The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Elmer Ethun. Ethun was drafted into the Army Air Forces in March 1943 at Fort Sheridan. He completed basic training in Florida. He moved on to Camp Crowder, Missouri to telephone school. From there, he went to Hammer Field in Fresno, California to message center school and learned cryptography and Morse code. He was in the 2nd Airbase Communication Detachment. In April 1944 he was sent overseas to Calcutta, India, then to China. He worked in the message center as a cryptographer encoding and decoding messages. He left Calcutta and arrived in the States in December 1945 and was discharged. He made a career as a machinist.