Warren Nolan was born in November 1923 in New Orleans, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: he later corrects this to Algiers, Louisiana]. He grew up in the area. He graduated high school 1940 and began study at Tulane University [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] in September. He remained there through the start of the war. Depression-Era New Orleans was not too bad as he was lucky. His father was a self-made Irishman, who worked in the steamship repair shops in Algiers, Louisiana at Johnson Ironworks. His father was put in charge of a lot of things as he was one of the few port workers with a high school education. By 21 years of age, he was superintendent of the shop. Pretty soon, he and a friend opened their own business, Union Ironworks. He eventually sold the shop and through the years it became a maker of Liberty ships [Annotator's Note: a class of quickly produced cargo ship]. He sold the whole shop to them and then he bought the Algiers Public Service Company which ran ferries and ran that for most of Nolan's life. They were advanced financially. He did not recognize it then, even though they had their own automobile. Money went a lot farther then. The people he knew never went hungry. He is sure the parents knew how hard it was, but the kids were not bothered by it. The war changed the whole picture. The kids played baseball in the corner lot and big football games. It was a lot of fun and they enjoyed life. He feels today that kid's lives are too regimented. Nolan had two brothers and two sisters who died in infancy from a blood disorder. Later his wife was concerned about it and found it only affected females and is curable now.

Warren Nolan grew up in Algiers and New Orleans, Louisiana with two brothers. His older brother was in the Navy and was an engineering graduate from Tulane University, New Orleans. He was commissioned as an ensign in Naval Engineering and was sent to MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts] and got a degree in Architecture. His brother served as a Navy officer for the whole war in the Navy's Bureau of Ships. He ended up as a lieutenant commander and was called back during the Korean War and sent to San Diego, California, became skipper of the whole base, and got married. Nolan's younger brother was at Tulane when the draft came up. He was colorblind, so he joined the US Merchant Marine. He was made an ensign in the Navy Reserve and an engineer in the Merchant Marine. He went to Europe a couple of times and stayed in the Reserve after the war ended. Nolan thinks they all liked the Navy because they lived on the water their entire lives. His father worked in the maritime industry and almost everyone else did too. All of the Southern Pacific Railroad trains back then were built in Algiers so there were a lot of railroad workers there too. Nolan was always interested in boats. They had a house on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and he spent every summer of his life on the water. If they had a choice, they would take the Navy. The house was built in 1920 and it was nearly impossible to get there by car in those days. They usually took a train to get there. Nolan raised his own family there until Hurricane Camille [Annotator's Note: Category 5 hurricane that made landfall at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, 17 August 1969; second most intense tropical cyclone on record] washed all of the houses out completely.

Warren Nolan had an older brother who was kind of the pioneer of the family. The family is Catholic, so the brother went to Jesuit [Annotator's Note: Jesuit High School, New Orleans, Louisiana] for high school. A lot of people could not afford it during the Depression. Nolan followed his brother and his younger brother then followed him to Jesuit. Nolan finished in 1940. The war in Europe was being discussed. Nolan wanted to be a naval architect at first but decided against it. He went to Tulane University, New Orleans for Architecture. He joined Naval ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] there. He was in the middle of his sophomore year when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He stayed there for the first year of the war, through Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands, 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943]. Nolan was 19 in 1942 when the draft was started for ages 21 and above. In the middle of his junior year, he had to register. A lot of people were quitting and joining the service. At the end of his junior year, a program was developed that if anyone would sign up to be an apprentice seaman in the Navy, they could go to Tulane and join ROTC. Since he was already there, Nolan volunteered to do this in July 1943. Nolan stayed until graduation and then commissioned 20 February 1944. The V-12 program [Annotator's Note: V-12 Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946] was also instituted there to stem the loss of college men. All of this overlapped, and the members lived on campus as if it were a Navy base.

Warren Nolan was in Naval ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Campus life was crazy. On the weekends he could get leave. He was the senior officer and ROTC company commander. He oversaw the V-12 program [Annotator's Note: V-12 Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946] personnel and he was ushering them in as if he was a basic training instructor. It operated just as if it was an actual naval base. There was a lot of communal, physical exercise. There was a lot of on-campus entertainment too. Nolan would go out boating a lot. They took all of the same courses as the US Naval Academy [Annotator's Note: US Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland] did such as navigation, astronomy and more. When the programs ended, the ROTC cadets were considered ready to go, while the V-12 graduates went on to different Naval schools. During the summers, the ROTC cadets went on cruises on the different battleships to Europe. Once the war started, that was stopped and they were sent to Corpus Christi, Texas to take basic Air Force training. They even ended up flying there. Nolan ended up being on an aircraft carrier later. He also received gunnery training at Shell Beach on 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm automatic cannon], .50 calibers [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun], and a couple of 40s [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm antiaircraft autocannon]. He would go down on a weekend once a month and learn to take guns down and put them back together. They learned to fire them too. He was in the service for a long time before he actually got out there to war.

Warren Nolan was in the middle of his sophomore year at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He was at home for Sunday lunch. It was a formal, large meal for his family. They all talked at lunchtime. His father pushed them hard. They had a good sized yard and they would play out there. There were always ten to 15 guys hanging around. A cousin came in and asked if they had been listening to the radio. They turned the radio on then, and heard the news. It took time for the news to come in. They did not know where Pearl Harbor was. That was the beginning and Nolan was just 18 years old. He did not think about how it was going to impact his life. Of course, his return to school was different. It took a long time to build a big fleet. Since he was in ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps], some of the teaching officers were being called to duty. Because Nolan was already in it, he did not have to make any big decisions. The big difference was that he went from paying for school to being paid Navy pay to go to school. The program did not change all that much other than not going to sea as often. Nothing was really normal anymore. There was rationing, wage freezes and more. Even that became normal after some time. New Orleans accelerated then due to ship building, repairs, and a busy riverfront. There was plenty of work to do. On 20 February 1944, he graduated and was commissioned. There was no big, fancy deal. He knew he was going to become an officer and go to war. He already had orders to his ship, an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. He went by train to San Francisco, California. His ship, the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), was already part of Task Force 58 in the South Pacific. There were only three or four new Essex-class carriers at the time. He then went to Pearl Harbor via Treasure Island [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Treasure Island; an artificial island in San Francisco Bay, California, 1941 to 1997] on a Navy troopship. Nolan and his friends who were also going to carriers got priority assignments. Before leaving, Nolan was assigned to oversee about 100 sailors. In total, they loaded about 5,000 men to leave for Pearl Harbor. It was early March 1944. They went under the Golden Gate Bridge in gorgeous sunshine but shortly after that waves were crashing over the ship and they had 5,000 seasick people.

Warren Nolan went to Pearl Harbor aboard a Navy troop transport ship. It took about six days to get there. He was then ordered onto a Navy tanker for transportation to his ship. They were on the USS Monongahela (AO-42) in small convoy. It took about 15 days of sailing. Nolan had nothing to do aboard ship and had a nice room. They landed at Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands. He went on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] and stayed aboard for a day or two and then he made it out to the ship with four others on an open whaleboat. It took most of the day to get to the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17). He was wringing wet and everything was blacked out. Nolan went alongside to the gangway with his possessions and it all is wringing wet. The lieutenant who met him was Bosworth [Annotator's Note: no given name provided] who Nolan says was the "biggest horse's ass" who never stopped telling you he was from Harvard [Annotator's Note: Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts]. They had no room for him, so he just had a cot next to a passageway. He was appointed to the gunnery department and was made the fourth division officer. On his third day he got a call to report to the bridge. The commander, who had attended LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana], told him he wanted a Tulane University ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] graduate to prove to him he was smarter than him and made him junior officer of the deck. His first duty ever was as watch officer on that ship as it went out on a mission to their first raid in Hollandia, New Guinea. They moved MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] from Port Moresby, New Guinea up to Hollandia, New Guinea. That was his first operation. Nolan ultimately became an officer of the deck.

Warren Nolan was quickly made an Officer of the Deck aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) while only an ensign. He was flattered. The OD duties at sea are essentially running the ship. The bridge on aircraft carriers is not very wide. The big clock is very important. [Annotator's Note: He describes the bridge layout in detail]. They used different plans to zig-zag [Annotator's Note: a naval anti-submarine maneuver] across the ocean, mostly communicating by flag signals. All done to prevent submarine attacks, maintaining 18 knots minimum speed. Sometimes they would get an unknown that would change base course, all based on the clock in the dark of night, hundreds of ships turning at once. It would not take more than one or two minutes for ships to collide if a mistake was made. It was always scary. They used TBF radio [Annotator's Note: Navy model TBF radio telegraph transmitter] which used tangential waves which are short termed and of limited range and all in code. Doing all of that on bridge is busy and stressful but exciting, and he loved being up there. He would also be glad when his watch ended.

Near the end of the war, Warren Nolan was near Okinawa. They would spend months at general quarters and were exhausted. He could literally fall asleep standing up. His duties on the bridge running the ship's course were tough and he needed to concentrate. He fell asleep once and woke up and made mistake. He caught and corrected the mistake, but it caused panic inside him. It was not more than two or three seconds of dozing off, but even later in life he can feel the panic if he thinks about it. He could have caused a catastrophe. After that he was always scared to death he was going to make a mistake. Ships did collide from time to time. Nolan felt privileged to be aboard the aircraft carrier. There was no other way to fight the war in the Pacific without carriers. The land bases were not there. The rest of the fleet was there to protect the carriers. When the kamikazes started, the targets were the aircraft carriers. The aircraft were what was giving the Japanese the problems. The flyers suffered terrible casualties. Operational losses were high. Bad weather was a nightmare for them. Nolan got to know most of them. They became friends that respected each other. Nolan knew he was important to the war. The carriers would have an admiral aboard. Mitscher [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher] was their Admiral when they were Task Force Command. By the time they were at Okinawa, they had five Task Groups. Four of them were basic groups and one was the Saratoga [Annotator's Note: USS Saratoga (CV-3)] carrying night fighters. Each group had four aircraft carriers, three to five warships, and then cans [Annotator's Note: tin cans is naval slang for destroyers] on the outside.

Admiral Mitscher [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher] was aboard Warren Nolan's ship [Annotator's Note: USS Bunker Hill (CV-17)] the last six months of the war. Hw was the frontline guy carrying out the plans of Nimitz [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz, Sr.]. He had been the skipper of the USS Yorktown (CV-5) when Doolittle [Annotator's Note: USAAF then USAF General James Harold Doolittle]. Nolan did not get to meet him officially. On the aircraft carrier, there was a Flag Bridge and a Navigation Bridge. Mitscher used to sit in a big chair on the Flag Bridge and the guys on the Navigation Bridge could look down and see him. Sometimes they would interact briefly. Towards the end of the war and they were being attacked a lot off of Okinawa and they needed more advanced, quicker shooting. Antiaircraft shells with proximity fuses [Annotator's Note: five inch/38 cal. type Mk. 32 impulse ammunition] were finally aboard which helped. They never knew when the Japanese aircraft would come out to hit them. They were manning the guns all the time due to this. Nolan was the gunnery officer by then. The Admiral could be just above him and look down on his back. One day, a plane was on the horizon and Nolan was tracking it. Mitscher asked him what kind of plane it was. Nolan told him it was an F6F [Annotator's Note: Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter aircraft], one of ours. He asked if he was sure. Nolan said he was not. The Japanese were getting our planes and using them. He alerted the gunners. At one point, Mitscher told him not to worry about it, it was one of ours. [Annotator's Note: Nolan gets emotional.] Another time, Nolan was looking at the sister carriers when he saw a plane make a run and drop a bomb. Nolan and his crew started firing without any commands. The plane turned and went towards the front of the fleet. Nolan realized his guns were low and could have been hitting the other ships. Mitscher saw all of that. At a later date, Mitscher sent a message to the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) saying that he was proud to have been aboard and he was particularly impressed with gunnery crews. Nolan says that other ships had to wait to be given the order to fire. On his ship, he was told if he saw something shoot at it.

When Warren Nolan first boarded the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) he thought it was massive. He watched the first flight operations come aboard and thought it was ridiculous. He wondered how the planes could stand the landing stresses. He never figured out how to get around the ship completely. He was in a 42 man bunk room off the bow with the junior ship officers. That room was where they would get "the word". There were men from every department so they would always know what was going on. An Air Group commander had a stateroom off the bunk room, Ron Hoel [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant Commander Ronald W. Hoel; ace of Fighting Squadron 8 (VF-8)], would come in there and fraternize with them. Hoel would tell others that if they wanted to know what was going on in the war, just go to the junior officers bunkroom. These ships were like floating cities. They would go into port occasionally and clean the hangar deck. There were basketball courts and enough room to play football and baseball. There was a ship's band that would play in there as well. Sometimes they could jog and catch sun on the flight deck. They were moving from, and taking, atoll after atoll, but there would be nothing much there before they moved to the next one. They would have shore parties but on the front lines, there could never be more than one-third of the crew off the ship at one time. They would go on beach and have some beer and then head back to the ship. The officers had a regular dining room with good meals when in port. Nolan often thought about the men on the beaches washing out of their helmets and eating rations. Nolan says there was a lot of discrimination in the Navy then. The black division aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) was maybe 50 to 100 men who served the officers as waiters when they were in port. Nolan had a ten gun 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm automatic cannon] antiaircraft battery with two men to a gun and him. He had a long battery. They hung over the deck and there was a service ramp below them for the artillery canisters. Most of the time, Nolan would have eight of the black division helping with the canister movement during firing. Later when the ship was hit, a lot of them were killed. [Annotator's Note: He pauses with emotion.]

The USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) did not have a soda fountain and ice cream stand like the USS Alabama (BB-60) did, but Warren Nolan says they did have a Gedunk Stand [Annotator's Note: a canteen or snack shop] that would serve ice cream on rare occasions. They really only had basic mess halls otherwise. The Essex-class carriers were basic and raw. They were great ships that were the savior of the Pacific war. They could outrun the battleships and would often have to steer off to not hit the ships, especially the South Dakota battleships [Annotator's Note: class of four fast battleships built between 1939 and 1942] which had terrible hull designs. The later ships, like the USS North Carolina (BB-55) and the USS New Jersey (BB-62) had better designs. They did not have too many battleships though because they were the fast carrier task force. They needed destroyers and escorts that could keep up with them. Sometimes the battleships would form a division out of the different groups and do a mission, but not often. The carriers were never really close the islands, usually about 50 miles out. In the Mariana Islands, Saipan and Guam they got in close enough to see the mountains. The Japanese were in the hills firing down on the beaches. The battleships would form a line inside the carriers and fire into the hills. Nolan was watching it with binoculars and could see the Marines trying to make it off the beaches. He would see the whole side of the mountain come down at times.

The USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) had five divisions within the gunnery department. Warren Nolan had about 75 men in his fourth division. His basic duty was to man the 20mm [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm automatic cannon] guns from about the ship's island aft. He had three 20mm on starboard and two on the port quarter with the other guns the total was ten operated by about 30 men. He spent the last three or four months of the war in this senior position. The first day out on a mission, they would do training and flying. They would go to battle stations one half hour before daybreak anytime they were near the front lines. The Japanese would like to come in from the sun, so it was in the eyes of the defenders. Once they started launching strikes, they would remain alert. They were always busy. If there was any opportunity to be off duty, they went and got in their bunk. Nolan's division was also in charge of the smaller boats on board. Nolan had to run the division and stand watches. The night the ship was hit [Annotator's Note: 11 May 1945], Nolan was on bridge watch. This is where Nolan usually operated but it was a big ship with hundreds of men with different duties and officers. There was a man named Laurent who was Nolan's chief petty officer who had been in the Navy before the war. He was the man who really ran the show for them. He was very uneducated but devoted to duty. He was killed the day the ship was hit. Nolan found his body. [Annotator's Note: Nolan gets very quiet.]

[Annotator's Note: There is a break in tape then the interview begins mid-sentence.] Warren Nolan went aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) after it had made strikes against Rabaul, Papua New Guinea which was a real baptism of fire. That battle was always in the tops of the older crew's minds as their biggest event. Nolan had just gotten aboard and headed down to Hollandia, New Guinea [Annotator's Note: 21 to 28 April 1944] in support of MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] moving up from Port Moresby, New Guinea to the Philippines. They came back up. They had already made one attack on Truk [Annotator's Note: Truk Lagoon, now Chuuk Lagoon] but they decided to hit it again [Annotator's Note: 29 April to 1 May 1944]. Nolan had only been aboard a week. He had a small battery on the starboard side. All of a sudden, ten Betty torpedo planes [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mistubishi G4M or Mitsubishi Navy Type 1 "Betty" bomber] were coming in low towards the ship. Two or three made it through the battleship and destroyer screens. Nolan began firing and all but one came down. One of them came across their bow. They could not hit him but he crashed in the water on the other side. He could have dropped the torpedo, but it appeared the back seat pilot was dead. Around June [Annotator's Note: June 1944] they were preparing to invade the Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan and Tinian. They were in port at Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands. Admiral Mitscher [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher] was the Task Force commander and he decided to do a high speed run in one evening. All of the fighters launched and caught the Japanese off guard and nearly cleaned them out. They started attacking all of the small islands north for the June invasion.

Warren Nolan was aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) in the Mariana Islands campaign [Annotator’s Note: June to November 1944]. The Japanese must have decided that things were going too far there. There had been no major engagement with their fleet by then. Intelligence alerted them that the Japanese were coming. The American fleet decided to stay and meet them to protect the men ashore. The Japanese still held airfields in the area. The Japanese lost so many aircraft that day it became known as the "Turkey Shoot." [Annotator's Note: The "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" was the nickname for the aerial combat portion of the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June 1944.] The weather was beautiful. Some would break through and make runs on the carriers. Nolan was on the port side on a small battery when two Judy dive bombers [Annotator's Note: Japanese Yokosuka D4Y "Suisei" dive bomber, known by the Allies as the "Judy"] came at them. He had never seen so many planes in the sky at once. Nolan was on the 20mm guns [Annotator's Note: Oerlikon 20mm automatic cannon]. They needed to be held until the right moment to fire or they were useless. It was hard to do as the other guns were firing already. They all were being bounced around. They opened up and hit them. Nolan was blown off his feet and knocked down the deck. Tons of water was coming down on him and he thought he was going to drown. He thought he was in water but then it stopped. He was covered with gunpowder. Both planes had crashed in the water, but one plane released his bomb. It hit the ship below the waterline and exploded. Nolan got on his feet and saw the guys were okay. The shrapnel had gone up through the next gun crew over. The lieutenant [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps First Lieutenant Gordon A. Stallings] there had been gutted and six men there were killed. That was one of Nolan's first ugly experiences and he had only been aboard for a little over a month. He would have several more experiences with enemy aircraft blowing up right in front of him, but never got hit again until later in the war.

Warren Nolan remembers one particular close call around Okinawa. There was an enemy plane coming in from pretty far out. He was coming right into Nolan's gun battery and was getting hit but kept coming. All ten guns started firing on it at once. Nolan could see the red propeller spinning and the aircraft exploded right in front of them. Nolan can still see it when he closes his eyes now. Back in the Mariana Islands [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Philippine Sea, 19 to 20 June 1944], that was a big battle. All of the Japanese carriers were sunk, and all of their aircraft were shot down. Task Force 58 knew the remainder were still out there and heading away. The decision was made to go after them. Search planes went out but did not find them at first. Around one o'clock in the afternoon, a search plane spotted the Japanese fleet. Admiral Mitscher [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher] had to decide if he would send aircraft after them that late in the day because they would have to return at night. The Navy did not do night landings in those days. It was also going to be an extreme range for gasoline. The Japanese fleet was farther away than thought. They attacked and started to return, and planes started going down out of fuel. It was a horrible evening for the pilots. After dark, a few planes did make it back, but the ships were blacked out. Mitscher decided to turn on their spotlight beams so the planes could start landing. Some planes were waved off and hit the water. One aircraft did not take the wave off. It hit the deck and crashed into the forward group of men and planes. The whole flight deck was on fire and they could no longer land aircraft. Usually, the men were not in the firing stations during landing operations, but they had to this time. A lot of people got killed. The next day, the Task Force spread out and rescued a lot of pilots who were in life rafts and vests [Annotator's Note: approximately 75 percent of the crews were rescued]. The operation used up the experienced Japanese pilots for the most part. The quality of Japanese aviators was never the same.

Warren Nolan was part of Task Force 58 when they were making carrier raids south of Japan in preparation for the invasion of Okinawa on 1 April 1945. They covered the invasion of Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: on 19 February 1945]. They were out at sea for 85 days. The Japanese had started using kamikazes in the Philippines. Those pilots were volunteers and mostly experienced pilots. By Okinawa, the pilots were conscripts flying off of Honshu Island, Japan to try and stop the invasion. The kamikaze campaign started right after the invasion did. The USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) was hit on 11 May 1945. There would sometimes be 100 planes attacking at once. These pilots had only been trained to take off and barely knew how to fly. They did not even have to navigate. They just followed the island chain down until they encountered targets. US Navy aircraft were trying to intercept them first. The 11 May attack was the fourth or so attack of 100 to 200 aircraft in waves. Almost all 16 carriers had some damage during this but the Bunker Hill was the worst. They were under attack constantly. They nearly lived on the gun stations for that month. More people were lost in the battles at, and leading up to, Okinawa than in the history of the United States to that point. A lot of that was carrier personnel. One bomb could kill 100 men. Around 9 May, Mitscher [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Marc Andrew "Pete" Mitscher] was aboard and made an announcement to the ship that he felt they were seeing the end of the battle and that it's been a terrible ordeal. He asked them to hang in there a few more days and said he was proud of them. The next day they were hit and lost 400 men, including men on Mitscher's staff. The ship kept moving and stayed in the task force. Nolan was not even aware of other attacks on their ship that day. At the end of that day, they were given three destroyers as escorts and started heading back for Ulithi Atoll [Annotator's Note: in the Caroline Islands]. The next day they collected the dead and buried them at sea. It was gruesome and he will never forget it.

Warren Nolan had been on bridge watch from 12 to four [Annotator's Note: midnight to four o'clock in the morning] on the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17). He went to his battle station after that and stood watch. They had launched aircraft that morning and they had begun returning. At these times, some of the men would take turns going below to relieve themselves. The assistant gunnery officer called Nolan to come up and relieve him for a half hour or so. Pilots were getting into their planes for the next flight. Nolan climbed up to the station where the gunnery officer was. The officer was handing Nolan his headset, when Nolan saw a single aircraft coming in behind the aircraft landing on the carrier. It was already diving straight at them and Nolan was kind of spellbound thinking someone had run out of gas. He then realized it was a Japanese Zero [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M or Mitsubishi Navy Type 0 carrier fighter, known as the Zeke or Zero]. The Zero hit right where Nolan had just left. The bomb went through the deck and exploded in the water but the Zero blew up and took some American aircraft out with him. The whole end of the ship was now on fire with exploding bombs and gas tanks. The ship was moving so the smoke and fire were not bad. Nolan heard an antiaircraft gun firing. He looked up and saw another kamikaze coming in. [Annotator's Note: There was barely 30 seconds between attacks.] The gun hit the enemy aircraft and spun it. Nolan dove for cover. Part of the wing came into the area where Nolan was. The bomb went through the flight deck and blew up the hangar deck below. All of the smoke was then hitting Nolan. He crawled to the searchlight platform to get some fresh air, otherwise he would have suffocated. By this time, men were getting up out of the deck trying to escape the fire and they got some of them on the platform. Their flesh was coming off. The topside officers had small syringes of morphine that they carried with them. Nolan used up all of his capsules on these men.

Warren Nolan was aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) when it was hit by two kamikaze aircraft on 11 May 1945. The deck was on fire and smoking badly. The air began to clear and Nolan heard a 40mm gun [Annotator's Note: Bofors 40mm auto-cannon] firing. He looked down and saw the men in the battery and then saw another aircraft coming in as clear as day. A good friend was in charge of that gun below and they hit it and took it down in time. Nolan saw the fires were being contained and he could look over the side. He went below a level and got some men to help him man a firehose. He had been trained to fight oil and gas fires. They have to be suffocated because water directly on them would make them worse. At one point, the man next to him threw his head back and started bleeding. The guns in the burning aircraft were going off. Luckily he was just grazed. It took hours for Nolan to reach his old gunnery station. When he climbed down into his battle station it was still smoldering and was a wreck. There were men just milling around who had been displaced. They decided to take the gun canisters off and throw them overboard. A cruiser came alongside and was sending fire hoses over. Nolan was able to man the working guns and stayed there until dark. They left the formation and headed south. They then went down below and there was still a lot to do. It was all forced air below and the intakes were up above. During the fires, smoke was being forced below, suffocating more men. The next day the hangar deck was cleaned. There were canvas plots all down the deck. Each recovered body would be placed on one canvas plot. Nolan was given some stretchers and 15 men to go recover bodies. Nolan was assigned the ready rooms where the pilots meet. He came across his bosun's mate's body. He had suffocated. Nolan opened the door to one ready room where the pilots had been waiting to man their aircraft. There were bodies and pieces of bodies and burned leather. The stench was awful. A man had been sitting in a chair and he came apart when they tried to move him. [Annotator's Note: Nolan gets emotional and asks to be excused.] It was gruesome.

Warren Nolan was helping to gather the dead after two kamikaze aircraft hit the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17). They tried to identify who they could. By the middle of the day, there were a couple of hundred dead laid out. They would wrap canvas around the man and put a five inch shell inside for weight. They made a slide out of doors. They would slide eight to ten bodies at a time into the ocean. They buried 300 bodies like that. [Annotator's Note: Nolan has a difficult time speaking.] It was a tough job. He never thought about it that much until he started talking about it now. [Annotator's Note: Nolan breaks down emotionally.] During the attack, he was busy. It was the next day that he had to deal with the horrible carnage. He cannot explain the odors. You are recognizing your friends. It really sank in then. He knew there was a tremendous amount of loss but not the scope. Nolan had about 15 men alive out of 75 in his division. After the war, Nolan was at a reunion and he talked with one man who had been on his battle station with him. He had gone over the side and into the ocean. Luckily, he was picked up but never made it back to the ship. Now he is a doctor in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the only one Nolan knows of that survived from of his battle station. Almost two-thirds of the crew was lost. They went to Ulithi Atoll [Annotator's Note: in the Caroline Islands] and then via Pearl Harbor to the Bremerton Navy yard [Annotator's Note: Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, Washington]. They were preparing to go back for the invasion of Japan, but the war ended. They had gone from Seattle to San Francisco, California and picked up their airplanes. They then went to Pearl Harbor and picked up an air group. They stayed for about two weeks training air groups. They were sent back to the Bremerton Navy yard and went down to a skeleton crew to do what was called Magic Carpet Duty [Annotator's Note: Operation Magic Carpet was an operation to repatriate American military personnel serving overseas]. They were needed to help bring troops back. They went out to Leyte Gulf [Annotator's Note: in the Philippines] and filled the carrier with troops. They then went to Guam, Tinian and Saipan and brought back another load. They joined another carrier in Long Beach, California. They were doing maneuvers for being able to create student books on the carriers. The ship went back to Bremerton and Nolan left her there in May 1946. The ship went into mothball reserve and Nolan was discharged in June 1946 into the inactive reserve.

Warren Nolan was discharged from the Navy in New Orleans, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: in June 1946]. He went into the inactive reserve and was subject to being recalled. Two of his shipmates were. Nolan married during this time period. One of his shipmates that had been with him the whole time, was called back into service for Korea. His older brother was called back for Korea too. Nolan was discharged as a junior grade lieutenant [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant (junior grade), Lieutenant (j.g.) or LTJG]. The USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) was one of the older ships and did not get recommissioned for the Korean War. Those ships ran night and day for years. Nolan was just short of his regular degree, so he finished up school with the G.I. Bill getting a Bachelor of Architecture degree. He met his wife in 1949 at Newcomb [Annotator's Note: Newcomb College; women's college of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana]. She was an interior decorator. Nolan does not know how to put his most memorable war experience into one thing. He now thinks about how everyone was in it together then. Combat was interesting and terrifying but he can't say one was more than the other. Dealing with the dead and thinking about how many dead were all over the place and the fact that you are still going is a tough thing that sits with one. The war gave him a maturity at an early age, so much responsibility so early. All that was in front of him now was his family, his marriage and his business. He thinks America is the greatest place in the world but to see what has changed in his lifetime disturbs him. He thinks we have degraded and is not gaining but losing. He only lives day to day now. The new generations are born into it and it is all they know. He wonders why he is at all, everything he accomplished is all behind him. Nolan feels that The National WWII Museum is necessary but whether the new generations think it is important is another question. The world is such a different world. He hopes it is educational for them. He has no regrets and he feels very fortunate. Good business, good family, good life.