Richard Shannon
United States Army Corporal

Interviewed by: Nicholas Curry
Adult Secretary: Don Pinkston

I can still remember exactly what I was doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I was 13 or 14 years old. We were coming back from church and we were driving up our driveway and the announcement came on the radio. We knew that we would be at war. It was very traumatic. Everyone was anxious to do his part. We knew our goal was to fight evil. We had a goal and our purpose was to defend mankind. We had clear objectives and that made it easier for us to serve.

In the summer of 1945 I had finished high school and was drafted. I had lost an older brother in the war. He was killed in a crash the day before the war ended in Germany. My parents did not want me to enter the service because they had already sacrificed one son and didn’t want to lose another. All of my high school buddies were signing up that summer so I did too.

When I first when in, I went to infantry training at Ft. Robinson. Our training was to prepare for the invasion of Japan. It was very strenuous. There was a lot of night marching. We knew that the Japanese were fierce fighters especially if the fighting was going to be in their homeland. Our training area simulated the terrain of Japan. The American generals were very depressed and worried. They felt that the invasion of Japan would be the worst battle in the history of war. They estimated that there could be up to a million casualties in the battle. It was with that knowledge that President Truman decided to drop the Atomic bomb. He felt that the bomb would save both American and Japanese lives. In the middle of our training the bomb was dropped.  This changed our training a lot. I feel that the atomic bombings saved many lives in the end. We knew the Japanese would have fought on to save their homeland if the atomic bomb had not been dropped. 

After training I was transferred to New York for further training. From there I went to Ft. Dix and then to the Pentagon. I was in the intelligence department. One of the most exciting things was when one of the sergeants was going on leave they gave me a car and chauffeur to deliver top secret documents to the FBI and the War Department.

The colonel in my office tried to talk me into staying in the service. One day he handed me some maps and asked me to follow him up the steps. When we entered the room sitting behind a large desk was General Eisenhower. I almost dropped those maps. I wished I had the nerve to tell him that I was from his home state, but I was very nervous about being in his company.

I was discharged in December of 1945 and decided to use the GI bill to continue my education. I went to Eastern Michigan University after I was discharged. Colleges were very crowded after the war. A group of us were going to go to Eastern Michigan until they showed us where we would be staying. They had the gym lined with cots with footlockers at the end of each bed. We all said that’s what we had in the army and we didn’t want any more of that. Where we ended up had Quonset huts and double-decker beds. The GI Bill was a beautiful opportunity that took me all the way through undergraduate school.

Going into the Army was good for me. I grew up a lot. It gave me more discipline. Even to this day when I go to hang up my clothes there is a place for everything. It made me more determined to go to college and do something worthwhile.

You asked me if the war could have been avoided.  One of the ways the war could have been avoided was if we had followed Winston Churchill’s advice and stopped Hitler sooner before he had gathered strength. We have learned some lessons from the war. We believe that freedom is important and that freedom has a cost to it. We should feel blessed for all the freedom that we have. Frankly, I felt that when World War Two ended that that would be the end of all wars, but unfortunately I was wrong.

Permission Granted for Use by Richard Shannon  © 2001
Transcribed by:  Judy Wimmer