Lester Caplan was born in 1924 in Baltimore, Maryland. As the son of a traveling salesman, he felt his childhood was "normal," and he was too young to fully understand the effects of the Great Depression. A senior in high school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Caplan drove with a friend to Washington D.C. on 8 December 1941, and was on the steps of the Capitol when President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] declared war. Caplan graduated in June 1942, and enrolled for a two-month course on aircraft inspection at Johns Hopkins University [Annotator's Note: in Baltimore, Maryland]. Upon completion, he took a job with the Navy Department inspecting the installation of gas tanks on bombers. All of his friends were joining the armed forces so rather than putting in for a deferment, he complied with his draft notice for the Army and was inducted at Fort Meade, Maryland in March 1943. He wanted to get into the Army Air Corps, but was sent to the 44th Infantry Division camp at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington for basic training with a field artillery battalion. Caplan was selected for ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program], and underwent orientation at the University of Utah [Annotator's Note: in Salt Lake City, Utah]. After about nine months of study in an engineering program at Wheaton College in Illinois [Annotator's Note: in Wheaton, Illinois], the program was discontinued and Caplan was sent to Camp Crowder in Niosho, Missouri to join the 529th Signal Operation Company.

At Camp Crowder [Annotator's Note: in Neosho, Missouri], Lester Caplan was originally trained as a radio repairman, but was switched to a telephone lineman program [Annotator's Note: Caplan had been assigned to the 529th Signal Operation Company at Camp Crowder]. Caplan was afraid of heights, however, and persuaded a commanding officer to change his designation back to that of a repairman. In May 1945, Caplan traveled to Camp Beale in California, then to Fort Lawton in Seattle, Washington, which was his point of departure for the Pacific. He boarded the USS Cushman K. Davis [Annotator's Note: SS Cushman K. Davis] Liberty ship [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship], and traveled through rough seas, eating Spam and getting seasick. Caplan arrived in Hawaii on 6 June 1945 and left there on the 22 June, only to return the next day due to a murder on board his ship. Once underway again, the ship passed the dateline [Annotator's Note: the International Dateline], and stopped at Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] and Ulithi [Annotator's Note: Ulithi Atoll, Caroline Islands], arriving at Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] on 24 July 1945. On Okinawa, Caplan remembers training on how to set up radio relay stations for the invasion of Japan. He never encountered any Marines or Japanese, and was only there two months when the atomic bombs were dropped. None among his unit had ever heard about such a bomb, but they learned that it created an explosion powerful enough to destroy a major city. Personally, he thought the atomic bomb was the "greatest thing imaginable." He said the Japanese were tantamount to terrorists, sending out Kamikazes to kill en masse. In later years he thought the Americans might have given the Japanese more time to respond before dropping the second bomb, but he is sure the action prevented catastrophic losses on both sides. Caplan said he must have been scared, but he adjusted; after all, the war wasn't a horrible experience for him. He noted that he "just missed" several far more dangerous situations, like going to Europe with his first infantry division [Annotator's Note: Caplan had originally been assigned to the 44th Infantry Division], or going to Okinawa earlier in the war. Though he has no clear memory of the event, he knows the soldiers celebrated V-J Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945].

After Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], Lester Caplan traveled to Busan, Korea, and was sent to the ASCOM City Signal Depot at Toksan, Korea for the remainder of his service. There were still Japanese troops hiding out in Korea, but Caplan never felt it a threat. He said it was a "wonderful assignment," and the five men in his radio relay team lived in one tent, and set up another communications tent higher up the hill. They were a "real curiosity" to the natives who had never before seen an American. The locals helped whenever they could; the teenage boys volunteered to be their houseboys, and the younger boys sat around their tents to watch their activities. Caplan said there was no stress, and while he was there, he frequented the nearby town to enjoy the spa baths, and once went on wild boar hunt. He gave no thought to being sent to Korea instead of going home, and realized that he had fared better than two of his close friends who were lost in the war. While on Okinawa, he visited a cemetery where he saw the graves of some of his classmates from Wheaton [Annotator's Note: Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois], and found it "devastating." He returned to the United States on the USS Marysville Victory [Annotator's Note: SS Marysville Victory] in February 1946. Caplan said he had no desire to stay in the service, and took his discharge as a PFC in 1946.

After being separated from the Army at Fort Meade, Maryland on 6 March 1946, Lester Caplan used the G.I. Bill to continue his education. A buddy he met at Camp Crowder [Annotator's Note: in Neosho, Missouri] introduced him to the woman he soon married, and Caplan knew he had to decide on his life's work. At the time he knew nothing about optometry, but he decided it was a medical field in which he could get an education in a reasonable amount of time. Classes were crowded because of the G.I. Bill, but because of the high attrition rate, Caplan got into Northern Illinois in September 1947, and got his doctorate in 1949. He opened his own practice in Baltimore [Annotator's Note: Baltimore, Maryland], but was not successful, and while spending some time in someone else's optometry business, his family grew to include one adopted son and one natural son. He eventually returned school for a master's degree in education. Caplan became a consultant for an optometry program in the Indian Health Service, and became known as the "Father of Indian Health Service Optometry." In 1975, the American Optometric Association named him Optometrist of the Year. Fulfilling a long-held desire, he began teaching at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Years later, he was clinic director, and co-founded the National Organization of Clinic Directors. In 2011, he was inducted into the National Optometry Hall of Fame. Caplan found his academic career very rewarding.

Lester Caplan's decision to serve in World War 2 came out of his belief that it was a legitimate war, and America was fighting for something worthwhile. He made the transition back into civilian life without difficulty, and put the war experience out of his mind. In retrospect, he thinks his most important experience from that time was meeting his future sister-in-law and her husband while he was at Camp Crowder [Annotator's Note: in Neosho, Missouri]; it led to his first marriage, his two children, and "32 quite nice and wonderful years." He is proud to have done his part, and appreciated Tom Brokaw's portrayal of his as "the greatest generation." Caplan said it was amazing to see how much was accomplished by an "unprepared" country. He feels it important for institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] to teach the lessons of the war, and applied his thinking in terms of today's international terrorists: he maintains that evil people cannot be allowed to dominate the world.