Interview with John Wilson, an officer in the U. S. Army during World War II. Wilson was born in Illinois but attended high school in the Philippines after his father accepted an engineering position there. He graduated from high school in 1939 and then enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, where he participated in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program. He graduated and took his commission in the Army in 1943. After Officer Candidate School (OCS), he was assigned to an engineering unit slated to participate in the invasion of the Philippines. He eventually landed on Luzon. On Luzon he was assigned temporary duty with a small Philippine Civil Affairs unit that was made up of officers and men who had relatives interned by the Japanese in the Philippines. His small unit made their way to Santo Tomas where he liberated many friends and old school mates. A few weeks later, Wilson liberated his father, a civilian internee at Los Banos. Wilson remained with his unit constructing hospitals in the Philippines in anticipation of the casualties expected from the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Interview with Glenn E. McDuffie, an Armed Guard in the U. S. Navy during World War II. He discusses lying about his age in order to join the navy at 15 and his experience in boot camp. He served as an Armed Guard on merchant ships that transported supplies across the Atlantic and remembers being in London while German bombers flew overhead. He transported German prisoners out of Marseilles and Naples shortly after the liberation of those cities. He remembers going to Times Square upon hearing that the Japanese had surrendered. He claims to have been the sailor in the iconic photo of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day. He describes how he proved he was the sailor in the photo, what he did after the war, and how he learned that his brother survived the Bataan Death March.