Jim Stumpfa is 94 years old [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. He was in the US Coast Guard for four years. He is from Minnesota. He went to school in east Minneapolis and graduated from high school. While he was in high school, he had an urge to travel. He wanted to join the Navy to see the world. This was prior to Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Because he was 17 years old, his father took him down to get signed up at the Navy recruiting office. The officer was nice to them, but Stumpfa did not pass because of his eyes. He graduated from high school and went out to California. He got a part-time job in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. He heard about a factory that was building B-24 bombers [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. He knew he would make more money there. He went to the factory, and they told him he had to go to sheet metal school for 90 days, which he did. He was then making B-24s. It was a good job. His job was riveting the bomb bay doors in the airplane. One guy he worked with became a good friend of his. Then Pearl Harbor happened [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. They thought they would be drafted. They went down to the recruiting office for the Navy because they did not want to be in the Army. His friend got signed up and everything went well for him. Stumpfa went in and was turned down again due to his eyesight. He went next door to the US Coast Guard. He had to read the eye chart again and was rejected again. He said he could read. He went into an adjacent room, and he could see the eye chart. He copied the eye chart and took it home. The recruiter told him his eyes were not that bad and told him to eat carrots and come back in two weeks. He took the test again and passed. He had to go to the Navy base and get a complete physical. They all had to stand outside while naked. It was a quick physical. There was another eye chart he had to read. It was a different eye chart. It was not one he memorized. The doctor became frustrated. All the men behind him were frustrated standing there naked. Then the doctor passed him. He had to go to optical to get glasses. Once he was in the Coast Guard, he had to do six weeks of basic.

Jim Stumpfa sang the US Coast Guard song while they were marching. He enjoyed the exercise. He did not like the middle-of-night wakeups. After basic, they asked about his interests. He told them in high school he made a radio and was interested in electronics. They had openings in the electrical school in Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. It was a long train ride from San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. They went through the Southern states. They stopped in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana]. He went to Franklin Tech [Annotator's Note: Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston]. It was a class of 20 recruits. They got liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] there. After 90 days he was assigned to the USS Bangor (PF-16). He also served aboard the ship USS Perseus [Annotator's Note: USNS Perseus (T-AF-64)] and received training on the Pacific coast. It was no more than 30 days. He was getting seaman training, learning about the ship, learning about navigation, and learning about the weather. There was no technical training. The USS Bangor was a small destroyer. The Navy took over the Coast Guard, so now he was in the Navy and the Coast Guard. They got all their orders from the Navy. The Navy abused them. They gave them all the jobs they did not want to take care of. The ship was manufactured in Cleveland, Ohio [Annotator's Note: 20 May 1943]. It came down to Saint Louis [Annotator's Note: Saint Louis, Missouri] down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Then it got stuck in Plaquemines, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana]. The crew was placed in an area at LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana] in a dormitory for two weeks while the engineers worked to get the ship out and floated to New Orleans which took two weeks. The crew had a good time in Plaquemines. The young ladies at the college took good care of them. They partied. They got back aboard the ship and had it fitted out with supplies. Then they shipped out. They sailed through the Gulf of Mexico and went to Bermuda. They were there for six weeks and would have their shakedown cruise [Annotator's Note: a cruise to evaluate the performance of a naval vessel and its crew] there. They would port every night and then go out to sea. They would do all the routine exercises they had to do. They had a good time in Bermuda. It was Thanksgiving [Annotator's Note: 24 November 1943] and the captain announced he would have Thanksgiving dinner for them. That meant turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. The captain was strict. He was the only seaman on the ship. He knew the ship and navigation. He knew how to train them and control them. They felt comfortable under him. The night before Thanksgiving some of the duty crew broke into the kitchen. There were turkeys in the refrigerator, and they took one or two turkeys out and carved them up. They did this in the middle of the night while they were on duty. The next morning when the kitchen crew went in and noticed someone had broken in and carved up a couple of turkeys. They had left a big mess in the galley. The kitchen crew reported the incident. The captain wanted to know who it was. He wanted them to report to his office. They all waited, and no one reported. Then he told them they were not going to have the Thanksgiving dinner he promised. They would have bologna sandwiches for Thanksgiving. No one told who broke into the kitchen.

Jim Stumpfa was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Bangor (PF-16)]. They were the tail end ship of the large convoy going to North Africa. It took 13 days to get there from Norfolk [Annotator's Note: Norfolk, Virginia]. The water was rough. One night the Navy radioed them. A man had fallen off the lead destroyer of the convoy. None of the ships had lights on them. They could not use their searchlight. They were assigned to fall out of the convoy and look for the man. Very seldom do you find someone who falls overboard in the North Atlantic, but the moon was out, and the captain spotted the man out there with a cork float. That saved his life. The captain backed the ship right up to him. They all ran to the fantail [Annotator's Note: overhang of the deck extending aft of the sternpost of a ship] to greet him and pull him aboard. When he came aboard, he asked if they were Coast Guard. It was the second time the Coast Guard had pulled him out of the North Atlantic. They asked him what happened. He was checking the deck of the destroyer when a huge wave washed him overboard. He was lucky to grab the float. They took him to Brusekar, Algeria where they were stationed. The weather was good there. They did some patrolling in the Mediterranean [Annotator's Note: the Mediterranean Sea]. German Stuka dive bombers [Annotator's Note: Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber] would attack the convoy. They lost two or three ships. They went on liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] here and visited the area. They were cautious about going into Algiers. They had to go in groups of three or four if they went into the city. The natives were looking for sailors that had wristwatches, jewelry, or American dollars on their person. They lost some of their sailors to the city of Algiers. The natives were and they would hit the sailors over the head and drag them into the alleys. They went to shore very little. They got along with the Arab kids. They hung around their base. Stumpfa had one kid ask him for his knife. His name was Labbe [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], and he hung around him a lot. Stumpfa told him he would give him his knife when they left to go back to America. They tried to teach the kids baseball. Most of them could speak English. He wanted to see the historic city. It was unlike the cities in America. He was uncomfortable there. They were on a French base. The French were controlling Algiers. There were some French Naval people there. While they were there, they had some German prisoners of war come onto the base. The German prisoners were hungry. They fed them. They did not have barracks for them. They had abandoned their trucks and tanks because they ran out of fuel. They welcomed them. They thought they would use the prisoners to do all their work. The prisoners were engineers, mechanics, and electricians. The Navy used them to work on all their equipment. The Germans worked in the city too developing things and repairing equipment and utilities. Stumpfa was working with the gyrocompass [Annotator's Note: 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] they had on board. The captain relied on it. One time they went out and came back in and it did not balance out. The captain gave him orders to get it balanced out right away because they would be sailing in two days. He repaired it and opened it up. He could not find the problem. He knew there were electricians in the German camp. He got permission to go to the German prison camp. They had three or four electricians and he selected one of them. The German looked at it and took it apart and fixed it. They put it back together and the compass balanced. The captain thought he did all the work, as Stumpfa took all the credit for getting it repaired. They got the ship going. They had no other problems on the ship. His job was to also maintain the batteries and the searchlight.

Jim Stumpfa had an exciting time at sea [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Bangor (PF-16)]. He had a shop. He had a table that had straps on it. When they were in rough water they would lay down on the table and strap in. He could see the instruments and he had a telephone so he could keep in touch with the crew. The food was bad. They had powdered potatoes and powdered eggs. The coffee was bad, so he converted to tea. His shop was adjacent to the officer's storeroom. He could see canned chicken, olives, canned yams, and tea bags. The room had a large padlock on it. The machinist mate said he was going to make a key to fit the lock. He worked on the key for two days. It fit the lock. They opened the door and made a selection of canned chicken and tea bags. The stewards never detected that they stole the food. They would lock the door when they were done. He would have a good dinner when he was on watch. The machinist mate's job was to convert seawater to freshwater. They could not drink the freshwater; it was used for showers and the kitchen. The captain was a veteran of the ocean and navigation. When they saw the captain, they knew he had something to say. They felt good knowing he was at the helm. He never used his beautiful cabin. When they were at sea he would sleep in a Lazy-Boy [Annotator's Note: brand of furniture] chair up in the watch area. He would tell whoever was on duty he was going to take a nap and they should wake him up if anything came up. After the end of the war in Europe, they went back to the United States.

Jim Stumpfa had two four-hour watches a day [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Bangor (PF-16)]. They were on four hours, off four hours, and then on fours. They had to check and keep track of the maintenance they were doing. They had a new ship, and everything worked fine usually. He worked in the electrical shop below deck unless they had an emergency and then they were all called to their posts. Those were usually drills. They did their jobs and maintained what they needed to. He would go up on deck to see the weather. Sleeping in the bunks bothered him. He was in the lowest of four vertical bunks. It was not comfortable. The ship sailed well, and he had a good experience. On their way back to the US the captain got an order to go through the Panama Canal. The weather was nice in that area. They entered Panama City [Annotator's Note: Panama City, Panama] in September [Annotator's Note: September 1945]. They were there to be a target ship for the Navy. The Navy-Air Force was going to dive-bomb a makeshift target they were going to pull. They did that for six weeks. Then they got shore duty for a few weeks. When they had to go through the Canal, they had to go into Lake Gatun which is part of the Panama Canal. They were stuck in the lake for five days. The ships have to wait in line. They did not have any priorities, so they anchored in the lake. The water was about 80 degrees. The captain would let them jump in and swim. It was too hot for them to sleep in their bunks, so they would sleep on deck where it was cooler. The captain made a stop in Costa Rica where they had two weeks of liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. They pulled into Portofino [Annotator's Note: Portofino, Costa Rica], a small banana town. There were no banana ships, and the bananas were piling up. They had liberty in town for a couple of days. There was nothing there to see. He walked out of town with his friend. They walked down the road and they saw a beautiful home. In town, they were just shacks. They were amazed to see a colonial house. There was a lady sitting on the front porch who spoke decent English. She was making dinner and invited them to eat with her. She was a rancher, and she owned a lot of lands. She had a lot of bananas that she needed to get rid of because the boats were not coming. She told them to take bananas back to the ship with them. They had a good Sunday dinner. She and her husband were Germans in business in Costa Rica. There were a lot of Germans in Costa Rica. Her husband was stranded in Cleveland, Ohio. The FBI [Annotator's Note: US Federal Bureau of Investigation] came down and interviewed them and then took her husband back with them. They were German nationals. He was not in jail, but he was in a detention home for the duration of the war. She was running the ranch by herself. They went back to the ship carrying as many bananas as they could. When they got back the captain told them they were going on a trip to the capital. They took a German train. It was a little train. It only went about 20 miles per hour up the mountain. The natives would jump on and off the train. They jumped on with chickens. They brought goats on the train and were taking them to market. It was a nice trip. They were put up in private homes. They went on tours. The people were very hospitable. The Costa Ricans brag they are the best of the Spanish people. They were not Mexicans. They had nice shops. They enjoyed themselves for about four or five days. Then they went back to the ship to go to Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington].

Jim Stumpfa was shipped to Bellingham [Annotator's Note: Bellingham, Washington aboard the USS Bangor (PF-16)] when the war was over. They got orders to take their ship up to Alaska to give it to the Russian Navy in 1946. They loaded the ship up with mutton, cabbage and food for the Russian Navy. They took the ship up to Cold Bay [Annotator's Note: Cold Bay, Alaska] and they got the Russian sailors on board. They trained them for two weeks. The ship was being given to the Russians through the lend-lease program [Annotator's Note: Lend-Lease Policy, officially An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States 1941 to 1945] which President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] had inaugurated early in the war. They had difficulties training the Russians. Then they got notice to get the Russians off the ship. The ship was not going to the Russian Navy after all. Then they went back to Washington. None of them had enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to get discharged. Stumpfa attended USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] activities and dances. He was assigned to the long-range communications unit for the Pacific in Portland, Oregon for a short time. He visited the YMCA [Annotator's Note: Young Men's Christian Association] and looked at their bulletin board. There was a signup sheet to go see Mount Rainier [Annotator's Note: Mount Rainier in Mount Rainier National Park, near Seattle]. The guy at the desk told him the truck was full. He moaned and groaned about not being able to go. He felt bad. The guy at the desk asked him if he was a truck driver. They needed an assistant truck driver. It was a Navy truck that carries about 20 people. He had to be there at 6 o'clock the next morning. He got there expecting sailors or soldiers, but it was all girls going. They were dressed in their mountain climbing outfits. There were about 15 or 16 ladies. He wanted to sit in the back with the ladies. He asked the truck driver if he could sit in the back. They made a deal and he sat back with the girls but had to drive the truck back. He got acquainted with the girls. It was a fun trip. There was snow at the resort. They took a tour. They had an all-day tour. The YMCA sent lunch with them. There were two or three ladies he was partial to. There was one girl he warmed up to a lot. One lady asked if she could ride in the truck with him. It was not bad driving the truck. They enjoyed the trip. Her name was Grace and Stumpfa asked her where she lived. She was in the Navy; all the girls were. She was staying in a private home on Lake Washington [Annotator's Note: Lake Washington in Seattle]. He walked her home and got her telephone number. They went on dates. Stumpfa asked the captain if he could join the Coast Guard band, as he had his saxophone with him. The leader of the band let him join the band. The captain let him live ashore. When they would play for the dances, there was a Navy man who always came to listen to the music. A soldier played piano and they let him play with the band. They had an Army guy playing with the Navy band. He was an excellent musician. The piano player was going to be discharged soon so they were happy to have him. The soldier was from Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota], as was Stumpfa. He wanted to meet him again when they went home. He was still dating Grace. He got discharged and Grace was still in the Navy. He had to leave her to go home. He had his seabag in one arm and the saxophone in the other. After three months she was discharged. She took the train to Minneapolis to visit him.

After the war, Jim Stumpfa got Grace [Annotator's Note: a Navy girlfriend] a hotel room when she came to visit [Annotator's Note: in Minneapolis, Minnesota]. He got to visit with her for a couple of days. She went home to Milwaukee [Annotator's Note: Milwaukee, Wisconsin], but they corresponded. She decided to move to Minneapolis and got a job in the electrical industry. Stumpfa was working part-time at an electric shop because of her. He started school at the University of Minnesota [Annotator's Note: the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota] on the GI 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]. Later on, he used the GI Bill to buy a house. He graduated in 1952. He and Grace got married in Milwaukee where her parents lived. They settled in Minneapolis.

Jim Stumpfa did not suffer during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. His dad got laid off from the Great Northern railroad, but he found part-time jobs. He would work anywhere he could. They always had food and their home was comfortable. They lived in northeast Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota]. The area was good for bringing up children. The schools were good. In high school, he played clarinet and saxophone in the band. He joined the city band in college. They played concerts at nursing homes and parks. He wanted to join the Navy because he did not want to walk. He always thought about traveling on the ocean. The Navy was on his mind. He did not have contact with the German military during the war. The military he saw were the prisoners of war. They did the manual work for the Navy. They tried to teach them how to play baseball and the Germans tried to teach them soccer. The Germans knew English. They had good relations with them because they were anxious to work. They wanted to keep busy, so the Navy and the Army used them as builders and mechanics. There was a difference between the Russians and the Germans. The Germans were real mechanics. The Russians were young men with no mechanical training. Once, they picked up a sailor up out of the North Atlantic [Annotator's Note: he was on the USS Bangor (PF-16) headed to North Africa]. He remembers meeting Grace [Annotator's Note: his future wife] and going up to Mount Rainier [Annotator's Note: Mount Rainier in Mount Rainier National Park near Seattle, Washington]. He had duty in Algiers [Annotator's Note: Algiers, Algeria] and Costa Rica. He enjoyed boot camp in San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. During his liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], he walked down the main street viewing the area. He found a little shop that gave dance lessons and paid five dollars for six lessons in ballroom dancing. This gave him the courage to ask a lady to dance. The ladies were always willing to dance. He learned from them as well. He followed up on that after the service. He and Grace took lessons in 1950. Grace was a great dancer. He enjoyed showing her off. They danced a lot. They raised five children. All his children are doing well. Some of them are retired. His one daughter has been his ballroom dancing partner ever since he lost Grace to cancer in 1995.

Jim Stumpfa was fortunate after he lost his wife Grace. He found a place to ballroom dance. He visited with the band. He had to pay three dollars to get in. He danced the waltz with the lady from the door. He went back and met some more ladies. They moved the dance to a new place in Saint Louis Park [Annotator's Note: Saint Louis Park, Minnesota]. In 1999, he started dancing and he met a lady there. They connected. Her name is Delores. She has been special to him since 1999. They continued dancing. They went to Arizona and danced there for eight winters. They are caretakers for each other. They stay together much of the time. He wanted to be in the Navy. He wanted to be on a ship and see the world. He did not want to be in the Army walking. He wanted the ocean. World War 2 steered him into the electrical industry thanks to the Coast Guard. He was not a journeyman electrician until years later. He is glad he was able to serve and do his part. He enjoyed the work he did. He considered staying in before he was discharged. He enjoyed the Coast Guard. He went to university after he was discharged. Many people suffered and they lost a lot of people. There should be no more wars. It bothers him that there is a possibility of war. The museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and all military museums are great. He has been to several museums around the country. He has enjoyed them all. He thinks they should continue to teach World War 2 and World War 1 history.