Carl Caffarel was born in 1925 in Plaquemines, Louisiana, and grew up in the nearby town of Port Allen, Louisiana. The Great Depression was tough for a family with seven children, but he got through high school and started college at Louisiana State University [Annotator's Note: LSU] in 1942. With two service-eligible sons at the time, his father was concerned over the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, and Caffarel's family listened to the broadcasts all afternoon and most of the evening. The advanced unit of LSU's ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] was put on active duty, but because he was a freshman, Caffarel wasn't affected. He wasn't anxious to enlist. But he was 17, and knew he would be drafted, so he joined the Navy to avoid going into the Army. When he applied for acceptance into a program to become an officer, he learned that he was half an inch short of the five-foot, six-inch requirement to qualify, and was rejected. Through persistence, he entered the V-12 program after basic training, and was in school in Detroit, Kalamazoo and Princeton until the war was almost over. [Annotator's Note: The US Navy's V-12 College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the Navy during World War 2.]

Carl Caffarel was at Columbia University in New York, taking final exams [Annotator's Note: which were abandoned], when the announcement was made that the war had ended. He joined the revelry in Times Square, and likened it to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He was commissioned the same week, and got a big pay raise. He continued classes at the Combat Information Center in Florida, learning how to handle radar and communications with aircraft; and followed that up with classes at St. Simon's Island in Georgia, where he was taught to be a fighter director, using a radar scope to detect and alert pilots to enemy planes. In January 1946, he was deployed to Pearl Harbor, and assigned to the USS Chicago (CA-136)]. Caffarel said they sailed to Shanghai, China to "show them the flag." His duties were limited to standing watch. However, he did take part in several social affairs he called "getting acquainted with the Allies" that were hosted by the English and French.

After two months in Shanghai, Carl Caffarel made the rounds of ports in Japan. He did a bit of exploring, but complained that he had to wear a heavy sidearm when he went ashore. There were never any problems with the native population, he said, and although the people weren't friendly, they were cordial. Caffarel went ashore at Hiroshima, and saw block after block of empty space; the area had been cleaned up a good bit, but not entirely. There were very few people around. He went up the stairs of the one remaining structure, and could look out over the city and see the total damage. Caffarel thought the decision to bomb Japan was right because it ended the plans for a bloody invasion. Seeing the devastation at Hiroshima didn't change his mind. His tour of Japan lasted about four months.

In July 1946, Carl Caffarel was separated from the Navy and put on inactive reserve. He went back to Port Allen, and when he reunited with the friends he enlisted with, found them all very changed. They had grown up. Caffarel thinks The National WWII Museum is valuable for telling the story of what happened to the men who served in the war. Using the G.I. Bill, Caffarel went back to LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University] and got his engineering degree. He worked as an engineer for most of the rest of his life. His career was interrupted by a telegram he received when the Korean War started. He reported for duty at New Orleans, Louisiana on a Friday, was flown to Japan [Annotator's Note: Caffarel said he immediately recognized its odor], and was standing watch in Korea by Tuesday. He spent two more years in the Navy, shuttling between Korea and Japan. He has never revisited Japan as a civilian.