Edward Thomas Toole was born in 1925 in Millen, Georgia. He had four brothers and one sister. He was the youngest boy, but his sister was younger than him. He lost his four brothers. He was raised by his mother and his brother. His father abandoned the family. His oldest brother is 15 years older than him. He was six years old when his father strayed away. His older brother was the guardian of the family. He was raised in Millen until he was six years old when they moved to Garfield, Georgia, near Savannah [Annotator's Note: Savannah, Georgia]. Garfield was a small town. He walked about a mile to school. He had three or four buddies in town. They played sports or went hunting. They had their own garden and grew their own vegetables. Everyone had their own garden during the war and they collected scrap metal. When he was 18 years old he joined the service. During that time it was a big change when Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] started his antics during the war. As the war grew closer to the United States things grew scarce. The United States was not ready for war. Things were rationed. He would find any piece of iron he could scrap. He would find it laying around. He was walking home from church with his mother when he found out Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He remembers 7 December 1941 because it is not something you could forget. He had a brother in the Marine Corps who had fought at Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal, codenamed Operation Watchtower; 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943; Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] and Peleliu [Annotator's Note: The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II; 15 September to 27 November 1944; Peleliu, Palau]. He fought through the Southeast [Annotator's Note: Southeastern Pacific]. He had another brother in the Army who stayed in Newfoundland [Annotator's Note: Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada] during his service. Toole joined the Navy. They had all the services covered.

Edward Thomas Toole wanted to join the Naval Air Force but he could not make it. The Navy appealed to him more than any of the others [Annotator's Note: the other service branches]. After the war, he went to the University of Georgia [Annotator's Note: in Athens, Georgia]. He went into the Army Cavalry Reserve for tanks. He joined the service in 1943. He went to boot camp at Barin Field [Annotator’s Note: Barin Field is a Naval outlying station in Foley, Alabama]. It was an outlying base where they did the final stage of flight training. When the cadets came it was called "Bloody Barin" because there were so many crashes and pilots killed there. It was affiliated with the air station in Jacksonville [Annotator’s Note: Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida]. It was next to a small town called Foley [Annotator's Note: Foley, Alabama]. During the war, that area was full of activity and you could hear the roar of the airplanes. Now the area is quiet. Boot camp was a different experience. They had them up at three in the morning and had to clean their seabags. They had to learn to drill. They were doing stuff they were not accustomed to. He enjoyed it. It was a new experience and he met a lot of people. He liked it coming from a small town and going into a hive of people involved in the war effort. He never had flown much. He could get permission to fly with the cadets and he would go. He was in personnel administration. When he went home, all his friends were gone into the service. Everyone was involved in the war effort. People do not do that nowadays. People were 100 percent united to fight Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler]. Everything was new, but he adapted to it. He was happy to get paid. He made 30 dollars a month. That was big money during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939]. That was good money then because everything else was paid for, like his meals and health insurance.

Edward Thomas Toole stayed in Barin Field [Annotator's Note: Barin Field is a Naval outlying station in Foley, Alabama] until he went on the USS Raleigh (CL-7), a light cruiser. They ported out of Norfolk, Virginia. The ship was decommissioned in 1945. He was on board when they decommissioned it. He was at the Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia when his name was called over the intercom. He went in and the officer told him that he needed to pack his seabag because the ship was waiting on him. At the last minute, he was supposed to replace a Chief Petty Officer. He does not know why he was taken off the ship. The vacancy needed to be filled and Toole was the only one at the station who had the qualifications to replace him. He was the center of attention and as he walked up the gangplank he lost his balance and almost fell off the side. He was supposed to salute the flag and the officer of the deck. He did neither. He got on board and he did not know anything about ships. A cruiser is not a little ship. There were about 450 men and 25 officers aboard. They took him to the barbershop on board and he had his hair cut off. He was in charge of the unit. He had to pretend he knew more than he did. He learned a lot. It was an entirely new experience for him. It was early 1945 when he went aboard. Part of their mission was training midshipmen. It was a training vessel. They still went through their normal routine. They fired the guns. There were cadets aboard. The guns shook the deck when they went off. He saw the planes [Annotator's Note: Vought OS2U Kingfisher catapult-launched observation floatplane] on deck get catapulted off. When they put the plane in the air they shoot it off. Everything was new to him. They traveled to places like Cuba and New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. He learned a lot in the Navy. He had the opportunity to stay in the Navy and go on the USS Pennsylvania [Annotator's Note: USS Pennsylvania (BB-38)] another cruiser. But he decided to use the G.I. Bill of Rights [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] to go to college. He resigned from the Navy and went to the University of Georgia [Annotator's Note: in Athens, Georgia]. Japan surrendered in August [Annotator's Note: August 1945] and the next March he went to the University of Georgia. He could have gone on to the next ship with the executive officer [Annotator's Note: also referred to as XO; the second in command of a unit or ship], but he visited them and he got a cool reception. He did not like that. He decided to go into the ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] where he joined the Armored Cavalry.

Edward Thomas Toole thought transitioning to the Army was easy. He was a commissioned officer. It was interesting to join. He was in the Army Reserve. When Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] happened he did not get to go. When he was being examined, the doctors saw he had had surgery for osteoporosis [Annotator’s Note: Osteoporosis is a bone disease that causes a loss of bone density, which increases your risk of fractures]. The Army could not take anyone with osteoporosis. He tried to tell the corpsman he had just been in the Navy during World War 2, but he would not listen. In order to get in, he would have had to go to Atlanta [Annotator’s Note: Atlanta, Georgia] and go through certain motions. He asked to either be passed or put in the Reserves. They put him in the Reserves. They were called up to go to Korea, and he would have gone if it was not for the corpsman. He regretted the way that other guys got to go and he did not. He was commissioned but he was not on active duty. His military service in the Navy was three years. The Army added another year. His college degree was in business administration and economics. He found a job with General Motors. He was a field representative. He was assigned the Tampa [Annotator’s Note: Tampa, Florida] area which covered most of Florida and South Georgia. GM [Annotator's Note: General Motors] had YMAC which was the truck financing division. He did the collections for people who were behind on the payments. He called on dealers and maintained the relationship and collections. He was boarding in Atlanta in a house where a man who was employed by General Motors lived. That man told him about an opening and he got hired. He worked for General Motors for 30 years and retired in 1982. He has been retired for 34 years. General Motors had a plan where if you went to college they would pay. He went to Florida Southern and got a degree in liberal arts.

Edward Thomas Toole's most memorable moment was when Japan surrendered. That meant the war was over. That was a dramatic change. When Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died, he was playing tennis and he went into the barracks and heard he died. He learned independence. He learned to fend for himself. He made new friends. It was a big change for a boy from the little town of Garfield, Georgia. He knows he made a contribution to the greatest warfare event we had. He was a part of defeating an evil empire, Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also know as il Duce]. The Russians were just as bad. You do not know how close the United States was to being beat. When they attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] we did not have a military ready for the fight. They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] took out the United States Naval fleet, but they got five Japanese planes. He made a contribution. People look at World War 2 as something significant. The United States saved democracy. If it was not for the United States, Hitler would have run the world. When the United States landed at Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], Hitler did not meet them right away. Hitler made the error of not committing his forces to the beach. We got to get on land. The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is a great place. People can see what happened and it does a good job of showing that. He was a First Class Petty Officer.