The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with George Zapalac. After completing jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, Zapalac went into the 101st Airborne, 506th Infantry Regiment. He jumped into Normandy on 6 June 1944. The objective for the 506th Infantry Regiment was to secure two bridges over the Carentan canal. He recalls being seriously wounded soon after landing and tells of the effort made by members of the 4th Infantry to bring trucks up so he and many other wounded could be taken to the aid station on Utah Beach. After receiving emergency treatment he was put on board an LST and taken to a hospital in England. After he recovered, Zapalac returned to his unit in November. It was found that he was unable to properly handle his weapon because of the injury and he was sent back to the hospital. Soon thereafter, he returned to the United States.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Karl Williams. Williams joined the Navy in April of 1942, as a 3rd Class Yeoman. He completed training at San Diego and provides details of his training experiences, uniforms and general life at camp. While waiting on a ship assignment, Williams was transferred to Tiburon, California, making submarine harbor nets by hand. From June to October of 1942 he volunteered to attend school for additional Yeoman training in Bloomington, Indiana. He was transferred to Miami to complete further training through the middle of 1943. He then served as 2nd Class Yeoman aboard a submarine chaser. They were sent to Panama in August of 1943. He did not have any contact with enemy submarines during his service. They traveled to New Caledonia and Guadalcanal, where they were stationed through August of 1944, serving as a patrol ship around the island. They were sent to the Mariana Islands where they remained until the war ended. He was discharged in October of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Peter Bourgeois. Bourgeois joined the Army in July of 1943 and served with the Medical Corps. In December of 1944 he was assigned to the 96th Infantry Division and participated in the liberation of Leyte and Okinawa. He provides details of working as a Combat Medic with L Company, and caring for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. He also served as a rifleman at Okinawa. He was discharged in January of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Michael Silan. Silan joined the Marine Corps in February of 1943. He trained as an airplane mechanic, and provides details of his training, including the type of airplanes and engines he worked on. In December of 1943 he traveled to New Caledonia aboard the USS Mintaka (AK-94), and shares experiences of his travels. He was assigned to Marine Scout Dive Bomber Squadron 241 (VMSB-241), and served as a Marine plane captain. In the spring of 1944 they traveled to New Georgia Island, Efate, New Hebrides and Rendova Island. In January of 1945 they were assigned to the Philippines, where Silan operated planes amidst the battle as an artillery spotter. He shares experiences through several missions. Silan was honorably discharged in November of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Jack Butler. Butler joined the Army in March of 1943. He volunteered to join the paratroopers and completed jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia. In June of 1944 he traveled to Sicily. In August he was assigned to Head Quarters Company 509th, Parachute Infantry Regiment. They traveled to Naples where he served in a machine gun squad. They moved on to southern France, then on to Belgium where their job was to hold a cross road in Manhay. Butler shares his experiences through combat with the Germans, working under the commanding officer General James Gavin and fighting in extreme cold weather conditions. Their battalion defended a 7 mile stretch of terrain between Soy and Hutton, beating off repeated attacks by the German 2nd SS Panzer Division. He returned to England in March of 1945 and was discharged in August.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Neville Stopford. Stopford was born in Manila, Philippine Islands in 1932. He attended a boarding school in Baguio. Soon after the 1941 invasion, the Japanese ordered all those captured to pack a few personal belongings and they were marched and interned at camp John Hay. The captives were separated into two groups, women and children in one group and men in the other. No members of his family were with him as they were interned in Santo Tomas. He recalls being at the camp until June 1942 at which time he was taken to Santo Tomas and reunited with his family. Stopford discusses the shortages of food and tells of the captors pilfering Red Cross packages. He remembers that the camp was set up as a democratic government by the inmates, having a police department, a school and three elected officials for the restricted self-government. He recalls that these internee officials were executed by the Japanese prior to the surrender of the camp.

Transcript of an oral interview with John Wilson. Wilson was born in the Philippines and graduated high school there in 1939. Upon graduating, he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin and participated in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program. He graduated and took his commission in the Army in 1943. After Officer Candidate School (OCS), he was assigned to an engineering unit slated to participate in the invasion of the Philippines. He eventually landed on Luzon. On Luzon he was assigned temporary duty with a small Philippine Civil Affairs unit that was made up of officers and men who had relatives interned by the Japanese in the Philippines. His small unit made their way to Santo Tomas where he liberated many friends and old school mates. A few weeks later, Wilson liberated his father, a civilian internee at Los Banos. Wilson remained with his unit constructing hospitals in the Philippines in anticipation of the casualties expected from the invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with John Hencke. Hencke joined the Army in 1942 and served with the Armored Force at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He joined the 12th Armored Division, 44th Tank Battalion. They traveled to New Guinea, where he shares details of his living and food accommodations. He participated in a rescue operation of prisoners in Leyte. In February of 1945 they were the first tank battalion to enter the city of Manila and liberated American and Allied civilian prisoners interred in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. Also included in the transcript is a copy of a response letter Hencke wrote in 1999 to a Japanese student at Abilene Christian College, answering several of his questions regarding his experience in the military.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Frank Mendez. Mendez joined the Army in 1940. He joined the First Cavalry Division at Fort Bliss, Texas. In the spring of 1943 Mendez traveled to Brisbane, Australia, clearing eucalyptus forest and setting up camp for the division, where he remained for six months. In October they went to New Guinea for a few months training in jungle warfare, then on to the Admiralty Islands through October of 1944. He provides details of his living and food accommodations on the islands, and occasional intermittent fighting with the Japanese. They then participated in the Philippines Campaign, capturing Tacloban and Samar. He also served in rescuing civilian prisoners in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. Mendez served in the Philippines from October of 1944 through August of 1945, then returned to the US for discharge.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Don Ennis. Ennis was born in 1931 in Manila, Philippines. Ennis and his family were living in Manila in December 1941. He recalls daily air raids until the occupation of Manila by the Japanese at the end of December. In January of 1942 his father was interned in Santo Tomas Internment Camp. The remainder of their family was placed under house arrest and by May of 1943 they were all issued orders to report for internment at Santo Tomas. Ennis vividly describes the camp, their living conditions, their work assignments, their communication with the Japanese guards and their transfer to Los Baños Internment Camp in April of 1944. They were liberated in February 1945 by nine C-47 aircraft, dropping B Company of the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Susan Magnuson DeVoe. DeVoe completes this interview with her sister Karen Magnuson. She shares her family’s story of residing in an internment camp in Manila for 2 years. Her parents were citizens of the United States, and traveled to Manila, where her father was manager for Know Brothers Uber Alles, an import/export company in 1938. Susan and Karen were both born in the Philippines. Her mother was 7 months pregnant with Susan when the Japanese invaded the Philippines, and shortly thereafter they were all taken to the Santo Tomas Internment Camp. She provides some details of their time in and liberation from the camp. Additionally, she shares what life was like getting settled back in the US and how her mother came to write a book on their experiences in the camp.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Fred Fullerton. Fullerton joined the Army in September of 1941. He served with the 75th Ordnance Company at the Ordnance Depot in Fort Santiago, Manila, Philippines. From there he was assigned to the island of Bohol with the 81st Division of the newly organized Philippine Army as an instructor. In January of 1942 his division was sent to Iligan, where they ran out of ordnance supplies. His job was to search for and purchase materials and food for the 81st Filipino Division. In April of 1942 he worked with the 73rd Infantry Regiment in Malabang to fight against the Japanese. They were captured at Dansalan, Lanao. Fullerton provides vivid details of his extensive work in the Philippines and experiences as a prisoner of war at Camp Keithley. He shares personal accounts of the Japanese executing fellow servicemen, exhaustive marching, malnourishment and work in the rice paddies and steel mill. Upon returning safely back to the US he was discharged in February of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Helen Beattie. Beattie was born in the Philippines, where her parents were missionaries. She provides details of her family history. She and her family lived in Lugazpi, Philippines. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines, they landed five miles from her home. Beattie provides vivid details of her family and friends attempts to run and hide from the Japanese. They were captured in January and allowed to live in a compound of houses, not an internment camp. Sometime in 1942 they were taken to Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. Beattie shares her experiences there as a fifteen-year-old girl, separated from her family. They were later transferred to Los Baños Internment Camp and rescued in February of 1945. They returned to the US in May of that same year.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Henry Bucher. Bucher was born on Hainan Island, in the South China Sea, in March 1936. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, Bucher was 5 years old living with his family in Manila, Philippines. He describes the events that followed in Manila. Bucher and his family were allowed to stay in their home, though not leave their compound, until the summer of 1944. They were all then transferred to Los Baños Internment Camp. His father was under forced labor in the camp, while his mother would teach school to Bucher, his siblings and other children. He describes their living conditions, food accommodations, what he was allowed and not allowed to do as a child in the camp, his interactions with the Japanese guards and their rescue in February of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Edith Chamberlin. Chamberlin’s mother was from Poland, her father was from England, and she was born in Shanghai, China. Her father was a cinematographer and was offered a job in the movie industry in the Philippines. She speaks of their life in the Philippines prior to the war. After the Japanese invaded the Philippines, she and her family were taken to Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila. They remained there from January of 1942 through their liberation in February of 1945. After the war, their family re-established their life in the Philippines.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Dwight Clark. Clark was born into a family of ten children in New Carlisle, Indiana. Upon being drafted into the Army in February 1943 he underwent basic training, which was followed by attending weapons school at Camp Hood, Texas. In school he learned to be a gunsmith and artillery mechanic. After eighteen months of training, his unit, the 672nd Amphibian Tractor Battalion, was sent to Fort Ord, California where they had amphibious training in Monterey Bay. They were sent to Bougainville from which they participated in the invasion of Luzon. On 23 February 1945, the unit was attached to the 11th Airborne, participating in the raid on the Los Banos Internment Camp. Clark tells of the raid and the aftermath. He expresses his admiration for General MacArthur. Clark returned to the United States in December 1945, and received his discharge a month later. Clark concludes with details about his life as a minister and teacher until his retirement.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Ann Drake. Drake was born in the Philippines on 31 August 1937. Her mother was from North Borneo and her father was an American. In 1941 the family lived to Manila and she recalls 8 December 1941 when the Japanese began bombing the city. She fondly remembers her father saying goodbye to the family for it was the last time they ever spoke to him. She recalls the Japanese taking her mother and siblings to Santo Tomas internment camp. Drake and her two sisters were placed in the Holy Ghost Convent for children while her brothers remained at Santo Tomas. In January 1944 the girls and their mother were again sent to Santo Tomas where they were united with the boys. Drake describes the living conditions and the scarcity of food. Internees were supposed to receive Red Cross packages monthly, but received only three packages during their confinement. Drake comments on the day they were freed and how she presently feels about the Japanese. After the surrender of Japan, Drake learned her father had been interned at Cabanatuan concentration camp for several years before being put on a …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Hazel Moore. Moore was born 13 January 1910, and she speaks of her family history. She and her husband, Emmett Assenheimer, moved to Panama City, Florida in 1940, where Emmett was the Chief Expediter of J.A. Jones Construction Company. He oversaw materials needed for construction. They were building the Wainwright Shipyard in Panama City. They both had the opportunity to christen the liberty ship, SS Ransom A. Moore. Moore speaks about who Ransom A. Moore was in history. The Wainwright Ship Yard was building LSTs for the war. She served with the Gray Ladies of the American Red Cross.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with George Zapalac. After completing jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia, Zapalac went into the 101st Airborne, 506th Infantry Regiment. He jumped into Normandy on 6 June 1944. The objective for the 506th Infantry Regiment was to secure two bridges over the Carentan canal. He recalls being seriously wounded soon after landing and tells of the effort made by members of the 4th Infantry to bring trucks up so he and many other wounded could be taken to the aid station on Utah Beach. After receiving emergency treatment he was put on board an LST and taken to a hospital in England. After he recovered, Zapalac returned to his unit in November. It was found that he was unable to properly handle his weapon because of the injury and he was sent back to the hospital. Soon thereafter, he returned to the United States.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Karl Williams. Williams joined the Navy in April of 1942, as a 3rd Class Yeoman. He completed training at San Diego and provides details of his training experiences, uniforms and general life at camp. While waiting on a ship assignment, Williams was transferred to Tiburon, California, making submarine harbor nets by hand. From June to October of 1942 he volunteered to attend school for additional Yeoman training in Bloomington, Indiana. He was transferred to Miami to complete further training through the middle of 1943. He then served as 2nd Class Yeoman aboard a submarine chaser. They were sent to Panama in August of 1943. He did not have any contact with enemy submarines during his service. They traveled to New Caledonia and Guadalcanal, where they were stationed through August of 1944, serving as a patrol ship around the island. They were sent to the Mariana Islands where they remained until the war ended. He was discharged in October of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Jack Butler. Butler joined the Army in March of 1943. He volunteered to join the paratroopers and completed jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia. In June of 1944 he traveled to Sicily. In August he was assigned to Head Quarters Company 509th, Parachute Infantry Regiment. They traveled to Naples where he served in a machine gun squad. They moved on to southern France, then on to Belgium where their job was to hold a cross road in Manhay. Butler shares his experiences through combat with the Germans, working under the commanding officer General James Gavin and fighting in extreme cold weather conditions. Their battalion defended a 7 mile stretch of terrain between Soy and Hutton, beating off repeated attacks by the German 2nd SS Panzer Division. He returned to England in March of 1945 and was discharged in August.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Peter Bourgeois. Bourgeois joined the Army in July of 1943 and served with the Medical Corps. In December of 1944 he was assigned to the 96th Infantry Division and participated in the liberation of Leyte and Okinawa. He provides details of working as a Combat Medic with L Company, and caring for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. He also served as a rifleman at Okinawa. He was discharged in January of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Michael Silan. Silan joined the Marine Corps in February of 1943. He trained as an airplane mechanic, and provides details of his training, including the type of airplanes and engines he worked on. In December of 1943 he traveled to New Caledonia aboard the USS Mintaka (AK-94), and shares experiences of his travels. He was assigned to Marine Scout Dive Bomber Squadron 241 (VMSB-241), and served as a Marine plane captain. In the spring of 1944 they traveled to New Georgia Island, Efate, New Hebrides and Rendova Island. In January of 1945 they were assigned to the Philippines, where Silan operated planes amidst the battle as an artillery spotter. He shares experiences through several missions. Silan was honorably discharged in November of 1945.

Transcript of an oral interview with John Wilson. Wilson was born in the Philippines and graduated high school there in 1939. Upon graduating, he enrolled in the University of Wisconsin and participated in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program. He graduated and took his commission in the Army in 1943. After Officer Candidate School (OCS), he was assigned to an engineering unit slated to participate in the invasion of the Philippines. He eventually landed on Luzon. On Luzon he was assigned temporary duty with a small Philippine Civil Affairs unit that was made up of officers and men who had relatives interned by the Japanese in the Philippines. His small unit made their way to Santo Tomas where he liberated many friends and old school mates. A few weeks later, Wilson liberated his father, a civilian internee at Los Banos. Wilson remained with his unit constructing hospitals in the Philippines in anticipation of the casualties expected from the invasion of the Japanese home islands.