Arthur Q. Davis was born in March 1920 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His family lived on a rice plantation in Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana, until the great flood of 1926 destroyed the fields, and they moved to New Orleans. His father opened and ran a retail store, but that business held no interest for Davis, who immersed himself in drawing and art. He went to Tulane [Annotator's Note: Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana] to study architecture. He gained employment with a construction company in Detroit and met and married a girl from there. The company sent him to work in a defense factory and shipyard in New Orleans, and he was there when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. All his friends were joining the Navy, and Davis wanted to be a part of the great adventure. Because of his background in architecture, he was assigned to camouflage activities at the 8th Naval District in New Orleans. From there he was sent to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the hub of camouflage instruction for the world. Davis said it was an "easy, cushy job" designing camouflage communities that were never built. Davis wanted to do something more practical, and his commanding officer arranged for him to go to Washington, D.C. to the Bureau of Ships to work on ship camouflage.

As far as the war was concerned, Arthur Davis claimed, working for the Bureau of Ships was his big adventure. It was a small department, and Davis worked in a small theater where he could duplicate any kind of weather. The team had models of every ship in the fleet, and they would create designs for the models that had a two-fold objective: course distortion and type deception. The Navy sought input from captains and skippers of all types of ships as to the designs that would prove most effective. Their work paid off in the Pacific in the early part of the war when the Japanese navy had no radar. It was still useful later on for the PT [Annotator's note: Patrol Torpedo] boats that plied the waters in and among the south Pacific islands. It was eventually decided that Davis should go out to the fleet, and traveled between installations in the Pacific, such as Noumea, New Caledonia and Guadalcanal and worked with people in the shipyards where he supervised the execution of the Department of Ships' designs. He also went among the sailors of the 3rd and 5th Fleets to interview them regarding their opinions on the effectiveness of the designs. He was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) as his base of operations, and wrote his own orders, which was somewhat unusual.

The USS Missouri (BB-63) was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when Arthur Davis designed its camouflage. Davis remembers it was a "tremendous" ship, and he drew on it with a piece of chalk attached to a long bamboo stick, after which it was painted. Later, before it was used in Tokyo Bay as the site of the signing of final armistice, it was repainted a neutral grey. However, Davis mentioned, the Turkish government created a postage stamp that carried a representation of the Missouri, in camouflage. Throughout his military service, Davis interacted with all branches of the armed forces, and held a special admiration for the Marines, but said he was glad he was not a Marine. At the end of the war, Davis had the opportunity to stay in the Navy and earn a promotion from Lieutenant Junior Grade to full Lieutenant, but he decided to go back to school. He resigned his commission and was deactivated. He used the G.I. Bill to attend Harvard University [Annotator's Note: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts] where he studied under notable European professors and alongside students with potential for greatness. After graduating he did a short stint in Detroit, then he went back to New Orleans and established Curtis and Davis, an architectural partnership he formed with Nathaniel C. Curtis, Jr. in 1947. The firm designed public and private buildings both locally and internationally, including the New Orleans Superdome.

Going back to his experiences in the Pacific, Arthur Davis recalled visiting many bases, and said New Caledonia was a "lovely spot," where he worked primarily on the camouflage of PT [Annotator's Note: Patrol Torpedo] boats and the destroyers that got in really close to the shore and the enemy. The big carriers and battleships were too big for camouflage to make a difference except between ships. Late in the war, when the air battles heated up, the bigger ships were identifiable to the Japanese pilots by their wake that created a long white stripe in the water, and camouflage was useless. It took about a month, and the efforts of many personnel, to paint a big ship. Davis' commanding officer [Annotator's Note: likely US Navy Commander Arthur W. Colledge], who approved all the camouflage colors and designs, had served in a similar position in the First World War. The patterns used in World War 2 were bolder. However, the Germans already had radar, and once the Japanese began using it to their advantage, camouflage became less effective.

There were always air raids to deal with, according to Arthur Davis, during his duty in the Pacific. The Japanese pilots were always targeting the big ships, and sometimes they got close; but usually they were shot down. Davis was no longer working on the big ships when the Kamikaze action began. He never got hurt. Because he had a college education, he didn't go through boot camp; instead he had "indoctrination" at Dartmouth. And he conceded that he never really acclimated to military life. He considered himself a civilian doing his job in the Navy, rather than being an officer in the Navy, and never enjoyed having to give commands. He felt that because he wrote his own orders, he had much more freedom than most military personnel. He believes the United States "did the right thing" in dropping the atomic bombs, that it probably saved millions of lives.

There were ways, Arthur Davis said, to make the ships appear to be going in the opposite direction from their heading. Sometimes they painted waves on the bow of the ship to make it appear shorter. The most fun, Davis said, was working on the aircraft carriers, because there was such a large surface on which to work. Every ship had its own limitations and special needs. He was married before he joined the Navy, and his wife, of 63 years at the time of the interview, joined Davis at his assignments when it was practicable, but not, of course in the Pacific. She was glad to see him when he got home. He said his time in the Navy was a special experience and felt the United States did a pretty good job of fooling the enemy.

Before the war, Arthur Davis worked in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] building a plant near the lakefront [Annotator's Note: Lake Pontchartrain Lakefront] for the production PBYs [Annotator's Note: Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat]. Because there was very little steel available at the time, the construction was of wood, and required special construction methods to make it strong and durable. The plants are still standing. He also worked in a shipyard in New Orleans, where he became acquainted with an "old labor docky" who gave him a voodoo charm to protect him through his career in the Navy. It was not the only brush Davis had with that belief system during his lifetime. During his time in the Navy, while serving in the Pacific, he had interactions with the native populations of Australia, New Zealand and Noumea.