The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Robert Frederick. Frederick quit school in November 1942 to join the Navy. He attended gunnery school before being assigned to USS Oakland (CL-95). He spent the rest of the war abaord the Oaklnad and was discharged in January 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Bill Price. Price joined the Navy in 1943 and received basic training in San Diego. Upon completion, he was assigned to the USS Oakland (CL-95) as a first loader on a 40-milimeter. Standing beside the gun with no protective shield, he was vulnerable to enemy fire. After a year and a half, Price was transferred to the storekeepers division, where he maintained five storerooms of dry goods. When the kitchen placed an order, deckhands retrieved goods from Price and delivered them by hand. At the signing of the peace treaty, the Oakland was right beside the Missouri, and Price watched the Japanese delegation climb aboard. While on liberty, Price observed that Yokohama had been completely destroyed. After the war, there was pressure for storekeepers to remain in the service, but Price insisted on going home. He was discharged in December 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Eugene Paul. Paul joined the Navy in January of 1943. He served as Fire Controlman aboard the USS Oakland (CL-95). They joined Task Group 50 near Funafuti, and supported amphibious assaults on the Gilbert Islands, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa. Paul describes his experiences with kamikazes and going through typhoons. Paul returned to the US after the war ended.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Leland Gwin. After Gwin's brother was captured on Corregidor, Gwin vowed to rescue him. In late 1944, when he turned 17, Gwin joined the Navy. Upon completion of amphibious training, he was assigned as an engineer to an LCVP attached to the USS Rockingham (APA-229). While landing troops at Okinawa, he rescued a crew whose landing gear failed and evacuated 150 wounded off a hospital ship that was attacked. Gwin was later assigned to pick up American POWs from Leyte, where he met someone who had been imprisoned with his brother. Gwin learned that although his brother survived the Bataan Death March, he had been worked to death in a coalmine. Gwin spent the next six months transporting soldiers home, making four round trips before by June 1946. He then received orders to Bikini Atoll but was granted leave to see his dying mother and was subsequently discharged. Several of the men who went in his place died soon after from exposure to radiation.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Raymond Thorpe. Thorpe joined the Army in early 1943. Shortly after basic training, he was deployed with the 624th Military Police Battalion to Detroit during the race riots in 1943. He eventually was shipped to India and contracted malaria. While there, Thorpe joined Merrill's Marauders and operated behind the Japanese lines in Burma.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with James McDavid. McDavid joined the Navy in 1940. He worked as a draftsman and plane spotter aboard USS Pennsylvania (BB-38). McDavid was aboard the ship, located in Dry Dock No. 1 in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. After extensive repairs, the Pennsylvania conducted training operations along the California coast from April to August of 1942. McDavid continued his service as an Electronics Electrician First-Class, repairing some of the Navy’s most complex and secret technologies. They participated in the Aleutian Islands Campaign in 1943, the Marianas Campaign in 1944 and the invasion of Okinawa in 1945. Upon his discharge in late 1945, McDavid worked in the Naval Shipyard for 32 years.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Micki and Jim George. Micki George completed Cadet Nurse Corps training in 1948. She traveled with a USO Unit out of Dallas and worked with the Nurse Corps in California and with Special Services as a chauffeur, chaperone and pianist for performances. She was stationed in the US and did not travel overseas. Micki was discharged from military service in 1950. She and Jim met at the University of Texas at Austin, while completing their medical degrees. Jim joined the Army in December of 1945. He served in the Korean War as a combat medic in a field MASH Unit, and was discharged in 1950.

Transcript of an oral interview with John H. Smith. Born in Summerville, Pennsylvania in 1915. He describes conditions during the Great Depression. After graduating from high school in 1934, he spent two years in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) where he describes building roads, fire roads, parks, and dams for water conservation and swimming areas. In 1936 he took a job at Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, New York at a steel foundry making parts for landing craft. He describes conditions during the war including rationing. In July 1945 he was drafted into the Navy and sent to boot camp at Sampson Training Base on Lake Geneva, in New York. When the war ended he was sent to the foundry at San Diego Naval Base. He provides detail about foundry work. After a month in the foundry he was sent to Electronics School. Soon he was discharged in San Diego and made his way back to Buffalo where he joined the Naval Reserves and was recalled in 1950 for the Korean War and assigned to the USS New Jersey (BB-62) for nine months. His wife got sick and he was given a hardship discharge.

Transcript of an oral inerview with Doctor Dayton L. Alverson. He was born in 1924 in the San Diego Naval Hospital. He joined the Navy and received training in radio interception. Went to Washington, DC where he volunteered for assignment to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) as a Radioman First Class. Left Newport News in July 1944 and sailed to Bombay, India and took the train to Calcutta. He was flown on a DC-3 over "The Hump" and into Kunming, China. He volunteered for duty near Amoy Island, which was occupied by the Japanese and was flown to Zhangping and traveled to a small encampment 25 miles north of Amoy. He recounts his time intercepting Japanese code and sending it to Chungking and provides details about breaking the code. He next describes taking 38 days to travel 18,000 miles on foot, in sampans and on trucks to reach the camp. He describes the methods by which the Chinese moved the sampans up and down the rivers. He was then assigned to a group making a raid on a small island adjacent to Amoy. He traveled by sampan down the river to Shima, China in order to deliver two 50-caliber machine …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Herman Weskamp. Born in Mansfield, Colorado on 30 December 1923, Weskamp enrolled at Loyola University under the V-12 Program. After one year he was sent to Midshipman School at Notre Dame in 1943. He volunteered for a program called Amphibious Roger. He was sent to Fort Pierce, Florida for guerilla training in preparation for assignment in China. Upon completion of the training, he was transferred to Long Beach, California where he embarked on the USS General LeRoy Eltinge (AP-154) for transit to Calcutta, India. Weskamp was assigned to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) as a Transportation Officer. He met Chiang Kai-shek and his security chief, General Li Dai who headed SACO while he was in Calcutta. His unit was sent across the Hump in a road convoy with equipment to support the invasion of China. Before the convoy arrived in Kunming, China, the atomic bombs were dropped and the war ended. En route to Kunming on the Burma Road, he relates several harrowing incidents and an attack by Chinese insurgents. Weskamp was next assigned to a motor pool near SACO headquarters in Chungking. After the camp was decommissioned, …

Transcript of an oral interview with Colonel (Ret.) Frank Gleason. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on September 20, 1920. After graduation from Penn State, he was commissioned into the Army in 1942. His first assignment was to Fort Belvoir, Virginia as the leader of a platoon of African-American soldiers. In 1943 he was recruited into the Office of Stregic Services (OSS) and sent to a camp outside of Frederick, Maryland (later Camp David). His duties there included training agents in heavy duty demolitions, explosives and booby traps. His next assignment was temporary duty to London for six weeks and training in sabotage and underwater demolition. He recalls that, upon arriving in London, he delivered a crate of fresh fruit to Major General Dwight Eisenhower. He was subsequently assigned to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) headquarters in Chungking, China where he spent several months training Thai troops. Captain Merry Miles assigned him as Executive Officer to the SACO unit at Camp 3 in Linju, China. The mission was to train guerillas in demolition, small arms, scouting, patrolling and other duties as assigned. He recounts one of those duties in January, 1944 resulting in the destruction of a bridge over the …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Sager. Sager was born in 1919 and raised in Virginia. He attended the University of Virginia and was commissioned in the Marine Corps Reserve upon graduation in June, 1941. He did not participate in a ROTC program at UVA. Instead, he attended a Platoon Leader course offered by the Marine Corps. He was immediately called to duty after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sager was then assigned to K Company, 3rd Battalion, First Marine regiment, First Marine Division and landed on Guadalcanal in August, 1942. Sager discusses combat at the Tenaru River and at Edson's Ridge. Sager left Guadalcanal in December and his unit headed for Australia to recover. e spent part of his time there in a hospital down with malaria. His malaria was so bad, he was returned to the US. When he recovered from malaria, Sager was promoted to captain and assigned as an instructor at the Infantry Basic School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was also tasked with establishing guidelines for internal base security while serving at Camp Allen in Virginia. In December 1944, Sager volunteered for an assignment that took him …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Charles Scheffel. Scheffel grew up in Oklahoma and enlisted in the Army ROTC in 1940. He was called up in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. He was allowed to finish out his senior year of college and was married in March 1942. He embarked on the Queen Elizabeth from New Jersey in September 1942. As leader of 200 men, he landed in Scotland and drove with them to Whittington Barracks where they joined with the British 51st Highlanders. He lists the three main survival lessons he learned from the seasoned English soldiers: having a batman to back you up, digging a two-man foxhole, and waiting for the ""crack and thump."" Scheffel how the ""crack and thump"" lesson would later save his life when he was seriously wounded when attacking the Siegfried Line. From England he went to Algeria with the British troops on the Scythia. The ship is torpedoed off the coast limps into Algiers. Scheffel made the decision to leave the British Highlanders and join up with American 9th Division in February 1943. The division went into Tunisia. Then he was sent to spend another month with the …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with John Galbraith. Galbraith joined the Marine Corps in February of 1942. He describes the training he received to become a pilot. Galbraith became a flight instructor and then trained on twin engine planes. He was sent to the Pacific and flew C-46 transport planes into Guam, Tinian, and Saipan. Galbraith discusses flying into Iwo Jima during the battle. He flew into Japan on several missions after the war had ended. Galbraith describes the damage he witnessed at Nagasaki and Yokohama. He also tells of how he weathered two typhoons on an airfield. Galbraith left the service after he returned to the US.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Leland Gwin. After Gwin's brother was captured on Corregidor, Gwin vowed to rescue him. In late 1944, when he turned 17, Gwin joined the Navy. Upon completion of amphibious training, he was assigned as an engineer to an LCVP attached to the USS Rockingham (APA-229). While landing troops at Okinawa, he rescued a crew whose landing gear failed and evacuated 150 wounded off a hospital ship that was attacked. Gwin was later assigned to pick up American POWs from Leyte, where he met someone who had been imprisoned with his brother. Gwin learned that although his brother survived the Bataan Death March, he had been worked to death in a coalmine. Gwin spent the next six months transporting soldiers home, making four round trips before by June 1946. He then received orders to Bikini Atoll but was granted leave to see his dying mother and was subsequently discharged. Several of the men who went in his place died soon after from exposure to radiation.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Robert Frederick. Frederick quit school in November 1942 to join the Navy. He attended gunnery school before being assigned to USS Oakland (CL-95). He spent the rest of the war abaord the Oaklnad and was discharged in January 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Bill Price. Price joined the Navy in 1943 and received basic training in San Diego. Upon completion, he was assigned to the USS Oakland (CL-95) as a first loader on a 40-milimeter. Standing beside the gun with no protective shield, he was vulnerable to enemy fire. After a year and a half, Price was transferred to the storekeepers division, where he maintained five storerooms of dry goods. When the kitchen placed an order, deckhands retrieved goods from Price and delivered them by hand. At the signing of the peace treaty, the Oakland was right beside the Missouri, and Price watched the Japanese delegation climb aboard. While on liberty, Price observed that Yokohama had been completely destroyed. After the war, there was pressure for storekeepers to remain in the service, but Price insisted on going home. He was discharged in December 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Eugene Paul. Paul joined the Navy in January of 1943. He served as Fire Controlman aboard the USS Oakland (CL-95). They joined Task Group 50 near Funafuti, and supported amphibious assaults on the Gilbert Islands, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa. Paul describes his experiences with kamikazes and going through typhoons. Paul returned to the US after the war ended.

Transcript of an oral interview with John H. Smith. Born in Summerville, Pennsylvania in 1915. He describes conditions during the Great Depression. After graduating from high school in 1934, he spent two years in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) where he describes building roads, fire roads, parks, and dams for water conservation and swimming areas. In 1936 he took a job at Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, New York at a steel foundry making parts for landing craft. He describes conditions during the war including rationing. In July 1945 he was drafted into the Navy and sent to boot camp at Sampson Training Base on Lake Geneva, in New York. When the war ended he was sent to the foundry at San Diego Naval Base. He provides detail about foundry work. After a month in the foundry he was sent to Electronics School. Soon he was discharged in San Diego and made his way back to Buffalo where he joined the Naval Reserves and was recalled in 1950 for the Korean War and assigned to the USS New Jersey (BB-62) for nine months. His wife got sick and he was given a hardship discharge.

Transcript of an oral inerview with Doctor Dayton L. Alverson. He was born in 1924 in the San Diego Naval Hospital. He joined the Navy and received training in radio interception. Went to Washington, DC where he volunteered for assignment to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) as a Radioman First Class. Left Newport News in July 1944 and sailed to Bombay, India and took the train to Calcutta. He was flown on a DC-3 over "The Hump" and into Kunming, China. He volunteered for duty near Amoy Island, which was occupied by the Japanese and was flown to Zhangping and traveled to a small encampment 25 miles north of Amoy. He recounts his time intercepting Japanese code and sending it to Chungking and provides details about breaking the code. He next describes taking 38 days to travel 18,000 miles on foot, in sampans and on trucks to reach the camp. He describes the methods by which the Chinese moved the sampans up and down the rivers. He was then assigned to a group making a raid on a small island adjacent to Amoy. He traveled by sampan down the river to Shima, China in order to deliver two 50-caliber machine …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Herman Weskamp. Born in Mansfield, Colorado on 30 December 1923, Weskamp enrolled at Loyola University under the V-12 Program. After one year he was sent to Midshipman School at Notre Dame in 1943. He volunteered for a program called Amphibious Roger. He was sent to Fort Pierce, Florida for guerilla training in preparation for assignment in China. Upon completion of the training, he was transferred to Long Beach, California where he embarked on the USS General LeRoy Eltinge (AP-154) for transit to Calcutta, India. Weskamp was assigned to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) as a Transportation Officer. He met Chiang Kai-shek and his security chief, General Li Dai who headed SACO while he was in Calcutta. His unit was sent across the Hump in a road convoy with equipment to support the invasion of China. Before the convoy arrived in Kunming, China, the atomic bombs were dropped and the war ended. En route to Kunming on the Burma Road, he relates several harrowing incidents and an attack by Chinese insurgents. Weskamp was next assigned to a motor pool near SACO headquarters in Chungking. After the camp was decommissioned, …

Transcript of an oral interview with Colonel (Ret.) Frank Gleason. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania on September 20, 1920. After graduation from Penn State, he was commissioned into the Army in 1942. His first assignment was to Fort Belvoir, Virginia as the leader of a platoon of African-American soldiers. In 1943 he was recruited into the Office of Stregic Services (OSS) and sent to a camp outside of Frederick, Maryland (later Camp David). His duties there included training agents in heavy duty demolitions, explosives and booby traps. His next assignment was temporary duty to London for six weeks and training in sabotage and underwater demolition. He recalls that, upon arriving in London, he delivered a crate of fresh fruit to Major General Dwight Eisenhower. He was subsequently assigned to the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) headquarters in Chungking, China where he spent several months training Thai troops. Captain Merry Miles assigned him as Executive Officer to the SACO unit at Camp 3 in Linju, China. The mission was to train guerillas in demolition, small arms, scouting, patrolling and other duties as assigned. He recounts one of those duties in January, 1944 resulting in the destruction of a bridge over the …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Sager. Sager was born in 1919 and raised in Virginia. He attended the University of Virginia and was commissioned in the Marine Corps Reserve upon graduation in June, 1941. He did not participate in a ROTC program at UVA. Instead, he attended a Platoon Leader course offered by the Marine Corps. He was immediately called to duty after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sager was then assigned to K Company, 3rd Battalion, First Marine regiment, First Marine Division and landed on Guadalcanal in August, 1942. Sager discusses combat at the Tenaru River and at Edson's Ridge. Sager left Guadalcanal in December and his unit headed for Australia to recover. e spent part of his time there in a hospital down with malaria. His malaria was so bad, he was returned to the US. When he recovered from malaria, Sager was promoted to captain and assigned as an instructor at the Infantry Basic School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was also tasked with establishing guidelines for internal base security while serving at Camp Allen in Virginia. In December 1944, Sager volunteered for an assignment that took him …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Micki and Jim George. Micki George completed Cadet Nurse Corps training in 1948. She traveled with a USO Unit out of Dallas and worked with the Nurse Corps in California and with Special Services as a chauffeur, chaperone and pianist for performances. She was stationed in the US and did not travel overseas. Micki was discharged from military service in 1950. She and Jim met at the University of Texas at Austin, while completing their medical degrees. Jim joined the Army in December of 1945. He served in the Korean War as a combat medic in a field MASH Unit, and was discharged in 1950.