Gene Alair was born in February 1920 in Fargo, North Dakota. His mother was in the entertainment business, so they moved quite a lot. He lived in Great Falls, Montana, Spokane and Seattle, Washington before moving down to Beverly Hills, California, where he finished high school. He didn't know anything different from moving around. This happened until he was in the tenth grade. His mother was a good singer. His father was in the insurance business in San Francisco, California. The Great Depression did not affect them all that much as they were not poor. Many people were worse off. By today's standards, Alair feels he was home taught mostly. He went to several different elementary schools. High school in Beverly Hills was stable for him. His mother was working on soundstages at the time. Most of her work was in Fox Studios. Beverly Hills High School was very small. There were only nine kids in his tenth-grade class. He recalls when Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] was active in Italy. He and some friends discussed it but did not know much about Europe. Alair did not have many plans after high school. He attended Santa Monica City College for one year and then UCLA [Annotator's Note: University of California Los Angeles] for Business Administration. He lived at home and attended school in the day time. He never registered for the draft. He was in the NROTC [Annotator's Note: Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps] program in college. When he lived in Seattle, his home overlooked Puget Sound. He also thought it was better than living in a foxhole so that figured into his choosing the Navy.

Gene Alair did not find Navy life difficult. He really enjoyed it. After recieving his commission, he was assigned to the USS Astoria (CA-34). His first assignment was in the number three turret, but he moved over to antiaircraft guns, five inch 38s [Annotator's Note: Mark 12 Five-Inch/38 caliber gun] and .50 caliber machine guns. Alair was a junior officer on the Astoria before the war. The discipline was new to him. [Annotator's Note: He tries to get a picture off camera.] On 7 December 1941, he was at sea outside of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and he heard over the intercom, "General Quarters, this is no drill, the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor." They immediately went looking for the Japanese fleet but did not find them. Alair was in charge of two antiaircraft batteries. They were generally prepared for an attack and had been practicing for the event of one for several years. They knew how Asians attacked. Alair is not sure he felt anything except for being mystified. He came into Pearl about a week later and it was just devastating. Some of the ships were still burning. As a junior officer he had a job to help clean up the harbor of clothing, debris and body parts. He did not spend a lot of time on the ship there. He had a whale boat and a liberty boat cleaning up to keep the contaminated water out of the systems of the surviving ships. He has no distinct impression of how he felt then. It was over 70 years ago.

Gene Alair was assigned to a Transport Division Staff, CTD8, as a flag secretary and navigator aboard the USS Astoria (CA-34). He went to Midway [Annotator's Note: the Battle of Midway, 4 to 7 June 1942] and the ship was sunk at Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: during the First Battle of Savo Island on 9 August 1942]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer backs up the story.] Alair spent most of his time in the South Pacific. He was in the Battle of the Coral Sea [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Coral Sea, 4 to 8 May 1942; first engagement between aircraft carriers] but does not recall much about it. They went from there back to Pearl Harbor and then to the Battle of Midway. At Midway, Alair saw an aircraft carrier sunk [Annotator's Note: the USS Yorktown (CV-5)]. The Astoria was part of the Fast Carrier Task Force, which in some historian's mind was the turning point of the war. After that battle they spent a lot of time in the south Pacific. They went into Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, New Guinea, and more. The Astoria was a screening vessel following a carrier at Midway, right off her quarter. Midway was mostly an air operation and they did not see any surface action. A screening vessel protects the carrier from attacks. The Astoria was under steam all of the time and was screening the USS Yorktown (CV-5) when it was hit. They were on the defensive until after the Battle of Midway then they became aggressive. The island hopping they did was to drop personnel for two days, mostly Marines, when advised by Coastwatchers [Annotator's Note: also known as Coast Watch Organisation, Combined Field Intelligence Service, or Section C, Allied Intelligence Bureau; early warning network of Allied military intelligence operatives] that enemy troops were on an island. They had enough Marines to go in and engage the enemy Japanese that were occupying the islands. When they got to Tulagi, which was the only good port in that area, the Marines lost a lot personnel.

Gene Alair was aboard the USS Astoria (CA-34) during the battle of Guadalcanal. Saipan was a big operation [Annotator’s Note: Alair had been transferred to a troop transport after the loss of the USS Astoria (CA-34) during the First Battle of Savo Island on 9 August 1942]. There was a sugar mill there where the Japanese had a lot of people occupying the area. Alair was a beachmaster [Annotator's Note: military officer in charge of the disembarkation phase of amphibious warfare] at Saipan. He was ashore and it was turmoil. Things were coming in faster than they could handle it on the beach. They could not go far inland due to the Japanese. They brought food in mostly. Clothing and ammunition too. The beach was narrow. They only had short distance radio communication. LCVPs [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel, also referred to as Higgins boats] were full of troops but they could not come in because there was no place to put them. Many of them were offshore for hours. As soon they would land, they would come under Japanese sniper attack. Not all of the Japanese were gotten rid of. Many were found on the islands months later. Everybody was in danger there but Alair never felt that he would not survive. He spent about ten days on the beach there.

Gene Alair was in the South Pacific for many months. He was on a Transport Division Commander's Staff, CTD8. They had three APAs [Annotator's Note: attack transport ships] and two cargo ships moving troops in and out of the various islands. Most were occupied by someone. Coastwatchers [Annotator's Note: also known as Coast Watch Organisation, Combined Field Intelligence Service, or Section C, Allied Intelligence Bureau; early warning network of Allied military intelligence operatives] were in the area as Allies. The Japanese were trying to get to Australia. Singapore was a hostile area. It was very hot and humid there, and there was a shortage of supplies. The Battle of Savo Island [Annotator's Note: also known as First Battle of Savo Island, or The Battle of the Five Sitting Ducks, 8 and 9 August 1942] is where the USS Astoria (CA-34) was sunk. He does not have much to tell about it. They were treaty cruisers [Annotator's Note: military ships built 1920-30s under international treaty terms], the USS Astoria (CA-34), USS Vincennes (CA-44), and Quincy USS Quincy (CA-39). They were all sunk at the same time. The Navy lost all of the ones that were built after World War 1. The essential part of any task force are tankers for resupply of gas, oil and food. The battle was a light one. They were attacked by the Japanese at night. The Astoria was in a surface battle with a Japanese ship. In the daytime, they saw there were still people aboard the ship even though they had abandoned it at night. Alair was selected to go back on board to assess conditions. The decision was made to tow it, but the ship was too waterlogged. Due to the attack happening at two o'clock in the morning, it was hard to see what was happening. After being hit a few times, he knew they were a good target. Alair did not get hurt. He was in the bridge in a 1.1 director. [Annotator's Note: The fire director was a shipboard fire contral system. In this case, Alair was manning the fire director for one of the Astoria's quad mount 1.1 inch/75 caliber antiaircraft guns.] He jumped off the ship and removed his shoes when he hit the water. He was picked up by a whale boat and taken to the USS Wharton (AP-7), a transport. They did an inventory of who the survivors were. The crew had been pretty well decimated. [Annotator's Note: Alair repeats himself.] Alair lost a lot of friends that night. It took five to six months to be able to identify where everyone had been scattered. He lost 60 to 70 percent of his men. Some had been killed and some sent to other units. Alair was assigned to a transport division as a staff officer. He became a flag secretary of a division of three transports and a supply ship. He was not bothered to be aboard another ship.

Gene Alair went in and out of Guadalcanal many times. Nothing really stands out to him about it other than he lost a lot of acquaintances. His staff was all combat personnel with combat experience. They did not tell each other sea stories. [Annotator's Note: Alair mentions pictures off-camera that he had not seen in many years and talks about them.] On Saipan, there was a sugar mill that was bombed completely but when the troops went in, the Japanese were still there shooting at them. They lost men over ten days taking out the Japanese survivors. He went into Lingayen Gulf [Annotator's Note: Invasion of Lingayen, Philippines, on 6 January 1945] and other South Sea islands. All of his experiences were in advance of long-term operations. He was in American Samoa on two different tours, one was four or five days and several months later again for four or five weeks. There were still a lot of natives who were there and did not know how to react to war. They were friendly but they just wanted to survive. The initial trips were to scout out the area's potential and then report back to determine longer operations. In Tongatapu, there was a group of American missionaries who did not really know what was happening. American Samoa in those days was primitive. The missionaries saw the military as killing off the natives. Alair did not interact with either.

Gene Alair went into Lingayen Gulf [Annotator's Note: Invasion of Lingayen, Philippines, 6 January 1945], the spot where MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] returned, north of Manila. He was there for four or five days. It was always hot and humid. He looks at some pictures and sees that he was always wearing a jacket. It was a protective, lead jacket. The Navy was an aggressor in the sugar plantations. Alair did not like the Japanese. They had attacked Pearl Harbor. He talked with some Marines, but only after the war ended. After the USS Astoria (CA-34) was sunk, he was assigned to the USS Callaway (APA-35), a transport ship. The quarters were nicer than sleeping on a beach. Alair first saw a kamikaze that hit a transport near the Callaway and the pilot actually got out. They brought him aboard as a prisoner. On the Callaway, they were hit and that pilot survived the crash. The kamikazes were young kids, 15 or 16 years old. They were not successful pilots really. The ships would lay up a barrage of shrapnel to make them fly through it. Most of the time they headed for the bridge. What Alair thought about the kamikaze was stopping him and killing him. They would create a lot of injury to the personnel, lost limbs and more. [Annotator’s Note: On 8 January 1945, a kamikaze attack on the USS Callaway (APA-35) resulted in 29 of her crew killed and 22 wounded.] Hospital corpsmen had a very tough job. He recalls one young man had a lost an eye. There were only so many corpsmen available.

Gene Alair received some schooling at government expense back when he was married. He had been sent back to Harvard University for a year and the war ended while he was there. They lived in an apartment right across the street. He was sent there under orders. Alair stayed in the Naval Reserve as a TAR, Training and Administration Reservist. He was active all of the time recruiting young men to go into ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps]. Part of the time, the war had not been popular, and a lot of people did not like people in uniform after the war. Alair never went ashore in Korea or Vietnam but did his work as a TAR then. He spent one five-week tour in Honolulu, Hawaii recruiting young men into Naval Communications. He was sensitive to the fact that a lot of the young people did not like what he was doing, which was hard to overcome at times.

Gene Alair's most memorable experience of the war was being back on board the USS Astoria (CA-34), below decks inspecting the ship after it had been abandoned due to battle damage [Annotator's Note: during the First Battle of Savo Island on 9 August 1942]. Men were dead but their battle lights were still on. It was an alarming situation for him. He was trying to assess what of the ship could be salvaged, were the hatches closed and locked downed tight. They had tried to tow the ship twice but the tow lines broke due to the weight. He was just looking at the facts. He was young at the time and a JG [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant (junior grade)]. He had not been injured. Some of the men he was working around were missing limbs. We overcame the Japanese, but we were not well-prepared. It was just our sheer strength and supplies that did that. Alair was already in the Navy before the war started. Serving gave him an education he would not have gotten otherwise. He feels he is more tolerant than many of the adults of his generation because of what he had seen. He does not like protestors, they are obstructions. They are against what he believes is a just cause. He does not feel many Americans know about the war. Even he knows very little about the European side of the war. He feels The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] is important. He does not know whether more than the fact of history can be taught. He does not know how to handle teaching about any lessons. The Japanese wanted land and had an aggressive nature. He saw the Japanese commit things that are objectionable to him.