Otis Arthur Slack was born in Canton, Illinois in April 1921. He was raised by his aunt and uncle as his mother was killed when he was five months old. He was never adopted. He grew up on a big farm. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Slack how they did during the Great Depression which was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States.] His uncle was a great cattleman and had hogs and horses. He was a great farmer. They never had a lot of money but were never hungry. They did not know they were poor. He attended school in Canton. He did not graduate. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Slack where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He had been overseas in Kodiak, Alaska for about a year before the war started. He enlisted in the Army on 17 December 1939. He trained at Camp Jackson [Annotator's Note: now Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina] and then in Cheyenne, Wyoming and Mississippi. He was part of the 6th Division [Annotator's Note: 6th Infantry Division] at that time. The 37th Infantry Division had been wiped out in World War 1 but was reactivated and he was made part of that. Slack was a private. He took medical training as well as infantry training. They did not get a lot of news up in Kodiak, Alaska. They were there at a new fort [Annotator's Note: Fort Greely, though not the current Fort Greely in Fairbanks, Alaska] that was not finished when they arrived. Kodiak is a beautiful place. It is in the middle of the Japanese current [Annotator's Note: the Kuroshio Current, also called the Japan Current or the Black Stream]. They could wear light clothing in the winter and in the summer they would salmon fish.

Otis Arthur Slack [Annotator's Note: with the 37th Infantry Regiment (Separate)] was on Kodiak Island [Annotator's Note: Kodiak Island, Alaska] when Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941. They did not do anything until they attacked Dutch Harbor [Annotator's Note: Battle of Dutch Harbor, 3 to 4 June 1942, Dutch Harbor in Amaknak Island, Alaska]. They had already established themselves on Attu [Annotator's Note: Attu Island, Alaska], Kiska [Annotator's Note: Kiska Island, Alaska], and Amchitka [Annotator's Note: Amchitka Island, Alaska]. The bloodiest battle in World War 2 was fought on Attu [Annotator's Note: Battle of Attu, 11 to 30 May 1943 at Attu Island, Alaska]. The 7th Infantry Division was brought in and landed on Attu. It was supposed to be about a three-day deal. There were approximately 6,000 Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] on the island and the Americans landed with about 10,000 troops. Slack was held in the reserves. The Japanese pinned the boys down on the beaches and in the tundra. The hospital ship for the 7th was not large enough to handle all of the casualties, so his ship got some of them. They amputated arms, legs, and hands from being frozen and getting gangrene [Annotator's Note: tissue death caused by a lack of blood supply]. About 2,500 men were lost. There was a lot of hand-to-hand fighting. His commander said not to take any prisoners as there was no room for them. Slack told him he did not think the Japanese were taking any prisoners either. Slack did not go ashore. He was told that about 100 Japanese were pinned down. They all committed suicide. The Japanese were still on Kiska. They thought they were on Amchitka, where Slack and his outfit made a landing in a terrible storm. They lost their destroyer and supply boat. Slack went over the side sometime after midnight. The landing barges were hitting the ship in the high waves. You could barely see the landing barrages. Some of the boys did not make it down. They were told to get on the island, get in their sleeping bags, and stay until daylight. They stayed in their sleeping bags for three days. Fortunately, the Japs had already left for Kiska. The supply boat had beached so they could get tents. They moved everything by hand. The temperatures were a little below zero to a little above. Big equipment was brought in to clear the area. Later on, the blizzards came. He was there a couple of months. They were not prepared for the weather. When they went by Dutch Harbor, the buildings were still burning from the bombings.

In 1935, General Billy Mitchell [Annotator's Note: Brigadier General William Lendrum Mitchell] told Congress [Annotator's Note: United States Congress] that whoever controlled the Aleutian Islands and Alaska, controlled the world. The Japanese idea was to come into those islands and take Dutch Harbor [Annotator's Note: Battle of Dutch Harbor, 3 to 4 June 1942, Dutch Harbor in Amaknak Island, Alaska]. Their next move was to take Kodiak [Annotator's Note: Kodiak Island, Alaska] where Otis Arthur Slack was [Annotator's Note: with the 37th Infantry Regiment (Separate)]. The first attack worked. The second attack did not work. A williwaw, or white-out, came in and they could not get back to their carriers. Slack was involved in an air attack that lasted 17 days. They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] attacked twice a day with fighters and three bombers that came off of Kiska [Annotator's Note: Kiska Island, Alaska]. They tried to hit the supply ship but did not do well. After 17 days, P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] and some bombers came in and knocked all the Japanese out in one trip. It is the deepest water in the world there. The islands float and they could feel them move. They were told the water was so deep that anything that sinks does not hit the bottom but finds a floating equilibrium. If you fell in the water, you would die in four minutes. A lot of men were lost that way on landings. His group was prepared for winter fighting and had good equipment. They were not allowed to go out by themselves. They all carried a compass because of the white outs. They had to have a minimum of three people to travel. In the winter, it went to 50 degrees below zero. The snow would be so deep that they had to dig tunnels to get around. Slack was known as the midnight requisitioner. The only thing they had to drink was jet alcohol. He had connections and could get some. They would drink it with grapefruit juice. Slack would maneuver between the commanders who were in tents. They got some small Quonset huts [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building]. Errol Flynn [Annotator's Note: Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn, Australian-born actor who became an American citizen] came up there and got a hut. Slack was up there for two years plus.

Otis Arthur Slack was on Amchitka [Annotator's Note: Amchitka Island, Alaska] when the Japanese withdrew [Annotator's Note: from the Aleutian Islands, Alaska]. His outfit [Annotator's Note: 37th Infantry Regiment (Separate)] were the first American troops in and the last ones out. His was the first group to return to the United States. He went to Camp Fannin [Annotator's Note: in Tyler, Texas] and was made field first sergeant. Pay was frozen though. He got the troops up, fed them, trained them, and brought them back. They came back in early 1944. When Slack got out of the military, the Germans had surrendered. He got out on the point system [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home]. He was in Illinois working when the Japanese surrendered. The bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] being dropped were the greatest thing that ever happened. Each side would have lost thousands of people. After the war he returned home to Canton, Illinois. He became a policeman but did not like it and left after a year. He got his insurance and real estate broker's licenses. He took in a friend as a partner. They built a couple of subdivisions of homes. He and his wife had three children and decided to move to a larger city for a better education for them. He moved to Memphis [Annotator's Note: Memphis, Tennessee] and worked for an automobile dealership. Elvis Presley [Annotator's Note: Elvis Aaron Presley, American singer and actor] used to visit with Slack who sold him a car for his girlfriend. They became close friends. He had not made his big deal on the Ed Sullivan Show [Annotator's Note: American television's longest-running variety show] yet. Presley was one of the greatest people Slack ever met.

Otis Arthur Slack took pilot training using 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]. Beechcraft [Annotator's Note: Beechcraft Aircraft Company] in Memphis [Annotator's Note: Memphis, Tennessee] wanted a representative. He was hired and moved to Gulfport, Mississippi. After two years they wanted him to move to Louisiana and he quit. He had a friend in Mobile [Annotator's Note: Mobile, Alabama] who had a plane and had been in the military. Slack moved there and went to work as a real estate sales manager. He then went into the heavy equipment business as a salesman and ended up as a manager. He decided to retire. The current state of affairs in the world scares him. In World War 2, there was no choice. It had to be won. The other two wars were political wars, the Johnson [Annotator's Note: Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the US] war [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] and the other [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. Boys were sent and killed for no reason. North Korea and South Korea have been fighting for 10,000 years and will be for another 10,000. In World War 2, the objective was to get to the head of the source causing the problem. We do not do that today. People are being trained in the United States to fight us [Annotator's Note: Slack is referring to the training of Islamic terrorists who took part in the September 11 Attacks; series of coordinated terrorist attacks on the US, 11 September 2001]. Blow them up and get out. We [Annotator's Note: the United States] know who the bad guys are now like we did in the war. The men are being trained and sent out in groups of two or three. They can stop that mess. They allowed in the United States to train to kill us. He had lunch with a retired colonel who said the laws do not allow them to do anything about it.