By Chace Anderson “‘FIRE ONE came the call from the conning tower. Then the whole sub bucked,” recalls Tuolumne County resident and World War II submariner Don Deiss, now 87. “I was with 10 other guys in the forward torpedo room waiting the next order,” Deiss continues. “Eight seconds went by and FIRE TWO came the call.” Another
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I was born on February 14, 1922 in Newman, California to Mary and Severo Soares, who were Portuguese immigrants. When I was about a year old, my family moved to San Jose, where I grew up on a dairy farm. I had three brothers and two sisters. Carl was first, then Frank, Silverio, Mabel, myself,
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The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner By Randall Jarrell  From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me
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By Max Kernaghan As told to Packy Maxwell I spent about four years during World War II in the Army Air Corps (which became the U. S. Air Force after the war) which included operations in a war zone. I owe the service a lot. They took on a 19-year-old kid, housed, clothed, fed, and
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By Wendell Nicholls As told to Mary Louis  I was born in Sonora, California on April 30, 1921. My family lived in Soulsbyville, just up the hill from Sonora. I lived there for the first 25 years of my life. My parents were Evelyn and Royal Nicholls. I had four siblings. Aileen, Ruth, and Francis
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I remember Vernon Dunlavy, my principal at Sonora High, writing in my yearbook, “You’re going to go a long way in life.” That really hit me.  I always remembered what he wrote, and I guess in many ways he was right. ~ Tete Arellano By  Graciano “Tete” Arellano As told to Chace Anderson  Sonora and
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By Arthur Moore as told to Jim and Judy Hamilton My name is Arthur Moore; no middle initial. I was born May 3, 1919, in Willits, about 150 miles north of San Francisco. My mother’s name was Bertha Friesendorf and my father’s was Arthur Moore. She was from Hamburg, Germany, and came to San Francisco
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By Denny Thompson  as told to Bill and Celeste Boyd  I gazed down from the aircraft as we crossed the English Channel and saw hundreds of ships heading for the beaches of France.  It was June 6, 1944 and I knew that the troops were hitting the beaches on D-Day as we flew toward Lisieux,
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A ‘party animal’ turned fighter pilot, then college dean, Sonora resident Paul Becker recalls the dogfight days of World War II.

By Robert Rundle as told to Mary Louis I was born in Stockton, California to William and Pearl Rundle.  Two and a half years earlier my brother, William, had been born. I lived on Ophir Street in Stockton and had some very good buddies across the street. They were cousins to a certain girl, Ruth
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