Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr. was born in March 1920 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He was the youngest of eight children and was premature. His father was a custom tailor and they lived behind his tailor shop. Snyder went to school there. He played football at Allentown High School and got a scholarship at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. While there, he was in the cafeteria eating lunch on 7 December 1941 and heard on the radio about the bombing of Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He did not know what that meant to them all. He had to consider he would be in a war. He went through four years of college and graduated January 1943. While in school, a month after Pearl Harbor, recruiters came around. Snyder and seven other football players were impressed by Captain Anthony Caputo [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] of the United States Marine Corps. They all signed up and then finished college. Snyder was an enlisted man in the United States Marine Corps Reserve. He graduated a semester early and went to work for Bethlehem Steel [Annotator's Note: Bethlehem Steel Corporation in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania]. In the summer of 1940, he was working there when Japanese officers came and inspected them for quality. When he was on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], some of that steel might have been coming at him.

Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr. got his orders in May 1943. [Annotator's Note: Someone off-camera interrupts Snyder.] Snyder had looked into what the other services had to offer [Annotator's Note: before joining the Marine Corps]. In May, he got orders to report to Parris Island [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island] in Beaufort, South Carolina. 325 men showed up that day for the 32nd Officers Candidate Class. This was the first time he had been with other college graduates from across the United States. They endured the torture of boot camp. He was lucky he got out. Twenty percent did not make it. That set the pace for Snyder for the rest of his life. Boot camp was not hard to take because everyone had to do it. The leaders were tough. Snyder went from there to Quantico, Virginia to the Officers Training University [Annotator's Note: now The Basic School, and Marine Corps University]. He went through officer training and on 25 August [Annotator's Note: 25 August 1943] he got his commission as a Second Lieutenant. He had a sweetheart he had known since the fourth grade. They got married in the Quantico Chapel and stayed together for 69 years. He left Quantico after three months to attend an artillery school at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for ten weeks. He learned all the guns from 40mm [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft autocannon] to 155mm [Annotator's Note: M1 155mm howitzer; nicknamed "Long Tom"]. There was a 90mm antiaircraft artillery gun [Annotator's Note: 90mm Gun M1/M2/M3]. When he graduated, he got orders to go to the Marshall Islands to join the 15th Base Defense Battalion [Annotator's Note: 15th Defense Battalion] of 90mm guns to protect the airfields the 4th Marine Division had captured. He stopped off at Ohio State University at the United States Naval Recognition School in Columbus, Ohio. He was one of six Marine officers there. He learned to identify aircraft and watercraft. He took his wife home and then went to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. He got to stay in the Palace Hotel for the first time while awaiting orders. He got orders to go to Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington] to the USS Grant [Annotator's Note: the USS U.S. Grant (AP-29)]. They had four double-decker beds. They zig-zagged [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] to Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii]. He was housed in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and it was so fun he did not want orders to go anywhere. He then got orders to the Naval Air Station and got on a C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo aircraft] for his first flight ever. He flew 2,000 miles over water to Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands]. He got on a jeep and went through the war-torn area to Dog Battery [Annotator's Note: Battery D] of 15th Base Defense Battalion. He replaced an officer who was wounded earlier.

Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr. arrived on Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands] and was met by a Marine with the first jeep he ever saw in his life. He was taken to 15th Base Defense Battalion [Annotator's Note: Battery D, 15th Defense Battalion] on Roi-Namur [Annotator's Note: Roi and Namur islands, Kwajalein Atoll]. That was the famous battle won by the 4th Marine Division [Annotator's Note: Battle of Kwajalein, 31 January to 3 February 1944], which was a turning point in the Pacific war. On his first night, the sirens went off. He went to a command post to give the orders to the men on the guns. There were four guns in a battery. The first night, Snyder had to run for the nearest bathroom, which was not a bathroom. They had rough conditions. He got through it and got through his tour of duty there. He got orders to Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Mariana Islands] via Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. The next invasion would be Tinian. It was the island to be fixed up big up to take care of the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] that could bomb the homelands in Japan. The battalion was now called the 16th Anti-aircraft Artillery Battalion. The 2nd Marines [Annotator's Note: 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division] captured the air base and Snyder set up the guns to defend the airfields. They did not go to Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945; Iwo Jima, Japan] but after it was captured, they went to the invasion of Okinawa on 1 April [Annotator's Note: Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945; Okinawa, Japan]. They loaded their guns on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. The 6th Marine Division had just captured Yontan [Annotator's Note: Yontan Airfield, Yomitan, Okinawa, Japan] and Kadina [Annotator's Note: now Kadena Air Base, Kadena and Chatan, Okinawa, Japan] airfields. His job was to protect against the kamikazes. They were at battle stations almost every day. The worst air raids against them were on 24 and 25 May [Annotator's Note: May 1945]. Prior to that, they had terrible rains and typhoon-type weather. It was terrible living. The war on land had almost halted. They got air raids during that time. On the night of the 24th [Annotator's Note: 24 May 1945], there were seven raids. Each group had seven planes. The first six planes bombed the airport. They shot down a good number. The last group came in low, almost below radar. It was a surprise, and it was the first time they attempted a crash with a twin-engine bomber that was converted to hold troops. The troops were trained as commandos to die after jumping off with explosives strapped to themselves. One plane got through. Eight men got out and destroyed 70,000 gallons of gasoline and 40 airplanes including a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. All of the Japanese were killed in the process. That was the most serious belly-landing air raid that the Japanese resorted to. He learned later that the Japanese were training to do that with 200 planes at Tinian. Snyder thought that the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] could come back again at low-level, but they never tried it again at Okinawa. On 27 and 28 May [Annotator's Note: May 1945], 156 planes came attempting to knock out the airfield. They came from one to four planes at a time in 56 raids. In the south, the Marine infantry was mopping up the land battle. The Japanese infantry in the caves all came out and kept fighting. When the war ended, it did not really end for the infantry. It was not ended for the antiaircraft guns either because the kamikazes kept coming. Snyder feels that he might have fired some of the last shots of World War 2. He does not recall when they did. Snyder did not get to go home until November [Annotator's Note: November 1945]. He went home in a troopship going through terrible typhoons. That was scarier than anything else he can remember happening. He got to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California] and went to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California]. He met his wife in Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] at Union Station. That was the end of his war story. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer backs up in the story.] Snyder and his outfit had no knowledge of the Japanese attacking using commandos before it happened. It never happened again. Most of the other aircraft were shot down. Only one made it in the Okinawa attempt.

Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr.'s wife met him in Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois after he came home from the Pacific] because she wanted to stay at the Edgewater Beach Hotel and get the best dress and best hat she could as a celebration of Snyder coming back. They returned to Allentown [Annotator's Note: Allentown, Pennsylvania], and he started planning his future. He wanted to use 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 graduate school at Harvard [Annotator's Note: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts] and the Wharton School of Business [Annotator's Note: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, also called Wharton Business School, and Wharton School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. It took a long time to get in, if ever. In the meantime, he went to work to keep busy and make money. He went to work for the Atlas Mineral Products Company in Mertztown, Pennsylvania. He used his high school mechanical drawing experience there. He was the only veteran they ever hired. He learned all about the different facets of the business. In November 1948, they sent him to Houston, Texas. Snyder was invited to the president of the company's house to have dinner.

In a battery of 120 men [Annotator's Note: Battery D, 16th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion], they had to set up their own facilities to eat and sleep in between raids. Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr. likes to remember that as an officer he was allowed one bottle of hard liquor a month. He did not drink or smoke. He saved his bottles. Someone told him the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] had one guy who would swap stuff for booze. Snyder got word and his six by six truck [Annotator's Note: two and a half ton, six by six truck, also known as deuce and a half] to him. For a bottle of scotch [Annotator's Note: type of alcohol], Snyder got a truckload of lumber to build a kitchen and put floors in the tents. Next, he swapped a bottle for a case of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Snyder handed them out to his smokers. There were 100 cartons in a case. It was for a good purpose. In the process, Snyder started smoking. He brought ten cartons home with him.

Everything Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr. learned as an officer in the Marine Corps prepared him for the rest of his life. [Annotator's Note: Snyder gets emotional.] The thing about future generations benefitting from his experience is that the military experience prepared every person honorably discharged. So many young people get the idea that by not being in the military they got cheated. Snyder earned his privileges. FDR [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] was the one who gave the horrible message of Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Roosevelt died [Annotator's Note: on 12 April 1945] while Snyder was on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. It was a shock. Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] became President at a time in history that was critical. Snyder was sweating it out with the kamikazes, and somebody was making a bomb to end the war. Truman had the guts to drop it, even with the Japanese lives lost. They dropped the bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945]. Close to where Snyder was stationed there was a reconnaissance group of planes. Snyder had the horrible chance to see the photographs of Hiroshima taken by those planes. It was unbelievable. They had no idea what good it would do, but they found out a few days later. Hirohito [Annotator's Note: Emperor Hirohito, also called Emperor Showa, Emperor of Japan] gave in to unconditional surrender. On 6 August [Annotator's Note: 6 August 1945], Snyder and his men were at battle stations. A white, Red Cross plane flew over Okinawa in September. Snyder does not recall if it was going to the Philippines or Tokyo Bay [Annotator's Note: in Tokyo, Japan].

Kenneth T. Snyder, Sr. says the reason for a museum [Annotator's Note: such as The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and why it started in the first place, is to let the people who were not there, get a glimpse of what it was like. Maybe, then prevent future conflict and war. He does not know else would the younger generation get a chance to learn that. Getting the information directly from someone who was there could give meaning to the younger generation. The war changed Snyder in ways that are hard for him to say without repeating himself. Snyder wonders how many veterans fought suicidal enemies like the kamikazes. That death was aimed at Snyder and his battalion [Annotator's Note: 16th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion]. [Annotator's Note: Snyder gets emotional and says is the first chance he has had to ever think about that.] Snyder feels he had the rare experience in Marine antiaircraft against the kamikazes and firing the last shots that ended World War 2 and possibly ending all wars. We cannot afford another war. Everybody has the same weapons. They carted 90mm guns [Annotator's Note: 90mm Gun M1/M2/M3] all over. Almost the same destruction can be done now with shoulder-launched missiles. The "Man Above" [Annotator's Note: slang for God] helped him start his life in 1920 and made him of age to be in the war. Amen.