Jack Pierce was born in 1921 and grew up near Kirbyville [Annotator’s Note: Kirbyville, Texas] in a sawmill town called Call. His dad went to work there. He went to school there. They moved in 1929. They were in the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939]. He has one sister, Mary Helen Pierce. She is two years older. They had a 29 Model Chevrolet [Annotator's Note: a brand of automobile]. He learned to drive when he was 12 years old on Old Highway 8. He was in and out of Kirbyville. In 1937, he went to New Mexico with his dad to help his nephew run a portable sawmill. He went to school in New Mexico. They were out there for a year and a half. They left there and went back to Kirbyville. His dad had started to work at a mill and there was construction work. He finished school in Kirbyville in 1937 or 1938. In 1940, when he was 20, he went to work in the Gulf refinery. He worked for a year. He got two weeks of vacation from work. A week later he joined the Navy. It seemed like the best way to go, you are always aboard a ship and you have everything there. You have food and clothing and you do not have to do all the walking. His father was flat-footed so they would not take him. His mother was a housewife all her life and it was a job. When he was a kid, there were no jobs and no money. Men could not feed their families. His grandpa had a farm, he was a good farmer. He kept a lot of people from going hungry. On the farm, he had a mare. He would ride her. They made their own entertainment. They had one movie house in Kirbyville. His grandpa drove a school bus. Tuesday nights they would go to the show if they had the money. They would go to town by school bus. They were about three and a half or four miles out of town, and by the time he got to town, he would have a bus full of people so they would not have to walk. They would go to the show and it was always a Western. When it was over they would drop people off on their way home. There was nothing for young people to do so they would entertain themselves. They would take a can and flatten it out and tie the end to a stick. They also played Marbles. He used to go to the creek to fish. He does not remember where he was when he was told about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He thought they would get into the war quickly after that. He was fresh off the farm and he did not know too much about the world or people but he learned quickly.

Jack Pierce went to boot camp for six weeks in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. Then he went to L.A. [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California] for electrical school. Then he went back to San Diego for six weeks for gyrocompass [Annotator's Note: A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and the rotation of the Earth to find geographical direction automatically] training. After that training, he went to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to wait for the USS Cascade (AD-16) to get ready. Then he wound up in the Philippines. The USS Cascade was a destroyer tender. They were around Pearl [Annotator’s Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii], and then they went back to the Philippines. They were there for a few months. Everyone came out of electrical school as a Third Class Electrician [Annotator's Note: Electrician's Mate 3rd Class or EM3c]. While they were in the Philippines, a lieutenant came by and told them they all had to take a test. He had a friend named McGraw [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to verify identity], and they both failed it. The next month they were sent back again. They were sitting by each other and looking at each other's papers to see if they had the same answers and they did. His friend passed, but he did not. He had to go back. The next day they were working on the destroyer and the lieutenant came over. He told Pierce he thought he had told him to take the test. Pierce told him he put everything he had into the last test and if it was not good enough too bad. The next time a call came for new construction came, his name was on the list. That was how he got his first stateside leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. He received a 30 day leave. He ended up in Kirkland, Washington which is just across the lake from Seattle [Annotator’s Note: Seattle, Washington]. He was at a small shipyard. He was there for three or four months waiting for them to finish the ship. The other ship got commissioned first. They left off and went to Pearl. Two or three months later his ship got commissioned. They took about two-thirds of their guns off because they were scheduled for patrol duty in Panama. Another ship had their crew mutiny [Annotator’s Note: mutiny is an open rebellion against the proper authorities, especially by soldiers or sailors against their officers], and that is how they ended up in the Philippines. They were there for several months. He had a friend, Brooks [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to verify identity], who was an aviation radioman. He told Pierce they should take the test for the pilot academy. They could go stateside if they passed the test. They took the test. A month later Brooks got his orders to go stateside. About a month later Pierce got his orders. When they called his name he had to be ready in 30 minutes to go ashore. He was supposed to go by boat but the engine was pulled. They asked if he wanted to go back to his ship and he did not. He asked them if there was an airstrip on the island. He told them to get him as close to shore as they could. He hitchhiked back to Pearl and then rode a flatboat back to San Francisco. They lost a sailor on the trip to San Francisco because of the weather. He got back and he went on leave. He was then sent to Allentown, Pennsylvania. He was there when the war ended. They asked if he wanted to stay in and finish his training or get out. He wanted to get out. They sent him to Philadelphia [Annotator’s Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. He had a girlfriend in Pennsylvania. She raised horses. She would talk about Roy Rogers [Annotator’s Note: Roy Rogers; American singer, actor, and television host] and he took that with a grain of salt. He was in her bedroom and the entire wall was filled with pictures of Roy Rogers. She told him that Roy Rogers and his horse stayed at her house before he went to Hollywood [Annotator’s Note: Hollywood, California]. He was staying in a hotel downtown. She wanted to meet him. They met at the bar. She showed him some ornaments and the horses. When he went back to base they sent him back to Seattle. He was discharged in Galveston [Annotator’s Note: Galveston, Texas] on 4 December [Annotator's Note: 4 December 1945]. The medic told him he was the only man he ever weighed that weighed the same as when he entered service when he got out. He then returned home.

Jack Pierce remembers getting to Kwajalein Island [Annotator’s Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands] after they had finished attacking. There was debris in the water. He was a Third Class electrician [Annotator's Note: Electrician's Mate 3rd Class or EM3c]. He was on a gyrocompass [Annotator’s Note: A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and the rotation of the Earth to find geographical direction automatically] in the shop there. They had two spare compasses. He had a Chief named Smith [Annotator's Note: no given name provided; unable to identify] and he was an expert on the compass. When a destroyer would get tied up alongside them they could pretty well repair anything that was wrong with it. The destroyer boys just hated to see them because then they would not get to go ashore. He did not pay attention to the names of the ships he worked on. They just give him a job and whatever they needed to be done. The USS Barataria [Annotator’s Note: USS Barataria (AVP-33)], about a month or two after Brooks [Annotator's Note: no given name provided; unable to identify] and Pierce left, was a part of a convoy. The ship encountered a storm and the planks started to buckle so they had to leave the convoy and go with the storm. Later he found out that the USS Barataria was loaned to the Coast Guard. He enjoyed the USS Barataria more than the USS Cascade (AD-16). They were told not to waste the water because men from another ship were coming over to use their showers since their ship was not converting saltwater to freshwater.

Jack Pierce had a good job offer on the West Coast. He tried to get discharged there, but they would not do it. He returned to the Gulf [Annotator's Note: he had worked at a Gulf Oil Refinery before he went into the service]. He stayed there for 40 years then he retired. He was a shift man. He worked in the pump houses. It was a good company to work for. He retired in 1981. He almost got seasick on the USS Cascade (AD-16). The ship was pitching and he got woozy. He stuck his head out to get a little fresh air and everything smoothed out. When he was in Kirkland the Chief ran him down. Pierce was doing something he was not supposed to. The Chief said he knew he was trying to get off the ship but he said he was not going to make it. Pierce told him he was not trying to get off the ship. Pierce had spent a couple of months in the Philippines but no women and no booze [Annotator's Note: while aboard ship] and he was going to get all he could get while he was there [Annotator's Note: while he was ashore]. That straightened that out. His next leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] at San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] took three days on the train. There was an Army boy on the train and they sat together. He got hurt on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal, codenamed Operation Watchtower; 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943; Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] that was the first part of the war. He spent the entire war in that hospital in Oakland [Annotator's Note: Oakland, California] and that trip was his first trip out of the hospital. He said they were in their foxholes and sometimes the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] would overrun them and sometimes they would overrun the Japs. A Japanese officer ran up behind him shot him in the back of the head and it came out of his left eye. Another one came up and used their bayonet on him. He said they finally got him into a field hospital. One time, they loaded him up with a bunch of bodies and took him out to the ditch to bury him. When they grabbed him to throw him in one of the men said he was still warm so they kept him. It was not his time to die. He was from Jasper [Annotator's Note: Jasper, Texas]. Pierce's mother met him at the train station, and they took him to Jasper on their way home. Pierce does not know whatever happened to him after the war.

Jack Pierce thought his experience in the war [Annotator's Note: World War 2] was good. He was glad it ended because he did not have anyone telling him what to do anymore. He made good friends in the Navy but he does not keep in touch with them now. A boy from Galveston [Annotator's Note: Galveston, Texas], Davis [Annotator's Note: no given name provided; unable to identify], went to boot camp with him. After the war, he looked him up in the phone book, but he could not find him. He ran into another friend while he was in Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington]. They hung out and one of his friends told him they could pull his card and he could stay for five days. Pierce was seeing a girl and she was from Butte, Montana. He went on a train to see her in Montana. He spent the night with her and then went back the next day. He was shipped to Galveston to be discharged. He does not think the war means much to today's generations. If it did, there would not be Japanese vehicles running up and down the streets. The Japanese destroyed the United States fleet for no reason [Annotator's Note: he is referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He does not know how anyone can support the Japanese government. He thinks the war made him a little wild. He had a rough young life. He stayed single until he was 32 years old. He married a girl named Hilda, and she settled him down. He went to work regularly. She settled him into normal life. He was a Third Class electrician [Annotator's Note: Electrician's Mate 3rd Class or EM3c].