Gabriel Spinelli was born in October 1923 in Italy. His father was in the marble business, his mother was a homemaker. In 1925 the family traveled by boat to New Orleans for his dad to show his wares at the Exposition. They moved to Dallas, and then to Mexico, and when Spinelli was about ten years old, they settled in Los Angeles, California. Spinelli was at St. Mary's College in Moraga, California on a football scholarship when World War 2 was brewing, but his family never discussed the political situation at home. He and a buddy were on a ski trip at Lake Arrowhead in December 1941 when they heard the news boys shouting "Pearl Harbor Bombed." Neither Spinelli nor his buddy knew where Pearl Harbor was. There was still no talk of war at home, but at 19 years old Spinelli was gung-ho, and figured he would be drafted anyway, so he went to San Francisco to enlist. Spinelli doesn't remember choosing a particular branch of service, but he ended up in the signal corps without ever having heard of it before.

Gabriel Spinelli began his active duty in March 1943. His basic training took place in Sacramento at a facility that had been a Japanese internment camp. Spinelli joked that when the Japanese complained about the living conditions there, the government moved them out, and moved the Army in. He believes the Japanese expatriates were held for their own safety, because tempers ran high after Pearl Harbor, and things could have gotten pretty ugly, but he feels the Japanese lost a lot as a result. After three months, Spinelli moved to Camp Crowder, near Joplin, Missouri for training as a telephone lineman. He liked the work, and felt good about being in the Army. Although his group was convinced they were going to Europe, they embarked from San Francisco and headed west, all the way to Melbourne, Australia. The 28 day trip seemed so long that Spinelli thought he was in the Navy. They sailed on to Bombay, India then moved by civilian train overland for five days, arriving in Calcutta, where they camped on a horse race track, spent a few good days, and dined at some nice restaurants. From there Spinelli flew over the hump, without knowing how dangerous that was, in a C-46 [Annotator's Note: Curtiss C-46 Commando cargo aircraft] to Chongqing, China, headquarters for the China-Burma-India campaign. The soldiers were not advised of their destination beforehand, nor were they properly dressed to encounter snow on the runway when they disembarked. They ended up in Quayoung [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling]. For Spinelli, it was like being in another world; outside the big city the native population didn't even know about the war.

Gabriel Spinelli didn't stay in Quayoung [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] too long, but while there he was often occupied replacing copper wire that was stolen each night by the black market guys. For a time they were training the Chinese peasant soldiers on the newer telephone technology, communicating through interpreters. The Chinese infantry troops were being sent to Burma, where many were homesick and went AWOL [Annotator's Note: absent without leave]. Spinelli went to Burma to complete the training of the Chinese, and his company of linemen received an award from Chiang Kai-shek for their service. American construction battalions were there, too, building roads through the jungle to open supply routes into China. Spinelli himself drove a duce-and-a-half [Annotator's Note: a two and half ton truck] with a cargo of 15-gallon drums of gasoline along the thousand mile road. They were all young guys and the danger didn't bother them at the time. The first part of the road as well built and quite straight but when they hit the original road below Bahmo that had been carved out of the mountains by Chinese coolies, it got pretty hairy. Spinelli only drove the Burma road once, then went back to China and his signal work.

A regular day for Gabriel Spinelli started early, and was usually spent driving the lines to check wires and repeater stations. He did not have much interaction with the native Chinese because he did not speak their language. Because his company was in a remote province, what he called the Siberia of China, there was nothing to do during free time but walk around town, and maybe have a beer. The bars and restaurants were not very nice, and the soldiers' rations were better than the local food. Calcutta, on the other hand, had great food, including good steaks. On the whole, the natives did not pay much attention to the Americans. Spinelli knew what was going on in the rest of the world, and celebrated when Victory in Europe was proclaimed. The American forces in China didn't think Victory in Japan would come so soon afterward, but then they had no idea of the strength of the atomic bomb. Spinelli was afraid of the Japanese, mostly because of negative propaganda he had seen, and he didn't want to get captured. Because he was not in the infantry, he felt relatively safe.

Gabriel Spinelli didn't go home immediately after the war's end but it wasn't long before he was shipped to India for a while to wait for his point system numbers to qualify. It had been a long stretch and he felt pretty good about boarding the ship for home. Spinelli left from Calcutta, stopped in Manilla, then sailed on to San Francisco. He remembers cruising under the Golden Gate Bridge and enjoying the big flower-patterned welcome sign on the hills. [Annotator's Note: Spinelli smiles at the memory.] Once in port, the soldiers enjoyed a shower with lather; they couldn't get clean bathing with sea water on the ship. He was issued new, clean clothes, then boarded a train for Fort MacArthur in Los Angeles. Spinelli felt he had served long enough, and took his discharge. He did not return to college, nor did he ever use the G.I. Bill to purchase a home. His father had a liquor business, and was suffering from leukemia, so Spinelli ran the store for a time before taking employment with the store's distributor, Seagram's. Spinelli worked for that company for 38 years, and stresses that he just sold the liquor, he didn't drink it.

Gabriel Spinelli's most memorable experience in World War 2 was his outbound ocean ride on the big troop ship, the USS General W. A. Mann (AP-112). The ship carried 2,000 men and the soldiers were served two meals a day, at irregular hours, and there were sailors who ran black market sandwiches to supplement the ship's meals. It was a deep sense of patriotism that inspired Spinelli to join the service, something he shared with most Americans. The country had been attacked, and he knew no one who was against the war at the time, but points out that people were more innocent then. Spinelli grew up in a hurry and his service transformed him from a crazy college kid into a guy worried about whether he would come back. He also started smoking, a habit he kept for a very long time. Today, Spinelli often thinks about his service experience, and feels it proved what is possible when a country is united. He believes institutions like The National WWII Museum are important because they can teach future generations. One thing that wasn't mentioned that he wanted to put on record was the crossing of the Brahmaputra River, and wide, fast flowing, dirty brown waterway between India and Burma. Because there were no trucks in Burma, they had to be brought up from India, and the trip required crossing the river on motorized rafts. Each raft carried eight trucks, and, because he was not a great swimmer, crossing the river was one of the scariest things Spinelli did during the war. Fortunately, he has never had problems with bad dreams, but clearly remembers the sensation of fear on that river ride.