Sometimes it's weird to think about your parents or grandparents before you knew them. What were they like? Were they spontaneous, did they do anything crazy? How did they compare to me at my age?
I started an Oral History Project with my Grandpa where I just ask him questions about his past, he talks, and I transcribe it. He was just a little older than me when he was in the Navy in WWII and it's always fun for me to listen to his stories because it's a side of him I never knew. A side when his life was so hard and sad, but he also had some crazy and adventurous experiences.
I wanted to include two new stories he told me that I had never heard before.
Prince: While we were over seas the first time, we were the first cargo ship that went from New Maya, New Caledonia to Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal was the point where we stopped the Japanese from any further expansion.
Uh, one day I was talking to the armed guard personnel that were on board and we were back on the fantail of the ship. And I’m walking forward and I look out and here comes this torpedo wake right at our ship. And I started screaming, “Torpedo, torpedo!” And I ran up the stairs to get as high as I could so when it hit I’m out, you know, your out of the way a little bit. And the thing went under the ship and exploded on the beach! (Laughs)
Prince: The first nine months we were in the Pacific and then we came back to Panama. We went through the Panama Canal and ended up in a place called Sparrows Point, Maryland. For nine months I never saw a soul that I had known before, and I never hear a word from my family.
Prince: When I was through in New York I had a friend, his name was Floyd Roach and he was from Park City. And, uh, we went all through our training together ...
When we finished school he was transferred to a destroyer in Mare Island, California. That destroyer took off to go to Hawaii and they’ve never, to this day, determined what happened to them. They just disappeared.
