Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Main Auditorium.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Aristides Phoutrides. Phoutrides joined the Navy in May 1943 and went to quartermaster school after boot camp. He was then assigned to USS Laffey (DD-724) in February, 1944. He recalls bombarding the shore during the Normandy invasion. In late 1944, he went to the Philippines with the Laffey. He recalls escorting carriers during the Iwo Jima invasion. He also recalls being at Okinawa on radar picket duty on 16 April and being attacked by 22 kamikazes and struck by six. They returned to Seattle for repairs and were there when the war ended. Phoutrides was discharged in May 1946 but stayed in the Reserves. He was recalled during the Korean War and given a commission.

A student recital presented at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

Lecture recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Charles Chapman. Chapman joined the Army Air Forces in 1942. He was sent to Karachi with the 8th Medical Supply Platoon. He handled the medical supplies for the Army and drove an ambulance to and from the local airport close to their base. From there he traveled to Kunming, China. Chapman describes flying over the Hump. He worked out of a brick warehouse in China packed with medical supplies and a pharmacy. He assisted with receiving and shelving medical inventory. During his time off he served as a driver for the officers. He was discharged around October of 1945.

Lecture recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Everett Campbell. Campbell joined the Navy around 1942. By 1943 he had completed flight school and received his wings. He served in the Pacific theater as a fighter pilot aboard the USS Kadashan Bay (CVE-76). In July of 1944 they traveled to Pearl Harbor to join a carrier division. They participated in the Battle of Peleliu in September and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October. They returned to the US in April of 1945 and Campbell was discharged in September.

Ida Bridgewater discusses growing up in the Stop Six Neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas, where her parents, Garfield and Dorothy Thompson were civil rights activists. Her father graduated from I.M. Terrell High School and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was elected state representative of District 95 and held office for 10 years until his retirement.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with John Steele. Steele was working in a machine shop doing precision grinding when the war started. He was drafted in February 1943 and a woman took his place in the factory. His eyesight disqualified him from combat duty so he was trained as an x-ray technician because of some past expertise in photography. He was stationed in Florida at an airbase. In January 1946, Steele was discharged. Steele also describes the work in the service his wife did during the war.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Allen Pang. Pang was born to Chinese rice farmers on Oahu. The students at his high school were predominantly of Japanese descent, and he served alongside them in the ROTC upon entering college at the University of Hawaii. Hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his group volunteered for the Territorial Guard. The Japanese-American students were sent to a labor battalion, while Pang enjoyed guard duty. He laments on the unfairness of this arrangement, as the Japanese-Americans were loyal to the United States. When the Territorial Guard was dissolved, Pang entered the Army Air Forces as an aviation cadet. Upon completion of flight training, he was assigned to the 17th Bombardment Group, 432nd Bombardment Squadron, in Algeria. The unit moved to a base in Sardinia from which Pang bombed Southern Italy as a B-26 bombardier navigator. Pang details mission procedure, from briefing to debriefing, and describes the method by which a bomber would signal their fighter escort to intervene. After moving to Corsica he expanded targets across Italy and into Southern France, flying a total of 68 missions. Pang returned home and was stationed in Hawaii when the …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Marbury Councell. Councell joined the Army Air Forces in June, 1943 and trained in Maryland and Mississippi to become an aerial gunner. He was assigned as a ball turret gunner on a B-17 bomber in the 337th Bomb Squadron, 96th Bomb Group once he got overseas to England. He flew on 11 missions before being shot down in February, 1945. His pilot managed to get the plane to crash land in Switzerland, where Councell received medical care because he had been shot in the leg and had lost an eye. He was in the hospital in Switzerland for while and was back in France when the war ended. He was returned to the US and was discharged in March, 1946.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Main Auditorium.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with William James McConnaughy. McConnaughy was born 8 February 1920, and joined the Army Air Corps around 1940. He was working on guard duty at Randolph Field in Texas when the war started. By late 1942, he was serving as Supply Sergeant with the 817th Bombardier Training Squadron at Big Spring Army Air Field in West Texas. In 1945, after the war ended, McConnaughy was transferred to Portland, Oregon, and then served as a Room Orderly on a B-29 base at Okinawa. In late 1945, early 1946, he returned to the US and received his discharge.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Ramon Galindo. Galindo was born on 29 May 1921 in Nuevo San Juan, Mexico. His parents brought him to the United States in 1922. He joined the Texas State National Guard in 1943, at the age of 22, and became an American citizen that same year. In 1944 he joined the 571st Anti-Aircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion. He received training at Camp Wallace in Galveston. From 1944 to 1945 he served in Europe, participating in the Battle of the Bulge and the Rhine River Battle. He provides details of these battles and familiarized himself with the sound of the German cannons 88-mm cannons, and he knew to drop to the ground when he heard the whistling sound. In May of 1945, his battalion was stationed at Adolf Hitler’s headquarters, the Führerbau, where oversized pictures of Hitler and his top officers covered the walls. Part of Galindo’s mission was to protect these images. Galindo was honorably discharged in February of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Bill Dean. Dean joined the Army in September of 1944. He served with the 283rd Combat Engineers and was assigned to Lauf, Germany. He assisted in building a pontoon bridge across the Rhine River. After the war ended, Dean served on guard duty atop the bridge. He was later trained on purifying water for the troops. He returned to the US and was discharged in August of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Bill Ott. Ott joined the Navy in 1944 upon graduating high school and received basic training in San Diego. Upon completion of gunnery school and air/sea rescue training, he was assigned to a rescue boat stationed at Elba. There he was part of an eight-man crew that recovered B-29 and seaplane crews attempting to land at Kwajalein and Elba, respectively. When the tower notified them of a crash, Ott’s boat rushed to the scene and deployed a swimmer who loaded people, dead or alive, onto a floating stretcher. It was Ott’s responsibility to shoot at sharks if necessary. Once aboard, survivors would be treated by the crew’s hospital corpsmen. Typically, less than half of an aircrew survived a crash, but Ott felt it was important also to recover bodies for proper burial whenever possible. After two years abroad, Ott returned home and was discharged in early 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Bakel. Bakel had earned a degree in aeronautical engineering in early 1941 and was working at Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego when he was called up for active duty in the Army Air Corps. In May, 1942, he was commissioned as an engineering officer and assigned to several bomb groups before going overseas in early 1944. He was attached to the 308th Airdrome Squadron in New Guinea with the responsibility of opening new or captured air bases for use by fighters or bombers. He recalls opening an airfield on Luzon early in 1945 during the invasion of the Philippines. When the war ended, Bakel had enough points to receive a discharge.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Irma L. Ashenbrenner. Ashenbrenner was born 26 September 1923 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She joined the WAVES in 1943. She attended boot camp at the U.S. Naval Training Center (WR) at Hunter College in the Bronx, New York. While at boot camp she attended radio classes. Following that she was sent for six months for more advanced instruction at the Navy Radio Training School at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. There she learned to copy Morse code. Now a Radioman 3rd Class, she was assigned to the Navy's wireless radio receiving station at Chatham, Massachusetts. There she copied intercepted coded messages from German submarines in the Atlantic. These were then transmitted to Washington, DC to be analyzed. When the war ended, Ashenbrenner was sent first to Seattle and then to San Diego to handle the paperwork involved in discharging Navy personnel. On Christmas Eve 1945 she boarded a train from San Diego to New York. She was discharged from the Navy 27 December 1945.