Lawson T. Winslow, Junior was born February 1926 in Hardin, Montana in Little Bighorn County, where Custer [Annotator's Note: US Army Major General George Armstrong Custer] had his last stand [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Battle of the Greasy Grass or Custer's Last Stand, 25 to 26 June 1876 near Little Bighorn River, Crow Indian Reservation in Little Bighorn County, Montana]. They moved when he was two years old to Lincoln County, Montana. His father had studied agriculture in college and became the Farm Advisor. He decided to go into farming himself. He bought a ranch near the Canadian border, and Winslow lived there until he was 11. It was a great life. The Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] hit and caused them to lose the ranch. He had two brothers, two sisters, and five horses. In 1937, they moved to California. He finished school through his first semester of college there. He had no interest about what was going on the world. When Franklin Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] became president, his older brother told him about the inauguration. That is when he started following current events. In the sixth grade, he started going to a school in Eureka, Montana. He went to seventh grade in Carmel, California. They then moved to Santa Rosa [Annotator's Note: Santa Rosa, California], where he became much more aware of current events when Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] invaded Poland [Annotator's Note: German Invasion of Poland, 1 September 1939]. He was only 13. Winslow was in high school when Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. They heard about it on the car radio after church. He was now 15 and did not think about it affecting his life. A year later, he was living in Oroville, California and a Navy recruiter came by to recruit students and high school seniors into the Navy College Training Program [Annotator's Note: V-12 US Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946]. Winslow was scheduled to graduate from high school 1 July [Annotator's Note: 1 July 1942]. The next day he went to the high school and asked to be given his diploma mid-year instead and then went to Santa Rosa Junior College where he turned 17. A week later, he went to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] and signed onto the Navy Training Program. He favored the Navy from when he was very young. When he was four, he traveled by coastal steamer from Washington to San Francisco. He saw Navy ships and was impressed. When he was a Boy Scout [Annotator's Note: Boy Scouts of America, scouting and youth organization founded in 1910], he was sorry he could not become a Sea Scout [Annotator's Note: international Scouting movement with an emphasis on water-based activities]. His parents were happy to sign for him to get into the Navy. He was able to get take seven semesters at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, beginning 1 July 1943. He majored in mechanical engineering. In July 1945, he had one semester left to complete his education. The war ended and Officer Candidate Schools were closed. He was told he would go home at the end of the semester in the Naval Reserve. The people in the fleet did not like that idea, so they were given their commissions without candidate school and assigned to a ship. Winslow was assigned to a troopship [Annotator's Note: the USS Monrovia (APA-31)].

The ship Lawson T. Winslow, Jr. was assigned to [Annotator's Note: the USS Monrovia (APA-31)] had seen a lot of combat. He was sort of disappointed that he had not seen it. He was an assistant engineering officer. He was on it for eight months starting in December 1945 and left August 1946. They made trips across the Pacific. His first port after Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington] was Sasebo, Japan. He saw the destruction there [Annotator’s Note: from bombing during World War 2]. They picked up occupation troops and brought them home. The next trip was to Shanghai [Annotator's Note: Shanghai, China] taking replacement troops over. On one voyage, they took some United Nations Rehabilitation and Relief Administration civilians over. Winslow made six crossings before August [Annotator's Note: August 1946] when he was released to inactive duty. As the assistant engineering officer, he was the division officer for the auxiliary group that kept everything running. He stood watches in the engine room. He learned how the engineering plant operated. There was a lot he did not know, and he had to learn on the job. They talked mostly among themselves and not with troops they were carrying. He did talk with the UN [Annotator's Note: United Nations] personnel sometimes because they shared the same staterooms as the officers. He chatted with troops during the Korean War later [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953].

Going on deployments after the war ended, the seas could get rough. Lawson T. Winslow, Junior's lieutenant [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Monrovia (APA-31)] was concerned hearing the ship groan. Another time, they received a message that a tsunami [Annotator's Note: a long sea wave caused by an earthquake or other disturbance] was occurring. They battened the hatches but did not feel it. He enjoyed life at sea and running the ship. He finished his last cruise in 1946. He attended the University of California, Berkeley [Annotator's Note: in Berkeley, California] for one year 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]. He never got his degree. In his final semester, recruiting teams came around. He accepted an offer from Standard Oil Company, now called Chevron, as an engineer. He decided to go to work instead of getting his degree. He started that work in June 1947. He was separated from active duty in the Navy. He stayed in the Naval Reserve until retiring from it in 1969 or 1970. For Standard Oil, he was a maintenance and design engineer in Richmond, California. He stayed with that until he got notice in 1950 [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He was already attending Naval Reserve meetings and going on cruises as an active Reservist. When North Korea invaded South Korea, he hoped the Navy would call him back in, but did not volunteer to go. In January 1951, he was to report to active duty on his birthday, 26 February 1951. He was assigned to the USS John A. Bole (DD-755). He reported for duty, got his shots, and was told to await orders to the ship. He boarded 26 March 1951 in Sasebo, Japan. He was the main propulsion assistant as the Division Officer. They did not stand watches in the engine room of destroyers. He stood watch in the combat information center where the radars are. In August [Annotator's Note: August 1951], he became the engineering officer of the ship. They operated in the Formosa Strait [Annotator's Note: now called Taiwan Strait; separates Taiwan and continental Asia] Patrol, keeping track of traffic between Taiwan and the mainland. They were keeping the Nationalists [Annotator's Note: the Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist Party on Taiwan] from invading China, and the Chinese from invading Taiwan for a couple of weeks. They then went to Korea and provided screening duties for Task Force 77 or for accompanying ships onto the North Korean coast for shore bombardment. He came back to the US on 2 July 1951 for training, home leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], and machinery overhaul and repairs. In January [Annotator's Note: January 1952], they went back out. They returned the following July [Annotator's Note: July 1952]. Before departing to go back again in February 1953, he was released from active duty and went back to work.

There was no doubt in Lawson T. Winslow, Junior's [Annotator's Note: a Naval Reservist aboard the USS John A. Bole (DD-755) serving in the Korean War] mind that North Korea invaded the South [Annotator's Note: South Korea, causing the Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He felt very strongly that they should not be able to get away with it and he was happy to be a part of the operation there. He enjoyed his destroyer duty. His second year of duty, he stood bridge watch. He likes the sea and likes to look at the water. In rough seas, he enjoyed the related activities unless he was trying to sleep or eat. His ship was small with a crew of about 300. The camaraderie was nice. He would not have wanted to be on land in Korea. He had a nice warm bed and good food every day. He had gone over to Japan on a troopship. He talked with a young soldier who was going to be glad to get on shore. Winslow told him that he was glad he was on a ship and not in a land war. They had one case where a destroyer had taken a torpedo. At other times, they were looking for submarines. At times they detected them, and he found that exciting. There were other personnel who had been in World War 2. He was 25 and 26 while on board and was older than most of the men. Most of the stories Winslow heard were on the troopship by men who had been on the landing craft going on the beaches during World War 2. One guy had been on an aircraft carrier that had been sunk. Another had been on a destroyer that was shot up. They were without communications equipment when they went into port. They noticed the ships had their flags at half-mast and thought they were being honored. They were signaled then that President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] had died. While Winslow was at the University of Texas [Annotator's Note: University of Texas at Austin in Austin, Texas], he followed his brother's stories. He was a gunner in a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] in Europe. The planes his brother was flying to Europe were having difficulty finding Greenland. They could hear planes going down over their radios. His brother's crew had thrown a lot of equipment out of the plane to conserve fuel. His brother flew 32 missions over Europe. Another friend had been in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. Winslow's personal experience of World War 2 was through his friends who were writing to him.

Lawson T. Winslow, Junior really enjoyed the Navy and would have been happy if they told him he had to stay on another year [Annotator's Note: after the end of the Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He wanted to get married and raise a family. He did not like the idea of being away for six months at a time [Annotator's Note: while on duty at sea]. After he got married, he enjoyed the training cruises he went on [Annotator's Note: as a member of the Naval Reserves], but those were only for two weeks. He returned to work at the Standard Oil Company [Annotator's Note: now Chevron Corporation] and continued in the Reserves until he was retired in 1970. He was no longer active, but got paid retirement when he reached age 60. Winslow went back to Richmond, California after the Korean War. He was married. In 1959, he was transferred to El Paso, Texas for seven years. He then got an opportunity to go to Iran to the Abadan Refinery [Annotator's Note: in Abadan, Iran], which at the time was the largest in the world. In the mid-1960s, he volunteered for a two-year assignment there. They moved there in January 1966. After two years, an opening appeared in Tehran [Annotator's Note: Tehran, Iran] at headquarters. He and his wife liked the idea, and they went there for nine years. He was coordinating activities between the oil fields and engineering concerns and suppliers. He traveled a lot. The Iranians started getting restless in 1976. In 1973, oil prices went up a lot. The expansion of facilities increased a lot too. Traffic became bad, foreigners were paying a lot for housing that made it difficult for the locals to get housing. Foreigners were no longer as popular was they were when they first got there. In 1976, he and his wife decided to leave and went to England for three years. He was still working for Iran on loan from Chevron. The Shah [Annotators' Note: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi or Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Shah (Emperor) of Iran, 1941-1979] was removed from office. The Ayatollah [Annotator's Note: Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, also called Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian political and religious leader, supreme leader of Iran, 1979 to 1989] took over. Winslow stayed on in England, but never went back to Iran. From there, he went to Saudi Arabia for two years. He retired then. He has now been retired longer than he worked.

When Lawson T. Winslow, Junior [Annotator's Note: an engineer on loan to the government of Iran from Standard Oil Company, later Chevron Corporation] and his wife arrived in Iran, there were no traffic jams and people were happy to see them. They [Annotator's Note: the Iranians] became restless when oil prices went up, living conditions began to get worse, and more foreigners came into the country. The people he did not work with, were no longer friendly. He enjoyed the people he worked with on staff. They were a great group. That continued even after conditions were getting worse. A lot of that was due to Khomeini [Annotator's Note: Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, also called Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian political and religious leader, supreme leader of Iran, 1979 to 1989] sending in tapes to the mosques. He was stirring up the population against the government and foreigners. Winslow was spat on through his open car window once. It was no fun anymore. His work was still good. He disliked having to leave the job. By the time he left, their children had gone to college. He took a position in London [Annotator's Note: London, England] for three years. Winslow traveled back and forth to Iran for that time until the last six months when the Shah [Annotators' Note: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi or Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Shah (Emperor) of Iran, 1941-1979] was deposed. Americans were not welcome after the Ayatollah took over. When Winslow left Iranian airspace for the last time, he felt relief. There were strikes happening. When he had gone in that last trip, they were going to southern Iran and there were strikes. They had to land in Baghdad [Annotator's Note: Baghdad, Iraq] to get fuel because they could not get it in Iran. They flew to Tehran [Annotator's Note: Tehran, Iran] and changed planes to back to London. It felt good to get out of the country.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Lawson T. Winslow, Junior, an engineer working for Standard Oil Company (later Chevron Corporation), how his work in the oil industry in Iran was affected by the Yom Kippur War, also called Ramadan War, October War, 1973 Arab-Israeli War, 6 to 25 October 1973.] Officially, the Shah [Annotators' Note: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi or Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Shah (Emperor) of Iran, 1941-1979] was an ally of Israel. Winslow had friends in Saudi Arabia who were on the other side. Even though the Saudis did not engage in the wars [Annotator's Note: with Israel], they were in favor of the Palestinians. The Shah was pro-Israel. Israel got its oil from Iran in those days. In the US, gasoline became hard to get. People who had to drive cars sometimes had to wait for hours to get gas. Iran was helping get oil to the West [Annotator's Note: the Western nations of the world]. Winslow was building new facilities in Iran then. They would order machinery that had to come all the way around Africa because the Suez Canal [Annotator's Note: in Egypt] was closed. When oil prices went up, they started expanding rapidly. The equipment was coming into southern Iran and there were no facilities to unload the ships. There were a lot of things they just could not get. That is how that war affected them. They were also busy because they were shipping out as much oil as they could. Iran was an ally, but the people were not. They did not feel the same about Israel as the Shah did. They favored the other side – Egypt or Palestine. A lot of Winslow's Iranian colleagues left when the Ayatollah [Annotator's Note: Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, also called Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian political and religious leader, supreme leader of Iran, 1979 to 1989] took over. Some of the people Winslow worked with were devout Muslims and admired the Ayatollah. They did not like the Shah's secret police activities. [Annotator's Note: They take a break to get water from 1:00:31.000 to 1:01:52.000.] Some of the college graduates were pleased to see the Ayatollah take over. He does not know how they felt later with how things went. He had other friends who were very upset and left the country. He has had telephone conversations with friends in Tehran, but they cannot say a lot. He met up with some on vacation in London [Annotator's Note: London, England] and they were not happy. Other acquaintances have told him how terrible it was. There are some who are thriving and some he knew got good jobs but then left anyway. Winslow knew that some of the people he worked with did not like the Shah's support of Israel by the conversations they had amongst themselves. They would not tell Americans if they were anti-Shah. One colleague told him later, that he would never have told him about his feelings because he did not know who Winslow would tell. They are still friends. Some Iranian colleagues had to leave the country, or they might have been executed. One of them passed away a few months ago [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. Winslow did not know of his situation until he read a book the man's daughter wrote about it. He had been working closely with foreign employees and supported having them there. He was Winslow's boss. The Iranians did not talk to him about Israel as a country. Later they would. Most were not anti-Israel but were anti-Shah. One man he knew who was very devout [Annotator's Note: in his Muslim faith] got a job with the new government but left about a year later. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Winslow if he attributes any of these issues to the post-World War 2 world.] After having read the book [Annotator's Note: mentioned previously], yes. Before this, he was not aware of the American occupation of Iran to run a railroad to supply the Soviets. On the other hand, Winslow met some Iranians who had worked on that, and they enjoyed their relationship with the Americans working on it. Overall, they did not like the idea. The Shah's father had been pro-Germany. The bulk of the Iranians did not like the Americans coming in.

Lawson T. Winslow, Junior's most memorable experience of World War 2 was hearing about the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. It was not particularly enjoyable, and he was a bit disappointed. He had wanted to be on a Navy ship during the war, but that stopped that. His group bought the newspaper every day to keep up with the progress of the war. His big incentive to serve was the college education, but he always like the idea of being in the Navy. When Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], he was only 15 but had hoped to participate. He was not concerned that anything was going to happen to him. The war got him a good education at an early time of his life. At a very young age, he was employed as an engineer. It also affected his outlook on life, but he is not sure in what way. He is proud to have served. Military service teaches discipline and camaraderie. The Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] that followed helped him develop as well. World War 2 veterans have been called The Greatest Generation [Annotator's Note: the term The Greatest Generation refers to the generation in the United States that came of age during the Great Depression and later fought in World War 2 and is derived from the book The Greatest Generation by American network television journalist and author Tom Brokaw]. It was a period to be proud of. The nation pulled together. Winslow feels his generation's parents should really be called the greatest generation as they were willing to send their children to such a horrible war. He only knows two friends who lost their lives. There is an expression today, "Thank you for your service." Nobody ever said that during World War 2. They asked, "What outfit were you in?". You could not thank someone for their service when you served too. It was entirely different from now. The museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and the history is extremely important, as is this program of getting these memoirs. His brother flew so many missions [Annotator's Note: as a gunner on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber in Europe]. People should be aware of what the nation went through. It shows that there was a good feeling that everybody was pulling their share. He was on a train in Navy uniform while he was attending school. An elderly woman insisted that he take her seat as he was standing. He told her he was just a student and not fighting, but she insisted. He fell asleep. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks permission to ask Winslow a personal question about the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt during the Yom Kippur Warr, also called Ramadan War, October War, 1973 Arab-Israeli War, 6 to 25 October 1973.] Winslow followed it quite closely. Israel occupied the Sinai [Annotator's Note: Sinai Peninsula, Egypt]. Carter [Annotator's Note: James Earl Carter Jr., 39th President of the US, 1977-1981; Georgia State Senator, 1963-1967; 76th Governor of Georgia, 1971-1975; Nobel Peace Prize winner, 2002] arranged the final peace agreement between Begin [Annotator's Note: Menachem Begin, 1913-1992, leader of the Irgun paramilitary group, sixth Prime Minister of Israel] and the Egyptian president [Annotator's Note: Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat, president of Egypt, October 1970 to October 1981]. Before this, Israel got two bodies that had been buried in Egypt in exchange for live terrorists. Winslow vaguely remembers hearing about it, but it might have been recently [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. The bodies brought from Egypt were people who had assassinated a British Prime Minister in 1944. Winslow did not know that. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer explains that Lord Moyne, Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, was assassinated by an extremist Jewish group, the Lehi or the Stern Gang on 29 May 1948.] Winslow and the others working in the area at the time, would not have heard anything Americans did not hear back home.