Nolan Albarado was born in June 1917 in Grand Bayou, Louisiana. He was very young during the Great Depression and life was rough. Being in the country, his family had a garden, chickens and more. They did not have money, but they had plenty to eat. His father worked at the WPA port but not very often. [Annotator's Note: The WPA or Works Progress Administration, later the Work Projects Administration, was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agency that employed millions of job-seekers to carry out public works projects.] Albarado worked as a log cutter for a sawmill on a plantation. They made crossties for the narrow-gauge trains that hauled sugar cane to the mill. He also worked in the mill during the grinding times. His family raised some hogs for food. He would receive a dollar a cord for wood, eight feet long and four feet high. Albarado was selected for service, which at the time meant that all men age 21 had to spend one year in the military. He ended up spending four years and four months due to the war. He was inducted at Camp Livingston, Louisiana. He received his uniforms at Camp Shelby, Mississippi and then went to San Diego, California for basic training. When he arrived, a news reporter asked him what he thought of it all. He answered that he arrived on Friday the 13th, to barracks 1300, 13 miles from town and even gunners were 13 men to the gun. A couple of days later he received a check for five dollars which he called a lucky check.

Nolan Albarado went to basic training in San Diego, California. From there his unit [Annotator's Note: 133rd Antiaircraft Artillery Gun Battalion (Mobile), 97th Coast Artillery Regiment, 97th Antiaircraft Artillery Group] went to Honolulu, Hawaii to train on guns. Some cooks were AWOL [Annotator's Note: Absent WithOut Leave] and the First Sergeant asked if Albarado would cook him breakfast. The Sergeant liked it so much, he asked Albarado to be the cook for the outfit. He then went to school to be a cook. On the morning of 7 December 1941, he was at the bakery shop changing some of the ovens. He was going across the field when the Japanese came in strafing them. He thought it was maneuvers at first between the red and blue armies. He thought the Japanese insignia meant they were the red army. He ran into the bakery shop and the officer in charge did not know what was happening either and he sent them to work. They next day they went to build a field oven by the mountains. Albarado patrolled the pineapple fields with machine guns and later was stationed with guns atop buildings in Honolulu. There was no more action though. He returned to his outfit at Fort Kamehameha. They removed the guns off of the USS California (BB-44) and mounted them at the end of the harbor. They were cooking out of a tent. When the unit found out the US Navy had better food, the soldiers started sneaking over to get food. His officers gave their ration money to the Navy officers and Albarado had to go cook for the Navy. He did that until he returned home.

Nolan Albarado was in the Army but was cooking for the Navy in Hawaii. He returned home to the United States in 1943 and got married. He then transferred to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer backs up Albarado to Pearl Harbor.] Albarado was assigned to the 97th Coast Artillery Regiment, 97th Antiaircraft Artillery Group and was living in Schofield Barracks when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He had been trained on five inch guns. When he returned he was training on 90mm guns. He did not stay long on the five inch guns because he was assigned to be a cook and attended cooking and baking school. On 6 December 1941, he had given a Christmas card to a friend to mail to his fiancé for him. He still has the card because of the attack on 7 December [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941]. The cooks had two shifts, dinner and then breakfast and lunch, they worked one day and one day off. On days off they could go into Honolulu or the USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] shows. At one show they had hula dancers and when they asked for volunteers, they grabbed Albarado and taught him the hula. He went to a movie afterwards and saw a newsreel that showed the men enjoying themselves in Honolulu and he really hoped it did not get shown in the United States. He had also attended USO shows in San Diego while in training. He has a picture of Marlene Dietrich [Annotator's Note: Marie Magdalene Marlene Dietrich (1901 to 1992), was a German-American actress and singer] and others.

Nolan Albarado had no idea of the tensions between the United States and Japan as he was focused on the war in Europe. A good friend of his had been killed when the Germans shelled a ship, the USS Falgout (DE-324), that they claimed was an accident. He was at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii before the Japanese attacked. He believes a fellow operating the radar pointed out aircraft coming in but was told to go back to sleep. He said there were too many parties going on at night. Albarado was going to work and crossing a field when the Japanese came down strafing him and another soldier. He could see the Japanese insignia and the pilot. He thought the pilot was laughing. The two aircraft caused quite a bit of damage. They dropped a bomb on a building there but that was all that came over them that day. There were false alarms at night causing them to jump into trenches that had been dug to bury the dead soldiers. They had no ammunition to fight with. They had been told that paratroopers had dropped in the graveyard, which is where Albarado was. They also thought they smelled gas and were getting gas masks out of tin cans using bayonets. The next day after the attack they were ordered back to work. Albarado did not get to see much of the damage but he could see the planes and hangars on fire at Wheeler Field [Annotator's Note: Wheeler Army Airfield, Honolulu, Hawaii]. He stayed on duty in Pearl Harbor until April 1943. He came home and got married and then went to Europe.

Nolan Albarado survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and remained in Hawaii until 1943. He returned to the United States and was assigned to the 133rd Coast Artillery Antiaircraft [Annotator's Note: 133rd Antiaircraft Artillery Gun Battalion (Mobile)] and went to Europe in August 1944. He went all through France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany after landing in England. He entered France through Omaha Beach, Normandy after D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. They stayed on the beach at Sainte-Mère-Église, France for a few days. He was at the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: defensive wall built by Germany in the 1930s] at Cherbourg, France when the unit was called back to cover the airstrip by the Rhine River. After the Allies had crossed the river, Albarado's unit did as well. They were headed into Austria when the war ended. They had landed between Bad Aibling and Munich, Germany at the end and he returned home using the point system. Because Pearl Harbor was not considered a battle, he lacked about three points to be able to fly back. He did not want to fly back anyway. He had a friend at Camp Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of several temporary staging camps named after popular cigarette brands of the day; Camp Lucky Strike was located between Cany and Saint-Valery, France] with him who was going by ship but ended up flying back. They met up in the United States and traveled to New York. Albarado was discharged at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.

Nolan Albarado was not on the front lines because he was assigned to artillery units. The 9th Air Force needed them to be around them and their aircraft for defensive reasons. They swung from one outfit to another. They were with Third Army at the Siegfried Line [Annotator's Note: defensive wall built by Germany in the 1930s]. They were not there long before being called back to the Rhine River. At Cherbourg, France there were bayonets coming out of the ground from World War 1 at something like a little museum. He would not trade the experience he had for "no money in the world" but he also would not want to do it again for "no money in the world." He had no real close calls with being bombed or shelled. At Sainte-Mère-Église, France, and Saint-Lô, France, he could see tracers coming over but was not engaged. There was another point where there was an island with Germans, but they mostly left them alone. He cooked and baked for the unit [Annotator's Note: 133rd Antiaircraft Artillery Gun Battalion (Mobile)] when he could. When he could not, he took them C rations. A colonel he knows travels to Europe and tells him that it is nice to be there and not have to eat C rations.

Nolan Albarado was in a tent in Rennes, France on Christmas Eve 1944. He volunteered to bake cakes for his company [Annotator's Note: Albarado was a member of the 133rd Antiaircraft Artillery Gun Battalion (Mobile)]. The guards volunteered for KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police]. A storm blew the cooking tent down so Albarado and another guy stood in the storm and held the tent up until it could be repaired. The next morning, they had cakes and pies for the men to eat and they really enjoyed it. Albarado guesses that the war changed his life because he missed a lot of his young days. When he was in Rennes, France there was a champagne underground. He got a bottle to bring home which he tied up in long underwear in his duffle bag. When he returned home and returned the excess clothes, he unwrapped it. He was told it was against the rules to have it. The person with him called the sergeant who also said he cannot have it. He told them that if he cannot have it, then nobody can. The sergeant called the officer in charge who asked him if he was causing trouble. He told the officer that he had made a promise that if he could get back home, then he would share that bottle with his family. The officer told him he would do the same thing if he were him, and let the bottle go through. Albarado drank it with his family. Albarado feels that the war changed America, the economy improved. It also changed him from a country person to a city person. At first, it was a good thing, but Vietnam, Korea and Iraq show that has changed. They still want to fight. He thought World War 2 would be the one and only. He thinks The National WWII Museum is a nice thing to have to teach the history of the war. His grandson knows about Pearl Harbor and World War 2 from school.