Kenneth Marshall was born in December 1926 in Grand Island, Nebraska, one of four siblings. His father, a hardworking man, had difficulty finding a job during the Great Depression, but eventually got on with the Union Pacific Railroad. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Marshall was 15 years old, and he immediately tried to enlist. When he brought the papers home for his father to sign, they were torn up and thrown into the fire. He and a buddy hitchhiked to California, and witnessed the Navy's fracas in the Zoot Suit Riots. Marshall made several more attempts to join; once even threatening to have the enlistment papers forged. On his seventeenth birthday, he finally made it into the Navy and went to basic training in Farragut, Idaho. As a result of the Outgoing Unit questionnaire, he became a mechanic, Fireman second class.

Kenneth Marshall's first overseas destination was Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides. He had no idea where he was. Early on, Marshall witnessed young Marines coming off of Guadalcanal with what became known as "the thousand yard stare." On shore, the officers divided the men alphabetically, and sent Marshall to a PT boat [Annotator’s Note: patrol torpedo boat] base at Tulagi. As a 2nd class motormac [Annotator's Note: Motor Machinist's Mate 2nd Class, or MoMM2c], he later became part of the crew of an LCVP [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel, also referred to as a Higgins Boat] crew and island hopped along the South Pacific. As a result of some unpleasant experiences, he came to hate the officers, except for his PT-237 skipper, who Marshall claims was a good man. Marshall's father died while he was traversing the Pacific, and he didn't get the news until a month after the fact, and feels the Red Cross was to blame for the late notice.

After island hopping through the Solomons during 1943 and 1944, Kenneth Marshall was in the Pacific on the USS Rockingham (APA-229) in August 1945 as part of Operation Crossroads [Annotator’s Note: Operation Crossroads was a postwar nuclear weapons test conducted in mid-1946 by the United States at Bikini Atoll]. Marshall was living on the ship, but working as a motor mechanic aboard the captain's gig [Annotator's Note: a captain's gig is a catch-all phrase for a variety of small craft carried on naval ships to serve as taxis]. Marshall's gig was moving personnel in the chartered area around the USS Pensacola (CA-24) between the two blasts for several days. There, American sailors were working 12 hour watches, clearing metal and debris from its decks, often falling overboard. Marshall feels the Navy grossly neglected the health of the sailors who served during these hazardous bomb trials. [Annotator's Note: Marshall's jaw twitches as he talks about his experience with the Veterans' Administration.] He asserts that, back in those days, the crewmen were not allowed to question anything; and neither Marshall nor any of his mates went to sick bay if they had a simple scrape or scratch, although later several of those he knew suffered dire consequences. Marshall said that the Pensacola was later put in dry dock, where the Navy tried to chip all the paint off the hull, then made tin cans out of radioactive scrap when they decommissioned her. [Annotator's Note: The USS Pensacola (CA-24) survived the nuclear tests, and was taken in tow for Kwajelein, where she was decommissioned, her hulk turned over to Joint Task Force One for radiological and structural studies, after which the hulk was sunk.]

Kenneth Marshall served [Annotator's Note: in the US Navy] for four years. He intended to stay in the Navy, but after Operation Crossroads he was assigned to the mothball fleet in San Diego, and he hated it. When he first checked in to the destroyer base there, he saw a huge sign instructing everyone who was at Operation Crossroads to check in with the doctor. Marshall said the doctor did a "short-arm" exam, and said, "Hell, you're fine." Marshall repeats that while serving on the Rockingham [Annotator's Note: USS Rockingham (APA-229)], the sailors were often in the drink. The seas were rough, and sometimes his job required him to go over the side. When asked if he had volunteered for Operation Crossroads, Marshall said he never volunteered for anything. He was an eyewitness to the Able blast; the officers had goggles to watch the event, and the crew was told to turn away, but Marshall looked anyway. He had no idea what he was observing, but he knew it terrified him. He had been aware that the United States had dropped a couple of big bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that had killed many Japanese, but wasn't moved about the destruction because his own life was spared through that devastation. Recalling the small lagoon where he observed the Able blast, he agreed it was filled with various old enemy ships, and that the damage was incredible: a hole was blown clear through one huge ship, and another vessel was sucked up the spout. Marshall said that shortly afterward, a tidal wave washed over the entire island, and he felt his own ship was threatened, but the swell was broken up in the lagoons.

As a kid from Nebraska, Kenneth Marshall was not aware of the hazards of sun exposure in the south Pacific, and he was severely sunburned on two occasions. In New Guinea, he woke up one morning and was stone deaf. His ears were swabbed out in the sick tent, and he was told he would have hearing problems later; that prophesy proved true. He only went on Bikini Island once, after the blasts, when there was only a sand bar left. The sailors had a beer crawl on the island, and swam off the beach. Nobody knew the island was radioactive. On the way back to the United States, Marshall was one of 85 sailors who were stranded on Goat Island because of a radio failure and, though it was a court martial offense to wear another man's belongings, everybody ended up with other people's gear. Marshall told the ranking officer that he would stay in the Navy if they took him out of the mothball fleet, and send him back to sea. But the Navy was trying to reduce its payroll, and Marshall was a rule-breaker, and he was discharged in late 1947.

Kenneth Marshall used the G.I. Bill in 1947, and was subsequently employed by the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company for over 43 years. He started out climbing poles, and he always loved the work, retiring in 1990 when the company downsized. He admits he was often drunk while he was in the Navy, and his drinking continued during his first years with the telephone company. But he grew out of it when he got married and had his first child. He noted that his years in the service helped to teach him racial tolerance. He doesn't think World War 2 means anything to the population of today, but he is proud of his service, and wears a squadron badge on weekends, trolling for someone to acknowledge what his time in the Navy meant.