The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Richard Bischoff. Bischoff joined the Army in December of 1942. He served with the 607th Tank Destroyer Battalion. They arrived in England in April of 1944. They invaded Normandy on D-Day plus 2. Bischoff and his unit fought across France and into Germany during the summer and early winter of 1944. In December they participated in the Ardennes Campaign, ending the war near the Czechoslovakian border. Bischoff returned to the US and was discharged in December of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents and oral interview with Harold Gensler. Gensler was born in Tarrytown, New York on 28 September 1915 and graduated from high school in 1935. He recalls the crowds at the New York recruiting station being so large the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor that horse-mounted policemen were needed for crowd control. He was exempt from the draft and ineligible to enlist in any branch of the service as he was employed by a railroad company with a job considered essential to the war effort. In 1943 he joined the Navy and was assigned to a Naval Construction Battalion. He was put on various clerical assignments all the while desiring to be in combat. After filing numerous requests he was assigned to the USS Edgecombe (APA-164). The ship departed for New Guinea 31 December 1943 and he describes in minute detail the Shellback initiation ceremony that took place upon crossing the Equator. He made trips to Leyte and Ulithi to deliver supplies and to the Philippines as the fleet prepared for the invasion of Okinawa. He also recalls listening to radio broadcasts by Tokyo Rose foretelling the landings on the island. …