I received my parents' permission and went into the Navy on June 3, 1941.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I was 17, I was told I had the choice of enlisting in the Navy or going to jail, so I spent the next three years in the Navy.
I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war.
I stayed in the Navy until July of 1946.
I grew up in a Navy family.
You know, my dad was a lieutenant colonel at Ft. Lewis on the 3rd of March, 1941. Fifteen months later, he was commanding a theater of war.
My father took me back home, back to Greenwich Village, and he thought by taking me out of the orphanage he'd be out of the World War too. But no way - they got him anyway. He went in the Navy and then I lived on the streets.
Because my father was often absent on naval duty, my mother suffered me to do much as I pleased.
I was six months old at the time that I was taken, with my mother and father, from Sacramento, California, and placed in internment camps in the United States.
My mom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and my parents actually bought our home thanks to the loan she got through the GI Bill.
My grandpa was in the Navy, but it wasn't something that was expected or planned for me to do.