Mervin Jensen was born in 1926 in Albert Lea, Minnesota. There were ten kids in the family. His mom and dad raised them in a small house. They kept adding onto the house. They provided for them as well as they could. It was a good family life. He was the only one out of ten children who went to college and graduated. His father came from Denmark when he was 15 years old. There is a large area that grows vegetables and he worked on that project. Then he worked for another man from Iowa working on water pipes and sewage. He traveled around to wherever the work was. Jensen was in sixth grade when his father got a job in Kahoka, Missouri. He was there to put the water and sewer system in for the town. Then he went back to Albert Lea and worked for the city. He became the head of the water department. He went where the work was [Annotator's Note: during the Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939]. They did not have extra, but they had enough. He and his two sisters were the only ones who graduated high school. The others went to school until they were old enough to work. His mother fed the family of 12 people. They paid rent to her to help pay for the expenses of food and other stuff. When he was 12 years old his sisters were 14 and 15 years old they went to work for their father in the vegetable place. They worked ten hours a day. The rows were a mile long and they crawled on their hands and knees. They ate onion all day long in the summer. They rode out there on a flatbed truck. He was not a good student and did not like school. They lived across from a seedhouse [Annotator’s Note: this is where they kept the seeds for the farmers]. He hung around there a lot. When the guy who worked there was drafted, Jensen was a sophomore. He quit school and worked there for 18 dollars a week. When he turned 18 years old he was drafted. Everyone was getting drafted. He remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. They were putting shingles on the roof because it was starting to be winter. He was 15 or 16 years old. His brother told him he would be fighting in the war. If you did not have a job that was needed for the defense [Annotator's Note: working a job considered essential for support of the war effort] you went into the service. It was necessary to keep the civilian population going. Some factory jobs stayed. They did not discuss the attack very much. His father would be out of town for weeks working. Back then they would kill two or three thousand people a year in the war. That was how war worked. He figured if he got into combat he might not make it back. He listened to the nightly news. They did not have electricity at that time. They had kerosene lights and a radio that ran on a battery. His brothers would take it into town to get it charged. He was close to his brothers.

When Mervin Jensen received his draft notice, he thought everyone else had to go so he would to. He went to Fort Snelling in Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota] where he was processed and given the choice to join the different branches. He joined the Marines Corps. He did not want to be in the Army. There were other people he knew who picked the Marine Corps. They took a train to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina] which took two or three days to get there. When they got there, they got onto large trucks like cattle cars. He had his bag with him. They went to a barracks and everyone had to strip down and get in the showers. They were going to delouse [Annotator's Note: rid a person or animal of lice and other parasitic insects] them. There were some people that had a problem with this. Then they got fatigues. It was January [Annotator's Note: January 1945] when he was there. They shaved their heads. Everyone was equal. He was not used to saying "Yes Sir" and "No Sir." He got reprimanded a few times. They went on a bivouac [Annotator's Note: a bivouac is a temporary campsite] where they went on a hike and camped in a tent. They would each have half the shelter. They would get a buddy and they put the halves together to make a tent. They were told to beat their sacks because poisonous snakes could be in there. He did have a snake in his bag one night. It was a lot of repetition. He thought that was good because once you got into battle you would just know what to do. At the shooting range they were target shooting. They had to mark their targets so the gunnery instructors could see if they hit their target. He asked them why they wanted them to do it right. The Sergeant told him it was so they would do things automatically because they would be used to it. They passed a law that anyone who was 18 could not go into combat until they had six weeks of training. He was on a troop train through the Southern United States on their way to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California]. He got sick on the ride and had to go to the sick bay. They told him he had cat fever [Annotator's Note: a respiratory infection accompanied by fever; thie term "cat fever" was used especially in the United States Navy]. They gave him something and told him he would be alright. He went back and slept the rest of the ride.

Mervin Jensen went to advanced training at Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California]. They would run up and down the mountains. They were in good physical condition. They did have a bad incident but it was to teach them how to react to warfare. They were firing live ammunition about three feet over their heads. A couple of the guys were drunk and some of them got hit. One got killed and two were injured. When they finished their training they sailed out. When he came back, he landed at the same dock he shipped out of. He was on a Landing Ship, Tank [Annotator's Note: generally referred to as an LST]. They made it to Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. They were there when Victory in Europe [Annotator's Note: VE-Day or Victory in Europe Day, 8 May 1945] happened. They had to march in a parade but did not have to stand at attention. It was so warm on the black top their shoes sank into the black top. They did not know where they were going. They thought the war was over there and now they could come over to help defeat the Japanese. They were testing the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] at the time. It was hot outside and he was glad to get out of the sun and back to his barracks. Some of the people there were there from the original attack. He knew the war was over and he was glad for that. They loaded on a ship and while aboard it was announced that the first bomb had been dropped on Japan. After that, they were told they were going to land near Yokosuka, Japan. The officers said it would take seven waves to establish a beachhead. They were in wave number two. He has no hard feelings about Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] dropping the bombs. It killed a lot of Japanese, but it also saved a lot of people. They did not have to fight anymore. A lot of people would have been killed if they had invaded Japan. Seven waves is a lot to establish a beachhead. When they got done with that they turned around. They sailed to Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. They got in their barracks there and joined the 5th Engineer Supply Depot. They were bringing everything back to Guam to their depot. None of the stuff could be brought back to the United States. He was running heavy equipment. He spent two weeks loading gas refrigerators onto a barge. They would tip them off the boat over the Mariana Trench [Annotator's Note: the Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is located in the western Pacific Ocean about 200 kilometres east of the Mariana Islands; it is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth]. They had six or seven dump trucks. They dumped stuff into the craters to get rid of them. They would light them up and burn them. They had sandbags all around the area. One night they caught fire. They jumped on bulldozers and pushed the stuff over so it would not spread. They were getting rid of these in the dump. They carried the sandbags with them in their packs. They would use them if they got pinned down and needed some form of protection. They would fill them with materials so the bullets could not come through. His job was to load the rest of them in. He backed up the crane and started to turn it and saw two mortars laying under him. He snuck off the back and went to his officer. They got the munitions people down there. They ended up being duds. They had a typhoon go through. The lieutenant did not know how they were going to protect themselves because they were in tents. Jensen suggested they use some of the leftover materials to make a makeshift shelter. They put plastic on it to make it waterproof. The typhoon hit. It did not do a lot of damage. It rained a lot. They used to go down to the beach to swim. One time he saw three octopi in the water so he no longer swam there.

Mervin Jensen was ready for discharge. They were unloading a ship that had oxygen cylinders on it. They were used for welding and cutting. They got the orders that they were ready to go home. He hooked his hook to the front of the truck and he lifted the whole truck to dump the cylinders off the back all at once. They went back to their barracks and waited around for a troopship. It took about a month. They did not have any duties. All they had to do was clean up the barracks and police the grounds. They played a lot of cards. They had movies at night. Then the USS Billy Mann [Annotator's Note: USS General W. A. Mann (AP-112)] came in. There were two big troopships. They could hold 30,000 men. They went down 13 decks. They slept in beds that went up 13 high. The beds were not big. He never got sea sick. His bed was number 13, all the way at the top. When he was up there he thought he was going to be sick. He ran all the way up to the deck, and that helped. They sailed by Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands] and the rest of the Mariana Islands. They went by where the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were tested. They landed in Yokosuka [Annotator's Note: Yokosuka, Japan]. They could see the tunnels they had for the trains. It would have been costly to fight a war there. Then they went to China. The trip over the Yellow Sea was rocky. He did not go ashore because he did not want to take all the shots for the diseases that are native there. When they got to China they were tied up in the Shanghai River [Annotator's Note: likely the Huangpu or Whangpoo River which flows through Shanghai, China]. There were families that lived on the boats. He remembers seeing a baby floating in the water in the tide. He did not get off at any place. He did not have any money. What would he do if he did get off? Some guys did get off and they got drunk. Shanghai was pretty built up at that time. Then they went to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] to pick up guys who were ready to go home. That is why they stopped in China as well. They were picking up guys who had married White Russians [Annotator's Note: a Russian subject who emigrated from the territory of former Imperial Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Russian Civil War of 1917 to 1923 and who was in opposition to the revolutionary Red Communist Russian political climate] and they brought them home with them. Okinawa was their last stop. They landed in California. His brother worked in a shipyard and knew a guy who photographed ships as they were coming in to dock in the United States. They would make the pictures up and he tried to get Jensen to sell them. When they pulled in, there was a guy selling the pictures and he bought one. He got a picture of the ship they came back on. It was one of the largest transports in the world. Once they were in California they took a train to Great Lakes Naval Station [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes in Lake County, Illinois]. They were separated from the service there. When they were on Guam [Annotator’s Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] the Navy went on strike. They were unloading stuff and then the Marines would take it up. They put all the Navy guys in the brig [Annotator's Note: a brig is a military prison aboard a United States Navy or Coast Guard vessel, or at an American naval or Marine Corps base] and they had to march all day long. The 5th Engineer Supply Depot went down to the docks. They were trying to figure out what guys could do. Jensen could run a crane but he did not know if he should volunteer because they might have put him on a wheelbarrow all day. They put him on the large crane. He started unloading the ship. He was running the crane and the captain [Annotator's Note: of the ship he was unloading] came out and brought him coffee and donuts. He was asked if he would like to join the Merchant Marine. He thought about it because he wanted to see Europe. He was told he would get an upgrade in rank. He would be a machine operator. He did not want to do it. The captain offered him the chance to sign on to his ship, but he did not do it.

Mervin Jensen wanted to get back home to civilian life. He was running up the ladder and he was pulling himself along with his arms and he hit his head on the vent system. He hurt his neck pretty bad but he decided not to go to sick bay because he did not want to stay in the service any longer. Then he took the train home. He could not get to Albert Lea [Annotator's Note: Albert Lea, Minnesota] by train. His dad had to come get him from the train station. He went back to high school. He used 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] it was a great program for him and a lot of other guys. They got their tuition and books free. They got 30 dollars a month as a stipend. He took his last two years of high school. He went to school during the day and took a full load of classes got his diploma. He then went on to University. He got a teaching degree in Physical Education and a minor in biology. He taught in Hampton, Iowa for a year or two then a job in Stillwater, Minnesota opened up and he applied for that. He wrestled at the University of Minnesota [Annotator's Note: in Minneapolis, Minnesota]. He was the captain of his team. He got an assistant coaching position for the wrestling team at the university his senior year. His coach had gotten his Doctorate degree from Boulder, Colorado. When Jensen graduated, they wanted someone with football experience but he did not have much football experience. They hired a coach from Ohio State University [Annotator’s Note: in Columbus, Ohio]. He went down to Iowa to coach because that wrestling team was a rival with Albert Lea. They were competitive. He left Stillwater to go to Brainerd [Annotator's Note: Brainerd, Minnesota]. His wife is from Brainerd. He stopped in to talk to the principal. He sent his resume and then he got hired there. He coached wrestling there. His son Bob wrestled for him. His other son Mark is a head wrestling coach now. They have the division match there. He took his team to state about ten times. He remembers when they dropped the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] because he knew the war was over. They dropped the second bomb when he was on Guam [Annotator’s Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. That was enough to make Japan surrender. He does not know what would have happened if he did not get drafted. He would not have had the money to go to school. He used 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 has a Master's degree in Education. Everyone was getting drafted and people were expected to go. If you did not work for the government you went into the service. He was impressed with the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He thinks people would enjoy it. He thinks the younger generations need to learn history. Freedom is not free. It is paid for by the people that fight for it. There should be more being taught about history. They need good teachers too.