Albert Reale was born in March 1925 in New Britain, Connecticut. He had a good childhood among his three brothers in a middle-class suburban neighborhood. His father plated chrome hardware for the Stanley Works. During the Great Depression his father didn't make much money but his mother was a good manager and Reale didn't feel that the family really suffered. Reale was an honor student and although he was a senior in high school when Pearl Harbor was attacked, his teachers and classmates didn't discuss the impending war. He knew he would be going into the military and, during his freshman year of college, he volunteered for the Navy, because he liked boats and the water. Reale had an ambition to fly the F4U Corsair [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft], so he joined the Navy Air Force.

Albert Reale's Navy flight training ended after he had flown 50 hours solo, then washed out. He could have been a navigator, but at 19 years old, he didn't feel that that was a satisfactory alternative. So he went into LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] training at Great Lakes, Michigan. His unit picked up an LST in Seneca, Illinois and sailed downriver to New Orleans, Louisiana for a shakedown cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. By Navy standards, the LST wasn't a big ship, but it was a good ship. It was the length of a football field, traveled at a top speed of 12 to 13 knots, and had a flat bottom, so it rolled a lot, and wasn't comfortable in rough seas. [Annotator's Note: Reale grinned.] In his position as quartermaster he helped the navigation officer "shoot the sun and stars" to get the ship's position, steered in and out of harbors and beaches, and set the ship's clocks. The sailors had three square meals and stood four-hour watches. They traveled through the Panama Canal to Pearl Harbor, where they could still see the sunken ships with their masts sticking out of the water. But the town had recovered, and Reale and a buddy took a few trips on the island.

Albert Reale remembers that the size of the Pacific impressed him, and there were many days when he saw nothing but water. Reale recalled seeing the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 SUperfortress very heavy bomber] fly over on their way to drop the atom bombs on Japan. His LST [Annotator's Note: Reale served aboard the Landing Ship, Tank USS LST-1122] saw duty in Eniwetok, Guam, Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa. They picked up the soldiers that had taken Okinawa who were a sad-looking bunch, filthy and in bad shape. Reale had casual conversations with those soldiers and although they didn't discuss anything in great detail, he could tell it had been rough. Reale described nuisance raids by Kamikazes at two or three in the morning when the ship would be strafed. As long as they stayed inside, he said, the ship got messed up a little, but the sailors didn't get hurt. Reale and a buddy went ashore once on Okinawa to look around. He stopped short at a stick in the ground with a red circle around it. Thinking it might be a mine, he asked his buddy to get help. When someone from the Army showed up, they all had a laugh, as it turned out to be a surveyor's stick, and not at all dangerous. A typhoon they experienced on their way back sent huge waves crashing around the ship. The bow would shake and make sounds like the twanging of a saw, but stayed in one piece.

Albert Reale thought the Japanese were miserable people, and seeing the surviving soldiers from Okinawa reinforced his opinion. He thought it was great when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan because it ended the war. They were on their way back to Pearl Harbor when his crew got the news, and all aboard his ship [Annotator's Note: USS LST-1122] were screaming and jumping up and down. Reale's ship returned to the Pacific to bring supplies to the people in Japan and the Philippines. In Manila, he attended Sunday mass, and was amazed at the devotion of the population. He picked up souvenirs in Sasebo, Japan where the Japanese inhabitants showed no animosity. He saw Hiroshima and Nagasaki from about a mile away when his ship passed, and observed that it was a flattened land, total destruction. Having seen the effects of nuclear energy, Reale still believed the United States had to maintain its position in the arms race.

After V-J Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945], Albert Reale spent another six months in the Navy, and was glad to get his discharge in 1946. He remembered the way the Marines looked when they got on his ship after battle, and being glad he hadn't been involved in combat. He took a train through New York City where he got his papers, and returned home. At the University of Connecticut, he used the G.I. Bill to get his degree in Business Administration. Reale feels that because of his experience in the war, he is glad to be alive and makes the most of every day; for some, there just weren't enough days. He feels good that he was able to serve. He believes America wasn't prepared for Pearl Harbor, and today we need to be prepared at all times, and seek peace whenever possible. He was against involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He believes institutions like The National WWII Museum can teach future generations about the past and act as a preventative measure against another such war. For the sake of the millions who died, that is very important. In closing, he wanted to mention the strangest thing that happened to him in the war. While on watch one night, he observed and reported seeing a big "blob" come out of the water. The ship sent a friend-or-foe signal, but got no answer. It might have been a submarine, but the thing disappeared, and no one ever knew what it was.