Richard Tempus Dixon was born in June 1925 in Oakland, California. He was the second of two sons raised by his father after his parents divorced. His father settled the two boys in Long Beach, California, where he worked for the state department of public health, so they had an income during the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945]. He was 16 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Dixon was on the beach with his surfboard when he heard a paperboy call out the news. Everybody left the beach. At his father's suggestion, he dropped out of high school, and went to work at a local shipyard. In May 1943, while he was still 17, his father signed the age waiver for him to enlist into the Navy. He was sent to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California] for basic training. His father visited him while he was there. Dixon stayed in the reserves after the war and was called up for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953]. For his initial training in the Navy, Dixon was sent to Roosevelt Base on Terminal Island [Annotator's Note: Roosevelt Base or Naval Station Long Beach in Long Beach, California], and spent about 14 months awaiting orders for his ship. He was eventually assigned to the USS YR-69 [Annotator's Note: Non-Self-propelled Floating Workshop YR-69].

Richard Tempus Dixon was assigned to the USS YR-69 [Annotator's Note: non-self-propelled floating workshop YR-69, in 1944], It was basically a floating machine shop. The crew was made up of two carpenter's mates, a bunch of motor machinists, electricians, and things like that. The barge was built at Harbor Island in Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington}, and was towed down to Oakland [Annotator's Note: Oakland, California]. Once it was supplied, Dixon rode with 14 other sailors from San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to Hawaii and then to Subic Bay in the Philippines. They were running dark the whole way over, but in the Straits of Surigao [Annotator's Note: Surigao Strait, southern Philippines] they got a radio message that they should put their running lights on. Coming right for them was a parade of ships. The crew had a scare when they crossed the line of travel between a freighter and a gate vessel [Annotator's Note: a net laying ship]. They had a two-week layover at Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines] while its tug went off to free a ship that had run aground in Borneo. The barge was 91 days underway, having begun its travels right after Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died, about the middle of April [Annotator's Note: Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945]. Aside from going ashore to get mail, Dixon was on the ship during his entire service in the war. There were no women aboard, and only one nice black man who joined the crew toward the end of his tour of duty. There were a few Hispanics who were all good people. The barge was 150 feet long, and the crew got to know each other pretty well. One day, Dixon was on the fantail, naked, taking a saltwater shower, when General Quarters [Annotator's Note: a call to report to battle stations] was sounded. Dixon climbed the ladders, barefooted, to reach his position at one of the four 20mm guns [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm antiaircraft automatic cannon]. A Navy plane flew over, and radioed the barge's tug to say, those guys are really on the ball. The crew laughed about that for weeks. They did their repair work tied alongside a dry dock, the ARD-7 [Annotator's Note: the USS ARD-7; auxiliary floating dry dock], in Subic Bay [Annotator's Note: Subic Bay, Philippines]. The tug that brought them overseas was a 150 foot vessel with a 19 foot propeller. The crew figured out that the speed they traveled was five and a half knots. The journey to the Philippines was long, but the seas were calm almost all of the way.

While they were under tow, a typical day aboard the USS YR-69 [Annotator's Note: non-self-propelled floating workshop] for Richard Tempus Dixon would include three meals a day and a period on watch. The men did their own laundry. When in port, the crew worked on damaged ships to get them back in service. At Ulithi [Annotator's Note: Ulithi Atoll, Caroline Islands], in the western Carolines. A big, long tow [Annotator's Note: tow boat] came in with carriers [Annotator's Note: aircraft carriers], and they were stacked up like cordwood. When a wind blew his barge into the anchor chains of the carriers, the men aboard the carriers were shaking their fists at the men on the barge. That night the barge was anchored way out of range, and the next morning, almost all of the carriers had moved out, going to the Battle of the Coral Sea [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Coral Sea, 4 to 8 May 1942]. Dixon said it was a scary thing to see the five carriers, four or five cruisers, and probably a dozen destroyers and troop transports in the relatively small lagoon. Dixon was a carpenter's mate, and he worked mostly on LCVPs [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP; also known as the Higgins boat], whose biggest problem was that the ramps would not close properly. He agreed to help build a dock at Olongapo [Annotator's Note: Olongapo, Philippines]. When he got there, the pilings had been driven, but the deck planking had yet to be installed. They used valuable teak wood from Burma [Annotator's Note: now Myanmar], four inches thick, 14 inches wide, and 16 feet long. The work took two or three days. One night they were warned not to get out of their foxholes, but the only enemy they faced was an army of huge ants that scared the crap out of everybody. Dixon remembers a couple of Japanese attacks that lobbed shells on an emplacement near Zig-Zag Pass [Annotator's Note: nickname for Highway 7, Luzon, Philippines]. Dixon got married in June 1950 and was recalled by the Navy in August. He once again worked on a repair ship, in Sasebo, Japan under an officer he had known on Terminal Island [Annotator's Note: Terminal Island, Long Beach, California] during World War 2.

Richard Tempus Dixon's time in the Philippines was interesting. Some of the natives got hold of some hand grenades and blasted them in the bay to kill their day's catch of fish. At the time the harbor was horribly polluted because all of the waste from the ships and the town went into the water. When the war was over, one of the ships started lobbing five inch star shells [Annotator's Note: artillery used to illuminate the battlefield] to celebrate the event. Next day, everybody was over at the supply center drawing star shells to join in the pyrotechnics show. Dixon had the points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] to go home and joined the millions of military personnel on the Magic Carpet program [Annotator's Note: Operation Magic Carpet; Europe, June 1945 to February 1946; Pacific, October 1945 to September 1946] that moved them from the Pacific to the United States. The return trip took 30 days. Dixon stayed on inactive duty for a year and then joined the Navy Reserve. At the start of the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953], he was called back up immediately. From August 1950 until March or April 1953, he worked out of Sasebo, Japan. After having been through two wars, he took his discharge from the Navy. While Dixon was in the Philippines, he took some classes under the auspices of the Armed Forces Institute [Annotator's Note: United States Armed Forces Institute, 1942 to 1974]. When he got back to California, he took night classes for his high school diploma from the Long Beach School District [Annotator's Note: in Long Beach, California]. He went to work for Harbor Boats [Annotator's Note: Harbor Boat Building Company, San Pedro, California], building 40 foot pleasure craft. During a visit with his mother in Oakland [Annotator's Note: Oakland, California], Dixon met and eventually married his dentist's assistant. His stepfather gave him a job that he stayed in for about five years before he went to work for a high end cabinet shop.

Richard Tempus Dixon progressed through jobs as a building superintendent, including a time at University of California, Berkeley [Annotator's Note: Berkeley, California] and for the city of Fremont [Annotator's Note: Fremont, California] before his retirement at 63 years old in 1988. His most memorable experience from World War 2, was the long-haul tow from San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to Subic Bay [Annotator's Note: Subic Bay, Philippines]. He joined the Navy because he didn't want any part of the Army or the Marine Corps. He had a neighbor, a chief in the Navy, who said that as long as his ship did not sink, he would be guaranteed three meals a day. World War 2 made him grow up "damned fast." Today, when he looks back at his experience in World War 2, he recognizes that a lot of the training he got in the boat building industry before the war helped him get his assignment in the Navy. Dixon thinks World War 2 does not mean "a hell of a lot" to America today. He does not think people really know what went on, and laments that there are very few veterans left to tell the story.

Richard Tempus Dixon thinks institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana], which he has visited, are doing a fine job in trying to teach the public about the war. His message to future generations who hear his story is believe in yourself more than anything else.