[Annotator’s Note: There is a person assisting the interviewee with answering the interviewer’s questions throughout the segment.] Howard Cecil Whiteside was born in March 1922 in Hampshire, Tennessee. He grew up on the family farm during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. He had two older sisters, an older brother, and two younger sisters. The family was fortunate as they had plenty to eat throughout the Depression. Many people he knew had nothing to eat and no money. He hunted skunks for five dollars per skin to help the family get by. He describes various aspects of his childhood that paint a vivid description of rural life in 1930s Tennessee. In the late 1930s, he moved to Columbia, Tennessee to work in a grocery store for 12 dollars and 50 cents per week. While working there, he became aware of world affairs, namely the rise of Nazi Germany. On 6 December 1941, he and some friends left Columbia and went to an airfield in Alabama in hopes of taking a ride in a plane the following day. When they arrived at the airfield in the afternoon of 7 December, they were turned down and told the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Whiteside was disappointed his plane ride was canceled and realized he would be going to war soon. He registered for the draft on his 20th birthday. To avoid being drafted into the Army, he and two friends went to Nashville on 5 July 1942 to join the Marine Corps. After waiting in line for many hours, they decided to get in the line for the Navy and signed up. Three weeks later, he and his two friends entered active duty and boarded a train to San Diego [Annotator’s Note: San Diego, California] where they began their training. The first three weeks were spent learning to march and getting various vaccinations. Whiteside’s tetanus shot went awry and he developed a serious case of cellulitis. He was hospitalized until November. Upon his release, he discovered his friends had already shipped out aboard a destroyer. He was sent to gunnery school for a month before reporting to the Naval Armed Guard school at Treasure Island, San Francisco [Annotator’s Note: San Francisco, California]. From there, he was assigned to the SS Charles M. Conrad and embarked on his first Pacific tour on 3 December to Wellington, New Zealand.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person assisting the interviewee with answering Interviewer’s questions throughout the segment.] Howard Cecil Whiteside arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on 1 January 1943. There were stevedores unloading and breaking nearly 500 cases of beer which they then drank. From New Zealand, they sailed to New Caledonia where he watched a large convoy of warships sail out of port. While based in New Caledonia for a month, Whiteside met a native who had been a cannibal earlier in life who told him of great deer hunting on the island. He and a fellow sailor went hunting, but never killed anything. They sailed from New Caledonia through a fierce, 10-day storm to Sydney, Australia. The storm was so fierce the ship drug a sea anchor to stop it from rolling over and the sailors strapped themselves into their bunks at night to stop from being tossed out of bed. They sailed back to California with a load of cowhides and unloaded in Alameda [Annotator’s Note: Alameda, California] before picking up supplies and a complement of troops in Oakland [Annotator’s Note: Oakland, California]. While sailing to Brisbane [Annotator’s Note: Brisbane, Australia], an Army corpsman cut a cyst out of Whiteside’s arm without the use of anesthetic. While sailing from New Castle, the ship was nearly torpedoed on its way to Sydney. Whiteside and a fellow Armed Guard were on guard duty one night when they saw a torpedo pass within three feet of the ship [Annotator’s Note: SS Charles M. Conrad] and strike a ship sailing next to them in the convoy. This was the closest he came to being sunk while in the Navy. From Sydney, they took on a load of wool and sailed for the Panama Canal [Annotator's Note: manmade canal in the country of Panama that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in between North and South America]. While in the Canal, one of Whiteside’s lieutenants became drunk and ordered everyone to general quarters and ordered them to open fire into the sky. They ignored the orders and caught hell from the drunk lieutenant. Upon sobering up, the lieutenant said nothing of the incident. The ship sailed to Norfolk [Annotator’s Note: Norfolk, Virginia] where Whiteside was granted a 30-day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go home. Upon arriving home around midnight, he wrote a note for his parents and went to bed. They did not know he was home until they woke him in the morning. The days flew by quickly. While home, he was afraid to ask about friends serving elsewhere because he did not want to know if they had been killed. [Annotator’s Note: Whiteside talks about life aboard ship.] The Navy personnel on board were responsible for the guns and their quarters while the Merchant Marines were responsible for the ship’s operation and cargo. They ate and slept in separate quarters, though he did often swap rations with the merchantmen.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person assisting the interviewee with answering Interviewer’s questions throughout the segment.] Howard Cecil Whiteside describes the ceremony he participated in when he crossed the Equator, entering the “Domain of Neptunus Rex” and transitioning from a Polywog to a Shellback. After his leave, he boarded an oil tanker, the SS George W. Barnes. These runs consisted of bringing oil to Cuba and returning to various American ports with molasses which was being used to make anti-freeze. On one of these runs, a blade of the ship’s propeller was knocked off and forced the ship into port in New Orleans [Annotator’s Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] for a month. On another trip, the ship collided with another ship while sailing along the Carolina coast. Whiteside was then transferred to the SS Olney and continued to make these oil and molasses runs. While aboard the Olney, Whiteside was promoted to gunner’s mate second class and placed in charge of training new gun crews for service aboard other ships. Many of the new lieutenants were cocky and often disregarded Whiteside’s advice, but others were much humbler and more deferential towards him. Whenever his ships docked in New Orleans for several days, Whiteside would return home for a few days before reporting back. After his final trip on the Olney, he traveled from Houston [Annotator’s Note: Houston, Texas] to New Orleans by train to get orders for him and the 40 sailors he oversaw. The orders sent the men to Charleston, South Carolina where they boarded the SS Morris Sheppard. The ship was loaded down with ammunition needed for the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes CounterOffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. They sailed up the East Coast to join a large convoy and crossed the Atlantic to Marseilles [Annotator’s Note: Marseilles, France]. While at sea, they were ordered to don their dress blues and salute the ship carrying President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] as it steamed past them. Before unloading in Marseilles, the ship ran aground and was pushed off by a tugboat.

Annotator’s Note: there is a person assisting the interviewee with answering Interviewer’s questions throughout the segment.] Howard Cecil Whiteside and his ship arrived in late January or early February 1945 and sailed back to the United States to pick up construction materials needed for a hospital in the Philippines. En route to the Philippines, Whiteside stopped in Eniwetok [Annotator’s Note: Eniwetok, Marshall Islands] and Ulithi [Annotator’s Note: Ulithi, Caroline Islands]. At Ulitihi, he saw a convoy of warships sailing for combat. The ship was unloaded in Leyte [Annotator’s Note: Leyte, Philippines] and the sailors were placed in a camp in Samar [Annotator’s Note: Samar Island, Philippines] for three weeks. Whiteside then boarded what was to be his final ship, the SS Amy Lowell, and sailed for Peleliu [Annotator’s Note: Peleliu, Palua] where they took on a complement of Air Corps pilots. The pilots bet the sailors that the war would be over by the time they arrived in San Francisco [Annotator’s Note: San Francisco, California]. Whiteside now suspects they must have known something about the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. As the Lowell passed Hawaii, they received word that the bombs had been dropped and Japan was on the verge of surrender. When they arrived in San Francisco, the major celebrations had passed, but the sailors found a few bars where they celebrated among themselves. Whiteside and two other men were ordered to stay aboard the ship to discard any Navy materials and throw them overboard. They packed the guns up in crates as they went through the Panama Canal and sailed to Baltimore [Annotator’s Note: Baltimore, Maryland]. Whiteside was discharged on 12 December 1945 with the rank of GM/2C. He earned a promotion to GM/1C, but turned it down because he did not want to report to a combat vessel.

[Annotator’s Note: there is a person assisting the interviewee with answering Interviewer’s questions throughout the segment and can hear people laughing in the background throughout the segment.] Howard Cecil Whiteside’s most memorable experience of World War 2 was when he saw a torpedo and going through a storm that lasted 10 days. He enlisted to fight in World War 2 because he was going to get drafted anyway. He is not sure what his service means to him today. He went to school for one year after he was discharged and then he returned home and worked on the family farm. He thinks the world is different and America is very advanced due to the experience of World War 2. Whiteside believes there should be institutions like the National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and that we should continue to teach World War 2 to future generations.