was only about 1 foot below the ground. When the guys would dig a foxhole for the night it would fill with water. At night the guys stayed in their foxholes. If they got out of them they were sure to be killed.He hated the Japanese and feared them. They were tough and could take a lot of physical abuse. They weren't as well supplied as the American troops. They would not surrender. If a prisoner was captured they usually would not make it back to the regimental headquarters.Lazarick discusses with the interviewer how in Europe almost none of the soldiers hated the Germans but in the Pacific it was the other way around. He feels that the attack on Pearl Harbor was part of the reason for that hatred and distrust. He recalls a speech given by a regimental commander, Colonel Macy L. Dill, in which they were told that they were going into combat and that they would kill or be killed.

When Lazarick got back to his outfit on 5 December [Annotator's Note: 5 December 1944] they were up in the hills. The 96th Infantry Division was trying to get across the hills to Ormoc Bay where the 77th Division later landed, but they never got that far. The patrols up in the jungles were scary and the guys who went out on them were quite shaken.Around Christmas they were pulled off of the lines and sent down to the beach where they did some training and had some R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation]. They also became stevedores again. They had to load the ships getting ready for the Okinawa campaign.Lazarick was told by his buddies how bad the climate was and how the living conditions were atrocious. The men were sweating all of the time. Their uniforms actually rotted off of them.Lazarick hated General MacArthur [Annotator’s Note: General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area]. MacArthur had an ego the size of a castle but was a smart military man. There is a story of MacArthur inspecting a group of Marines and when he lifted the lid on a piece of equipment he saw that one of them had written "By the grace of god and a handful of Marines, MacArthur will retake the Philippines!" Marines do things like that.The interviewer states that the 96th Infantry Division suffered 10,000 casualties on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: this is incorrect. The 96th Division suffered roughly 9000 during their entire combat career].After shipping out of Leyte they headed toward Okinawa. They ran into Halsey's' Typhoon [Annotator's Note: Halsey's Typhoon, officially known as Typhoon Cobra, was a storm lasting from 17-18 December 1944. Lazarick's outfit left the Philippines for Okinawa on 27 March 1945. There is no way he could have been caught in Halsey's Typhoon].In the middle of April the whole 10th Army launched an attack. They had hit a stone wall. They would go out on patrol, get shot up, and go back. They weren't gaining any ground at all. They were told that on 19 April [Annotator's Note: 19 April 1945] there would be a huge barrage in both the 96th Division sector and the 77th Division sector. Everything that could fire did fire. Thousands of rounds were fired.Lazarick's outfit attacked toward Tombstone Ridge. Even after the barrage they ran into resistance when they attacked. They had orders to run forward until they couldn't run any more then dig in. They did so and were able to gain ground and get up on top of Tombstone Ridge. By the end of the day on the 20th they had all of Tombstone Ridge.Tombstone Ridge was limestone and coral. They were not able to dig foxholes in the stone.

On the morning of the 21st they were ordered to go down Tombstone Ridge and head west to the village of Nishibaru. During their advance a 320 mm mortar was fired at them. They round made noise and they could actually see it in the air before it hit. The mortar round left a hole in the ground about 15 feet deep and 30 to 40 feet in diameter.Lazarick's outfit got up on the ridge near Nishibaru where there was a stone wall.They got pinned down there and could hear bullets ricocheting off of the stone wall. A captain came along with a bullet hole in his arm and told them to get up on a nearby hill and start firing. The men told him it was suicide. The captain replied that their 2nd platoon was trapped down in the village and that Lazarick's group was to provide some cover fire.At that time he saw, for the first time, a Japanese counterattack in company strength against their almost nonexistent rifle platoon. There were some guys out of M Company next to them. Peters was the BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle] man and Lazarick had an M1 rifle. Lazarick started firing his rifle. There was a light machine gun [Annotator's Note: M1919 .30 caliber air cooled light machine gun] to Peters' right with nobody on it so he moved over to it and slid his BAR to Lazarick. Lazarick grabbed it by the barrel and burned his hands but didn't even realize it at the time. He started firing the BAR and glanced to his side and saw Sgt. Dovel [Annotator's Note: Staff Sergeant Davis Dovel] from M Company, the heavy weapons company, with a water cooled machine gun [Annotator's Note: M1917 .30 caliber water cooled machine gun] firing it from the hip.They could see a Jap [Annotator’s Note: racial slur for the Japanese] crawling up through the grass toward Dovel. Fortunately, some of his guys saw the soldier because Lazarick could not have gotten a shot at him.Some other guys in the company started firing their 60 mm mortars. They were firing almost straight up the in th air because the enemy was so close. The battle lasted about 15 minutes and when it was over they were told they had killed 195 Japanese soldiers that morning but he doesn't know. To him it would have been disgusting to go around counting dead bodies.Lazarick's hands were burned and he also had grenade fragments in his face. He got his second Purple Heart for this battle. He had received his first on Leyte and got his third on 12 May.After the battle the 383rd [Annotator's Note: 383rd Infantry Regiment, 96th Infantry Division] relieved them and carried on the attack beyond that.They were no longer an effective fighting force. There were only 7 men left from the original 48 man platoon. Lazarick heard that in some instances the remnants of battalions were pulled together to form a company.At a reunion a guy from Headquarters Company told Lazarick that on Okinawa they had 300 replacements just in K Company. It was carnage. Lazarick believes that that was the reason Truman [Annotator's Note: 33rd President of the United States Harry S. Truman] dropped the bomb [Annotator's Note: the atomic bomb]. Truman said that he didn't want another Okinawa. 234,000 people lost their lives in that piece of the war. One third of the civilian population was destroyed. About 100,000 Japanese soldiers were killed. 14,005 [Annotator's Note: roughly 12,500 Americans were killed or missing] were killed out of which over 5000 were sailors [Annotator's Note: US Navy losses were just under 5000 killed]. Kamikaze attacks sank 36 ships and damaged over 100 [Annotator's Note: Naval losses were actually 368 vessels damaged and 28 sunk].Simon Bolivar Buckner was the highest ranking officer in World War II to be killed in action. General Claudius Easley, commanding general of the 96th Infantry Division was killed in action. Colonel Edmund May, commander of the 383rd Infantry was killed in action.

They had a couple of rainy days in April [Annotator's Note: April 1945] but the rains got heavy after Lazarick left. He jokes that that was his legacy to the guys. His last day of combat was 12 May [Annotator's Note: 12 May 1945].Lazarick's outfit continued on [Annotator's Note: after he left] to a place called Dick Hill. According to stories he heard from the guys in his outfit, the guys got pinned down on Dick Hill. A guy named Clarence Craft won the Medal of Honor [Annotator's Note: Medals of Honor are earned, not won] for wiping out a platoon of Japanese soldiers by himself. The enemy soldiers were so close they could almost be heard talking.The most heroic thing Lazarick ever saw was Davis Dovel firing his water cooled machine gun from the hip. He was told later on that Duval had been awarded the Silver Star for that action. He never saw Dovel again after that action but knows that he survived the war. Four Medals of Honor [Annotator's Note: 4 Medals of Honor were awarded for Okinawa and 1 for Leyte] were won by Lazarick's division [Annotator's Note: 96th Infantry Division].There were times during mortar barrages, when the only thing between himself and the mortar shells was his foxhole, that he doubted himself. There were plenty of times when he was plenty scared. If he had lasted later he may not have made it. He may have been a combat fatigue candidate.Lazarick feels that his life was spared for a purpose but he never knew what that purpose was until he went to live in his retirement community.He believes that his mother's prayers got him to where he is today.There were a lot of soldiers who were a lot better than Lazarick who didn't make it. He was luckier than they were.He says that they had some fun times. There were times when he and other guys who could write would write letters home for the guys who were illiterate. Lazarick wrote home and his mother kept the letters.

The level of camaraderie began to diminish because they were dealing with different people. If they hadn't gotten replacements, however, there would have been no Division. Some of the replacements they got were very good. The replacements had had 17 weeks of basic training and knew how to fire a rifle and use a bayonet. The replacements looked up to the veterans but didn't always listen to them.On Zebra Hill, two days before Lazarick was wounded, he was in a hole with a replacement. He noticed that a kid was dozing off so he hit him in the head with a clump of mud and scared him. He then told the kid that if he fell asleep again and the Japs [Annotator’s Note: racial slur for the Japanese] didn't kill him, he would.The day before Lazarick got wounded they were in a field and the Japanese were dropping knee mortars on them. The Japanese were clever. They had dug little slit trenches along side of the hill. Lazarick yelled for his friend Jack Fitzgerald to move up so he could fit in th hole. Fitz exposed himself so he could get into the hole and saved his life. Smoke was laid down so they could get out. The captain asked where the rest of the guys were and when he was told that they were still in the field the captain told them to go back for them.In recent years Lazarick has had the opportunity to speak at an event in Reading, Pennsylvania.The job of the infantry is to get close with the enemy and destroy him and to take ground and hold. Kill or be killed.The Marines called them dog faces and they called the Marines jar heads.