Edward Dunne was born in October 1924 in Winsted, Connecticut. He got remarried after his first wife died and he moved back there. Dunne met some Chinese girls, and they were nice. Dunne did not like the Japanese. The Japanese today probably are not that way. His family was Catholic, so he attended Catholic school. He attended two years of high school. The war broke out. He went to church and heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. The next day about 50 guys from his school went in [Annotator's Note: the service]. Seven did not come back. He had to wait to get in. He got out when he was 21. He was 17 when he went in. He wanted to stay in, but his wife did not want him to. They were going to ship out by Japan somewhere. He got discharged and went to work. He had decided to sign up when his priest at church was talking about it [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack]. He had been in World War 1. Dunne chose the Navy because he always liked it. He went to Great Britain, Italy, North Africa, and Southern France. Marseilles [Annotator's Note: Marseilles, France] is a nice city. He got there and there were people who were going to be killed. Two guys and two girls. The girls had gone with the Germans. They had a parade of girls who were mostly topless. They all had kids by Germans. Dunne figures that would have happened anywhere. A lot of them were shot or went to jail. A guy on his ship who was a photographer went down there and said there were three men kneeling and three men standing [Annotator's Note: who killed the kneeling men]. They had gone before breakfast and when they came back, they could not eat. Those girls were killed. It was not right.

Edward Dunne went to England and then made Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France aboard the USS LST-53] as one of the first ones in [Annotator's Note: on D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They made it alright. The ship next to them was hit. There were 11,000 airplanes going over. He had never seen so many planes. He later talked to a guy who was in one of them who said the same thing about seeing the ships below. They helped a lot during the invasion. His ship was made a hospital ship after a while. They went back three or four times. They were bringing supplies in for the Army for a couple of months. They had tanks on their ship. He was on a Landing Craft, Tank. They had an air raid and were machine-gunned. They all got shot down [Annotator's Note: the attacking aircraft]. After three or four days, they did not do that anymore as they lost too many planes and men. One night they heard terrible noise. They were being bombed. In Marseilles, France they were on a little river. Dunne and some other guys were on the beach eating oranges. Two nuns and some kids came down. They asked if the kids were hungry. The next morning they gave them food. [Annotator's Note: Dunne gets emotional.] Dunne was in Marseilles a month and had a good time. That was the only time he saw action. Normandy was bad. He had 1,200 soldiers on board. A lot of the men did not come home. The Army lost more men than the Navy. Dunne was on the ship the whole time. They went back and forth to England in heavy rain. They never saw any submarines. They had destroyers with them.

Edward Dunne and the men [Annotator's Note: the crew of the USS LST-53] were told what was going to happen [Annotator's Note: for D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They got into the beach around six-thirty in the morning. They got the tanks off and then the soldiers went off. They stayed there for a couple of hours and then went back to get more soldiers. They were moving all the time. The Germans were strafing but they did not get their ship. You get lucky. Dunne enjoyed it. When he got back home, he did not have much money. He was in Norfolk, Virginia and had to go to Connecticut. He hitchhiked and got back late [Annotator's Note: returning to the Navy base]. The next time he went home about a month later he was dropped off where a guy said the base was two miles away. It was more like 12 miles away. He got back three hours late and he was demoted in rank. When you do not have much money, what are you going to do? He stayed in a couple of Salvation Army [Annotator's Note: Salvation Army, a Protestant church and an international charitable organization headquartered in London, England] places. You could sleep about three hours, and they gave him coffee and donuts for free. When he was getting discharged, he got free coffee and donuts at a big place. He got discharged, went to work, and had a good life. He got married when he got out of the service. He was married for 50 years and then she died. He has a new wife.

Edward Dunne's ship [Annotator's Note: the USS LST-53] had a big ramp that the tanks would go off of. There were six tanks. The tank deck was 300 feet long and 50 feet wide. They had a lot of supplies on board. The last LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] that went into Normandy [Annotator's Note: on D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] got torpedoed. If they had done that to the first ones, that would have been a lot of trouble. They went over right next to each other. A ship next to them hit a mine [Annotator's Note: stationary explosive device triggered by physical contact]. They got bombed and strafed but never really hit. Dunne was on the 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] shooting at the planes. Other than that, it was not bad. They went back and forth to England getting supplies. They then went to North Africa to get supplies. They next went to Italy and then Southern France where it was beautiful, and he had fun. There were a lot of women there. Some of them were bad though and a lot were hookers [Annotator's Note: prostitutes]. His mother was half-French and was very strict. After the invasion, the dead soldiers were buried on the hill. He would help the doctors treat the wounded on the ship. They had quite a few on board and they had five doctors. It was his first time seeing wounded men and was glad it was not him. He felt sorry for them. One guy from New York started talking about laying bricks with his dad. He did not make it. They lost mostly soldiers and some Navy. He talked with the wounded men. Some guys you could not talk to. You had to relax them. Dunne saw on television where a submarine sunk a ship and a guy killed the Japanese survivors in the water. The man said they could not take them on board and the sharks would have tortured them. Dunne and his wife went down into a submarine [Annotator's Note: on a tour after the war]. He could not have gone [Annotator's Note: to war] on one.

Edward Dunne [Annotator's Note: a crewmen aboard the USS LST-53] has no particular memory of D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] other than being shot at by planes. Nobody was shooting at them from the land. Cruisers were behind them and firing over their heads. Destroyers were going in and out. A lot of guys died and that was too bad. His hometown [Annotator's Note: Winsted, Connecticut] lost about 18 to 20 men. After Normandy, they returned to England and then went to North Africa. He knew a guy there from when they had gone in the Navy. They had been assigned to a tugboat in the Hudson River [Annotator's Note: American river that flows primarily through New York]. The buddy asked what he would tell a wife and kids that he had done in the war. He went down the Hudson River in a tugboat while other guys were getting killed. They put their names in to go overseas. Their captain said they were nuts. In North Africa, Dunne ran into Demick [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] the Polack [Annotator's Note: derogatory term for people of Polish descent] who said it was hot and it had been nice going up and down the Hudson River. He never saw him after that. Dunne could have stayed on that tugboat until he got out. The captain had tried to explain that to him. Instead he was on a landing craft. They helped a lot of guys, but a lot were lost. Dunne lives in Oregon now. Some of the Germans were taken to Arizona and did not want to go home after the war was over. They got married and stayed.

Edward Dunne [Annotator's Note: a crewmember aboard the USS LST-53] did not like the Germans or the Japanese. He still does not like the Japanese. He saw some Chinese girls yesterday [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview] that were really nice. He supposes all Japanese are not alike. Dunne was Irish and did not like the English too well. His grandparents had to get out of Ireland due to the English. The Irish have an army now but are probably half drunk. Dunne went to dances with English girls. England, France, and Germany lost a lot of men. That is war. Dunne wrote with some guys after the war. One died. Dunne wrote his family during the war. He has a couple letters his mom saved. He never got packages from home. A lot of guys did. If they got cookies, they would give them out. His family was poor. When the war started, his father did better. Dunne was in Italy two or three weeks. They were eating and a bunch of kids were eating out of the garbage cans. The cook took the leftovers out to them. In France, they gave food to some kids who came with a priest. Italy took an awful beating. They [Annotator's Note: Italy] went with the Germans, and they should not have done that.

Edward Dunne's most memorable experience of the war is seeing dead people. It is bad, especially when it is a lot of dead being hauled away. It made him want to kill somebody. Being on a hospital ship [Annotator's Note: his ship, USS LST-53, was briefly used as a hospital ship during D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] was good because he was helping people. They had doctors on the ship. They would take them to England and a lot of them did alright. Dunne, his mother, and sisters were going to church and the radio was on [Annotator's Note: before the war]. He heard about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He went down the next morning. His father told him to wait until he was drafted but Dunne felt that would mean he was chicken [Annotator's Note: slang for scared]. It took him awhile to get in due to how many people were there. He had to go to the next town over. That is how it should be. You stick up for your country. People appreciate his service. He is 90. He plays golf with an 88-year-old German who joined the Navy the day before the war ended. That guy wears his Navy hat out and people thank him for his service. [Annotator's Note: Dunne laughs.] He tried but it did not work out. The war showed Dunne the world. America is number one. The Army and Navy are not what they used to be. Nobody is going to start something now. He had told an Air Force guy that he could not see the sky for all of the airplanes. The guy said he could not see the water for all of the ships [Annotator's Note: during D-Day]. The Museum is important [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. There were a lot of young people in the Museum [Annotator's Note: the day he visited it], and it is a good thing for them. The war never should have happened. It cost a lot of men and women too. It was because of the Japanese, the Germans, and the Italians. He lived with a lot of different nationalities in his community, but they were all Americans. A friend's parents were German, and his father was in the German Army in World War 1. Dunne went to England, France, and North Africa which was a bad place. The people had nothing. The United States has people who cannot get anything to eat. It is a good country and always will be. Dunne voted for Obama [Annotator's Note: Barack Hussein Obama, 44th president of the United States] but does not think he should have. If there is another Black [Annotator's Note: African-American] guy, they will not vote for him. He did a lot of good things. The war was a war that had to be done. It cost a lot of men and women. He was lucky to get out. He could have gotten killed in Normandy [Annotator's Note: during the Normandy invasion]. There is nothing you can do.