Victor K. Carman was born in April 1927 in Woodmere, New York on Long Island. His parents divorced when he was three years old and he moved with his mother to Springfield, Massachusetts. His grandfather was building a house in Wilbraham [Annotator's Note: Wilbraham, Massachusetts] and that is where he grew up. He enjoyed his childhood. He had friends he went to school with. The elementary school was about a mile away. He walked to school every day. A bus took them to seventh and eighth grade which was about five miles away. Then he went to a technical high school in Springfield which is where he graduated. The town was a suburban area. They played football and other games in the backyards. One neighbor had a big field they would play touch football in. When he was in the eighth grade, there were Polish kids who would talk down about the British. He did not like that because they were allies of the United States. He lost a cousin to a training accident in California during the war. They traveled to New York to keep a relationship with his aunt and his cousin's younger brother. He went to a Christian retreat in Brockton, Massachusetts. When he returned home, he learned about the bombing of Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was a sophomore in high school at the time. During high school, he wanted to join the Navy. In high school, during gym class, they were doing body conditioning so they would be ready to join the military when they had to.

Victor K. Carman joined the Navy because he did not want to be a foot soldier in the Army or Marines. He had flown a number of times, but he did not want to be an Air Force man. He had been on small boats and that made him want to join the Navy. His grandfather had built a big house in Wilbraham [Annotator's Note: Wilbraham, Massachusetts] and he lived there for ten years. His mother would cheer for the Naval Academy at football games. No one they knew was in the Naval Academy. She was pleased when he went into the Navy. He went to the recruiting station in early July [Annotator's Note: July 1944] after graduating. They were not taking anyone in the Naval Reserve at the time. They told him if he was in the Reserves he would get out six months after the war ended. It was 1944 and he thought the war would last a few more years so he wanted to enlist until he turned 21 years old. He wanted to go into the Navy and serve his country. After he joined the Navy, he took a train from Springfield [Annotator's Note: Springfield, Massachusetts] to Geneva, New York. Lake Geneva was where Samson Naval Base [Annotator's Note: Naval Training Station Samson near Seneca Lake, New York] was. He did his boot camp training there. He thought he was getting into good shape physically. He was in the Boy Scouts [Annotator's Note: Boy Scouts of America] and had earned his Eagle Scout Award [Annotator's Note: the highest achievement or rank attainable in the Boy Scouts of America] the summer before. A Petty Officer [Annotator's Note: a non-commissioned officer in the Navy or Coast Guard] asked if anyone knew semaphore code [Annotator's Note: a telegraphy system used to convey information at a distance by means of visual signals with flags] which is using the flags to signal other ships. He knew how to do it. He had to lead the group in the different positions of the flags. They had latrine duty cleaning the bathrooms and the barracks. They went out on small boats and he had a boating merit badge [Annotator's Note: merit badges are awards earned by members of the Boy Scouts of America, based on activities within the area of study by completing a list of periodically updated requirements]. When he was in high school he learned Morse Code and he was in the radio club. He wanted to be involved with the radio in the Navy. They had radio school at Samson after boot camp. He took radio operator training in March [Annotator's Note: March 1945]. Then he went on leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. After that he took a train to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. He was not on a troop train. He got to pick his seat and sat next to a girl all the way to California. The train split off in southern California. She went one way and he went to Oakland [Annotator's Note: Oakland, California]. He remembers the train had to stop due to a cow being on the tracks. When they got to Oakland they took a bus to Stockton [Annotator's Note: Stockton, California]. There they were assigned to ships. He remembers they got as much free Pepsi [Annotator's Note: Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo] as they wanted. He remembers it was April and that President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died on 12 April 1945. His grandfather and mother were not Roosevelt supporters so he was not teared up. He thought he was a great man, but it did not affect him. He got to Oakland around 14 April and then went to Stockton. He was there for about a week. Then they told him he was going to Hunter's Point in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. The ship he was getting on was there being repaired so it could go back out into the Pacific. He was assigned to the USS Cabot (CVL-28), which was a light carrier. The ship was not as big as the other carriers. It had been hit by a kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese suicide bombers] on the flight deck and was being repaired so it could go back out to battle.

Victor K. Carman was happy to be assigned to his ship [Annotator's Note: USS Cabot (CVL-28)]. Some sailors were sent to islands to work on beaches. They were given mosquito netting. On his ship, they would work eight hour shifts. When he was in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] he enjoyed being a radio operator. When they got out to sea there was a lot of static messing up the calls. He hated being glued to his typewriter and the Morse Code key for eight hours straight. There was an electronics warrant officer and when they got to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Carman asked him if he needed an electronics striker [Annotator's Note: a striker is a sailor who is trainig for a particular job or rating but has not achieved it yet]. One of his strikers had been transferred and they needed one. He did not get his Third Class [Annotator's Note: the lowest rate of non-commissioned officer in the Navy and Coast Guard; equivalent to a corporal in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps; E-4] as a radioman, but he was happy being a First Class Seaman [Annotator's Note: the third enlisted rank from the bottom in the Navy and Coast Guard, ranking above seaman apprentice and below Petty Officer 3rd Class; E-3] as a striker. In addition to being in the radio shack, he set up the movies on the hanger deck. The good thing about a hanger deck is it is below the flight deck so other ships cannot see any lights. He would set up the movie screen and get the movie ready, and then take it down. When they had chapel service he would set up the microphone. When he was not assigned to anything he could go up on the flight deck and watch the planes take off and land. They went to Hawaii and to Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands where they joined several other ships. It was 1 August 1945. On 6 August 1945, the first atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] was dropped on Hiroshima [Annotator's Note: Hiroshima, Japan]. On 9 August 1945, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: Nagasaki, Japan]. The next day, the Japanese surrendered. They were happy it was over but they did not do much celebrating. Many of the ships did not go home right away. His ship went north to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. When they went ashore, their captain told them not to go into the caves because there could be traps inside. Then his ship went into the China Sea. In the middle of November, they got word about a typhoon coming. The peak of the typhoon was on a Sunday. They were serving turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy that day. In a typhoon, the ship is bobbing at 30 degree angles. The food went all over. By the time Carman got to the line, they were serving sandwiches. A typhoon is like a hurricane in the Pacific [Annotator's Note: Pacific Ocean]. An officer told a sailor they had to tie down some important equipment. When he went to tie down the equipment, the ship turned and he went overboard. Right behind them was a destroyer and the guy went up on a 15 foot wave and they were able to grab him. They saved him. Destroyers did not have the capability to make ice cream. If they [Annotator's Note: an air or aviation group on an aircraft carrier] had a pilot land in the water, the destroyers would pick up those men. As a thank you, they would give the destroyer ice cream because they could make ice cream. They were cruising around. There were about a million Marines and soldiers in the Marshall Islands and there were not enough planes to take them home. His ship picked up 400 Marines on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] and took them to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. They went back to the United States in mid-November [Annotator's Note: November 1945].

Victor K. Carman got to Japan on 1 August 1945. The bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped on 6 August and 9 August. There had not been much discussion, but they would have been told they would be invading Japan in November if they did not surrender. When the war ended, they knew it would be good. A carrier is the best way to transport soldiers. They can sleep on the flight deck. They move the planes to the back and the men can have the rest of the deck, or they could be in the hanger deck. They had an anchor pool. Each person put in five dollars. When they got close to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California] they would draw a number. He and his good friend decided if one of them won they would split it. They drew the number and they were looking for a guy named Dwight Jeanice [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to verify identity]. Carman said he was down sleeping because he had been on duty. Carman went down and asked him what his number was and told him he had won the thing. They each got 250 dollars. He bought a raincoat which he needed and he took a trip to Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] while they were still in San Diego. The captain told them any men who lived west of the Mississippi [Annotator's Note: Mississippi River] could go on leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. The rest of the men would take the ship through the Panama Canal to go up the East Coast [Annotator's Note: East Coast of United States] to Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. They let them off while they were going through the Canal. Philadelphia is on Delaware Bay. The harbormaster radioed them and told them the water was too rough for them to enter. The Army vs Navy game [Annotator's Note: an annual football game between the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York and the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland] was happening in Philadelphia and many of them would have liked to see the game. Word was that the captain somehow got to see the game. The next day they docked in Philadelphia. They went out and visited the city and saw Independence Hall [Annotator's Note: Independence Hall is a historic civic building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in which both the United States Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted by America's Founding Fathers]. When they were there he had a hard time staying awake. He did not drink coffee on the ship so he was always drinking tea. The tea did not help. When they docked at Philadelphia he was on dock watch to make sure no one messed with the ship. It was ten below zero. An officer on the back of the ship asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee. He did want some, anything to get off the dock. He likes coffee now. A lot of soldiers were getting discharged six months after the war. He was enlisted until he was 21 years old. He was 18 years old during this time so he went to electronics school. He was sent to Great Lakes Naval Base [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes in Lake County, Illinois] to take six months of basic electronics. They gave him three options for advanced electronics school. He could go to Treasure Island outside San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]; Memphis, Tennessee for aviation electronics; or Washington, DC to the naval research lab. He had already been to San Francisco, so he wanted to go to Washington, DC. He started in the advanced courses in July 1946. He finished in June 1947. They got to see the capital and the Lincoln Memorial. It was nice to visit the various places. On the weekends, Boeing Air Force Base was down the road and they could catch hops there. Before the war, he got reacquainted with his father because his mother thought it would be a good idea. He would visit his mother in Massachusetts and his father in New York. He lived on Long Island [Annotator's Note: Long Island, New York] near Mitchel Air Force Base [Annotator's Note: then Mitchel Army Airfield on Long Island, New York]. He would catch a hop up there and visit him. Then he was assigned to an LSD or Landing Ship, Dock. He was an electronics technician on there. He remembers them going on cruises. One time, they went from Norfolk [Annotator's Note: Norfolk, Virginia] around Florida all the way up to Pensacola [Annotator's Note: Pensacola, Florida]. They did not have a place for them to dock so the harbormaster told the captain to just anchor the ship and use their boats to take the men in. The captain asked if they wanted to go swimming with no stingrays or sharks around. They let the landing dock fill with water as if they were going to let the boats out, but instead, it made the dock a nice big swimming pool. They swam in the back part of the ship. Then they went on to Galveston, Texas. It was a wide-open city and he was a Petty Officer [Annotator's Note: a non-commissioned officer in the Navy or Coast Guard]. He had to watch the sailors. They went back to Norfolk. He had built up leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] time, about 60 days. He was due to get out on 11 February but they got eight inches of snow so he ended up getting discharged a week later on 17 February [Annotator's Note: 17 February 1948].

Victor K. Carman wanted to become an electronics engineer. While he was at the Great Lakes Naval Base [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes in Lake County, Illinois] they had the option to go to either Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] or Milwaukee [Annotator's Note: Milwaukee, Wisconsin]. One time he did go to Chicago and there was Doris Day [Annotator's Note: born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff; American actress, singer, and animal welfare activist] singing at the Aragon Ballroom. Most weekends he went to Milwaukee. He went to the dance halls with a girl he met. He went to the Milwaukee school for engineering. He looked forward to using the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] at the Milwaukee school of engineering. He started in March 1948, a month after he was discharged. The first year and a half were not too bad, but as the math got harder he did not like it. He decided he wanted to get into education. He met his wife in Milwaukee. She was attending Lakeland College. He transferred to Lakeland College. When they got married they towed a house trailer from Springfield, Massachusetts, and that is where they lived while he completed his degree. He was only using the G.I. Bill while he was at Lakeland so he signed up for the University of Wisconsin. He was going to be a guidance counselor. He was teaching math at Jefferson. He was hired by a lady and went to Cincinnati [Annotator's Note: Cincinnati, Ohio] to work.

Victor K. Carman remembers the typhoon. It was significant. The Philippines got hit by a typhoon with winds of 190 miles per hour. The typhoon that hit them was registered at 90 miles per hour and it was bad enough. He thinks if the typhoon that hit the Philippines hit his ship then he would not be here today. He signed up for the Navy because he was doing his duty for his country. They were helping win the war. The Navy made him more mature. He went in at 17 years old and got out at 21 years old. He is very proud of his service in World War 2. They have reunions every year for the USS Cabot (CVL-28). His ship served in the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. They put it in mothballs after World War 2 and sealed it up, but it went back out for the Korean War. It was sitting in Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] until 1967 when the Spanish navy, the Armada, needed a place for helicopters to land in the Mediterranean Sea. They asked the United States Navy if they had a ship they did not need anymore. The Admiral sent the USS Cabot. It was there until 1989. The Spanish did not need the ship anymore so they brought it back to Puerto Rico. Then the ship went to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] in 1989 from Spain. They just parked it there. The Coast Guard said the ship was too close to where the barges go through the Mississippi [Annotator's Note: Mississippi River]. There was a legion in Metairie [Annotator's Note: Metairie, Louisiana] that wanted the ship as a museum. The Coast Guard said the ship had to leave. They contacted the Navy and told them to get it out. The Navy said they gave it to Spain. The Coast Guard towed it somewhere down near Mexico. India does not have iron ore so they asked the United States if they could have the ships to melt down the iron in India. The Navy told them yes. His ship was one of many that were towed to India. One CVL [Annotator's Note: light aircraft carrier] was used at Eniwetok [Annotator's Note: Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands] to test the atomic bombs. They changed cruisers to light carriers. He thinks it would be good to have a branch of the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] in Washington, DC near the World War II Memorial.