The following is a transcript of an interview with VC-66 veteran Roy Tatham, with his wife, Kathleen, conducted in late 2001 by Lucy Perkins, a student at Robbinsville High School in Robbinsville, NC, where Mr. Tatham lived.

My name is Lucy Perkins and I’m here interviewing World War II veteran Roy Tatham,

Lucy:  What did you do before you went to fight in the war?

Roy:    I had worked for TVA for a little while; I was only 18 years old.

Lucy:   Did you volunteer, or were you drafted?

Roy:    Yes, I volunteered.

Lucy:   Why?

Roy:    We were at war.

Lucy:   Which branch of the armed forces did you serve?

Roy:    Navy.

Lucy:   Where were you stationed?

Roy:    I was on a carrier in the Pacific.

Lucy:   What were your duties?

Roy:    I was a fighter pilot.

Lucy:   What was the morale in your unit?

Roy:    Oh, pretty good.

Lucy:   How was the food?  What would you eat in a day?

Roy:    . . . Oh, the food . . .(laughing) . . . It left a little to be desired, but we had good food.  The cooking wasn’t all that great.  And then in a typhoon, they couldn’t cook.  You had to eat sandwiches, and the milk, in the Pacific, which is a hot, hot place, all the canned milk and everything, soured.  So . . .(laughing) . . .we drank water.

Lucy:   What were your quarters like, where you stayed?

Roy:    I had a  . . well, they had, for the young pilots, they had what they called “boy’s town.”  It was up in front of the ship, and myself and a lot of other people were up there - my age, and everything.

Lucy:   Were any aspects of your experience boring?

Roy:    Well, sometimes.  When you’re getting beat to death for a week with a typhoon, now that was bad.  Couldn’t sleep, ship going up and down . . .

Lucy:   What did the soldiers in your unit do for entertainment?

Roy:    Soldiers?  (you mean) SAILORS !!

Lucy:   Sailors (sorry), what did the sailors do?  What did you do for fun, for entertainment?

Kathleen:  Played cards, mostly.

Roy:    Well, we did, we played cards, we played bridge, we played poker.  A game we called Acey-Deucey, played with dice . . (laughing).

Lucy:   What part of the war do you remember being the worst time for America?

Roy:   The worst time . . . was right after Pearl Harbor.  Bad time, kind of like it is right now.  They caught us kind of napping.  And the thing was, the Japanese had us outclassed in the way of ships and airplanes.  Not many people know that, but that’s the truth.

Lucy:   When were you most afraid?

Roy:   I wasn’t afraid.

Lucy:   You weren’t afraid?

Roy:    No.

Lucy:   When did you start feeling that the war effort was going our way; that America would win?

Roy:    Well, when we started getting a lot of airplanes, better airplanes, and they were better than theirs, and we were better pilots, I knew we would win.

Lucy:   At the time, what did you think about Roosevelt?

Roy:    Roosevelt?  I didn’t have time to think about Roosevelt (laughing).  Besides, . . . how old are you now, Lucy, fifteen?  I was only four or five years older than you are.  I thought about a lot of things you think about (laughing).

Lucy:   What about Churchill, Stalin, or Mussolini?

Roy:    I never even thought about them.

Lucy:   What about Hitler?

Roy:    Now Hitler I didn’t like.  And the Japanese, . . . the worst.  I didn’t like them at all.  Because they were the ones I was fighting with.

Lucy:   What did you think about the internment of the Japanese-Americans?

Roy:    Well . . . I believe they had to do it.  Because the Japanese back then were pretty sneaky, and . . . whether or not it was the truth, I thought it was the truth. . . that we needed to do it. 

Lucy:  What did you think about the dropping of the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima?

Roy:    I was glad to see it. Because I was fixin’ to go in on the invasion, in Japan.  And later on . . . now, we were over there for three years.  They had caves everywhere.  As a matter of fact they had a cave under our house, didn’t they? They had a cave bigger than this house under the airfield I was stationed at when we were over there.  They had them everywhere.

Lucy:   Why, what were the caves for?

Roy:   For them to hide in, and fight in; plan and conduct their operations; down in there where they were safe.

(Here, Mr. Tatham is indicating the difficulties of defeating the Japanese using a conventional invasion instead of the atomic bomb.  Many more US servicemen would have died in such an invasion).

Lucy:   Have any of your opinions changed over the years?

Roy:    Yes.  The three years I was over there, I discovered that the Japanese are the most honest people I’ve ever seen.  The most honest.

Lucy:   Why?

Roy:    I mean, they didn’t steal anything.  They would try to . . .well, they might stretch the truth a little bit sometimes, you know, in order to sell you something, but they were honest people.  They were just doing like we were; they were doing what they were told.

Lucy:   Where were you when you heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

Roy:    I was over at Hayesville, working for the TVA, building the Chatuge Lake Dam.

Lucy:   What about D-day.  Where were you when you heard about D-day?

Roy:    Let’s see . . . where was I?  I was still on a carrier, out in the Pacific.

Lucy:   Really, and V-E Day?

Roy:   I was still on a carrier (laughing).

Lucy:   What about V-J day?

Roy:   Still on a carrier.

Lucy:   What about the death of Roosevelt?  Where were you then?

Roy:    Let’s see, where was I?  Oh, I was on the same carrier.

Lucy:   You spent a lot of time on carriers, didn’t you (laughing)?

Roy:    Oh yeah, I did.  I was on a carrier all the time, about it.  And see, I was in two more wars after this, now, and I’m trying to keep them separated.

Lucy:   So after World War II you stayed in the armed forces?

Kathleen:  He was out for a couple of years.  We got married and had our kids.  But then when the Korean War started they zapped him right back in.

Lucy:   So when you came home from World War II, what did you do?

Roy:    They sent me down to Pensacola as an instructor, teaching other people - like I did down there - how to fly. 

Kathleen:  And you taught flying over at Andrews, (NC).

Roy:  Oh yeah, I did that too.  And I flew for the Forest Service some.  But mainly I’ve been on carriers, a whole lot.

Lucy:    Do you remember any other problems returning soldiers would face? . . Or sailors?

Roy:    Oh . . . I remember they were all pretty rowdy, when they first . . . when I first got back.  I got back into San Diego I believe, but I was on the CVE, a little, small carrier. Kathleen:  She asked you about the problems after you came out, after you got back).  Roy:    No, not really.  They had several programs for them.  Well, people that got shot up pretty bad, they had a problem.  But . . . my brother, now, he got shot up pretty bad, three times.  And he had some problems.

Lucy:   Do you still see any of the men in your former unit?

Roy:    I’ve been in contact with them. They call, but most of them are dead, now.  They have reunions.  I don’t ever go, but they have them.  They’re always too far away for me to go.

Lucy:  Thank you