Everybody was scraping by during the Great Depression. Martin Brignac and his family made out with what they had. They received a certain number of commodities. He and his sister did a lot of cooking and made things work. He planted a small garden. A man next door would give them some of his vegetables. He quit school and went to work after his mother suffered a ruptured appendix. He went to work the next day as he got a job the same day he quit. A contractor he knew gave him the job due to his family situation. In six months' time, Brignac was doing all of the carpentry work. He was a fast learner. Brignac was in the coast artillery at Fort Worden, Washington [Annotator's Note: Fort Worden, Port Townsend, Washington, 1902 to 1953] when he heard of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The guns they had there were really obsolete but all along Puget Sound, Washington they were on alert for a Japanese attack. He was assigned to Battery E, 14th Coast Artillery Regiment (Harbor Defense) (Type A), that had mortar batteries that would shoot into Puget Sound. They were pretty accurate with them but thankfully they did not need them. He then switched to antiaircraft guns. Around early 1944, he went overseas to an aviation engineer battalion [Annotator's Note: 1892nd Engineer Aviation Battalion].

Martin Brignac was born in November 1921 in Lutcher, Louisiana. He only lived there the first year and then moved to Baton Rouge. His father was a machinist for the railroad. His father was going to see a doctor in Mississippi when he was killed in a car accident in 1928. [Annotator's Note: Brignac gets emotional.] Brignac was seven years old. He did everything he could to help his mother from then on. When he was 13 years old, he had mostly taught himself to be a carpenter. He was asked to build a house for some people. His mother's appendix ruptured, and she needed an operation. There was no money coming in, so Brignac quit school to go to work and help the family. His father had left his carpenter tools and Brignac figured out how to use them. By the time he was 14 he could read anything on a framing square so he built a house. He then learned every job there was to do like millwork, plumbing, machine work, electrical and even sewing. He had even seen a washing machine made out of wood once. When he was in the service on an island near New Guinea he built one for an officer.

Martin Brignac went into the service on 5 June 1941 and went to Camp Callan, California for basic training. Most were given a choice of infantry or field artillery. Brignac took the third choice of coast artillery, given to those who had volunteered for service. He had volunteered for one year, so he could get his time in and then be able to go back to work. He had been unable to work because he was draft eligible. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changed things. He was due to come home for Christmas in December 1941, but he did not get to until December 1942. It was part of what he had to do. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he thought he would not get to celebrate Christmas again until 1945. He was close to being correct. He had the required time in the service, but it was all stateside time. Overseas time counted higher and those men were discharged first. Around the end of January 1946, he was sent to Fort Hood, Texas and discharged. His initial duty was a gun operator in the Coastal Artillery. They would rotate positions depending upon who was available at the time. As soon as Pearl Harbor happened, they would be setting up outposts in case of Japanese attack all up and down the West Coast of the United States. They set up artillery around airports too. There was concern that the Japanese might use poison gas, so the plotting rooms for guns were designed to be closed off in the event of gas attacks. Brignac was sent on a detail to seal these rooms up as well as the sleeping quarters for the men. None of the men who had gone through Camp Callan had any kind of infantry style basic training. Brignac was chosen to build an obstacle course for them. He and a pilot designed the course as well.

Martin Brignac had no idea of what the Japanese were going to do along the coast. They had to try and do anything they could do to defend against the Japanese. He and his outfit [Annotator's Note: Battery E, 14th Coast Artillery Regiment (Harbor Defense) (Type A)] went up and down the coast looking for the most likely spots for landing an invasion. They would then set up artillery and machine guns there and camouflage them. He figured that when he went to Spokane, Washington to form an aviation engineer battalion [Annotator's Note: 1892nd Engineer Aviation Battalion], it meant he would go overseas. He just had no idea where or when. The Battle of the Coral Sea [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Coral Sea, 4 to 8 May 1942; first engagement between aircraft carriers] determined a lot. As soon as New Guinea was cleared, he was on his way over. He landed and started building an airfield in order to help get the Philippines back. He knew they were not even going to need the airstrip because the Japanese were already pulling out of the Philippines. He traveled aboard a boat to New Guinea and then by LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] from there to Ie-Shima, Japan [Annotator's Note: 22 June 1945]. On Ie-Shima, he was to help build an airstrip for B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] to fly to Tokyo, Japan and back. He also began building a strip on Okinawa.

Martin Brignac was building an airfield on New Guinea. The work was mostly just leveling the land. On Ie-Shima, Japan, there were giant holes that had to be filled with coral. The island was not very wide, so the airstrip was built on a slant so that an air draft would help lift the aircraft off the ground. The B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] needed about a mile and a quarter of runway when fully loaded. The island was only about a mile long, so the slant was necessary. When they were building the airstrip on Okinawa, the atomic bombs were dropped just as they were finishing it up. Two Japanese aircraft were sent there with three officers, a pilot and copilot and landed right in front of Brignac. He used to have pictures of each of those planes. Brignac felt that we should have dropped about ten atomic bombs on Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese did not worry about us at Pearl Harbor and he did not worry about them now. He thought we should just blow the island to pieces. The Japanese had no mercy on us whatsoever. He felt that if we had to take that island man-to-man, every single person could have used sharpened bamboo to hurt soldiers. The Japanese were already training to do that. Of course, he had no control over that. [Annotator's Note: Brignac says that he was "just talking" and laughs.]

When Japan surrendered, Martin Brignac was on Ie-Shima working on an airstrip. He and another man decided to build a wooden refrigerator. They were not making any headway and they wanted to make ice cream. Brignac decided to keep it running until the ice cream was frozen and everybody was served before giving up on it. He was anxious to get back home. Back when he was going through the processes of going overseas he found an extra pistol and an extra rifle that had not been charged to their division. The officer that had the pistol wanted Brignac to ship it to him after the war. Brignac decided that it was still government property and left it alone. He did bring back a Japanese rifle. He tried to convert it into a shotgun but someone stole it. He had only gone in the service for the basic training and he had a girl at home he wanted to marry so he decided not to stay in. They were married in 1946.

Martin Brignac had no trouble adjusting to civilian life. He and his brother went into the carpentry business. They did not get along very well, so they closed it up. He then went to work and improved his working habits. The company he worked for included doing fine woodwork on the governor's mansion, Piccadilly Cafeteria in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and another big job. His boss had him working building beams and arches for churches. He took him from there and put him in the cabinet shop and vice versa. Brignac made a washing machine in the Pacific that was really appreciated by the men. He would do whatever he needed to do that would help. He had enlisted to serve for work, as he had not known of the war other than possibly Europe. He knew we needed defenses here regardless and he chose coast artillery to stay here. Where he was at Puget Sound, Washington, there were two large aircraft factories, including Boeing, that needed protection. Even the Germans could have attacked up there.

Martin Brignac does not know how the war would have changed his life unless he had stayed working as a contractor instead of enlisting. The man that he had been working for would not have had to shy off work for not being able to get workers. All of the eligible young guys were not hired because they could be easily called away. Brignac put up with that through 1940 and then decided to get his year of service out of the way and get back to work. But the war broke out. He did not begrudge one minute of his time in the service time. He was doing his duty for the country and for the people. He did feel that he was lucky that he was never in really bad danger except for Iwo Jima when the base would be attacked. He would just run and jump in his foxhole to stay out of the shrapnel. The war put America in a position of telling the rest of the world not to fool with us. Do not interrupt our way of life. He talks of getting his poem book and reading a poem he wrote about 9-11 [Annotator's Note: the 11 September 2001 attacksby al-Qaeda against the United States]. Brignac thinks The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is very important, and the servicemen should be recognized. The history of the war should be taught to the younger generations. Somebody has to defend our country. There is no telling how many times this will happen. We cannot sit out of war forever. He feels that the North African war [Annotator's Note: the Iraq War, 2003 to 2011] should have never started. The man [Annotator’s Note: Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, fifth President of Iraq, 1979 to 2003] there had everything in control and we went in because of something he said. America spent millions and billions of dollars to accomplish nothing. It is where it was a long time ago. The Shiites [Annotator's Note: adherents of the Shia branch of Islam] and the Muslims have been fighting since the beginning of time. We should have kept our nose out of it. They got rid of him [Annotator's Note: Hussein] and the different kind of government, Democratic government, did not work. They are in the same condition they were in the beginning. Hussein had full control of that country.