"Shortly thereafter the war ended. A guy came into the tent one day and said they were looking for volunteers to go to the Pacific. So I and another guy raised our hands. The other guy didn‟t get to go because he had been there longer in Italy than me. So I got to go to the Pacific. So we loaded on a ship again. The day we left Leghorn, Italy the first atom bomb dropped. And then, before you know it we're a little way out in the ocean and the second bomb was dropped. They announced over the loudspeaker that we weren‟t going to the Pacific, we were going to New York. And I was madder than a wet hen."

View the full transcript of the interview with Benton Bastian. The transcript is in Portable Document Format . Before viewing the document, you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.