Horace Trahan was born in January 1927 in Maurice, Louisiana. He had one brother and two sisters. His father owned a grocery store. Trahan graduated the year he went into the service at 17 [Annotator's Note: 1944]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Trahan if he remembers the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He remembers it well. He went through all of the ships that had been sunk when he went through Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: 13 December 1944]. Trahan had joined the Navy to stay out of the Army. He went to basic training in San Diego, California. He enjoyed it. There were a lot of rules, but he coped with it. He went aboard a cargo ship for a while. He was transferred to USS Briscoe (APA-65). He took care of the soldiers and cleaned the latrines. He enjoyed the whole time on the water and did not mind doing the work. He had boarded in California [Annotator's Note: Port Hueneme, California] and went across the Pacific.

[Annotator's Note: Horace Trahan serevd in the Navy aboard the USS Briscoe (APA 65) in the Pacific.] They stopped in the Philippines and then went to the Iwo Jima invasion [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945; Iwo Jima, Japan]. Iwo Jima was bad. There were about 20 ships with LCVPs [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP] and LCMs [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Mechanized] aboard. He was a coxswain [Annotator's Note: person in charge of a small boat] aboard an LCVP. The Japanese planes would come in every morning. They would fly over and drop bombs. On his second trip back to the mother ship a bomb was dropped on a ship near him. He got near and could smell the flesh burning and decided to keep going to his ship. His LCVP was never fired upon. There were five or six foot waves and they had to take care not to get breached. He had been trained well. He enjoyed it and learned fast. His officers chose him due to his skill. They went to Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo Bay, Tokyo, Japan 2 September 1945] after Iwo Jima and after the bombs had dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. He was in the Philippines when he heard the war was over. Two years of it was enough. In Japan, they were told to be careful at anchor to ensure that anything floating was not a Japanese soldier [Annotator's Note: Fukuryu , or Japanese Special Attack Units, called "suicide divers", "kamikaze frogmen"]. He went ashore in Japan. everything was burnt. There were no houses. Each house had a large safe that was still standing. He did not interact with any Japanese. There were tunnels they went souvenir hunting in. They did not have light other than cigarette lighter.

[Annotator's Note: Horace Trahan served in the Navy on occupation duty outside of Tokyo, Japan.] He stayed aboard ship [Annotator's Note: USS Briareus (AR-12)] and worked there. He returned to the United States by ship to California. He then went to the East Coast [Annotator's Note: East Coast of the United States] by train. He went to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] and then got discharged. He moved back to his hometown of Maurice [Annotator's Note: Maurice, Louisiana]. On the ship [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans], they were only five of them on board while it was being decommissioned. He got a lot of leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] on that duty and could wear civilian clothes. He adjusted with no problem. He went to work in a sugarcane factory for a couple of years. He then found a job with Gulf States Utilities for 40 years. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Trahan what he thinks of The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.] He enjoys it. It brought back memories. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Trahan if he thinks people understand the war today.] Trahan does not think people realize what he went through. Everything is so different these days. It's a different type of warfare.