Marvin Tyson was born in July 1925 the Bronx, New York City, New York [Annotator's Note: the Bronx is one of the five boroughs in New York, New York]. He had one brother and one sister, and he was the youngest. He grew up in New York City. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s], they had a boarder [Annotator's Note: person who receives meals while staying somewhere in return for payment or services] in their house. His father had a small dry goods business. It was a struggle. Things worked out pretty well after. He played a lot of baseball, stickball, basketball. It was not a struggle for the kids. His memories are pleasant. There was always food on the table. Tyson was watching the New York Giants and Philadelphia Eagles football game when he heard [Annotator's Note: about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was shocked. He had no idea at the time of the implications for his life. He was 18 on 6 July 1943 and he signed up for the draft. Then, in September he was called. They asked him what he wanted, and he said Navy. He spent 30 months in the Navy. He had not known what to say and he just said it. He went to Sampson, New York [Annotator's Note: Naval Training Station Sampson, Seneca Lake, New York] for his boot training. He was trained to be a quartermaster [Annotator's Note: watch assistant to Officer of the Deck and Navigator; perform ship control, navigation, and watch duties] and signalman [Annotator's Note: job that combined visual communications and lookout] combination. He was assigned to Little Creek, Virginia on a LSM or Landing Ship, Medium. He was a signalman but assigned quartermaster duties. Navy quartermasters are different from Army quartermasters [Annotator's Note: Army quartermasters supply support for soldiers in the field]. Navy quartermasters are involved in navigation of the ship. He spent his time on the bridge. Tyson did all of his training in Sampson. He was on USS LSM-270, a flat bottomed ship with six officers and 42 men. The quarters are very cramped. The bunks were three or four high. It was ocean going but it bounced around. It was a landing craft, it could hold amphibious tanks. For the invasion of Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945, Okinawa, Japan], they had three large tanks that they took ashore. He spent most of his time on the conning tower [Annotator's Note: raised platform on a ship or submarine] of the ship. He got plenty of sun damage.

Marvin Tyson was in Little Creek, Virginia [Annotator's Note: Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, now Joint Expeditionary Base-Little Creek, Virginia Beach, Virginia, July 1944] to take a practice cruise to see if he was seaworthy. They took their ship [Annotator's Note: USS LSM-270] from Virginia, through the Canal [Annotator's Note: Panama Canal, Panama], to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California], Hawaii, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, where the staging for Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Invasion of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945, Okinawa, Japan] began in earnest. He had one close friend on the ship. The whole crew was very friendly. His friend was from Albany, New York. He died soon after the war. About 1,300 ships came together for the invasion of Okinawa. It was the largest assemblage of Navy vessels in history. For the three or four days before the invasion, the bombardment of the island was deafening but thrilling. On 1 April 1945, the invasion began. Tyson believes that he pulled down the flag that sent the 1st Marine [Annotator's Note: 1st Marine Division] tanks onto the beach. The Gunto Battle [Annotator's Note: Okinawa Gunto Operations 1 April to 17 May 1945, Ryuku Islands, Japan] was their Marines. [Annotator's Note: Okinawa Gunto is the largest island.] They were the lead ship. On Okinawa, the landing craft bow opened, and the tanks drove ashore. After a while, the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] built docking areas making it easier. After the tanks unloaded, they got materials from other ships that they would take ashore. They stayed in the harbor at night and watched the kamikazes. There were suicide swimmers [Annotator's Note: Fukuryu, Japanese Special Attack Units, called "suicide divers", "kamikaze frogmen"; literal translation is "crouching dragon"] who would climb up the anchor cables. It was no picnic. They were completely darkened. One night, a Japanese plane missed their yardarm [Annotator's Note: outer extremity on a ship] by ten feet. If they had lights on, he would have hit it. Many of the planes hit ships. They could not relax and were on watch all the time. The suicide swimmers were very dangerous. They picked up a kamikaze pilot who was still alive and they took him to a cruiser for interrogation. They had him in quarters and were teasing him. He lunged at one sailor who shot him. It turned out that he was a Stanford graduate [Annotator's Note: Leland Stanford Junior University in Stanford, California]. They delivered him in a bag to the cruiser. Tyson has no idea what his thoughts were. If he went to Stanford, he spoke English, but he did not speak to them. Tyson stayed at Okinawa the whole time. He returned to the United States on a hospital ship to San Francisco [Annotator’s Note: San Francisco, California] in August [Annotator's Note: August 1945]. He had battle fatigue [Annotator's Note: post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD].

[Annotator's Note: Marvin Tyson served in the Navy aboard the USS LSM-270, the lead landing ship, for the invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945, Okinawa, Japan]. There was no resistance whatsoever when they approached the island. Despite 500,000 people living there, they saw no civilization other than a woman washing clothes in the surf occasionally. He found out later the number of civilians killed on the island. Bob Hope [Annotator's Note: Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope; American comedian, actor, singer, author; known for entertaining American military personnel serving overseas] came and had a show on the island. The battle was taking place further inland. He enjoyed seeing Hope perform. They sat in the mud, but it was great. Tyson was only ashore when the landing craft brought supplies in. He would walk around the beach. He never went into the interior of the island. He was never approached by anyone for trading souvenirs and he was not a souvenir collector. He does not recall where he was when the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped. He knew they were attacking the island in preparation for attacking Japan. The battle for Okinawa was so great, that they knew the battle for Japan would be too and they dropped the atomic bomb two months later. Tyson was ready to invade Japan. He does not recall hearing that the war was over. He mustered out quickly and was discharged in September 1946 out of Lido Beach, Queens [Annotator's Note: Lido Beach, Town of Hempstead, New York] as a Signalman 3rd Class. He gave no thought to staying in the Navy. He enjoyed serving his country but when his time was up, he was out. He did no Reserve duty either.

Marvin Tyson went to college under the G.I. Bill at New York University [Annotator's Note: in New York, New York]. He had no trouble with what is now called post traumatic stress disorder [Annotator's Note: generally referred to as PTSD]. His time out of high school before the service was wasted period of his life. Everything worked out [Annotator's Note: transitioning to civilian life]. Going through the typhoons in the Pacific [Annotator's Note: Pacific Ocean] was his most memorable experience of the war. Riding out a typhoon out in a flat bottomed boat is scary. They could not stay at anchor and had to try to get away from the heart of the typhoon. He went through three of them. Cruisers were split in half. The steel of his boat was about one quarter inch thick. During the typhoon, some were on deck because not everybody could be below. It was not easy, but they had no injuries or fatalities. The ship was not damaged either. He cannot believe it. The navigator did a tremendous job. He cannot really describe the feeling. If you do it once, you remember it and they did it three times. He was on the conning tower [Annotator's Note: raised platform on a ship or submarine] during them. He wishes his memory was better. Thirty years ago he could have described it exactly, but he can still feel it. At one time, he could not take a rocking boat without getting seasick. Once he had his sea legs, he was okay. He was lucky in that if he laid down, the seasickness disappeared. He does not regret it one bit. The whole show was good.

Marvin Tyson served because he would serve his country any time and was drafted. He doubts he would have served if not drafted. The day he was drafted, he was proud to go but he would not have volunteered. His brother was in the Army. The war changed his life in that he changed his education. He took liberal arts courses after the war. He thinks he would have gone into engineering if the war had not happened. He went into his father's business at first and then went to work on Wall Street. He would have gone to college without the G.I. Bill. The 52-20 Club [Annotator's Note: a government-funded program that paid unemployed veterans 20 dollars per week for 52 weeks] made it easier. He cannot imagine why anyone would not have used the Bill. He is proud that he served his country. The experience is something he will never forget. In tough times, he knows he went through them before. He does not regret it. He might have practiced something else if he had not gone in the Navy. As a young kid, that's it. You do what you are told. He thinks the powers that be and the way the world is going now [Annotator's Note: Tyson pauses for a moment] the United States cannot be a dominating factor in the world anymore. He is glad he served. He did his duty the best he could. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Tyson to explain what happens the first time one crosses the equator.] His head was shaved. He still has a plaque they give you. He cannot recall now if they called him a "shellback" or a "pollywog" [Annotator's Note: Line-crossing ceremony; initiation rite that commemorates a person's first crossing of the Equator]. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Tyson if he thinks The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana should continue to teach future generations about the war.] Tyson feels that people should be able to see what World War 2 was all about and how the American servicemen did their jobs. Too many lives were lost but the mission succeeded. As history goes along, it gets tougher and tougher. The war showed the strength and power of the United States. He wishes he was 18 again and go through the same experience.