Rudolph C. Miller was born in 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother took him to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] where he grew up. Miller had two brothers and one sister. His life was "piss-poor" [Annotator's Note: slang for awful] during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. They were on relief. His parents decided to put him in a foster home because there were too many kids and not enough food. He was not happy at all there and got in trouble. He then moved to a nice family that were Russians. The woman had a son and two daughters. Her son thought his mother liked Miller more than she liked him. That persists to this day. The family never spoke of their Russian background. They bought a car when there were not many. Miller got to drive it. School was miserable. He was asked to leave his high school, so he decided to join the Navy. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Miller if he remembers hearing of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was on the street and heard it. He was shocked and upset. He got anxious to do something. He was later in Pearl Harbor several times. Nobody likes to go to war, but only one person cannot stop it.

Rudolph C. Miller had no place to go and nowhere to live when he was 16. He tried to forge his certificate [Annotator's Note: birth certificate] to get in the service earlier. They got him in the Navy nine days before his birthday. He was on his own at the time and almost 17. He chose the Navy because he could get in at 17. He and a group was selected to go to Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes in Lake County, Illinois] for boot camp. He liked it. He was a good swimmer and he taught swimming. From boot camp he was assigned to a ship in Seattle, Washington, the USS Fond du Lac [Annotator's Note: USS Fond du Lac (APA-166)] that had come in for repairs. It had been hit by a kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese Special Attack Units, also called shimbu-tai, who flew suicide missions in aircraft]. He was hoping to get on a warship and was not happy with this ship. He got to like it later on. He was learning to be a signalman. He had been in the Boy Scouts and had learned semaphore [Annotator's Note: use of an apparatus to create a visual signal transmitted over distance] using flags. The Navy used flags and lights to signal. He was a signalman and was assigned to the bridge [Annotator's Note: a room or platform of a ship from which the ship can be commanded]. It was just before the war ended and they went to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands]. They picked up 2,000 Marines. The atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945] was dropped and then another [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945] and then the war was over. They dropped the Marines in Sasebo, Japan.

Rudolph C. Miller loved the Marines aboard his ship [Annotator's Note: the USS Fond du Lac (APA-166)]. They were very friendly and nice. He knew one of them indirectly who was from Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. He knew his sister. They became very friendly while he was on the ship. They would light up the sky with a signal [Annotator's Note: a signal lamp or signal light] asking if anyone was from Chicago on the other ships. They would converse then by light. It was fun. Miller did not feel safe on the ship. He is Jewish and there was only one other Jew. They were on the bridge [Annotator's Note: a room or platform of a ship from which the ship can be commanded] together. There were signs left to him that showed other sailors did not like him because he was Jewish. He was never harmed, but he was made aware they did not like his presence. That is why he wanted to be a signalman and be up on the bridge. They had the troops aboard, but he did not know where they were going when the bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped. They dropped off their troops and he thinks they returned to Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. They then went through the Canal [Annotator's Note: Panama Canal] and the ship was decommissioned in Virginia. He was then without a ship and was reassigned to a tanker boat in the harbor in Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington]. They would take fresh water to the battleships and cruisers that were being decommissioned. If you had so many 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], you could get out of the service. He should have stayed in. He had no place to go. He returned to a family that he used to stay with. He stayed there until he found his wife-to-be and they left for Santa Monica, California to get married.

Rudolph C. Miller met his wife [Annotator's Note: Freda Miller, formerly Freda Feuer] on the street. It was snowing and three people were walking with her including her brother and a guy who liked her. They asked him where to find a community hall where a Christmas party was being held. Miller was a singer and was doing a show in another place. He told them they would enjoy it more. He gave them directions and then went home. A few hours later, he returned to do his show. When he finished, he went to the bar and his future wife was there. He asked her to dance, and they danced every dance until it ended. He was going to college but was having a hard time and flunked out. His wife was beautiful. She had something wrong with her feet and was very conscious of it. She came from a nice family. Her father had his own business and a family of ten children. All of the children were killed and cremated [Annotator's Note: in the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. Her father, one brother, and she survived. He does not recall how she did. She had stayed in a barn in snow and her feet froze. She got out the barn and a Russian took her to the hospital. She came to the United States with her father and brother with nothing. Miller never thought of her as Holocaust [Annotator's Note: also called the Shoah; the genocide of European Jews during World War 2] survivor. She did not talk with him about it, but she did several interviews on tape for historians.

Rudolph C. Miller liked the Marines. He was a sucker for the uniform, and he liked it a lot. They were sharp and he thought he would like to wear one. He was at the Glenview Naval Air Base [Annotator's Note: Naval Air Station Glenview in Glenview, Illinois] in the Marine Reserves. They just played baseball. He would go up with the pilots once in a while. He got to go up in a Grumman dive bomber [Annotator's Note: Grumman TBF or TBM Avenger torpedo bomber aircraft]. They flew over the Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: also called Great Lakes of North America or the Laurentian Great Lakes; a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in North America]. Miller was phased out when his enlistment was up. He got married and then went to cosmetology school. His wife's family had no money, and they would not make a wedding for them. They decided to go to California where a relative wanted to help. The relative made a wedding dress. They were married in a backyard in Santa Monica [Annotator's Note: Santa Monica, California]. It was beautiful with blossoming rose bushes all around.

Rudolph C. Miller's most memorable experience of World War 2 was being stuck in a boat in a harbor in Virginia. It was very cold and windy. One of the other ships sent a message that one of the captain's gigs [Annotator's Note: a small boat used on ships as the captain's water taxi] was floating away and they should keep an eye out for it. Miller spotted it and was told to see if they could catch it. They caught it and Miller had to drive it. He had never driven one. It was very bad with waves, and it was hard to get it to the gangplank. The water was splashing over the cabin, and he could not see where he was going. It took him several times to get caught and brought in. It was the scariest time of his life. World War 2 was good for him because it gave him a home. He did jack shit in his service. He did not do anything. [Annotator's Note: Miller laughs.] Miller feels that the war should be taught. He gets very upset when young people do not know what happened. What happened in World War 2 is more important than what happened in any other war.