The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Kennann. Kennann joined the Navy in 1942 at age 21. The first time he saw the ocean was at boot camp in San Diego. He was selected for aviation machinist’s school in Chicago and went on to study hydraulics. After graduating in June 1943, he was assigned to Alameda Naval Air Station as part of Composite Squadron 65 (VC-65), which then boarded the USS St. Lo (CVE-63). There Kennann performed maintenance work in the hangar deck and checked planes on the flight deck for leaks. When the St. Lo was struck by a kamikaze at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Kennann climbed down a cargo net to abandon ship. After waiting in the water for an hour, he was rescued by the USS Dennis (DE-405). By that time, he was already so weakened that he could not pull himself out of the water without assistance. Kennann rejoined his squadron and headed toward Japan, ceasing operations after the first bomb was dropped. Following his discharge, Kennann surprised his family by returning home early.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Bobby Meyers. Meyers was drafted into the Navy in June of 1943. He completed boot camp in Farragut, Idaho. He was assigned to a service school in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Beginning in 1944 he worked in the engine room as a machinist mate aboard the USS Dennis (DE-405). They traveled to Pearl Harbor, and escorted carriers throughout the Pacific. They traveled to Iwo Jima, Eniwetok and participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Dennis rescued 434 survivors from the escort carrier USS St. Lo (CVE–63), which had been sunk by a kamikaze. He shares his experience going through a typhoon. Meyers was discharged in late 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Sam Palermo. Palermo was born in 1924 in Melrose Park, Illinois. His parents came from Italy in 1902. He was drafted into the Navy in June 1943 and sent to Farragut, Idaho for boot training. Upon finishing, he went to Wahpeton, where he studied engineering at the North Dakota State College of Science for six months. In March 1944 he reported aboard the USS Dennis (DE-405) as a motor machinist in the engine room. The Dennis was part of Taffy 3 and participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf off Samar during which the ship was hit five times by Japanese gunfire. After the battle, the Dennis picked up 434 survivors from the USS St. Lo (CVE-63) and Palermo describes burials at sea of five shipmates and a casualty from the St. Lo. After dropping off the injured at Peleliu, the ship returned to Alameda for repairs. Returning to the Pacific, the Dennis provided support during the invasion of Iwo Jima. After twenty-seven days on station at Iwo Jima the ship went to Ulithi for provisions and to prepare for the next invasion. After participating in the invasion …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Alfonso Perez. Perez was born in Maxwell, Texas 11 September 1923. After finishing the fourth grade he went to work in the agricultural fields as a laborer. In January 1942 he joined the Navy and entered boot camp at San Diego. Upon completion, he was assigned to the USS Midway/USS St. Lo (CVE-63) as a plane captain with VC-65. He recalls the ship taking part in the invasion of Saipan and Tinian and going to Eniwetok for replacements and provisions. On 25 October 1944 the St. Lo was involved in the Battle off Samar when the Japanese attacked as planes from the St. Lo were being launched for submarine patrol. Perez remembers the Japanese ships being so close he could see enemy sailors on deck as they passed. He recalls seeing a kamikaze diving toward his ship and crashing approximately thirty feet from where he was. Upon receiving orders to abandon ship he went overboard and remembers being taken aboard a raft. The survivors were picked up by the USS Dennis (DE-405) and he recalls the compassion shown by the crew. After being treated for superficial wounds he …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Thomas Petrillo. Petrillo was born 21 January 1917 in Methuen, Massachusetts. He received a draft notice in January 1942, but joined the Navy. He reported to boot camp at Newport, Rhode Island in April 1942. After five months of training, he reported aboard the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) as a five inch gun loader. The ship was damaged during Operation Torch in November 1942, and returned to Boston for repair. Soon after arriving, Petrillo reported aboard the newly constructed USS St. Lo (CVE-63) as a gunners mate. He recalls the battle off Samar. Petrillo was wounded after the fifth explosion aboard his ship and recalls the efforts of others to pull him from the water. Taken aboard the USS Reynolds (DE-42) he went to Leyte where he was transferred to another ship. He was operated on and put into a full body cast. Petrillo returned to the United States aboard a hospital ship, stopping at Iwo Jima and Brisbane. Upon arrival at San Francisco he was put aboard a train bound for the Chelsea Naval Hospital in Massachusetts. He describes the difficulty and special procedures needed to get him …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Grover C. Phillips. Phillips was born 7 December 1925 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Upon enlisting in the Navy in February 1943 he went to San Diego for boot training. He attended radio school, gunnery school and flight training prior to being assigned to United States. Navy. Composite Squadron 10 (VC-10) aboard the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73). He flew on fifteen missions off the ship in a TBM. During one bombing mission, the plane was damaged by flak and he comments on the masterful job the pilot did in landing the plane. While returning from another mission his plane ran out of fuel just before landing resulting in ditching into the sea. The crew was picked up by the USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) and was transferred by back to their ship. He tells of the Gambier Bay being hit by shellfire from attacking Japanese forces. Phillips was wounded twice and observed the ship’s doctor being wounded. In the water, he observed his ship sink and heard the surviving crewmen give it a cheer. After forty-five hours in the water his group of survivors was picked up by an LCI. …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Lester Shodo. Shodo joined the Navy in July of 1942. He completed boot camp at Great Lakes. He completed schooling for aviation machinist mate at Navy Pier in Chicago. He went on to complete Navy gunner training in Florida. Beginning in April of 1944 Shodo served aboard the USS Midway (CV-41) with Composite Squadron VC-65. They traveled to Hawaii, then to Saipan, Tinian and the Marietta Islands. Shodo worked as a turret gunner aboard a TBM, supporting ground troops during landings, bombing and rocket missions. He was then transferred to the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73), where he served on missions with Composite Squadron VC-54 to Peleliu and Midway. He was later transferred back to the Midway, and VC-65, and traveled to the Philippines. Shodo was discharged in April of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Michael Tostik. Tostik tried to join the Navy in 1939 but was turned away. He joined the Civilian Conservation Corps instead and worked for civilian contractors building materials for the military. After training with an aviation unit, he was assigned to the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73). Tostik served as a mechanic aboard ship. He was aboard when the Gambier Bay sank off Samar and describes the day. He describes abandoning ship and being in the water for just over two days. He was rescued and transferred to an LST that got caught in a typhoon. He returned to the US via the Panama Canal and was discharged in New York.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Louis Vilmer. Vilmer joined the Navy in April of 1943. He completed aerial gunnery school and trained as an aviation radioman. He traveled to Pearl Harbor around May of 1944 and transferred to the Naval Air Station at Barbers Point in Hawaii. From there he traveled to Majuro and Eniwetok awaiting assignment in a replacement pool. He served aboard the USS Braine (DD-630) before being assigned to the USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73). They traveled to the Palau Islands and to Leyte Gulf, supporting troop landings. He provides some details of life aboard the Gambier Bay and his work as a dive bomber. In the summer of 1945 he completed photography and radar bombing school. He traveled to Guam and finally Alaska when the war ended. Back in the United States he was assigned to a military office processing travel reimbursements. He was discharged in March of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Doyle Hoffman. Hoffman joined the Navy in February of 1943. He completed boot camp in Farragut, Idaho and provides some details of his experiences. He also completed damage control school, and was assigned to the USS St. Lo (CVE-63). Hoffman worked in the Construction and Repair Division, where they made repairs to everything outside the engine room that was aboard the ship, including plumbing and welding. In mid to late 1943 they traveled between San Diego and Pearl Harbor, hauling airplanes. They also helped qualify pilots for carrier landings. He provides some details of accommodations, armament and general life aboard the St. Lo. In June of 1944 they participated in the invasion of Saipan, where they shot down two Japanese aircraft and supported the Marines and Army. They also participated in the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, the invasion of Guam, the invasion of the Philippines and the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where Hoffman shares vivid details of his ship under attack and sinking. In 1946 he participated in the Bikini A-bomb Tests. He was discharged in February of 1947.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Henry Osburn. He begins with an anecdote about his birth and a mix-up on his birth certificate. In 1944, he was draftred into the Navy at 18 years of age. Osburn went to boot camp in San Diego for four weeks of intense training. His pay was $32 per month. When he finished Basic Training, Osburn was attached to Carrier Aircraft Support Unit 53 in Hopeville, California. Two months later, he was sent to Philadelphia for more training, this time with catapult and arresting gear. From there, Osburn reported to the USS Hornet (CV-12) operating in the Pacific. Osburn then speaks about the job he had working with aircraft arresting gear and life aboard ship. He mentions the ship being involved in operations at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Ward McGill. McGill joined the Army in June of 1943. He completed boot camp at Camp Abbot in Oregon. He trained as a Combat Engineer, building Bailey bridges and pine log bridges. He provides great details of his training. He was assigned to Company B, 66th Armored Infantry Battalion, 12th Armored Division. Around September of 1944 they traveled to England where McGill worked as an assistant squad leader, driving a half-track. In November they landed at Le Havre, France, supporting the 94th Infantry Division up to the banks of the Rhine River, enduring numerous attacks and casualties of fellow servicemen. McGill was wounded in April of 1945 by a sniper near Würzburg, Germany. He was discharged in 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Edward Kozak. Kozak provides some details of his family’s history as professional musicians, including his experience on the piano, marimba, harp and drums. Kozak served as the head of the department in the Shreveport Symphony, and served as a music teacher at a number of schools, including Juilliard School of Music in New York. He joined the Navy in 1943. He graduated from the Washington D.C. School of Music and was assigned as a Coxswain on a Higgins boat. He served as a marimba soloist in a band that played for Admiral Chester Nimitz throughout the war.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Herman L. Bell. Bell worked in a shipyard in California at the beginning of the war and describes his duties as a welder. He joined the Navy in April 1943 and discusses his time in boot camp at Farragut, Idaho and the additional training that he received as a firefighter. Bell was sent to the USS Independence (CVL-22). He describes his duties and some of the work he performed. Bell discusses when his ship was hit with a torpedo off Tarawa and the damage control work he performed including how he helped save a trapped sailor. He also discusses an incident when emergency repairs were performed during a typhoon and another when a large bomb broke free from its restraints. Bell also discusses seeing the massive flyover during the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. He left the service in November 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Marshall Harris. Harris provides his family???s experiences through the Great Depression. Harris joined the Marine Corps in July of 1943. He completed radio school and volunteered to work with amphibious tanks. He was assigned to the 2nd Armored Amphibious Tank Battalion, driving the LVT-A4. He provides details of the LVT. They traveled to Hawaii, where he trained and played on a baseball team. In June of 1944 they participated in the Battle of Saipan, then the Battle of Tinian in July. He served as a radioman and machine gunner. In February of 1945 they participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima. He provides vivid details of his experiences through each of these battles. Harris was discharged in November of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Calloway Scott. Scott joined the Army in October 1943 and received medical training at Camp Grant. Upon completion, he was sent to Omaha Beach with the 9th Infantry Division, arriving eight days after D-Day. Although there should have been three medics assigned to each company, they were often short-staffed, with only one medic per several hundred men. Scott participated in house-to-house fighting in Cherbourg and pushed onward into Belgium and Germany. He recalls an evening when Germans parachuted behind American lines, creating a great deal of confusion in the morning, but the Germans were taken prisoner without incident. Scott celebrated the end of the war alongside dancing Russians and returned home in October 1945.

Transcript of an oral interview with Charles Thibeault. Thibeault was drafted and went into the Army in 1943. He took basic training in Alabama, was shipped overseas and joined the 35th Division, 134th Infantry, 1st Battalion, Company C in 1944 when they were in France. He was a squad leader then when he made Staff Sergeant he had his own platoon. He fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded. He also fought in the Battle of Bastogne and at Metz. His outfit liberated one of the concentration camps (somewhere in Germany but Thibeault couldn't remember the name). Thibeault gives a fairly graphic description of the scene at the concentration camp. After liberating the camp he got his men together and said, "As of now, right now, we do not take any more prisoners. If that is the way they are going to treat people, I will do the same. I don't care. This is not war, what they did to the people. They were prisoners of war and all that is all they done, and look how skinny they are; you could see the bones." His unit also liberated a concentration camp that just contained women. Thibeault …

Transcript of an oral interview with Frederick M. Bidwell. Bidwell joined the Army in 1940 at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was assigned to the 69th Infantry Division and headed for France in mid-1944. He eventually was attached to the 35th Infantry Division and fought in France at the Battle of St. Lo. He also briefly mentions the Battle of the Bulge.

Transcript of an oral interview with Lewane D. Herring. He discusses working at Corpus Christi and Kingsville Naval Air Stations in south Texas before being assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La and the destroyer USS Barton during his naval career. He also discusses his time spent in the Air Force during the Korean War. Mr. Herring then read a letter about his brother's service during the Korean War.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Richard Hockensmith. Hockensmith was drafted in the Army in 1942. He was assigned to the 626th Military Police Battalion in Camp Beauregard, Louisiana. They patrolled the streets and served as auxiliary police. He was then assigned to the 394th Military Police Escort Guard Company in Fort Bliss, Texas. They were trained to handle prisoners of war. He also received instruction on personnel management. He was then transferred to a little town about 35 miles east of Waco where a POW camp was established. In 1943 he went by troop ship to North Africa to pick up African and German prisoners from the Afrika Korps to transfer back to a POW camp in Mexia, Texas. He describes the work of a POW at the camp. From Mexia, Hockensmith was transferred to another POW camp in Camp Swift, Texas. He was then transferred into the personnel section of the Medical Corps and was shipped out to the Pacific in late 1944. They traveled to Okinawa, then to Kadena Airfield and remained in this area until January of 1946. He was discharged in early 1946.

Transcript of an oral interview with Ronald DeWitt. In 1943, he joined the Navy when he was 17. He went to Newport, Rhode Island for basic training and then went to radar operator school at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. From there, he was assigned to Port Hueneme, California for more radar training. He evetually volunteered for sea duty and was posted to the USS Algol (AKA-54) in August, 1944 as a radar man. He describes the function of and gear aboard the attack cargo ship; being the ranking radar man; traveling in a convoy. After entering the Pacific, he participated in the invasion of the Philippines and was present for the landing at Lingayen Gulf. From there, they delivered cargo at Leyte, then headed for Okinawa. Th eAlgol ws there for the first nine days of the invasion before heading for Guam and then the US. toward the end of the war, the Algol was back in the Pacific, where, after the war, it delivered its boats to China. From there, it returned to Seattle and DeWitt left the Navy in March, 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Lorenzo Todd. Todd completed radio school through the National Youth Administration. He completed Civilian Pilot Training with the Army Air Force Reserves in mid-1943. Beginning in 1945, he flew an L-5 aircraft with the 163rd Liaison Squadron. They traveled to Hawaii, the Bikini Islands, Eniwetok, Ulithi, and evacuated wounded soldiers from Okinawa. Todd returned to the US and was discharged in November of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Richard Taylor. Taylor joined the Navy in February of 1943. He served as a Marine pilot with a dive bomber squadron. In October of 1944, Taylor deployed to the Marshall Islands. He completed surveillance missions of Japanese-occupied islands. Around March of 1945, he was stationed at Engebi, on the Eniwetok Atoll. Taylor participated in the Battle of Okinawa, completing combat patrol missions and dropping napalm on the southern end of the island. He returned to the US and was discharged in November of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with James McKinley. McKinley was in college when the war started and in spite of serious damage to his eyes earlier in life, he was able to serve in the Army as a clerk in the Ordnance branch. He was shipped to New Caledonia and assigned to the 51st Ordnance Ammunition Company, operating an ammo dump outside of Noumea. He arrived there in 1943 and went home after the war and was discharged in early 1946. He used the GI Bill to finish schooling in pharmacy and earned a master's degree before becoming a pharmacist in Houston.