Transcript of an oral interview with Al Heigel. When Heigel finished high school in June, 1944, he joined the Navy at Little Rock, Arkansas and went for boot training at San Diego. He was assigned as a radar operator and reported aboard the USS Independence (CVL-22) at Pearl Harbor. Heigel describes the light carrier and its construction and features. He also speaks of the time the Independence was hit by a torpedo off Tarawa in 1943. Heigel then describes events off Okinawa: watching the USS Franklin (CV-13) being bombed off Okinawa; locating and shooting down kamikazes; describing battle stations; aircraft water landings; being in a typhoon, etc. After the war ended, the Independence served as a troop transport taking GIs back home to the US. He describes bunks in the hangar deck and arriving in Portland, Oregon. As the Independence was being prepared for the Bikini Atoll atomic tests, Heigel got off becuase he had the requisite amount of points allowing him to be discharged. He then entered the lumber business, married and raised family.

Interview with Mei Nakano, a college professor, concerning her experiences as a Japanese-American internee at the Amache, Colorado, internment camp during World War II. Nakano discusses her childhood experiences with bigotry in rural Colorado, the evacuation from Los Angeles to Amache in September of 1942, camp life, her marriage in the camp, resettlement in Chicago, and the lasting impressions of the internment experience.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Mei Nakano. Nakano is a Japanese-American and was an internee at the Amache Internment Camp in Colorado. She was born in 1924 in Olathe, Colorado. She provides detail of her life growing up in Colorado and various prejudices she received from teachers and classmates. They moved to Los Angeles, California in 1935 where she graduated from high school. She provides detail of the discrimination she and her family received in California, particularly after 7 December 1941. As notices were going out to other Japanese-American families regarding evacuation, Nakano describes her family’s preparations for the inevitable. They were evacuated by the War Relocation Authority to the Santa Anita Racetrack and in 1942 transferred to the Amache Internment Camp in Colorado. She provides much detail of life in these camps. Nakano returned to California after the war.