Edmond Guidry was born in 1920 in Westwego, Louisiana. He grew up during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. His father died when he was five and his mother died when he was 14. He dropped out of the ninth grade to go to work. He had two sisters and a younger brother. His was the only money. He was a carhop at the foot of the Huey Long bridge [Annotator's Note: Huey P. Long Bridge, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana]. There was a bar and a dance hall. He took orders from cars. There were no food stamps in those days. Clothing was cheap but the money was very little. If you got one dollar a day, you were doing well. He worked there for five years. He then joined the Navy in August 1942 before his 22nd birthday. He chose the Navy because he loved to swim and could not see himself living in a foxhole. He hunted possums and sold the meat. He bought cigarettes with the money. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Guidry if he remembers where heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was coming back from church. He did not even know where Pearl Harbor was. His aunt only spoke French and she thought it was a man and asked if they caught him. Guidry had not been keeping up with the war. Movie news would show different things. He had no interest in going in the service until Pearl Harbor.

Edmond Guidry joined the Navy in July 1942. He went to boot camp in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. It was wonderful. He got on the base and went to work at Consolidated Aircraft [Annotator's Note: Consolidated Aircraft Corporation]. He was paid in cash every night because they never knew when their ship was going to leave. He made extra money and would go with buddies to Tijuana, Mexico and drink beer. He was assigned to a ship by this time. Boot camp was very depressing. A guy in his company's name was Gone. One roll call, they called Gone's name, and someone said Gone was gone. He had gone over the hill [Annotator's Note: slang for AWOL, absent without leave]. Military life in the camp was rough. He had quit smoking before he went into the service. He had been a cook and a bartender before going in. On the Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: USS Wisconsin (BB-64)], he went ashore and had drinks in Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. Two guys with him enticed him into smoking again. When he got out of the service, he quit for the second time for good. Cigarettes were a good trading commodity [Annotator's Note: in the service]. Guidry left boot camp and went to electrical school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was cold and that was rough. He did not want to be an electrician. He wanted to be a metalsmith. From there, he left San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] on a troopship, the SS President Monroe [Annotator's Note: USS President Monroe (AP-104)]. The ship belonged to the Southern Pacific Railroad where he worked for 33 years. He made good money compared to what he made in the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States].

Edmond Guidry took a troop ship out of San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] with no escort and zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] to Noumea, New Caledonia [Annotator's Note: Nouméa, New Caledonia]. He got off there and stayed in the harbor on the Tjisladane [Annotator's Note: Guidry is most likely referring to the Dutch passenger ship MV Tjisadane]. They had Chinese people on the ship that were the stevedores [Annotator's Note: person who loads and unloads ship cargo] and they had English officers. The Chinese cooked their own meals in woks [Annotator's Note: bowl-shaped frying pan] over charcoal on the fantail [Annotator's Note: overhang of the deck extending aft of the sternpost of a ship] of the ship. Guidry did not want to even try their food. The ship had traveled the Orient where the labor was cheap. Guidry did not know what a wok was until then. They stayed a couple of weeks and then he was assigned with other guys to the destroyer Ellet [Annotator's Note: USS Ellet (DD-398)] at the end of January [Annotator's Note: January 1944]. He was an electrician onboard and took care of the batteries. Everybody would have watch and he stood radar watch for hours at a time looking for planes, ships, and landmarks. They sank a Japanese submarine. They did not see it. The sonar watch guy picked it up. They knew it was in the area. They were returning from the northern Solomon Islands. Guidry's sea detail was on the anchor windlass [Annotator's Note: machine that allows the anchor to be raised and lowered]. They would drop anchor when they launched the captain's gig [Annotator's Note: a small boat used on ships as the captain's water taxi] to do things on the supply ship that could not be done on the Ellet. They were anchored and told to make ready for sea. They left the gig behind, and they did not take any food or ammunition. The submarine had just torpedoed a supply ship. The Ellet was riding high in the water due to not having fuel or supplies on board. The submarine fired a torpedo. The sonar man heard it go under the ship. If they had been loaded with fuel, that torpedo would have gotten them. The captain of the Ellet was Phifer [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Thomas Carson Phifer]. He would walk with his hands behind his back, pacing where the men were watching the radar and sonar and say he hoped they got a submarine all night. Guidry wanted to get one too. The captain told the sonar people that if they picked up a submarine that they sank, they would get two weeks extra leave, a rank advancement, and a war bond. That was good. They dropped 20 depth charges [Annotator's Note: also called a depth bomb; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum], 600 pounders off the fantail and 300 pounders off the starboard [Annotator's Note: in maritime terminology, starboard means "right"] and port [Annotator's Note: in maritime terminology, port means "left"] sides. They heard 21 explosions. To confirm the kill, they stayed all night and the next morning, there were giant sharks next to the ship barely moving. They figured their internal organs were ruptured or they must have eaten a lot of Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. Guidry's battle station was on the 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] on the phone. He thinks it is funny that he was a boogalee [Annotator's Note: sometimes derogatory term for a Cajun, an ethnic group mainly living in the United States states of Louisiana and Texas, that implies the person is partially white and partially black] talking on the phone. He says boogalees are lower than Cajuns. It was confirmed they sank the I-168 [Annotator's Note: Japanese Kaidai type of cruiser submarine], which was the sub that sank the carrier Yorktown [Annotator's Note: USS Yorktown (CV-5)] at the Battle of Midway [Annotator's Note: Battle of Midway, 4 to 7 June 1942, Midway Atoll]. The guy on sonar made out okay.

Edmond Guidry was 900 miles south of Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii aboard the USS Ellet (DD-398)] when a Clipper flying boat [Annotator's Note: Martin M-130 or Boeing 314 long range flying boat] came down. Navy officers got out of it with their clothes in sacks. The plane was in trouble. One of the officers was Phifer [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Thomas Carson Phifer], their future captain. They saved them and took them to Honolulu. Phifer was promoted to the captain of the Ellet there. Guidry took care of the batteries that were the source of secondary power. There were a lot of receptacles topside. The salt air and waves would coat the copper with corrosion. He would have to work on those. He first went to the Solomon Islands. That is a string of islands. President Kennedy [Annotator's Note: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States] was torpedoed in PT-109 there [Annotator's Note: Patrol torpedo boat PT-109, sunk after being rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, 2 August 1943]. They would go in at night taking fuel and food back and forth. It took about two hours at full speed to get from one end to the other. They had to leave before daylight because they did not have air coverage. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] had an airfield and Navy base there. One night they pulled in and a bell started ringing loudly. Nothing happened though. The Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: USS Wisconsin (BB-64)] did not do the trips back and forth. Nobody had in their minds that they were not coming back [Annotator's Note: from the war]. They had good officers and a good ship. He corresponded with his future wife, his sisters, and his cousins. He kept the letters he got. His wife would kiss the paper for him and sent him pictures. He left the Solomons [Annotator's Note: Solomon Islands] for the United States. They sank the I-168 [Annotator's Note: Japanese Kaidai type of cruiser submarine] on 3 September 1943 then.

Edmond Guidry came back [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Ellet (DD-398)] to the Philadelphia Navy Yard [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] for a couple of months waiting for the Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: USS Wisconsin (BB-64)] to be completed. It was commissioned 17 April 1944. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Guidry the difference between being on the USS Ellet (DD-398) and the USS Wisconsin (BB-64).] It was like going from a pirogue [Annotator's Note: a long, narrow, flat-bottomed canoe made from a single tree trunk] to the Queen Mary [Annotator's Note: RMS Queen Mary]. They had 110 electricians on the Wisconsin. They only had ten on the Ellet. The Wisconsin had better food. A lot of SPAM [Annotator's Note: canned cooked pork made by Hormel Foods Corporation], Navy beans, Navy soup, and chicken. Guidry took care of the electrical outlets and the batteries. On the seventh level, they had armor plating that was 16 inches thick. They had to be sure the battery to open that door was fully charged. He stood watch in the aft steering room. His battle station was sick bay. Their shakedown cruise [Annotator's Note: a cruise to evaluate the performance of a naval vessel and its crew] was to an island near Cuba. They had beers on shore, and he saw his first cocoa bean in a tree. From there, they went back to Philadelphia for some light repairs. Then they went through the Panama Canal. The put mattresses on the sides to not scratch the paint on the battleship going through. Leaving the canal, there was a freshwater lake called Gatun Lake [Annotator's Note: artificial lake that is part of the Panama Canal] and they used that to wash down the ship. They had repairs done in Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. Then they joined the 3rd Fleet off the Philippines before MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] got there. He went ashore and saw Filipino collaborators in a stockade filled with deep mud. They treated them like hogs for collaborating with the Japanese. They were kind of cruel. The Filipinos do not care for human life.

Edmond Guidry wanted to kill the Japanese for what they did. When the war ended, the United States still did not trust them. The battleship Missouri [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)] went into Tokyo Bay [Annotator's Note: Tokyo Bay, Japan] for the surrender. The Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: USS Wisconsin (BB-64)] stayed offshore with other ships just in case they changed their minds. Once they signed it [Annotator's Note: the surrender document], they pulled in on 4 September [Annotator's Note: 4 September 1945] to Yokosuka Naval Base [Annotator's Note: now the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Yokosuka Naval Base in Yokosuka, Japan]. They divided the ship into two sections. Half went ashore and then they swapped. They could not take American money with them and had to use Japanese yen. He took cigarettes ashore to trade. Japan was whipped and could have gotten a little bit more. The civilians could not do enough for them. They would squat on both sides of the sidewalks. Guidry went ashore with five packs of cigarettes. There was a house next to a factory that had a stench that turned his stomach. It was fish heads drying on newspaper. He knocked and nobody came to the door. He opened the door, and the family was sitting around a little table. They had a beautiful fan and a black-lacquered box. He sat down with them and offered him a pack of cigarettes. He traded all five packs of cigarettes for their things. He only had a few hours and then they left for Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] to pick up sailors who were going home. One guy went below and looked at the pay list to see who was on the ship. He was a Guidry who was from the mouth of the river. They came home together and went to Guidry's aunt's house who invited him to eat. She nicknamed him "Gumbo Guidry". They took the people from Okinawa to Pearl [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. The men going to the West Coast to be discharged stayed on the Wisconsin. The guys going to the East Coast transferred to the Texas [Annotator's Note: USS Texas (BB-35)]. Guidry got on the Texas and was discharged at the Lakefront [Annotator's Note: Naval Air Station New Orleans in New Orleans, Louisiana].

Edmond Guidry was in charge of the movie projectors [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Ellet (DD-398)]. They got a pint of 190 proof alcohol to clean them with. They drank it with pineapple juice, water, and sugar instead. He translated a French movie they got on New Caledonia. Guidry held up a handkerchief to use as a screen. He got in trouble with his French. He got a butt-whipping when they were getting ready to cross the equator. Before that, you are a Pollywog [Annotator's Note: Navy sailor who has never crossed the equator]. The day before you cross, the initiation starts [Annotator's Note: crossing the line ceremony; initiation rite that commemorates a person's first crossing of the Equator; also called Shellback in the US Navy]. Guidry had already crossed but his paperwork was hidden by a clerk. A guy was standing in the back of him who told him that they were not going to do anything to him. They had a full commander that was getting initiated. The man was beaten unmercifully. They sewed canvas up with raw rice and cotton inside. They dragged that for a couple of days in the sea. That is what you were whipped with. It hurt. They put a canvas curtain up so you could not see what was happening. He could hear the screaming, hollering, and applauding. A guy dressed like a priest read the "charges" against Guidry. Guidry was on a bucket with a hangman's noose around his neck. The bucket was kicked loose but they grabbed him. There is a thing that is dragged behind a plane for target practice that was filled with slop and garbage. They also put fenders [Annotator's Note: bumpers used to absorb the kinetic energy of a boat or vessel berthed against anything else] in it. Two guys are outside with shillelaghs [Annotator's Note: a wooden club or cudgel]. They had to crawl through it while being hit. When they came out of the chute, they were washed off and then they had to kneel in front of the Royal Baby who said to tell him a story. The Baby had a can of crushed pumpkin and would throw it on them. The captain was on a chair. They told the captain that Guidry could speak French. He was told to sing a French song. After that he had to see the Royal Doctor. Six men put him a table and held him down. They took a wooden knife with a thin copper wire on it. That was passed all over his body [Annotator's Note: with electricity shocking him]. His hair was cut, and he was painted with grease. He was then thrown in the water and held down. He had been warned that when they pulled him up and asked what he was, he would answer "a shellback" [Annotator's Note: an old or experienced sailor, especially one who has crossed the equator]. That stopped the initiation. Your mother would not recognize you after that treatment. They had bales of rags to wipe off, so you did into mess up the showers. The day before this, they were marched down to the evening meal. They got no utensils, had to get under the table on all fours and eat like a dog.

Edmond Guidry went to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] on the Texas [Annotator's Note: USS Texas (BB-35)]. He did not use the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] for school. He did not have work but did get the cash given to them [Annotator's Note: from the 52-20 program, a government-funded program that paid unemployed veterans 20 dollars per week for 52 weeks]. He returned to the job he had before he went in the service for two years. He then went to work for the railroad for 34 years. His most memorable experience of the World War 2 was sinking a Japanese sub [Annotator's Note: submarine]. Just before the war ended, they went down to Hokkaido [Annotator's Note: Hokkaido, Japan]. It was in July [Annotator's Note: July 1945], and it was freezing. He saw salmon going to migrate as far as you could see. They were going to shell the steel mills there. On the Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: USS Wisconsin (BB-64)], they ran into a typhoon. The ship bounced around like a cork in the water. They lost three destroyers and 800 to 900 sailors. During it, you could not stand up. Guidry never got seasick. When he left on the troopship, before they got under the Golden Gate bridge [Annotator's Note: suspension bridge in San Francisco, California], there were people upchucking [Annotator's Note: vomiting]. You have to walk through that to go to eat or go the bathroom. Guidry did not want to go in the Army and grew up surrounded by water. The war changed his life for the better. The worst part of his service was trying to sleep. It was so hot on the Ellet [Annotator's Note: USS Ellet (DD-398] and in the Pacific. They had no fans. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Guidry what he thinks World War 2 means to Americans today.] He does not want to say with the guy that is President today [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. He thinks it is definitely important to have the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and to teach future generations. They have to know what kind of country they live in. Guidry thinks more atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] should have been dropped on Japan but there were only two. [Annotator's Note: There is break in the video and it returns with Guidry talking about a troop train.] The end of the train had a coach loaded with canned goods. Some were not labeled. That is what they had to eat coming home. If they did not want what was in it, they threw the whole can away off the back of the train.