The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Reverend J.B. Young. Young enlisted in the Army Air Corps in December 1936. He became a cook and then was trained as an airplane mechanic. Young was sent to Hickam Field in Hawaii to serve as a crew chief on a B-17. He describes the attack on 7 December and how he taxied his plane out of danger and the patrols that they flew in the immediate aftermath. Young was then sent to New Caledonia where his plane flew photo reconnaissance missions for three months. They traveled to Australia and flew missions against Rabaul and Japanese ships in the Coral Sea. Young describes some notable incidents from this time. He returned to the US after 66 missions and remained there until the end of the war. Young retired from the Air Force in 1959.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Martin Mark. Mark joined the Army in April 1943 and received basic training at Camp Joseph T. Robinson. Upon completion, he was reassigned to the Pacific and was shipped to New Caledonia for further training. At Suva, Fiji, he was trained by natives to perform jungle reconnaissance. As part of the Americal Division, he served for one year on the frontlines at Bougainville, where he built pillboxes and performed a dozen recon missions. During those missions, he engaged in hand-to-hand combat and destroyed Japanese military buildings while identifying targets and trails for his unit to follow. He then shipped to Leyte, where during recon missions he protected Filipino natives from Japanese atrocities. His service ended when he developed jungle rot from a day spent in the Torokina River. He was treated in Leyte with penicillin but never fully recovered. On his way back to the States, he suffered his first malaria attack and was taken to the Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco. Mark returned home to New York City.

Transcript of an oral interview with James B. Hinshaw. When Hinshaw finished high school, he was draftd into the Army in 1943. He went ot basic training at Camp Roberts in California. At Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, Hinshaw was attached to an anti-tank company in the 222nd Regiment of the 42nd Infantry Division, which shipped over to Marseille, France in December, 1944. Shortly thereafter, his unit moved into combat near Strasbourg. the 42nd eventually assaulted into Wurzburg, Germany where Hinshaw fired his 57mm anti-tank weapon at a German machine gun nest, neutralizing it. He remembers being strafed by a German jet fighter. When the war in Europe ended, Hinshaw's unit was headed for Austria, where the 42nd ID served occupation duty. He finally shipped home in Marchm 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Edward H. Hill. Hill was born 29 November 1918 In Los Angeles. He was inducted into the Army in 1940 and sent to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey where he became an enlisted instructor at the Signal Corps Replacement Training Center. He then entered Officers Candidate School and ninety days later was commissioned a second lieutenant. After being commissioned he applied for pilot training. After taking preflight and basic flight training, he washed out during advanced flight training in 1944. He was then sent to Signal Corps Officer’s school. Upon completion of the training he was assigned as Cryptographic Security Officer for the 31st Infantry Division stationed on Mindanao and was there when Japan surrendered. Returning to the United States in January 1946 he entered the Air National Guard and in 1950 was called into active duty. He remained in the Air Force until his retirement in 1967.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with James Brown. Brown joined the Army Air Forces in March 1943 and received basic training in Florida. He received aircraft mechanic training in Newark and attended gunnery school in Florida. Upon completion, he was assigned to the 675th Bomb Squadron, as an engineer gunner in a two-man crew flying A-20s. Brown flew a total of 23 missions in New Guinea and the Philippines. He was wounded by an armor-piercing bullet over Luzon, and one of his engines suffered a damaged fuel line. They made an emergency landing in Manila, and Brown received two months of medical care before being reassigned to Okinawa. When the typhoon hit his camp, he held onto his tent’s center pole and was carried into the air. After the war, Brown returned home and was employed by the VA, teaching agriculture to returning soldiers.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Ralph Edgar. Edgar joined the Navy in October 1943 and received basic training in Norfolk. Upon completion, he was sent to Guadalcanal, where he joined a special construction battalion that specialized in moving cargo. In the Philippines, he unloaded ships and brought supplies to the frontlines. The work was dangerous, and he encountered kamikazes. After the war, he ran a motor pool in Japan, supervising 260 Japanese drivers. One of his drivers stole three Jeeps, sold them on the black market, and was subsequently imprisoned. After two years, Edgar was sent back to the States to be treated for rheumatic fever. He received a medical discharge but soon returned to the Navy, managing motor pools again, this time as a civilian employee.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Lemar Hartman. Hartman joined the Navy in 1940 and received basic training at Great Lakes. Upon completion of radio school, he was assigned to the USS Selfridge (DD-357) at Pearl Harbor. During the attack, Hartman was on standby as a radioman, unable to answer messages, because the transmitting antennae had been shot down. Hartman witnessed the gruesome aftermath of The Battle of Vella Lavella and the Marianas campaigns, where he was tasked with installing radio communication infrastructure as soon as the islands were taken. He later returned home and was discharged in 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Roy Hughes. Hughes joined the National Guard and was called into active duty in September 1941. He was assigned to an artillery unit with the 45th Division in Algeria, preparing for the invasion of Sicily. In Salerno, he was wounded by shrapnel and almost left for dead when the medic was frightened by enemy shelling. Hughes’s best friend forced the company medic out of his hiding place, and Hughes recovered at a British hospital in Tripoli. Three months later, he returned to his unit for the invasion of Anzio. They fought in Southern France and finished the war while capturing Germans in Munich. Hughes returned home in June 1945. During his readjustment to civilian life, his nightmares were so debilitating that he was granted a full medical discharge. Over time, he made a full recovery.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Ramon Laughter. Laughter joined the Army in March 1941 and received basic training at Fort Monmouth. Upon completion, he was sent to OCS and earned a commission in the Signal Corps. He was then assigned to Camp Pinedale for further electronics training before joining the 134th Signal Intelligence Company, intercepting Japanese command radio communications while stationed at Kadena. Remarkably, some men in his unit were able to learn Katakana in one day, but Laughter relied on the help of six Nisei interpreters. After the war, Laughter returned to the States and was assigned to Air Defense Command, where he developed AWAC techniques that he had experimented with during the war. He retired as a full colonel in 1966.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Davis Mayes. Mayes joined the Army in the summer of 1936 and received basic training at Fort Sam Houston. While there, he taught himself to type. Upon completion of his three-year enlistment, he left to join the Navy, where his typing experience qualified him to become a radioman, copying down Japanese signals. He was on standby aboard the USS Solace (AH-5) during the attack on Pearl Harbor, bearing witness to the incredible destruction and its aftermath. His next assignment was as chief communicator for the USS Enoree (AO-69), coordinating 50 ships for the delivery of supplies to Europe. Next, he was assigned to a seagoing tug as chief radioman. As the only chief aboard, he instructed the crew in repairing everything from kitchen equipment to motors, salvaging parts from the mothball fleet. In the Korean War, he again went beyond his duties as a radioman and conducted repairs all over the USS Healey (DD-762). Mayes left the service in 1957 and went on to enjoy a 25-year career with the RCA Corporation. He was the only engineer there without a college education.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Miller. Miller joined the Navy in October 1941 and received basic training in San Diego. After a bout with the mumps and the measles, he was assigned to the USS Argonne (AG-31) at Pearl Harbor, where his first duties included removing projectiles from the badly damaged USS Oklahoma (BB-37), while the USS Arizona (BB-39) was still smoking. At Manus he was instructed to unload ammunition from the USS Mount Hood (AE-11) just before it exploded; fortunately, he had requested and been assigned a different task at the last minute. Miller spent the remainder of the war as a carpenter, repairing Higgins boats and PT boats damaged in action or left behind to rot. After the war ended, he was given train patrol in Seattle, trying to keep control of rowdy soldiers on their way home. Miller was discharged in 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Robert Sheron. Sheron joined the Navy in May 1944 and received basic training and learned to operate a Higgins boat at Camp Peary. Upon completion, he was assigned to the USS President Jackson (APA-18), where he worked as a typist in the S Division, managing dry supplies and disbursements. At Iwo Jima, he served as a stretcher bearer, retrieving wounded Marines from the shore. He recalls doctors performing amputations in the mess hall while the ship was used as an overflow hospital. He saw the flag raised on Mount Suribachi and remembers hundreds of ships nearby blowing their whistles in celebration. He stayed aboard after the war as part of Operation Magic Carpet and was discharged in 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Joseph Smith. Smith joined the Army Air Forces in December 1942 after working for Curtiss-Wright and Emerson. Upon completion of boot camp, aerial gunnery school, and celestial navigation training, he earned his wings. He was given further training until he qualified as a B-29 bombardier, radarman, and navigator. Smith was then assigned to the 29th Bomb Group, flying all of his missions out of Guam. His crew once voted to make an emergency landing in Iwo Jima to escape enemy fighter planes; he says many B-29s were saved that way on Iwo Jima. Smith’s last official flight of the war was over the USS Missouri (BB-63) during the singing of the surrender. He flew 26 missions in the Korean War before retiring as a first lieutenant.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with James Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer joined the Navy in June 1942 and received basic training in San Diego. Upon completion, he was assigned to the USS Tappahannock (AO-43), where he encountered many close calls with Japanese bombers and one Kaiten. At the end of the war, Pfeiffer was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder because he was experiencing quiet sounds as though they were as loud as gunshots. His time in the service took him all over the Pacific: to the Aleutians, Tulagi, Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santo, Ulithi, and Japan. Pfeiffer survived a typhoon and was discharged at the end of the war.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Mel Trenary. Trenary joined the Army in March of 1943. He served as a machine gunner with Company A, 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Trenary participated in the Italian Campaign, the invasion of southern France and the Battle of the Bulge. He returned to the US and was discharged in late 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Buck Ward. Ward joined the Navy in 1944 and received basic training in San Diego. He received aviation communication and gunnery training on the West Coast. Upon completion, he was assigned to the USS Hornet (CV-12) where he served as a Helldiver radio gunman. He flew missions over Chichi Jima and the Philippines. After the war, Ward was stationed for R&R on Guam, where at night he heard Japanese holdouts sneaking into the camp to forage. He stayed aboard the Hornet for Operation Magic Carpet and was discharged in 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Newton Zanes. Zanes joined the Marine Corps in July 1940 and served in Guantanamo Bay until April 1941. In February 1942 he was assigned to MAG-13 as an SBD radio gunner and sent to Samoa, where his first task was to make a campsite by clearing enormous banyan trees using dynamite. He was soon promoted to then-Major General Price’s PBY-5A crew, visiting almost every island in the Pacific theater. Zanes returned to the states in late 1943 and helped to start MAG-51 in North Carolina. There he met Charles Lindbergh, who put on an impromptu air show for the base. Toward the end of the war, Zanes qualified as an engineering chief and oversaw engine maintenance training at bases throughout the country. He remained in the Marine Corps until October 1952, when he began a lengthy career as a mechanical engineer. His family moved 45 times to capture unique job opportunities, including working for NASA and working behind the Iron Curtain.

Transcript of an oral interview with Edwin Seace. Seace enlisted in the Navy in June of 1942 and was assigned to the USS Independence (CVL-22). He was one of the plank owners (i.e. part of the first crew on a new ship) and mentions going through the Panama Canal as the first ship of that size to go through, scraping the sides of the flight deck overhang on the canal walls. From there, the ship docked in San Diego before heading out to Pearl Harbor then across the Pacific Ocean, making raids at Rabaul in September 1943, supporting the landings at Tarawa in November where it was torpedoed on November 20th. He talks about getting hit in the head by debris when one of the torpedos hit, watching burials at sea, going to Funafuti, then Pearl Harbor, then San Francisco for repairs, running aground on a sandbar leaving San Francisco due to the ship being overloaded, being in Halsey's fleet for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, supporting the landings on Luzon, the sinking of the Princeton, the sister ship of the Independence, and night combat runs made by the Independence's planes. He also mentions remembering the smell of Iwo Jima …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Reverend J.B. Young. Young enlisted in the Army Air Corps in December 1936. He became a cook and then was trained as an airplane mechanic. Young was sent to Hickam Field in Hawaii to serve as a crew chief on a B-17. He describes the attack on 7 December and how he taxied his plane out of danger and the patrols that they flew in the immediate aftermath. Young was then sent to New Caledonia where his plane flew photo reconnaissance missions for three months. They traveled to Australia and flew missions against Rabaul and Japanese ships in the Coral Sea. Young describes some notable incidents from this time. He returned to the US after 66 missions and remained there until the end of the war. Young retired from the Air Force in 1959.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Martin Mark. Mark joined the Army in April 1943 and received basic training at Camp Joseph T. Robinson. Upon completion, he was reassigned to the Pacific and was shipped to New Caledonia for further training. At Suva, Fiji, he was trained by natives to perform jungle reconnaissance. As part of the Americal Division, he served for one year on the frontlines at Bougainville, where he built pillboxes and performed a dozen recon missions. During those missions, he engaged in hand-to-hand combat and destroyed Japanese military buildings while identifying targets and trails for his unit to follow. He then shipped to Leyte, where during recon missions he protected Filipino natives from Japanese atrocities. His service ended when he developed jungle rot from a day spent in the Torokina River. He was treated in Leyte with penicillin but never fully recovered. On his way back to the States, he suffered his first malaria attack and was taken to the Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco. Mark returned home to New York City.

Transcript of an oral interview with James B. Hinshaw. When Hinshaw finished high school, he was draftd into the Army in 1943. He went ot basic training at Camp Roberts in California. At Camp Gruber, Oklahoma, Hinshaw was attached to an anti-tank company in the 222nd Regiment of the 42nd Infantry Division, which shipped over to Marseille, France in December, 1944. Shortly thereafter, his unit moved into combat near Strasbourg. the 42nd eventually assaulted into Wurzburg, Germany where Hinshaw fired his 57mm anti-tank weapon at a German machine gun nest, neutralizing it. He remembers being strafed by a German jet fighter. When the war in Europe ended, Hinshaw's unit was headed for Austria, where the 42nd ID served occupation duty. He finally shipped home in Marchm 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with James Brown. Brown joined the Army Air Forces in March 1943 and received basic training in Florida. He received aircraft mechanic training in Newark and attended gunnery school in Florida. Upon completion, he was assigned to the 675th Bomb Squadron, as an engineer gunner in a two-man crew flying A-20s. Brown flew a total of 23 missions in New Guinea and the Philippines. He was wounded by an armor-piercing bullet over Luzon, and one of his engines suffered a damaged fuel line. They made an emergency landing in Manila, and Brown received two months of medical care before being reassigned to Okinawa. When the typhoon hit his camp, he held onto his tent’s center pole and was carried into the air. After the war, Brown returned home and was employed by the VA, teaching agriculture to returning soldiers.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Ralph Edgar. Edgar joined the Navy in October 1943 and received basic training in Norfolk. Upon completion, he was sent to Guadalcanal, where he joined a special construction battalion that specialized in moving cargo. In the Philippines, he unloaded ships and brought supplies to the frontlines. The work was dangerous, and he encountered kamikazes. After the war, he ran a motor pool in Japan, supervising 260 Japanese drivers. One of his drivers stole three Jeeps, sold them on the black market, and was subsequently imprisoned. After two years, Edgar was sent back to the States to be treated for rheumatic fever. He received a medical discharge but soon returned to the Navy, managing motor pools again, this time as a civilian employee.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Lemar Hartman. Hartman joined the Navy in 1940 and received basic training at Great Lakes. Upon completion of radio school, he was assigned to the USS Selfridge (DD-357) at Pearl Harbor. During the attack, Hartman was on standby as a radioman, unable to answer messages, because the transmitting antennae had been shot down. Hartman witnessed the gruesome aftermath of The Battle of Vella Lavella and the Marianas campaigns, where he was tasked with installing radio communication infrastructure as soon as the islands were taken. He later returned home and was discharged in 1946.