Interview with Hazael R. Olivares, a serviceman in the U. S. Navy during World War II. Olivares dropped out of high school and decided to join the U. S. Navy after hearing about the attack on Pearl Harbor. He took his 16-week basic training course at Great Lakes in Illinois where he learned how to fire various guns and recognize aircraft. After basic training, he was assigned to Algiers, Louisiana where he learned how to weld. Aboard the USS Bordelon (DD-881), he served as a Ship Fitter in the damage control department. After WWII, he remained in the reserves and was called up for duty in Korea. He served aboard the USS Sitkoh Bay (CVE-86). After Korea, he worked as a civilian for the Army Corps of Engineers as an oiler on a dredge. He then served in the Merchant Marines, hauling refined petroleum products from South America to North America. He also discusses going to French Indochina (Vietnam) and traveling up the Saigon River in a merchant vessel.

Interview with J. L. Ashmore, a United States Navy veteran from Peoria, Illinois, regarding his experiences and memories of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941 while aboard the battleship USS West Virginia.

Interview with Marilyn Jean Johnson, an African-American resident of Fort Worth, Texas, from Champaign, Illinois, who moved to Texas during the civil rights era. Johnson, accompanied by her neighbor Exie Jean Alaman Morne'y, discusses the differences between life in Illinois and the segregated South, her first instances of discrimination, desegregation in Fort Worth, the Wright Amendment, Juneteenth, neighborhoods and housing, differences between Dallas and Fort Worth, persistent racism, and Carswell AFB.