Charles Brooks was born in Dallas, Texas. Life in the Great Depression was difficult. His mother had been widowed when Brooks was just six years old. She would save a nickel on car fare by walking to Dallas. When people dug in their garbage for food, the family would share their food with them. People shared with each other. Some scavenged for food. The people on farms were lucky. They had food for their personal consumption even though they could not get very much for produce sold. The Brooks family had a cow. It was Brooks' responsibility before school each day to take the cow to the alley so that the animal could graze on grass there. He attended excellent grammar and high schools. His grades were not as good as his sister's. She even managed to skip two grades as a result. Brooks was just concerned with passing no matter what grade he received. Before the war broke out, Brooks was still enrolled in school. After graduating, he obtained a job as a movie usher. He wore a furnished suit which he felt was very sharp. As an usher, he assisted ladies up and down the movie aisles to locate their seats. The job was fun but it did not pay very much. He ultimately convinced his mother that he would not pass the naval aviator test and as a result she agreed to sign the pass for him to be tested. He fooled her and succeeded in passing the test. Although underweight for his physical, he ate six bananas and managed to reach the necessary weight.

Charles Brooks entered the United States Navy. He was first shipped to Athens, Georgia for basic physical training known as ENS, or Essential Naval Service. Then he was sent to Hutchinson, Kansas just before the base opened. It was winter and very cold. The novice pilot had fun trying not to freeze in the open cockpit of the training aircraft. They flew the N3Ns [Annotator's Note: Naval Aircraft Factory N3N trainer aircraft] and Stearman [Annotator's Note: Boeing-Stearman Model 75 trainer aircraft] airplanes. They were great aircraft and easy to fly. From there, he was sent to Corpus Christie, Texas for instrument and type training. From Corpus, he was transferred to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he was placed in torpedo bombers. Then, it was off to the Great Lakes for aircraft carrier training. He had no problem with that. Next, it was Seattle, Washington and afterward on to Oregon. From there he was sent to CASU 32 [Annotator's Note: Carrier Aircraft Service Unit 32] at Barber's Point. A VT-3 squadron [Annotator's Note: Torpedo Squadron 3 (VT-3)] was being organized for Hilo. Leaving the continental United States, Brooks trained in Hilo for several months. He had been launched out of an anchored carrier and landed on the island of Hilo. Later, the USS Barnes (CVE-20) carried him over to land on the USS Yorktown (CV-10) as a replacement pilot for combat loses.

Charles Brooks landed on the Yorktown [Annotator's Note: USS Yorktown (CV-10)] just in time for the attack on the Japanese held Truk Islands. Brooks participated in a couple of attacks on the Truk Islands. The attacks succeeded in stopping incoming supplies. As a new pilot, he flew at the tail of the squadron [Annotator's Note: Torpedo Squadron 5 (VT-5)]. Looking down through the clouds, he could see the target and dove on it. His crewmen's ears had not popped when Brooks heard one man screaming into his microphone. Brooks observed a stove going by his aircraft. He had dropped his 2,000 pound bomb on his target of a seaplane hanger, but hit a huge outhouse instead. Brooks could see the antiaircraft tracers coming at him. He flew his plane to avoid the incoming fire which resulted in him dropping his ordnance on the outhouse instead of his target. They enemy fire was coming from three different islands. He drew all the fire because no other American pilot chose to drop through the hole in the clouds that he found. No rounds hit his airplane. That was his first mission on Truk. The second mission was not quite as frightening. After Truk, the Yorktown returned to Pearl Harbor. While the rest of VT-5 went home, Brooks did not have enough hours so he remained in Hawaii. Brooks was placed in a CASU, or Carrier Aircraft Service Unit.

Charles Brooks was sent to VT-3 [Annotator's Note: Torpedo Squadron 3 (VT-3)] which was forming up on the big island at Hilo. Most of the fellows had been together since coming out from the States. Brooks was a stranger to them. He subsequently had an appendicitis and missed some of the training. Consequently, when a call was made for volunteers for a night unit, he was sent as a volunteer, though he did not actually volunteer. He returned to Barber's Point and was trained with VT-8 [Annotator's Note: Torpedo Squadron 8 (VT-8)] as assistant engineer officer. He was responsible for running a flow meter for all the aircraft. This was important in determining the fuel rate through the carburetors and thus how long the aircraft could remain in the air at night. Flying at night was similar to flying in the daytime. Through the use of his instruments, he gained confidence in night flying. Brooks next was assigned to the number one nemesis of the Japanese, the USS Enterprise (CV-6) [Annotator's Note: the USS Enterprise (CV-6) was the most decorated American ship of the Second World War]. Despite the Japanese claim that the Enterprise had been sunk several times, it would only be sunk after the war and by the United States, not the enemy. Had it not been sunk, the Enterprise would have made a wonderful monument to its efforts in the Pacific.

Charles Brooks saw purple flak on his first combat mission off the Enterprise [Annotator's Note: USS Enterprise (CV-6)]. The combat mission was in the China Sea. The air group [Annotator's Note: Brooks flew a TBF Avenger with VT(N)-90, part of Night Air Group 90] came in at 15,000 feet over an enemy convoy it had located. Each torpedo plane was to make two glide bomb runs dropping two bombs at a time. After everyone else had dropped their ordnance on the second run, Brooks was making his run by himself. He was not hit by enemy fire but it remains uncertain whether his bombs hit the enemy. He suspects that the drop was short of the target. After dropping his bombs, he headed home. He tried to catch up with the rest of the air group to return to the carrier. Following this mission, he flew antisubmarine patrols. He would fly triangular patterns to spot any enemy undersea craft. While in the pattern, he experienced a friendly destroyer firing on his aircraft. Brooks could not tell if it was 20mm cannon fire or not. All of the fire looked big when it came at him. He also flew heckle missions over Japan. [Annotator's Note: Heckling missions were night time strafing and bomb runs over enemy targets.] The flight would have two or three targets and would drop flares to find runways. They would drop delayed action bombs on airports. While making a second run on a target, he was caught in a searchlight. He had experienced this before on Chichijima. It was not very pleasant. The fighters above him would eventually shoot the enemy lights out and Brooks would escape harm. While running a mission over the Japanese home islands, the whole sky lit up. He initially thought it was searchlights. He made a dive and headed out to the ocean. When he looked back, it was not searchlights at all. It was flames running up to about 300 feet. He returned to the target and saw he had lit up one of the enemy gas tanks. Brooks told his crewmen that they performed a great job that night. He felt safe at night because the enemy could not spot them in the darkened skies. The pilot behind him on that heckling mission said the flames were going great when he flew over the spot Brooks had hit. Brooks was proud of those results. The next important incident for Brooks was when the Japanese kamikazes hit the Enterprise. The ship was the number one target for the suicide attacks. Alarms sounded indicating the beginning of an attack. Brooks, like other flight personnel, had no battle station but would act as corpsmen after the attack. He was in his compartment when a loud sound occurred. He and his roommate, Scarbourgh, opened the hatch and saw heavy smoke. The kamikaze had hit just aft of the number one elevator. The explosion sent the elevator over 480 feet into the air. That was really raising the number one elevator. [Annotator's Note: Brooks recollects the severity of the explosion with a deadpan expression.] The Enterprise was sent home for repairs afterward. The ship reached Seattle when the United Nations organization was forming in San Francisco. Brooks called home and found out his brother was in San Francisco. The men met in San Francisco and enjoyed time together until Brooks had to return to Seattle. He had unofficially left the ship's force for the visit with his brother so he had to make a hasty trip back to Seattle via airplane. He had fudged the priority to enable his visit with his brother.

Charles Brooks was sent to Corpus Christie, Texas as a night flight instructor. [Annotator's Note: Brooks was a TBF Avenger torpedo bomber pilot in VT(N)-90 flying from the USS Enterprise (CV-6). When the Enterprise was damaged by a kamikaze hit off Okinawa in May 1945, the ship returned to Seattle, Washington for repairs at which time Brooks was detached from his torpedo squadron.] He trained other aviators from March until the war was over plus a couple of months afterward. At that point, he put in for multi-engine planes. He was sent to Pensacola to check out in P boats [Annotator's Note: ostensibly the Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat]. The wings on those aircraft seemed to flap up and down on takeoff. With everyone leaving the service, he put in for discharge in 1945. His discharge was in New Orleans. Before returning to the states, the Enterprise was on station during the battle of Okinawa. It was a massive operation. There were carriers, battleships, and all types of vessels firing on the island day and night. There was a fellow who had a brother in the infantry on the island. The man got a flight onto the island to see his brother. The island was a mess. By that time, all the curse words in the book had been used. The fellow who went to the island to see his brother said, "Mercy me, I almost met my maker." That provided the flyers with a new curse word, "Mercy me." [Annotator's Note: Brooks smiles at the memory.] During Okinawa, Brooks participated in patrols. In the northern Philippines, Halsey [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral William "Bull" Halsey] was in command of the task force which included the Enterprise. Patrols were sent out with some aircraft lost. Search planes were requested but Halsey refused to send them out. He was not about to sacrifice his fleet for three lost planes and their crewmen. At the time, it was thought to be a harsh choice but later proved to be a wise decision. Brooks did not personally perform patrols because it was not his rotation, or perhaps he had a cold. There were two or three raids on Japan. He was proud of his night outfit operating off an aircraft carrier. The Japanese had no such capability. One man up on a heckle mission [Annotator's Note: heckling missions were night time strafing and bomb runs over enemy targets] over Japan saw there were tracers shooting at him. He was being fired upon by the enemy. He went into a tight turn. Later, he came to realize that he had lost the enemy and that it was his own fire that he was seeing. All he had to do was discontinue firing his guns. [Annotator’s Note: Brooks chuckles at the incident of self inflicted friendly fire.] Some things that seem funny in retrospect were not funny at the time. Brooks flew over the home islands of Japan. He ignited a gas tank and created a large fire. As far as he remembers, he never flew over Tokyo. One man made a bomb run on a USS Mercy ship [Annotator's Note: a hospital ship for the US Navy]. Brooks never was shot down. On a training flight, he did have a problem with his hydraulics that prevented deployment of his landing gear. He shook the plane violently to attempt to get the wheels down. They finally seemed to lock in place. He landed on the carrier with no flaps. It was just a little fast. He knew that if he kept his plane low and slow, he could succeed in landing on a carrier. If there was a wave off, the plane would fly over the landing officer to avoid hitting the carrier's island. Brooks did ditch his plane on one occasion just off the stern of the ship. He went too slow on that landing and missed the flight deck. His Avenger was never really injured by flak. The rear window for the radarman was broken once but that was the worst incident. On one patrol, he returned to his carrier when it was reported that the fleet was under attack. He was told to standoff until they could take him in. After awhile, he notified flight control that he was running out of fuel. They urged him to land quickly. He managed to do so before running out of fuel. He was glad that he had participated in the flow meter validations for the night flight fuel consumption rates.

Charles Brooks would have breakfast before dawn onboard the ship. He would then look to see his assignment for the day. Normally, there was not a lot to do. A volleyball game might be organized. A lot of volleyballs were lost that way. The pilots might read in the ready room [Annotator's Note: the ready room was typically where the pilots would be briefed on their mission before taking flight]. There might be time for snacks. During battle conditions, the men would have cold rations. When not under that status, there was a snack bar with coffee and a toaster where cinnamon toast could be prepared and enjoyed. The men would kid around when not at battle stations. There was a man from Greenville, Texas named Red Atkinson [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant (j.g.) George H. Atkinson]. He was a large fellow. He would say it was terrible being large because in a fight with a small fellow, he would be called a bully. If he lost a fight with another large fellow, he would be called a sissy. There was no way for him to win. He had a great sense of humor. One of the last things he said was before a training mission simulating an attack on one of the other carriers. Atkinson said if he got killed on the mission to tell the Admiral that he was really mad about it. The tail was blown off his aircraft afterward and all three of the crewmen in the plane were lost [Annotator's Note: Atkinson's plane went downon 15 March 1945]. He was a great guy. Brooks had always meant to visit the man's folks in Greenville, but he never did.

Charles Brooks witnessed opportunities through his World War 2 experiences that he never would have otherwise seen. Never an exceptional student in school, he lacked ambition prior to the war. After the war, he was able to attend college and pursue some of the more interesting things in life. He found that he wanted to enter the profession of teaching because he liked young people. With a smaller income compared to his wife, he elected to take on another job in addition to teaching. He supplemented his teaching salary by obtaining his commercial license to become a crop duster. He could afford a family that way. In retrospect, World War 2 elevated the status of America all over the world. People wanted to come to this country. The strength of the dollar across the world also brought respect. The country was a world leader. At times, we would go beyond leading and try to impose our will on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, an imposition is just that. The rest of the world began to understand that they had to be a member of the world's society and not just get by individually. The "Haves" are not fully sharing the wealth. We need to take care of our brothers whether educated or not. We need to share the products of the globe. The significance of The National WWII Museum is to help people realize that the conflict was global. It should be memorialized to help mankind understand that they all need to get along. There is progress being made in that regard, but it is slow.