Allen Ray Sibley was born in November 1925 in Livingston Parish [Annotator's Note: Livingston Parish, Louisiana]. He had one older sister and one older brother. Another brother and sister died as small children and then he had another younger sister and brother. Sibley grew up in Livingston and Saint Helena Parishes [Annotator's Note: Annotator's Note: Saint Helena Parish, Louisiana]. He got his GED [Annotator's Note: acronym for Tests of General Educational Development] after he got out of the Army. His father had been on a train to be inducted in the Army for World War 1 when the war ended. He was then sent home. His father never said anything about it and Sibley heard of it through others. His daddy did not talk about himself. When his father was young, he was a cowboy. After he married Sibley's mother, he became a farmer. They moved a lot. They would have about 50 acres they plowed with a single horse. He worked in the field with his brothers. They grew cotton, corn, beans, and potatoes. They had a big garden. His mother canned so they had something to eat all winter long. One winter they had it pretty slim. He was 13. He could shoot a rifle and kill rabbits. They lived on rabbit, turnip greens, cornbread, and milk from their cow for one winter. He would fish when he had a chance. They did not have time to get into sports. He had a slingshot that he shot birds with while they were flying. Squirrels and rabbits did not stand a chance. He got the rifle when he got bigger. All in all he has had a good life. They went to church in a horse and buggy. Churches were better back then than now. Four or five years ago, his wife went grocery shopping. Two ladies could not get their car started because the battery was dead. His wife had battery cables to help them. One of the other ladies was rough and used bad language. Sibley's Bible stayed in the car all the time. His wife gave his Bible to the lady that used bad language and made her promise to read it. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Sibley where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] Sibley was at home. He went to school the following day and was sent back home. After that, he quit school a lot when taking over for his father who got hurt logging. He went in the Army. After he came home, he went to LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana] and took his GED to get his diploma. He remembers well when the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] bombed Pearl Harbor. He was drafted on 24 February 1944. He got in on time for the battle of Guam [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944, Guam, Mariana Islands].

Allen Ray Sibley was drafted into the Army [Annotator's Note: on 24 February 1944]. They put him on a Greyhound bus to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] for examinations. It took all day. Three or four weeks later he went into the service. He went to boot camp in Texas at Camp Barkeley [Annotator's Note: in Abilene, Texas]. It was the first time he went away from home and stayed. Prior to that he had only gone on weekend trips with his preacher. From his house to church was 12 to 14 miles. When he was plowing, if he caught up with his work on Wednesdays, he would ride his horse to church. He did the same on Saturday with the other young boys. He would spend the night with them in a hay loft and go to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night. They would ride home that night and Monday morning he would be plowing again. After boot camp, he was sent to California to Camp Beale [Annotator's Note: now Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, California]. He was just trained to be a soldier and fight. He had 17 weeks of basic training, went home for five days, and then went to California. California raises and cans peaches. The peach cannery was short on hands. The Army let some of the men work there on weekends and sometimes during the week. Sibley ran a peach cutting machine that took the seed out. After that ended, he was called to go to Fort Lewis, Washington [Annotator's Note: near Lakewood, Washington]. He shipped from there to Hawaii. He was not assigned to anything yet. They stayed in Hawaii a month or so. They left to go to Guam [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944, Guam, Mariana Islands] on LCIs [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Infantry]. They had six crewmen and 20 soldiers. They went to Eniwetok [Annotator's Note: Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands]. He was told there were two Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] subs [Annotator's Note: submarines] that got after his 15 boats in the convoy. Eniwetok looked like a sandbar. They docked for about three days. They pulled out and wound up in Guam. He stayed there until after the war was over.

Allen Ray Sibley came home and reenlisted. On Guam [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944, Guam, Mariana Islands] he was part of the 745th Military Police [Annotator's Note: unable to verify or identify]. All he knows is he was in the Army attached to the 77th Division [Annotator's Note: 77th Infantry Division]. He does not know why he decided to stay in the service. He was given 90 days at home [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. After that, he could spend his next tour where he wanted and he chose Camp Shelby, Mississippi [Annotator's Note: in Hattiesburg, Mississippi]. He was there for about two weeks when he was called, put on a train, and went north for a long time. He thinks they went to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. They wound up at Camp Stoneman, California [Annotator's Note: in Pittsburg, California]. He was there two to four months doing nothing. He went on the USS Marine Cardinal [Annotator's Note: SS Marine Cardinal] and went to Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan] for occupation duty with a lieutenant. Sibley was military police there. During the war when he was on Guam, the first Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] he shot jumped up straight ahead of him. Sibley had his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and a carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine]. When Sibley got to him, he rolled him over and went through his pockets. He has his pocketknife, a billfold with Japanese money, and small watch that does not run anymore. He gave some of it to his kids. He packed that stuff around until he could put it in his duffel bag. He would not take anything for the stuff. War is war and Sibley could not help but shoot him and the rest. It was his duty and he had to do it. [Annotator's Note: Sibley gets quiet.]

Allen Ray Sibley has a story about the Japanese General [Annotator's Note: Imperial Japanese Army General Tadamichi Kuribayashi] who was in command of Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan] until the Marines took it [Annotator's Note: after the Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945]. The island is two and a half miles wide and five miles long with 18 miles of caves. The big cave was the General's headquarters. It had a passageway about four feet wide. Bunks were dug into each side. When the Marines went in with flamethrowers [Annotator's Note: ranged incendiary device that projects a controllable jet of fire], the Japanese patients just turned over away from the flames. Their buttocks ran together. When Sibley left there in 1977, he got out of the Army in June 1977, those bodies were still laying there. They did not decay and had mummified. They had orders not go in the cave. One guy had a monkey that got loose. They got orders to catch him or shoot him. He and another MP [Annotator's Note: military police] then went in the cave. He saw those bodies in bunks that were three high. Farther down there were sulfur fumes and they had to get out. That rock [Annotator's Note: slang for island] is a volcano with Mount Suribachi [Annotator's Note: on Iwo Jima, Japan] on the end of it. If you go up on Mount Suribachi and look down into the crater, a 50 gallon drum looks like a bucket. There was green grass growing down there. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer says the Japanese consider it a memorial.] Sibley has been told it is nothing but a garbage dump now. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer says that they give tours there.] There is a gun position still there that was there when Sibley was. The Marines had to get right up to it to knock it out. There were American ships still there too. Sibley would go on the beach and shoot his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] at C-rations [Annotator's Note: prepared and canned wet combat food] cans. He says other than that, there is not a whole lot to him. He left the Army as a Private First Class in 1947. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer corrects his earlier statement that he got out in 1977.] They were not handing out any promotions.

After he left the Army [Annotator's Note: in 1947], Allen Ray Sibley took a test for his GED [Annotator's Note: acronym for Tests of General Educational Development for a high school equivalency diploma]. They wanted him to study first, but he said he did not need it. He made above 90 on four of the subjects and 76 in Science. In a few weeks he got his certificate. He says he was not smart enough to go to college. The Air Force had torn up just about all of Japan's railroads. There was a sawmill that cut cross ties that he ran for a while. The cross ties were shipped to Japan, but he cannot verify that. On weekends, he was paid to haul them to Livingston [Annotator's Note: Livingston Parish, Louisiana]. A green oak cross tie weighs over 300 pounds. He loaded them by himself, eight wide by eight high. He weighed 142 pounds. He got a job selling clothes out of a car. He and his wife were living in Baton Rouge [Annotator's Note: Baton Rouge, Louisiana] in a small apartment. He had a horse and rented a stall for it. He was selling clothes on his route and stopped at a hardware store. He bought a bale of hay for his horse. He got in trouble for using the car for that and quit. The boss tried to get him to stay. Sibley got downtown and met up with a fellow he knew. He pointed him to job. This was 11 November 1951. He worked there until he retired in 1977.

Allen Ray Sibley almost stayed in the Army. He liked being a soldier. He is glad he did not stay in because he would not have had the wife he has. If America had lost the war, there would not be much America today. Japan was not smart. They had us [Annotator's Note: the United States] whipped at Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. They had troops on the Yucatán Peninsula [Annotator's Note: Yucatán Peninsula, geographical feature that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Caribbean Sea]. If they had bombed San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California], Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington they would have whipped America. The soldiers then did not even have guns to train with. They had wooden guns and bayonets. Sibley did a lot of growing up in the war. It got a lot of years of his life that seem like a void. It is nothing to think about a lot. He has never been a drinker. He quit smoking when he came home. He let his bad habits go. He went to church before he went in the Army, and he did when he came home. That is where he met his wife. When he came home, he was pretty tough. He never wanted to hurt anybody, other than to see if he could whip them. He was little, but he was fast and big fellows could not get to him. He met his wife and forgot about all of that stuff. Shooting the first little Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] is his most memorable experience. He was a little fellow. Generally they are small, but he was really little. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Sibley what he thought of The National WWII Museum, in New Orleans, Louisiana when he visited it.] It was his second trip. He played out before he got to see a lot of it. He thinks it is a great thing and great achievement. He is a Charter Member and has been for a long time. He has a son-in-law that wants to see everything he gets from the museum.