Jack Dunlavy was born In Avery, Mississippi in June 1925. It was a small town. His father was a millwright at the Turner Lumber Company. He was also a carpenter and stayed employed during the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939]. He moved around and bought his own equipment. He was the youngest of eight children. He later moved to Mobile [Annotator's Note: Mobile, Alabama]. He worked various jobs there while he went to school. He did pretty well. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks what he remembers about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He came out of the movies in the afternoon and saw it in the newspaper. It did not mean a lot. He recalls when Carole Lombard [Annotator's Note: born Jane Alice Peters, American actress], who was married to Clark Gable [Annotator's Note: William Clark Gable, American actor], died, they did the same with the newspaper. He was drafted at 18 in September [Annotator's Note: September 1943].

After being drafted, Jack Dunlavy went to Anniston [Annotator's Note: Anniston Army Depot in Bynum, Alabama] to the induction center. He wanted the Navy and was picked for the Marines. A recruiter then said he needed three volunteers for the Navy and picked him. He did his basic training in Great Lakes, Illinois [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes in Lake County, Illinois]. While he was there, they made a movie called "The Navy Way" [Annotator's Note: 1944 American war film]. Roscoe Karns [Annotator's Note: Roscoe Karns, American actor] was the trainer to Bill Henry [Annotator's Note: William Albert Henry, American actor]. Jean Parker [Annotator's Note: born Lois May Green, American actress] was the fighter's girlfriend in the movie. After basic, he went to Norfolk [Annotator's Note: Norfolk Naval Shipyard, also called Norfolk Navy Yard, in Portsmouth, Virginia] to DE [Annotator's Note: destroyer escort] school, but it was full. He was then picked for the Missouri [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)] detail, and was sent to Providence, Rhode Island. He was picked for the navigation division and trained to be the Quartermaster. He was an assistant to the Officer of the Deck and assisted the navigator. At one time, he was steering the ship with a tanker on one side and a supply ship on the other side. There were five ships tied up all together. He had rotating duties. He was there when the Franklin [Annotator's Note: USS Franklin (CV-13)] got hit [Annotator's Note: 19 March 1945]. Each ship had three watches that would determine duty and when you ate. When the Franklin got hit, a third of their ship was eating and a third was waiting to eat. That is why they lost so many men. After that, their eating time was changed, and they ate at their stations. The Franklin had been hit by a kamikaze.

A kamikaze hit Jack Dunlavy's ship [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)] on 11 April [Annotator's Note: 11 April 1945] off Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. He was on the bridge assisting the Officer of the Deck. The Japanese plane hit just above the water line below the deck. About half the plane and half the pilot came on board. The next day the plane looked like termites had hit it. A popular thing to do was to make rings and bracelets from the metal of the plane. The pilot had been about 18 years old. They sewed him in a canvas bag with a Japanese flag and buried him at sea. The 20mm gun [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] from his plane had landed on the twin 40s [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] on the ship. The plane smoked up two engine rooms and that was the main damage. He has been told that you can still see the dent where the engine hit. There were no casualties. Dunlavy had been there for the invasion, and they were bombarding the island [Annotator's Note: Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945, Okinawa, Japan]. There were 49,000 casualties with 12,500 killed at Okinawa. Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945, Iwo Jima, Japan] was first, and they bombarded for several days there. They went in there 19 February. They shot down their first plane that day. It was a Helen light bomber [Annotator's Note: Nakajima Ki-49 Donryu heavy bomber aircraft]. It was foggy and the radar picked it up.

On 16 April [Annotator's Note: 16 April 1945], the Third Fleet was off the coast of Japan and sent planes out to hit Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] for the first time since Doolittle [Annotator's Note: bombing attack on the Japanese mainland on 18 April 1942 carried out by 16 North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) and named for the raid's commander, then US Army Air Forces Colonel, later US Air Force General, James H. Doolittle] did. Three days later, Jack Dunlavy was at Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. There were 25,000 casualties and 13,000 killed. Being on the bridge, he heard things other people did not hear. He was too young to be scared. Once, a plane looked like it was going to hit them, and he was scared. The Third Fleet had about 100 ships. His group was about a third of that. They had carriers, battleships, and cruisers. Their duty was to protect the carriers as all of the sea battles had ended. They had four destroyers out front, with 20 destroyers out along the edge to form a protective ring. He read that there were 1,988 kamikazes, but a lot did not get in. One time, the Hazelwood [Annotator's Note: USS Hazelwood (DD-531)] came through his formation. It was an old four-stacker [Annotator's Note: slang for a ship with four funnels, or smokestacks], and all four-stacks were off. A kamikaze had wiped nearly everything off the ship, but it was still afloat. Dunlavy was on the bridge and heard about the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945] being dropped. They knew the war would soon be over.

After the war was over, three envoys [Annotator's Note: from the government of Japan] were sent to Jack Dunlavy's ship [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)] to get instructions as to what the Americans expected to do when they went into Tokyo Bay [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] for the surrender [Annotator's Note: Surrender ceremony; 2 September 1945 aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63); Tokyo Bay, Japan]. They were anchored and Dunlavy was on Quartermaster watch. The Officer of the Deck sent for three Marines in case there was a surprise attack. The Marines searched the Japanese. The morning of the surrender ceremony, a destroyer came alongside. There were 81 officers on one side of the ship. Nimitz [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Sr., Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet] and MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] came at different times. They all got aboard. Before the ceremony started, Dunlavy was told to find a place and not do anything to disturb the ceremony. He ran to the bridge and the chaplain was there sitting in the captain's chair. He watched the proceedings from a bird's-eye view. From 16, until the time he went in, he would go to the movies and come out fighting mad. He wanted his mother to sign for him, but she would not. She was okay when he was drafted. He understands now he was the youngest and realizes how she must have felt.

Jack Dunlavy came back for Navy Day [Annotator's Note: 27 October 1945]. He thought he wanted to stay in the Navy but changed his mind. They returned to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and tied up at Pier 90. The Franklin [Annotator's Note: USS Franklin (CV-13)] was there and was charred from bow to stern. They let people come aboard [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)] for two days to see the surrender spot [Annotator's Note: spot of the Surrender ceremony; 2 September 1945 in Tokyo Bay, Japan]. About 100,000 came aboard those two days. While anchored there before Navy Day, Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States], his wife Bess [Annotator's Note: Elizabeth Virginia "Bess" Truman, first lady of the United States], his daughter Mary Margaret [Annotator's Note: Mary Margaret Truman Daniel; American soprano, actor, journalist, radio and television personality, and writer], and Mayor La Guardia [Annotator's Note: Fiorello Henry La Guardia, American politician] came aboard. There did not seem to be a lot of protocol. Dunlavy had Truman's nephew [Annotator's Note: Seaman John C. Truman] in the navigation room with him. They thought he was an old man. He was a schoolteacher and would not have had to go, but he volunteered. Dunlavy went to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] and was discharged 26 December 1945. He almost got pneumonia in New York and was so sick when he got to New Orleans, he checked into a hotel for a day before going home. He had no trouble adjusting to civilian life. It took him until March [Annotator's Note: March 1946] to get a job. He got one and made supervisor in six weeks. He eventually went to work at the Post Office [Annotator's Note: the United States Postal Service]. He was in management his last 16 years. He worked there 46 years and nine months. He used the G.I. Bill [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 accounting school. He took a course in income tax preparation. Dunlavy thinks the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans] is great. He took his grandson who has been three times. Dunlavy is leaving all of his World War 2 things to that grandson in his will. A guy was on Halsey's [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey] staff named Leif Erickson [Annotator's Note: born William Wycliffe Anderson, American actor] was a star on "High Chaparral" [Annotator's Note: "The High Chaparral", American television series]. Jack Dempsey [Annotator's Note: William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey, American professional boxer] came aboard once. Before his discharge, Dunlavy went to Madison Square Garden [Annotator's Note: in New York, New York] to the Roy Rogers Show [Annotator's Note: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rodeo, October 1954] and saw Babe Ruth [Annotator's Note: George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr.; American professional baseball player].