If the sword could talk, the sons of Arnulfo Valdez would listen.

All they know about its existence is what little their father has told them over the years about his service in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

There was some sort of battle with Japanese soldiers that ended with the enemy dead. And while bullets were flying, their father grabbed something from one of the fallen Japanese soldiers, an officer perhaps, and took it with him.

The Japanese katana, with blossoms on the hilt and a slightly curved steel blade, came back with him to Wapato, and his son Arnulfo Jr. has it now. Some time ago, Arnulfo said, he cleaned the blade because it looked like it was dirty, black with a charcoal-like substance.

He realized as he was cleaning that it was dried blood. A lot of it.

Whoever once owned the sword seemed to have made use of it, perhaps even earlier that day before he went into battle against Valdez. Was it used to kill American soldiers? Or maybe the blood was already on the sword, handed down from the Japanese soldier's father, like Valdez had done.

The sword, of course, is silent. So, for the most part, is the elder Valdez.

Now 88, the quiet man sits in his living room in Wapato and asks me why a newspaper would even want to publish something that happened so long ago.

The war is not something to be remembered, it seems. At least, not by him.

"I did a lot of fighting," he does concede at one point.

Despite his reticence, his son Arnulfo Jr. and stepson Jesse Farias do know bits and pieces about his part in the war. That he was drafted in 1942 at age 24, that he was at Fort Sill at Oklahoma, that he went to Oregon before shipping out to see action in the Philippines and Okinawa.

Service records show Valdez was wounded twice in the Philippines, in April 1945 and again in June 1945, for which he received a Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster along with a Bronze Star. But ask him how he was wounded, during what battle or even what parts of his body were injured, and he either does not want to talk or just can't bring himself to do so.

"I don't remember where," he says, then adds. "I know they flew me out in an airplane."

That airplane ride eventually led to another one on Christmas Day 1945, when Valdez received his honorable discharge and got to go home. Once back in Wapato, he made raising a family his priority and now his walls are filled with pictures of his 12 children, 28 grandchildren, 43 great-grandchildren and eight great-great-grandchildren.

But sitting not far from the pictures on the wall is the sword on the kitchen table, and it is heavy. Very heavy. Just lifting it requires some strength.

Valdez is not certain whether he killed the soldier who had the sword. But this time it's not because he can't remember; it was the chaos of battle.

"I don't know if it was me," he says. "But I was the one who got it."

The sons and I try to get him to talk a little bit more about what else he saw during the war, maybe even how he was injured.

Then they tell me it might not even be the thoughts of fighting that have kept their father silent, but memories of the brother he lost.

José Valdez had earned a Silver Star for bravery in Germany and had just sent his older brother a letter, telling Arnulfo that soon they would be fighting together in the Pacific. I ask Valdez about his brother, and he finds his voice for a moment.

"He was going to be where I was," Valdez recalled. "That's when they killed him."

I talk to him again about how important it is that younger generations remember the sacrifices that were made and his sons tell him again how important it is that he try to speak.

He seems to meditate for a moment, as if gathering strength, and then says "A lot of them got killed."

He pauses again and wipes his face, and it's hard to tell whether it's sweat or tears. The story is not about how he was wounded, but of an ambush somewhere, in Okinawa, he thinks.

"Machine gun opened up, my friends on each side, they were killed."

"I wasn't even scratched."

"Missed me the whole time."

And then that's it. His sons and I try to get a little more detail about the ambush, how it ended and who got the machine gunner, but to no avail. At least none that he can or wants to talk about right now.

I switch subjects and ask him if there were any good memories he can recall, and he smiles when I ask about the Philippines.

"Lot of girls," he says.

Everybody laughs and I have the sense the interview is over. Jesse and Arnulfo say it was the most they had heard their father talk about the war, and that I should be pleased.

Then I look at the sword again, and something he said toward the end of his story about the ambush cuts through my thoughts like a blade.

"A lot of good guys died."