Interview with Navy veteran Jean Balch, including Balch's personal experiences about the Pacific theater, being a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II, boot camp, radio, radar, and gunnery school, operations during the Leyte invasion, missions over Luzon, and raids on Japanese installations on Formosa and Saigon, French Indo-China. Additionally, Balch talks about his plane being shot down on a raid to Hong Kong and his capture on January 16, 1945, interrogations and beatings by the Kempei-tai, imprisonment at Ofuna, Honshu, solitary confinement for six months and continued interrogation, beatings by Japanese prison guards, starvation diet, the end of the war and liberation, and his participation in the war crimes trials held by the International Military Tribunal.

Interview with Lanson B. Ditto, clothier and Navy veteran regarding personal experiences about the Pacific, Atlantic, and Mediterranean Theaters during World War II. Ditto talks about his education, enlistment in the Navy V-7 Program, midshipman training, assignment to the USS Langley, pre-war duty in the Philippines, coming of war and combat around the Philippines and Netherlands East Indies, the sinking of the Langley and his transfer to the USS Pecos, the sinking of the Pecos and his rescue by the USS Whipple, various naval battles and assignments, antisubmarine patrols off the Solomons, various escort duties, and his promotion to captain of the O'Toole.

Transcript of an interview with Ralph W. Nelson, a Navy veteran, concerning his experiences while aboard the submarines USS Batfish and USS Parche in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Submarine School, San Francisco, California, 1942; early torpedo problems; his responsibilities as a fire controlman; assignment to the Batfish, 1944; various patrols in the Luzon Strait and Makassar Strait; lifeguard duty off Palau for downed airmen; transfer to the Parche, 1945.