Robert J. "Bob" Brasel was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1923. They had a side yard and, in the summer of 1936, when it got to be 113 [Annotator's Note: degrees], the kids in the neighborhood would come over and they would sleep on the ground. He had one sister and one brother. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], his father worked in a laundry. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the tape at 0:02:23.000 and Brasel begins mid-sentence talking about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] Somebody complained about the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] that was dropped later, but it evened it up. Brasel did not know where Pearl Harbor was. He tried to join Naval Aviation and the Army Air Forces but was rejected. The Navy would not take him because he had a missing tooth. He said then that they could just come get him and they did. He was drafted into the Army and went to Fort Sill [Annotator's Note: in Lawton, Oklahoma]. From there he went to Camp Haan [Annotator's Note: near Riverside, California]. He was in a brand-new battalion, the 389th Antiaircraft Artillery [Annotator's Note: 389th Antiaircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Battalion]. Some of basic training was ridiculous but he did what he was told.

After basic training, Robert J. "Bob" Brasel went to Camp Irwin [Annotator's Note: now Fort Irwin in San Bernardino County, California] and spent a lot of time. It was hot. He was assigned to the 389th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion [Annotator's Note: 1st Platoon, Battery C, 389th Antiaircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Battalion]. He went to New Guinea. They had two meals a day on the ship over and it was a long trip. They trained more there. He was involved in the invasion of Morotai [Annotator's Note: Battle of Morotai, 15 September 1944 to 4 October 1944 at Morotai, Indonesia]. From there, he went to the Philippines. They were there when the bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] was dropped. Brasel's job was on the gun crew as a generator assistant providing electricity to the gun. He later became a range setter. He advanced to sergeant. He was on a 40mm antiaircraft gun [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon] and an M51 quad-50 machine gun [Annotator's Note: a mounted, four-gun configuration of the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun]. They targeted anything that got in front of them that needed it. They shot down some Japanese planes. They hit one in the early morning and saw the projectile explode. They did not credit for it though. Somebody sitting at a desk took the reports and made the decisions. It was all politics. They even would fake reports and made it so that each gun got a half credit for a kill. It was hot and humid and rained every day in New Guinea. In the mornings the roads would be mud and by afternoon they would be dust. Brasel got dengue fever [Annotator's Note: mosquito-borne tropical disease] and was hospitalized for a week. He rejoined his unit before they left for Morotai and then to the Philippines. He was in the Philippines when the war ended. He did not think about much when the bombs were dropped. He did not know what they were. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] did not even know.

[Annotator's Note: Robert J. "Bob" Brasel asks the interviewer if he can read from a paper he is holding.] Brasel started his career at Fort Sill [Annotator's Note: in Lawton, Oklahoma] on 14 January 1943. He stayed there for a week or so then got on a train to Riverside, California to Camp Haan [Annotator's Note: near Riverside, California]. Brasel was surprised by how many of the people from North Carolina could not read or write. Many of them knew how to make white lightning [Annotator's Note: slang for moonshine, a once-illegal alcoholic beverage]. A clerk set up a school to teach them how to write their names so they could get paid. The 389th [Annotator's Note: 389th Antiaircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Battalion] had five batteries. He was in C Battery, 1st Platoon, Gun Section Number Four with a 40mm cannon [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft automatic cannon]. [Annotator's Note: Brasel holds up an empty 40mm shell casing]. They had an M51 Quad-50 machine gun [Annotator's Note: a mounted, four-gun configuration of the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun]. Camp Haan was the only station he ever had a house to sleep in. The rest of the time he was in a tent. They did most of their training at Camp Irwin [Annotator's Note: now Fort Irwin in San Bernardino County, California] in the Mojave Desert. They would line the guns up and an airplane would tow a sleeve [Annotator's Note: gunnery target] by. His colonel was strict about them not cutting the cables of the sleeve. The cable did get cut and everybody shot at the sleeve when it was floating down. They spent about one year and two months training. They then were put on a ship from San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] on 27 March 1944 and went under the Golden Gate Bridge. They were under blackout conditions after that and could not go on deck to smoke. They went by Hawaii. Their troopship was the Maui [Annotator's Note: USAT Maui] and was the first to not dock in Hawaii. They crossed the equator on 12 April [Annotator's Note: 12 April 1944]. The Navy has a party when you crossed the first time. They picked on officers. They would be outmanned if they picked on the enlisted men. They took off half of the mustache of one of their officers. Brasel did not eat meat one night for the only time he had ever passed it up. The rest of the ship got sick, and he did not. There were not enough stools [Annotator's Note: slang for toilets] for the customers. One guy passed out and cracked his head on the floor. They went to Milne Bay [Annotator's Note: Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea]. Officers could get off ship, but enlisted men could not, and they sat there for a week. It rained in the afternoon, and they all laughed at the officers who came back soaked. A guy from North Carolina, got quieter the further away they got from the United States. By the time they got there he was not speaking. He had never been away from home in his life. They sent him home and they got a report that he got better. Whether he was good actor, or it was real will never be known. They went up to Finschhafen [Annotator's Note: Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea] to get off the ship. It was a 35 day ride and they just played poker [Annotator's Note: a card game] all day. Brasel got sick and felt bad. He had three people check his temperature and then was sent to the hospital. They asked him to hitchhike to the hospital and he told them to go to hell. He was hospitalized for a week with dengue fever [Annotator's Note: mosquito-borne tropical disease]. They were taking Atabrine [Annotator's Note: proprietary name for mepacrine or quinacrine, antimalarial drug] to replace quinine Annotator's Note: medication used to treat malaria and babesiosis].

While at Finschhafen [Annotator's Note: Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea], people were needed to watch the docks. Robert J. "Bob" Brasel [Annotator's Note: with 1st Platoon, Battery C, 389th Antiaircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Battalion] and some men did that. They got to watch movies. They sat on their ponchos and helmet liners. It would start raining. When the noise of the rain got louder than the movie, they went home. They left for the invasion of Morotai on 16 September [Annotator's Note: Battle of Morotai, 15 September 1944 to 4 October 1944 at Morotai, Indonesia]. There was a big island called Halmahera [Annotator's Note: Halmahera, Indonesia]. General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] had dictated that there was no way to survey Morotai, so they had to guess where there were landing places. It was a complete surprise to the Japanese who were all in the jungle. He and his outfit went in on D-plus-one [Annotator's Note: the number of days after d-day, the day on which an operation or invasion takes effect]. Their guns were in the hold of the ship. On D-day, he was on deck and another ship was about 300 feet from them. He saw a Japanese airplane coming. He was so close he could see the pilot's eyes. If he had had his M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand], he could have shot him. The plane dropped a bomb. Brasel never heard it explode. One guy was shooting at a Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] plane and shot at an American plane too. They went in and waited for their gun to be put in place, so they missed most of the fun. There were three battalions of antiaircraft there. The peninsula they were on was four miles long and two miles wide. They had 96 guns, or 24 guns per mile on each side. That made it impossible for them [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] to fly anything in there during the daytime. Brasel counted eight bombs going off once. That was what the planes carried. A ninth would have been too close to them. Brasel was on an alert gun and had to fire three rounds for each alert. An Australian truck company across the street got the muzzle blasts and were not happy about it. Early one morning, Brasel could see a plane coming in. They shot at it and saw their projectiles explode. They thought they got a kill but somebody else got credit for it. They got together with their reports after that and teamed up with others to get credits. His gun section had a sergeant, two corporals, and a T5 [Annotator's Note: US Army Technician Fifth Grade or T5; equivalent to a corporal; E-4]. He was the T5 who took care of the power plant. He volunteered to be the truck driver so he would have a nice seat to sit on. He made corporal and became the range setter. Before leaving Morotai, he made sergeant. When they left, they went to the Philippines on a Navy APA [Annotator's Note: attack transports; amphibious assault ships] that was great. They had bushels of fruit to eat. A cook there was from Tulsa [Annotator's Note: Tulsa, Oklahoma; Brasel's hometown] and another guy Brasel had graduated from Will Rogers High School [Annotator's Note: in Tulsa] was there and knew him too. They were offered ice cream and they got some at night. A couple of nights later, they went again, and his supervisor told him not to do it anymore. Then the friend caught the supervisor taking the major in and they were back on.

Robert J. "Bob" Brasel and his outfit [Annotator's Note: 1st Platoon, Battery C, 389th Antiaircraft Artillery (Automatic Weapons) Battalion] left Morotai [Annotator's Note: after the Battle of Morotai, 15 September 1944 to 4 October 1944 at Morotai, Indonesia] for the Philippines and landed in Manila in July 1945. They went to San Fernando [Annotator's Note: San Fernando, Philippines] for more training for the Japanese invasion. They were scheduled for the first wave at Kyushu [Annotator's Note: Kyushu, Japan] and were expecting 50 percent casualties. A secret document released many years later revealed that the invasion would have been a complete disaster. He says, "thank you bomb" [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. The 389th was replaced. They left the Philippines on 22 December 1945. The first two days were rough and from then on it was smooth sailing. They had no blackouts and movies every night. They arrived in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] on 17 January 1946. He was honorably discharged on 25 January 1946 from Leavenworth [Annotator's Note: Fort Leavenworth in Leavenworth, Kansas]. Brasel had no difficulty adjusting to civilian life. 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] to attend college. He wanted to go to Arkansas [Annotator's Note: University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas] but nothing happened so he withdrew. He went to Tulsa University [Annotator's Note: University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma] and then transferred to Colorado [Annotator's Note: University of Colorado; unable to identify which campus] and graduated in 1951 with a degree in civil engineering. He had a job before he got out of school at the place where they made the nerve gas bomb [Annotator's Note: M34 cluster bomb containing the chemical agent sarin, a nerve gas]. He did not know what they were doing even though he had a Top Secret [Annotator's Note: Top Secret security clearance].