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Oral History Interview with Jean Balch, October 12, 1996
Interview with Navy veteran Jean Balch, including Balch's personal experiences about the Pacific theater, being a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese during World War II, boot camp, radio, radar, and gunnery school, operations during the Leyte invasion, missions over Luzon, and raids on Japanese installations on Formosa and Saigon, French Indo-China. Additionally, Balch talks about his plane being shot down on a raid to Hong Kong and his capture on January 16, 1945, interrogations and beatings by the Kempei-tai, imprisonment at Ofuna, Honshu, solitary confinement for six months and continued interrogation, beatings by Japanese prison guards, starvation diet, the end of the war and liberation, and his participation in the war crimes trials held by the International Military Tribunal.
Oral History Interview with Melvin R. Baird, 1998
Interview with Navy veteran Melvin R. "Pancho" Baird. It includes a combination of interviewing and reading from Baird's personal correspondence about his pre-World War II experiences with the U.S. Asiatic Fleet and his later experiences in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Baird talks about his stationing aboard the destroyer USS Alden as a radioman, the grounding of the SS President Hoover off of Hoishito Island, the Sino-Japanese War, liberty ashore various Asian port cities, events on the South China Patrol, civilian activities after his discharge, activities as a radio technician on Blue Beach during the Okinawan Campaign, kamikaze actions on Okinawa, and typical shipboard routine.
Oral History Interviews with Howard Yergin, January 1986
Interview with Howard Yergin, an employee of Caltex Petroleum Corporation from New York City. Yergin discusses his career with the company, including his education and Army service, hiring by Caltex, move to Shanghai in 1948 and business conducted there, businessmen who helped reestablish Caltex's Chinese market after WWII, fleeing China in 1949, attempts at recouping capital from the Chinese government, operations in Hong Kong, changes in the oil market over the years, corporate financing, internal reorganization, OPEC, Persian Gulf economies, South African operations, the tanker fleet, and the company's move from New York to Dallas.
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