Philip Dunford was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July 1925. He lived in Chester, Virginia when he was five years old. Inside his house was a lot of alcoholism and more, so most of his memories are from outside the house with little contact with his parents. His father worked for the state of Virginia, so the Depression did not hurt them financially, but he drank too much and lost the job. If Dunford wanted anything he had to earn it. He sold subscriptions to magazines when he was in the fourth grade. It was a lesson he learned for life. He has a Doctorate in Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary in California. He was 17 and in the 11th grade when he quit school to go in the US Marine Corps. He recalls Pearl Harbor and knows it changed his life from then on. He just had to be in it. He was ready to leave home and he felt he could do some good. He chose the Marines because it was firsthand involved in the war. Basic training was at Parris Island, South Carolina. He remembers going through the gate of the camp in a truck and having troops yell up "you'll be sorry." In just a few minutes, all of their personal identity was gone. Everything they brought with them was sent home. They looked exactly like everyone else. They were a Marine, period. It was very tough for a 17-year-old who had only ever had self-discipline. He was very glad to be a Marine and once he was out of Basic Training, he knew he was a man. He had worked at Embry-Riddle Seaplanes [Annotator's Note: now Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University] before enlisting and he was assigned to go to Jacksonville, Florida to attend aviation machinist mate's school. Dunford then went to Miami, Florida and El Centro, California to train as an aerial gunner with the .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun]. He then went aboard a ship and traveled to Ulithi [Annotator's Note: Ulithi Atoll, Caroline Islands, Micronesia] where his unit [Annotator's Note: Marine Torpedo Bombing Squadron 134 (VMTB-134)] was filling in for a squadron on Peleliu.

Philip Dunford was on a huge transport ship that was full of troops. One person had been overseas once and told him he was going to get sick. Dunford did not tell him how much of his life had already been spent on boats. That guy got seasick but Dunford did not. He was isolated on that ship for days and he did not know what he was going to do after the war. He had been married at 19 years old. He had an experience previously in Santa Ana, California, where he met a man who was with a religious group in the city called the Christian Service Organization. Dunford knew he was a good communicator and decided to become a minister. That stayed on his mind for the trip over. When he arrived on Peleliu and things settled down, a Presbyterian minister came to their spot. They became friends and the minister told him how to prepare to be both a father and a minister.

After crossing the Pacific, Philip Dunford's troop ship docked in Hawaii for a couple of days. He does not recall getting to Ulithi in 1944. He was there for one month awaiting orders and dodging kamikazes. There were still skirmishes happening on nearby Peleliu where two major operations were occurring. F4Us [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft] were attacking a ridge called Bloody Nose Ridge that was honeycombed with caves and tunnels. Dunford's unit [Annotator's Note: Marine Torpedo Bombing Squadron 134 (VMTB-134)] in the torpedo bombers was to keep the Japanese airfields torn up, destroy food crop fields, and do anti-submarine patrols to keep them isolated. Somehow, the Japanese always had ammunition to shoot back. The aircrews did glide-bombing on these runs which put them very close to the enemy. They only lost one plane. While on anti-submarine patrol they carried depth charges and they went around every day looking for the small, two-man submarines [Annotator's Note: Type A Ko-hyoteki midget submarine]. It was hard to tell the difference between a whale and a two-man submarine.

Sometime after the war, Philip Dunford spent time in Australia as a minister. He went to the capitol where he saw the first two-man submarine [Annotator's Note: Japanese Type A Ko-hyoteki midget submarine] since the war. He backed off to take a picture of it when a group of Japanese tourists came by. One of them asked him to take a picture of him standing next to the submarine. He thought to himself that if he had seen him years ago, he would have killed him. He thought then that he had to get over such thinking, but it was hard to do. He carried a small New Testament in his flight suit when he would go on a mission during the war. He got scared when he got shot at. He did not want to leave a wife and child behind. When the war ended, he immediately wanted to go home but he did not get to. He stayed for the whole Battle of Peleliu [Annotator's Note: 15 September to 27 November 1944]. His squadron [Annotator's Note: Marine Torpedo Bombing Squadron 134 (VMTB-134)] was readied to go to Japan, but was sent to China to get the Japanese out of there. He was there for a few months before going home. He says that World War 2 experiences never end. The city of Tsingtao, China was an eye-opening experience. He saw how inhumanely the Japanese had treated the Chinese. As a Presbyterian minister after the war, he traveled to Scotland several times, where he met the chief lecturer of St. Andrews University. This man's wife was from Tsingtao, and Dunford discovered that he had liberated her. They became friends and he still considers this one of the key experiences of his life.

Philip Dunford was an aerial gunner on the Avenger [Annotator's Note: Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber aircraft]. One of the things he remembers most was that there was a life raft on board for the radio man and the gunner to share. They had ten seconds to get the life raft out if they hit the water. The pilot had his own raft. He wondered if they could really do it in battle versus doing it in practice. The other memory is that they received newer planes with rockets on the wings later on. They did some training runs as firing rockets required a steeper dive than dropping bombs did. He was on a training run, heard a loud boom, felt air rushing in, and he thought they had lost a wing. The window between the radioman and the bomb bay had blown out during the dive. They never were involved in air-to-air combat as the Japanese air forces had been eliminated. He flew mostly off of Peleliu. The natives had been removed to the smaller islands. When the war finally ended, a truckload of .25 caliber Japanese riles were brought in. He saw that the bayonets had been made in the United States. He also remembers a German Lutheran missionary on an island. They talked of missionary work with this missionary. [Annotator's Note: Dunford tells a story that is somewhat hard to follow regarding this missionary and pearl diving off these islands before the war.]

Philip Dunford feels the Japanese were very capable fighters, but were also very cruel. What they did to an American body when they had a chance was awful. This bothered him for years. He could not buy a Japanese product or be behind a Japanese car in traffic. Even as a minister it was hard to get over his hatred of a people who were so especially cruel to a human body even after the person was dead. He saw this on Peleliu and it took him a while to learn how they had been conditioned into their behavior. When he later discovered what Germany had done to the Jews, is just added to that feeling regarding human nature. At the time he was on Peleliu he was not aware of the tremendous losses taking place. He was a teenager and was not knowledgeable about how the war was being fought. He was playing pinochle [Annotator's Note: a playing card game] on a cot when the war ended. He knew the war was over and how it ended but he thought they would still be there a while. It was good to know that so much of the danger to them was gone. It was disappointing to hear they were going to China, but he is glad he went. He learned a lot there and met some interesting people. He saw extreme poverty and hunger there. It got to where the men would not eat half the food on their trays so they could give the rest to the people outside who were literally starving. He spent Christmas there and it was the best one he ever had. He spent the whole day giving candy to Chinese kids, got them baths, new clothes and food. He has never forgotten a moment of it.

Philip Dunford received mail very infrequently. On Peleliu he was making plans to go to Maxton, North Carolina to a Presbyterian Junior College to finish his high school. He was told that he should first find out if his wife wanted to be preacher's wife. He waited and waited for a letter. It arrived. She was a US Marine Corps Corporal stationed in Santa Barbara, California. She replied that she had always wanted to be a minister's wife. Dunford had not known this until now. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer returns him to the war.] Leaving China was very exciting. He was bringing back a Japanese .25 caliber rifle as a souvenir. He boarded a ship and was only thinking of getting home. [Annotator's Note: He backs up in time.] Earlier in the war, on the trip from Peleliu to Tsingtao, China there was no chaplain on board the ship. Dunford asked the captain if he could hold a Sunday service and he preached his first sermon on the Yellow Sea, China.

Philip Dunford was discharged from the US Marine Corps at Camp Lejeune [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina]. He traveled from San Francisco, California to LeJeune. He asked the train conductor if he went through the town of Kimble, West Virginia and he said yes. He called his wife and told her. He realized he could not bring her into the troop sleeper and there was only one seat on the train for her. The conductor put them in the wash room and locked them in. After he was discharged they went straight to Maxton, North Carolina. He only recalls going through the gate at Lejeune and being told to sign into the Reserves by a lieutenant. He had no intention of going in to the Reserves and he is glad he did not. It would have meant he would have gone to the Korean War instead of into the Seminary. There was not a lot of celebrating going on about the end of the war. He just went back into his life with his new baby and his wife. There were a few things in New York City but there were no real celebrations. Everyone at home had sacrificed too to help win the war. When it was over, it was time to get on with life. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer changes tapes.]

After being discharged from the US Marine Corps, Philip Dunford picked up his wife and son and went to Maxton, North Carolina. He used the G.I. Bill to go to school. He had made his education plans while on Peleliu. There were so many troops doing the same thing that a program was set up to refresh them on high school courses. He passed a high school equivalency exam. He had to work in a cotton mill while going to school, so it took him seven years to finish. By 1953, he had two degrees and three children. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. His ministry is in West Point, Georgia. Dunford recalls that he knew that he had a job to do as a sergeant in the Marine Corps. His job was to keep his pilot safe and to destroy submarines to protect our soldiers. He felt the Japanese and the Germans had chosen to fight us. After the war, he wanted nothing to do with guns ever again. There was no difficult transition out of the military for him. He participated freely as a Marine, was happy he was a Marine, and just as happy to take the uniform off. One of the last things he did with his wife who was also a Marine was to go to the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. He is not positive that the war is what caused him to become a minister. He had always been a good communicator. In the service, he never would drink as a Marine. His father was an alcoholic, so he was not going to continue that. He feels that young people should still be taught about the war in school, because the full intention of the enemy was to deprive us of our way of life, and they were bent on world domination. They were also so cruel that they had to be stopped. Kids need to know that this country was 100 percent fighting this war and not just the soldiers. He thinks The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, is one of the greatest things ever.