John Scott Campbell was born in August 1926 in Seneca County, Ohio. He moved from there to Texas. His father was in the horse business. Campbell's first job was at home doing what people did on the ranch. There was no employment until he went in the Merchant Marine. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Campbell how The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States affected his family.] They played the hand they were dealt. His father was born and raised on a farm in Ohio. He went into a partnership in the horse business. He had becarios [Annotator's Note: Spanish for fellows] to train the horses. When the Depression hit, there was no horse business. The only relief he recalls taking was when he started school. His eyesight was not too good. The eye doctor wanted to change his prescription five times in the first year. They had no money, and they got the county to pay for his glasses. They just did what they had to do.

A neighbor of John Scott Campbell's had gone to sea. He would come home and tell sea stories and that sounded good. Campbell read Jack London's [Annotator's Note: John Griffith "Jack" London; American novelist, journalist, and social activist] stories and London said a young man should go to sea. He was not anywhere near water. He understood he had to be 16. Birth certificates were given out by the county medical officer. The legal stuff had to be done in black ink which you could get a store. It was easy to use that to change the certificate. Campbell became 16 instead of 15. He went to get his seaman's papers. The Coast Guard person told him he could only get papers for fresh water. He could do that for a few months and get saltwater papers with no problem. He worked on the Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: also called the Great Lakes of North America or the Laurentian Great Lakes; Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Ontario] for almost a year. There were three departments he could work in. The engine room was warm, and he chose that. He was a wiper [Annotator's Note: apprentice to oiler; cleans engine spaces and machinery] - coal passer [Annotator's Note: person who brings coal to furnaces and removes ashes] on the Great Lakes. The firemen [Annotator's Note: also called stoker or water tender, person who tends the fire to run a boiler or power an engine] were fussy about the size of the coal. At that age, you do not like somebody picking at you. An old firemen told him he would be better on an oil-fired ship. He got on a United States Engineers [Annotator's Note: United States Army Corps of Engineers] hopper dredge as a wiper. He learned to fire boilers and about oil. The next step up was fireman and water tender. The Coast Guard was the regulatory agency for the United States Merchant Marine. You did not join anything until the Maritime Commission started seaman's schools like Sheepshead Bay [Annotator's Note: Sheepshead Bay Maritime Service Training Station in Brooklyn, New York; 1942 to 1954]. They did not have much to offer for engine workers, so he never bothered.

John Scott Campbell's duties were complicated but simple. On a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship], there were two boilers that had four burners. On each four-hour watch, he cleaned the burners for one of the boilers. He had to maintain his station. The first assistant engineer was the engine man. The second assistant was the boilers. In port, they had to go through certain things. In port, they had generators running and were not using power for the ship. The engine work was done then as quickly as possible while they were unloading and loading. Everybody worked doing that. They worked four hours on and eight hours off at sea. In shore, it was eight and 16. In Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy], Pompeii [Annotator's Note: Pompeii, Italy] was far away so in places like that, the guys would trade off shifts to be able to do things. Going to sea was doing work according to the book. The Merchant Marine sailed with about 40 to 45 crew members. The same ship sailed by the Army or Navy took over 200 people. They ran a ship for less money than the Navy did despite their being overpaid. That was hyperbole. If you lost a ship, your pay stopped wherever it was. The Scots [Annotator's Note: inhabitants of Scotland] were exceptionally good to them. If they lost a ship and ended up in Glasgow [Annotator's Note: Glasgow, Scotland], they had an old hotel they turned into a dormitory. They made sure they got what they called "two hots and a cot" [Annotator's Note: slang for getting two hot meals and a place to sleep]. The United Seaman's Service [Annotator's Note: non-profit, federally chartered organization to promote the welfare of seafarers and their families in the maritime industry] had clubs where they were welcome. They had a library. The USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations, Inc.] in Glasgow would send a bus to take them to a movie or show. The Red Cross allowed them in on Wednesdays. They were charged for V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail] that they were given by the Army.

John Scott Campbell's first ship was on the Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: also called the Great Lakes of North America or the Laurentian Great Lakes; Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario]. His first ocean-going vessel was a World War 1 vintage ship they named "Rust Bucket." He does not recall the actual name. At the end of his first voyage, the ship was condemned. They were losing ships faster than they could be built in the first six months of the war. Over 600 ships were lost to German submarines. The old ships that were pulled out of boneyards had been neglected for too long, but they could be worked on in less time than it took to build a new one. On that ship, he went from New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and got a load of bauxite from Mexico and took it to Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. The first Armed Guard [Annotator's Note: United States Navy Armed Guard; sailors assigned the responsibility to man the deck guns of merchant ships to provide a nominal defense against attack] he sailed with was in late 1942. They had a Gunner's Mate, Signalman, and a Seaman First Class as the gun crew. None of them had ever seen a 20mm machine gun [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon]. They had seven or eight of them and a secret weapon that only the cadet from the Maritime School knew how to operate. The joke was that it was a five inch, 38 [Annotator's Note: five inch, 38 caliber naval gun] telephone pole [Annotator's Note: painted to look like a gun]. He supposes that if you were looking through the periscope of a submarine, you would not be able to tell if it was real or not. They never did learn how to fire it. Whenever there was an alert, they pulled the canvas off. It had cranks so they could move it around. The Navy guys did a wonderful job with what they had to work with. At first, they were not trained and did not know what it was like to live at sea. The last cruise he had in the Pacific had 37 guards on the ship. They did not really need them because, for all practical purposes, the war was over. Going into the Pacific [Annotator's Note: Pacific Ocean] from the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean], they ran single on a zig-zag course [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver]. They crossed the Pacific and had no idea of where they were going. When the war ended, they were in a staging area in the Philippines preparing for the invasion of Japan. They would have gone into the second wave into Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan] in October 1945.

John Scott Campbell cannot remember the name of his second ship [Annotator's Note: SS Andrew G. Curtin]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer names a of lot ships he did serve on, but they are not it.] Campbell was on her about 13 to 15 days altogether. They took a torpedo in the Barents Sea [Annotator's Note: Arctic Ocean, north of Norway and Russia, 1944] on the way to Murmansk [Annotator's Note: Murmansk, Russia]. They were picked up and went to Murmansk which was no picnic. Any day the weather was half decent, there were air raids. The Russians did not really trust them or know what to do with them. It is understandable because the average American is different. They were in a warehouse of some kind with portable pots [Annotator's Note: toilets]. They were not allowed to go anywhere unless they went in a bus and came right back. They were there for a few days. They were called if someone was needed on a ship. He went out and was supposed to go to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. Four days later, they hit a mine [Annotator's Note: a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines which are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any vessel]. The captain figured they could keep moving. They were moving in an increasing circle due to the rudder being damaged. They were not taking much water. They ran aground and the Brits [Annotator's Note: slang for the British] came over with a destroyer and got them. He ended up on a ship and went to Glasgow [Annotator's Note: Glasgow, Scotland]. On Campbell's 214 [Annotator's Note: DD-214, Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty], they show two ships. He only got credit for six months of service, when he actually had 24 months. The G.I. [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] benefits had all gone down in 1954 anyway. All he wanted really was to get a flag, be buried with a tombstone, and have the Merchant Marines acknowledged for what they did in the war.

John Scott Campbell lost three ships. The one [Annotator's Note: SS Andrew G. Curtin, sunk 1944] in the Barents Sea [Annotator's Note: Arctic Ocean, north of Norway and Russia] that was torpedoed did not break up. Liberty ships [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] usually broke up. He was not on watch at the time. The guys in the engine room got out in time. They only lost one man on that sinking. Nobody got hurt on the ship that ran aground. The third ship was south of Iceland. She went down faster, and several fellows were lost. The Brits [Annotator's Note: slang for the British] pulled Campbell out of the water. He was almost asleep. A Limey [Annotator's Note: slang for British person, often considered derogatory] laid him on the lifeboat of the Thorpe [Annotator's Note: unable to identify], said he was gone, and threw the blanket over his head like he was dead. He was not dead, but it was about four days before he knew what was going on. He drank a lot of tea and brandy [Annotator's Note: alcoholic beverage] and was transferred to another ship but that is all he can remember. His trip into the Mediterranean was on the Thomas Pollock [Annotator's Note: SS Thomas Pollock] with a load of wheat from Portland, Maine to Oran, Algeria. They could not get into the dock. They were going down Cape Hatteras [Annotator's Note: Cape Hatteras, North Carolina] and had a pool going as to when the ship would break up because they were overloaded. Nobody won because they got through. In Oran, the French Navy had a lot of dock space. All they did was play football. Arab women were in the holds sacking the grain so the ship could move into the docks. They had American and British desert vehicles they hauled to India. They brought back British mountain trucks to Italy. They called a lot of the Italian cities by different names than what they were. He got to see a lot of different countries on that trip. He went to Arzew, North Africa [Annotator's Note: Arzew or Arzeu, Algeria] and loaded nerve gas [Annotator's Note: nerve agent, a poisonous vapor that rapidly disables or kills by disrupting the transmission of nerve impulses]. Chemical warfare guys put tons of instruments on board to detect for leaks. They had special training and a plastic tent-looking thing to put over them with their gas masks on in case of leak. They wanted the Germans to know it was there. It was not kept secret for that reason. The chemical warfare guys explained that they would never know. They would just get paralyzed and be dead in a few seconds. They hauled that to a mine of some kind around Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy] they called Magnolia. They renamed things all the time. Everybody had a nickname. They did not want to get too acquainted or close. A narrow-gauge train came out and got the gas. They then went to Naples to unload the rest of the cargo. They hauled everything from North Africa to Italy, including vehicles. They brought iron ore ballast from Mers El Kebir [Annotator's Note: Mers El Kébir, port near Oran, Algeria] to Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. Their captain that was 25 or 26 years old. There were times that he missed on his navigation. He was to leave the convoy off of Philadelphia. They started getting blinker signals that they could not leave because they would hit minefields. He disagreed. The Navy sent a destroyer escort to tell him to get back in line or they would fire on him. He had come out of a cadet school and had been going to sea for about four years. He left a lot to be desired.

John Scott Campbell went to England and back. He also went to Oban, Scotland. They unloaded in Cherbourg [Annotator's Note: Cherbourg, France] and went back to the States [Annotator's Note: United States]. All of his papers were lost. In 1946, Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] was trying to get the Mariners Bill of Rights [Annotator's Note: Merchant Seamen's War Services Act (1945 and 1947)] in to give them educational funds. The Hearst Press [Annotator's Note: now Hearst Communications], Walter Winchell [Annotator's Note: Walter Winchell, syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist], and Admiral King [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Ernest Joseph King; Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations] did not like the Merchant Marine. For a lot of them, it was because they were anti-union. During the 1930s, the unions were doing good. They got corrupt themselves after the war. In 1937, they integrated Blacks [Annotator's Note: African-Americans] into the crews. He sailed with many Black men. Many became stewards. They did not have much trouble talking about race. He was told they became stewards because they were trained as cooks, cleaners, and butlers. One guy was a fireman who grew up on tugboats. He was an excellent fireman. They had an AB Seaman [Annotator's Note: Able Seaman or AB Seaman; deck rating for sea service experience] from Trinidad [Annotator's Note: Trinidad and Tobago] who had grown up on fishing boats. They had some Black guys on the gun crew. One was a World War 1 Navy veteran. They were on the three inch, 50 gun [Annotator's Note: three inch, 50 caliber naval gun]. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the tape and Campbell begins mid-sentence.] A Certificate of Substantially Continuous Service required a minimum of 24 months, meaning they did not take more than 30 days leave. Campbell was 4F [Annotator's Note: Selective Service classification for individuals who are not fit for service in the Armed Forces] eventually due to his eyesight. He always had three pairs of glasses. He was feeling a crosshead [Annotator's Note: metal bar attached to the piston rod in an engine] once. He had to get close to it and leaned over to get a better look and his glasses slipped off. They were thrown clear across the hull. The Certificate was to qualify them for what Harry was trying to get through. Campbell never got his papers back. There were not copy machines back then, so he just sent his papers in. He was looking for information on a ship 60 years after war and was told it was Classified. He cannot imagine they were sending secret things on a Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship] in a convoy to Murmansk [Annotator's Note: Murmansk, Russia]. They had a hold full of SPAM [Annotator's Note: canned cooked pork made by Hormel Foods Corporation], kids' shoes, Army boots, and Red Army [Annotator's Note: Soviet Army] uniforms. They had small vehicles and some trucks. He never did get his papers. That ship [Annotator's Note: SS Andrew G. Curtin, sunk 1944] had been sunk in the Barents Sea [Annotator's Note: Arctic Ocean, north of Norway and Russia] about three days out of Murmansk.

John Scott Campbell was on three ships that sunk. The first ship went down slowly. The rescue boats do not come in, you have to swim 40 or 50 yards to them. If the sinking ship breaks apart and goes down, it will pull the smaller craft down with it. They had to jump in. He could not swim worth a damn, but with a life jacket he did all right. It was cold in that water. He had not ever felt anything that cold. The second one hit a mine and they went over by breeches buoy [Annotator's Note: rope-based device used to transfer people from one vessel to another] from one ship to the other. The third one went down quickly, and they had to get off. He had been in the water eight to ten minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. You get to where you do not even feel cold. You just kind of relax. It is almost euphoric. He felt a gaff [Annotator's Note: pole with a hook at the end] grab his lifejacket. He heard a Limey [Annotator's Note: slang for a British person, often considered derogatory] say he was gone [Annotator's Note: dead]. In all of these instances, he was in convoys. Even in the Mediterranean, they ran with five or six ships. They did not "own" the Mediterranean until the war was nearly over. Once the Germans lost the air, they were pretty safe. They had gotten rid of most of the submarines by then. There were some surface raiders. The only place he was ever really completely afraid was going into the Mediterranean at Gibraltar [Annotator's Note: Strait of Gibraltar, Gibraltar, British Overseas Territory]. They were waiting for their turn to go through. There was a lot of scuttlebutt [Annotator's Note: a period slang term for a rumor] going around. At one point between Gibraltar and the Azores, Portugal [Annotator's Note: Autonomous Region of the Azores; an autonomous region of Portugal] there were four or five wolfpacks [Annotator's Note: tactic used by submarines; coordinated attacks] working. The Spanish were not friends. Franco [Annotator's Note: Francisco Franco Bahamonde; Spanish general and politician; dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975] seemed to like Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] but did not want him in Spain. The fishing boats were coming in and out of the ships. The German submarines ran underneath them, knock off a ship or two, and scurry away. Campbell was afraid to go on watch. He did not like that feeling of fear.

John Scott Campbell did several different jobs over time. He was a gunner on the 20mm gun [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] on one trip. He shot at plenty of aircraft. They were having air raids all the time. There is no way to know if he hit a plane. He thinks he might have hit a dive bomber because it went down. The German dive bomber came down terribly fast. It had automatic pull-out because the pilot would often blackout. If you did not get the pilot when the pull-out started, you did not get him. This was in late 1944 in Italy. By then the Navy was flying out of Corsica [Annotator's Note: Corsica, France] and pushed the German air [Annotator's Note: German Air Force] back. He would hear depth charges [Annotator's Note: also called a depth bomb; an anti-submarine explosive munition resembling a metal barrel or drum] in the distance but did not worry about it too much [Annotator's Note: when being picked up as a survivor]. If he counts standing on the Jeremiah O'Brien [Annotator's Note: the SS Jeremiah O'Brien], Campbell served on 14 ships. Some of that was on the Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: also called the Great Lakes of North America or the Laurentian Great Lakes; Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario] and short term. That's what makes him mad about his 214 [Annotator's Note: DD-214, Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty] showing two months and six months of service. The O. Henry [Annotator's Note: the SS O. Henry] was after the war. He had gotten a request to make one more trip around the holidays in 1945 to bring troops home. He went to Newport News [Annotator's Note: Newport News, Virginia], and he thought it would be a short trip to Europe and back. The O. Henry was taking a load of coal from Newport News to Recife [Annotator's Note: Recife, Brazil] and to Santos, Brazil then they were going to bring coffee from Santos [Annotator's Note: Santos Harbor, Sao Paulo, Brazil] and bones and hides from Argentina. They took the coffee to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana], the hides to Philadelphia [Annotator's Note: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], and the bones to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. That got a lot of the men home. When they got into the harbor at Santos, there was longshoreman's strike. Carnival [Annotator's Note: Carnival of Brazil, annual Brazilian festival] was going on, so they got to attend. That was his last trip. On the way down, they stopped in Trinidad [Annotator's Note: Trinidad and Tobago] where their assistant engineer had too much fun. He got put in a hospital in Recife. Campbell got promoted on the rest of the trip. On a ship, everything was in the logbook.

After his last trip on a ship, John Scott Campbell got married. They were married for 46 years. Jobs were hard. The first question was whether or not he was a veteran. He had quit school and gone to sea. He thought the Mariner's Bill [Annotator's Note: Merchant Seamen's War Services Act (1945 and 1947)] was going to go through, but it never did. He ended up with no qualifications for anything. The national companies were hiring veterans or people with degrees. The first thing he did was work in a stone quarry working a jackhammer. He weighed 130 pounds and the jackhammer weighed 110. That was not for him. He then spent his life in sales and marketing. He put his kids through college. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Campbell if he felt vindicated when the Merchant Marines were finally recognized as veterans with the passing of the Merchant Mariner Act, 2019].] No. They never got an apology from Walter Winchell [Annotator's Note: Walter Winchell, syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist]. The Hearst Press [Annotator's Note: now Hearst Communications] set the mode for the press today which is that lies sell more papers. There were people in government that did not play fair. What bothered him was that during the first part of World War 2, they had ships and sailors taking Lend-Lease [Annotator's Note: Lend-Lease Policy, officially An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States 1941 to 1945] materials to Europe from 1939 on. If they were injured, they could not get treatment at a military hospital. Even when they were in the war, and losing tankers off the East Coast, the government did not put the right kind of bombs in the aircraft attempting to attack the submarines. During the first six months, 600 or so ships were lost. The guys who survived those attacks came out of the water with oil in every part of their bodies or so burned they were unrecognizable. They were not treated in military hospitals which was not right. The nation owed them at least good care. Campbell shipped with one fellow whose right side of his face and head was difficult to recognize as human. He was still going to sea. That man should have had some surgery to make him more human looking. Campbell got included a fatigue test at a hospital once. People who had never been on a ship in their lives diagnose them. They had "channel fever" which they knew about. That got changed to "convoy fatigue." Campbell told the doctor they had no jurisdiction over him, and he was leaving. He and the other guys decided to walk out of the place. He walked into a burn ward one day. They were Navy and being taken care of properly. There were about 6,000 Merchant Marines who needed that, but Admiral King [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Ernest Joseph King; Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations] did not want that. Men who have been labeled pirates were really merchant mariners. That has still not been rectified and likely never will be. The Congress of the United States needs to make a complete apology to all of the Merchant Seaman, their widows, and orphans and they ought to provide Honor Guards at their funerals like the rest of the military does. He does not feel he did anything special himself, but people gave their lives the hard way and were never seen to.

John Scott Campbell says that Westbrook Pegler [Annotator's Note: Francis James Westbrook Pegler, American journalist and writer] was a sportswriter. He was convinced that the Merchant Marines were the dregs of prisons. Campbell knew of one man who stole two chickens to feed his family. He got caught. In 1939, he was offered a parole if he would go to sea. Pegler would have called Campbell a draft dodger. Campbell did get a draft notice when he was in the Philippines. The seaman were frequently drafted into the Navy. He knew one. The Hearst Press [Annotator's Note: now Hearst Communications] really pushed how much the Merchant Marines were being paid. Going to Russia offered 100 percent of their pay. When they entered the war zone, they got five dollars a day bonus. He got to the Barents Sea [Annotator's Note: Arctic Ocean, north of Norway and Russia] and the ship was gone. He ended up in Scotland. He got home four months later. His wages stopped when the ship went down. About 1943 or 1944, the unions, associations, and ship owners got together to stabilize wages and bonuses. If the ship was attacked in a war zone, they got a bonus. They changed it to be that the ship had be hit. Then they made it so that somebody had to be injured. He was in Naples [Annotator's Note: Naples, Italy] and a security officer was standing out on the deck watching an air raid. A spent 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] round [Annotator's Note: ammunition shell] landed on his foot and broke several bones. He got to go home. Campbell got a 125 dollar bonus for that.

The war was over and John Scott Campbell was working at Montgomery Ward [Annotator's Note: American department store chain] in a management training program. The district manager walked in with a kid who had just graduated from Ohio State University [Annotator's Note: in Columbus, Ohio]. The management program was canceled unless you had a college degree. The kid had gone through V-12 training [Annotator's Note: V-12 US Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946] and got his degree on 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]. Campbell feels the G.I. Bill was beautiful for combat veterans but not for people who did not deserve it. Campbell got so tired of having to say he was not a veteran and did not have a degree, that he started saying he was 4F [Annotator's Note: Selective Service classification for individuals who are not fit for service in the Armed Forces] and worked in the defense industry. He feels the country developed a race of people who did not learn anything but got a degree. He is a history nut. He was in Sandusky, Ohio and did some research on Johnson's Island [Annotator's Note: in Sandusky Bay]. A guy told him he could learn more at the Soldiers and Sailors Home Museum [Annotator's Note: Ohio Veterans Home Military Museum, Ohio Veterans Home Sandusky]. He asked about what they had on the Merchant Marine there. They did not have much. Sandusky had been a mariner's town for years. He sent them some pictures of Liberty ships [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship]. He sent some to the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] too. They had a uniform that had nothing to do with the Merchant Marines and he pointed this out and said they had to do something. He noticed on his last trip there were only a couple of posters left. In the films that are shown by the Navy [Annotator's Note: about World War 2] there is nothing about the Merchant Marines. Time Magazine's [Annotator's Note: American news magazine] World War 2 histories only mention some civilian ships and not the Merchant Marines. Walter Winchell [Annotator's Note: Walter Winchell, syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist] wrote a story about a Merchant Marine ship refusing to unload gas. The port captain had ordered him to stop putting the gasoline on the beach and to come back when the airplanes were there. In Anzio [Annotator's Note: Anzio, Italy], a Naval officer on a destroyer said he went into the port for his men to go on leave. He reported that the merchant ship captains refused to unload when their workday was done. The truth was that the beach captain said there could be no lights or work after dark. Naval officers loved to tell those kinds of stories, as well as a false history of the United States Navy. They are history writers and not historians. It is not fair to anybody.

John Scott Campbell feels that Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] knew when he was elected that there would be a war. In 1936, he passed the first Mariner Act [Annotator's Note: Merchant Marine Act of 1936]. He is not a fan of Franklin Roosevelt, but he wanted to get America back in the Merchant Marine business. When Campbell was a kid, the Argentina [Annotator's Note: SS Argentina] and the Brazil [Annotator's Note: SS Brazil] had been built as cruise ships. That was all a part of Roosevelt's plan. They could quickly be converted to troop transports. The America [Annotator's Note: SS America] was built as a troop transport but outfitted as a passenger ship. That was being done despite the country being isolationist. Admiral King [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Ernest Joseph King; Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations] was Chief of Staff, and he said the Navy did not want merchant ships and crews. He was too strong for Roosevelt to fight. He got away with building a quasi-military through the CCC [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps]. Those kids learned to march and answer commands. In 1939, with the near loss of England and into 1940 and 1941 England getting more desperate, Roosevelt tried to figure out how to keep them going. He started the Lend-Lease [Annotator's Note: Lend-Lease Policy, officially An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States 1941 to 1945], and the Germans did not like it. So they started sinking ships. Campbell has never been able to find casualty figures for that time period. Those people have no recognition for that service. When the war started officially, they lost 600 ships in six months. They finally approved the cadet training programs for officers. Many were private schools. When the Federal Government started training, they did an awful job. Campbell says that what they did, they did because they wanted to. Going into the Army would have been boring as hell. Campbell could not have gone into the service with his eyesight. After he went to Sandusky [Annotator's Note: to a museum in Sandusky, Ohio] he got mad and started knocking on a lot of museum's doors and got them interested. One in Gibsonburg, Ohio was happy he came.

The war changed John Scott Campbell's life. He probably would have been a schoolteacher. He loves history. The war made him impatient. His parent's families are loaded with schoolteachers. The war changed this country radically. During the terrible years of the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] there were the John Dillingers [Annotator's Note: John Herbert Dillinger, American gangster] and Baby Face Nelsons [Annotator's Note: Lester Joseph Gillis, aliases George Nelson and Baby Face Nelson, American bank robber] that got all the publicity. But back then, you could go away for days and not lock your house. Today they break in and defecate in your living room. The lack of value, propriety, and manners would not have happened during the Depression. Responsibility is lacking. People want the boat, the RV [Annotator's Note: recreational vehicle], the cabin at the lake, and all of the goodies. When Chrysler [Annotator's Note: American automobile manufacturer] was in bankruptcy, the unions were asked to take a share of the load and they said they did not have to. One assembly worker had worked for Chrysler for 15 years and became handicapped. He was on disability for 20 years. He made something like 274 dollars per hour all total. That is ludicrous. Campbell used to think the unions were wonderful things. He went to a convention and strike was being talked about. Campbell was an organizer for the NMUCIO [Annotator's Note: National Maritime Union and Congress of Industrial Organizations; unions]. He ended up with two broken ribs and in the hospital because he stood up to air his objection to the strike. The goon squad hit him. He got out of the hospital and went to the union hall and quit.

John Scott Campbell thinks that "tin horn dictators" will have a harder time getting a hold on a country [Annotator's Note: due to World War 2]. Americans are in the process of creating one now in their own country. It began with Roosevelt's [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] first cabinet changing from Free Enterprise to Socialism. At the beginning of Roosevelt's time, most farms were family farms. Today that is gone. Henry Wallace [Annotator's Note: Henry Agard Wallace; American politician, journalist, farmer and businessman, 33rd Vice President of the United States, 11th Secretary of Agriculture, 10th Secretary of Commerce] said it was easier to nationalize a half dozen big farms than 100 little ones. The aim of Socialism in this country was to organize big food giants so they could be nationalized easier. World War 2 brought that into being because mama did not want to cook anymore. If she had a job, they could get a boat and the kids could go to college. 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] contributed a huge amount to this thinking. The war was over, and 11 million people would be out of work, so they decided to send them all to college, so they had four years to figure out what to do with them. A great deal of those people have proven that the degree only means they attended college for four years. The country had the largest merchant fleet ever seen in the world. The country passed the insurance and registration laws so Panama and Nigeria registered any ship anywhere. Practically all of the merchant fleet is now registered outside of the United States. Any competition from any country could have been quashed. The merchant navies of Britain and Italy were given preference over America's. This might have been done out of a sense of fairness, but the government goes too far in everything. The stuff that went on with the development of overseas flight in this country was that a bunch of crooked congressmen made sure there was only one company providing it until some of them got caught and were put in jail. He thinks about the Okie [Annotator's Note: nickname for people from Oklahoma] family with four kids and more on an old stake bed truck filled with mattresses on the way to California. They saw a plump colt on the side of the road, and they were hungry. There was nobody around, so they butchered it to eat it. The rancher came up and told them to follow him to the ranch. He made them work to pay for the colt. He paid them for the work but charged them for what they consumed. This country does not do things like that anymore. Now they would have been arrested and separated. Nobody would be prosecuted. There is no responsibility today.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks John Scott Campbell what he thinks the significance of having The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is.] What he hopes comes from it is the teaching of truth. He has seen history books that are produced by history writers who are just paying their rent. People read novels and think it is history. The religious nuts think that God is going to take care of everything. Campbell's grandfather was a Baptist preacher and said that God helps those who help themselves. The country was founded as a republic. The only way a republic can survive is for citizens to take responsibility. He hopes that by showing people what the museum shows them, and hopes it is not too much Tom Hanks' [Annotator's Note: Thomas Jeffrey Hanks; American actor and filmmaker] theater, is what really went on. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] has to be portrayed the way it was. It was military foolishness, neglect, and silliness. We [Annotator's Note: the United States] did not win it because two military commanders hated each other's guts and argued about how to finish it off. So much was done wrong. They knew the Germans were running out of gas. They piddled around, losing soldiers all over the place. That has to be taught to the average person. There is so much about World War 2 that the truth has not been told about because of not wanting to offend generals and admirals. The Commander-in-Chief [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] in Washington [Annotator's Note: Washington, D.C.] had no military experience other than being Secretary of the Navy. It was all petty politics. Going back to the founding of the country reveals this same pettiness. Politicians are prostitutes and frequently generals and admirals become politicians out of necessity. He just hopes that museums and preserved ships gives people an honest feeling for how big the thing really was. Perception is the most thing to present. Judgement is on perception and not necessarily the truth. Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] said that if you repeat something often enough, people believe it. Tom Hanks is a nice guy but the show of his is carnival. It entertains the kids and makes them want to come back to the museum. The Museum has a responsibility to maintain a truth level. The only way that will happen is that somebody has to do some reading, and nobody wants to do that. Campbell has no television or computer anymore. He hopes the museum will stay close to the truth and show the prisoner camps and that these were German people who did that. He feels the German people realize that more than anybody. Americans still have the franchise to vote, but are not informed voters who seek information, so we get cute presidents like Kennedy [Annotator's Note: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States] and General Ike [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States], who could not straighten his own bed. There is too much thought given to Republicans and Democrats when the problem is in the population. He hopes all museums stay somewhere close to the truth.