Oral History Interview with James Browning

START OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1 Milligan: Okay, let me set my levels real quick. This is Sarah Milligan, I am in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, it’s…February 23rd, 2008, and I’m interviewing—are you Jim or James?

Browning: I went in the Navy as Jimmy, my father named me Jimmy, after my uncle Jimmy Browning, my great uncle Jimmy Browning…but I didn’t, some way or another the doctor didn’t register me, and…after what, after I went, went to work at the post office, I, I could get my birth certificate and I, adopted two of my great uncles’ name, James Woodson Browning, so J. W. Browning is my proper name.

Milligan: So you’re said, I’m interviewing James W. Browning… Browning: [Chuckling] there you go.

Milligan: …he will let us know what he wants to be called. And Belinda (Kirk?) is sitting in with us…to, to learn a little bit about oral history and so she may have some questions she wants to input. So, tell me, how did all this start? When, when did you…start with World War II? What’s your…career?

Browning: Well… 1:00Milligan: …career?

Browning: …I had two brothers in the coast guard and the coast guard was a, a different group…before World War II, and then when the war came along, they were officially part of the navy, and then I had a brother…that was drafted and, and went in the navy in 1943, so I had three brothers in the navy, and I was bored with high school, I was a senior, and…wanted to [Chuckling] get out of high school anyway I could, and so I, in, in…in October the 28th, 1944…I went to Louisville and, and enlisted in the navy.

Milligan: Where did you grow up?

Browning: What…where did I grow up? Here, here in Mount Sterling.

Milligan: In Mount Sterling.

Browning: I was born in Florida, but…my father went down there during the boom time in the twenties, and I was born down there and when things busted, he came back to [Chuckling] Kentucky… Milligan: What year… Browning: So I… Milligan: …were you born?

Browning: ’26.

Milligan: ’26.

Browning: 1926, and so I don’t even remember living in Florida, so I grew up here, I never went any place else. And I was sworn in, 2:00that was always easy to remember, went to boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois, I was sworn in on November the 11th, which was Armistice Day then, it’s Veteran Day now. And…I took ten weeks training at Great Lakes and, I’m going to show off my memory now [Chuckling]… Milligan: Uh-huh.

Browning: …at Company 2107, the Green Bay…section of Great Lakes, Barracks 2702, and 21st Regiment [Laughing].

Milligan: It’s pretty good [Chuckles – Milligan and Browning] Browning: I’m not sure about the regiment, but the rest of it I am [Chuckling].

Milligan: In 1944.

Browning: Yeah. So I went to ten weeks, in…in the middle of Winter, Great Lakes, right down on the lakes gr…Lake, Lake Michigan, and it was cold, I want to tell you it was cold, but it did get us out of a lot of drilling, you know… Milligan: Because… Browning: …but I never did mind close order drill and stuff like that. But one day we went over for antiaircraft on the lakeside, and we just about froze to death. It was about five miles over there. But we were there for ten weeks, and…I was talking to another fellow out there just a while ago that took his training up there too. 3:00We had wooden floors in the barracks of course, and we had black sole shoes, but, but made black marks on the floor, bu…and we cleaned them by taking steel-wool pads and putting them under our shoes and scrubbing them (Pounding sounds) like that.

Milligan: Putting them on the sole of your shoe and walking around.

Browning: Yeah, and they called it the Great Lake Shuffle [Laughter – Browning, Milligan and Kirk], and of course, in an hour or two was, was a hundred and some men in the barracks, they were dirty again, I think it was just a contrived thing to keep people busy. Another interesting thing we used to—of course they d…we stood a lot of watch, duty, watch. We had a front door guard, and a, and a…three of four of them around the barracks and…the, the rule was I guess, I suppose to teach us discipline, was if anybody that we wh…didn’t wear legging, with the boots, that’s what they called them in the navy, we had to say sir to them. And, and that somebody would come in who didn’t have boots on him, they could just have been the petty officer, 4:00you know, and we’d have to salute and say, “Company 2107 front door guard reporting sir!” Of course it was just a contrived thing to teach us discipline (clears throat), but after I’d…[Chuckling] I was thinking about it this morning, right humorous. After…at the, after I graduated or got out of boot camp but I, before I shipped out…of course I took my boots off and I went down to another barrack to say good buy in the morning I remember it well, I said good bye to him and I didn’t have my boots on and I walked up the barracks and that front door go “Company so-and-so, front door guard reporting sir!” That’s the only time I ever got saluted on [Laughter – Milligan, Kirk and Browning]. But…before, before we got out of boot camp we…they interviewed us and felt like what we were suited for to go into you know, what kind of training and, of course some of them went straight to sea duty, right straight to sea duty; 5:00for some reason or another they sent me to aviation ordnance school in Norman, Oklahoma, about as far from the [Chuckling] ocean as you can get. So I we…it took…twenty weeks, five months of training and of course this is 1945 and…we learned about…machineguns, bombs and fuses, aerial targets, aviation ordnance is what it was, what it was, and…just about the time, I think I got out in a like the middle of May…and they kept me, we went down…to Los Angeles and up to Alameda, California, and there was a permanent naval base up there, and…oh it was a nice, it was a nice base, had concrete barracks and nice chow halls, and it was just one of those permanent built probably thirty or forty years before that and I thought oh boy! This is great! I spent two days checking in, we go around 6:00take your papers and get checked in [Chuckling] and two days checking out [Chuckling] they took me and put me on a ship and, at, at Hunter Point there in San Francisco. And… Milligan: Let me ask you something real quick.

Browning: Okay.

Milligan: When you, when you left boot camp, what was your exit interview? What kind of questions did they ask you… Browning: Well… Milligan: …or did they just tell you where you were going to go?

Browning: …I, of course I don’t remember the details of it, but they, they, they supposedly found out what you’re most adapt at, adapt at, you know, adept at is what the word I’m trying to say, and…I, I think, I guess if they couldn’t find anything you were, they just sent you to sea duty, you know. We came out…of course you went in…as an apprentice seaman; your dress uniform just had one strip around the sleeve.

Milligan: Okay.

Browning: And after you got out of boot camp, you got your second stripe around your sleeve, and then the third stripe was the third and, and then of course after that, you, you got up to, to the shoulder you know, like that shoul…that went on your left arm. You pet…you got to be a petty officer then. 7:00Do you have a question?

Kirk: Did you, did you choose the navy because your brothers were… Browning: Yes.

Kirk: Kirk: …in the coast guard?

Browning: Yes, yes, yes, got in that, in that direction. I was just…seventeen years old, almost eighteen. As I said, I enlisted the 28th of October, and then of course in November I was 18 years old. I couldn’t imagine now, my father giving me permission and my mother, mother and father giving me permission. I think about if I had a seventeen-year old kid [Chuckling] I’m not sure that I would, I would have done it.

Milligan: but they did give permission.

Browning: Yes they did, yeah, and…at, I went…as I said they transferred me to the ship, the USS Langley, it’s an aircraft carrier, and (clears throat) in 1943 then, they realized that, that they n…aircraft carrier was a big thing you know, it was air war, World War II was, and they didn’t realize that at first, and they couldn’t build aircraft carriers fast enough, so they had some cruisers 8:00that were laid down, and the hull up like that, and the, and the CVL, this is…CV means aircraft carrier, L was light and ours was USS Fargo. Of course, cruisers are named after the capitals of states, you know… Milligan: Okay.

Browning: …and USS Fargo, when it was laid up, it wa…had been launched, just the hull, but it hadn’t been finished on the top. So they finished it up as an aircraft carrier, put the, it was six-hundred-and-forty feet long and they were fast, they’d do thirty-two knots…but they only carry about thirty-five airplanes, and there was nine or ten of them in that class, which was the independence class carrier and…but I enjoyed my sea duty, it, it gave you a feeling of individuality rather than being on a big base, you were on a ship with five, five or six hundred men, it, it made you feel more individual, I guess the word is, and (clears throat) we 9:00slept in a compartment, it wasn’t a third as big as this room and 85 sailors slept in there.

Milligan: So maybe twenty by…twenty by thirty, maybe?

Browning: And maybe, forty, about forty maybe… Milligan: Forty by forty?

Browning: …( ) like that, and they, the, the bunks—racks we called them—they folded up, and there would be five or six of them in a row, I mean above like that, you know, and…if you were lucky, if you got a [Chuckling] bottom, got a bottom you could just barely turn over in them. And we were…the officers, they slept up towards the front of the ship, officers’ country, we called it. They had a few portholes up there, and we were one of, our compartment had two portholes in it, that was one of the—it was up on what they called the poop deck, we had two portholes, we were proud of those portholes [Laughing]. But…I got on the ship 10:00in June of 1945, and of course the war was over in two months. We went…we went out on a shakedown cruise, that we got a disc…it had gotten out of dry-dock, that the Langley was in a lot combat during the…before it came back in and…I was thinking about February or, or March of 1945—Am I talking too much for you?

Milligan: No.

Browning: Okay. And they dry docked, complete overhaul, painted and everything like that, and they painted the inside of the water tanks…they refurbished it, and we went out on a shakedown cruise for five, five days outside of San Francisco, we called it the potato patch out there because it was so rough, and of course I had never [Chuckling] never been to sea before, and that paint in the water to make coffee, you could hardly drink it, and sea sickness, I was seasick for five days and my theory 11:00was I couldn’t lose anything, couldn't upchuck anything if I didn’t eat anything, and I about starved to death, but… Milligan: Was the, was there a lot of people that were seasick… Browning: Oh yeah.

Milligan: …on the boat?

Browning: Oh yeah there was like that.

Milligan: That was the first time you’ve ever been to sea was on this… Browning: Aircraft Carrier.

Milligan: …your first time out.

Browning: Yeah, yeah, and…we went out there and…let’s see, what else was I fixing to say? But I loved the ship, I’d, I’d go around and I’d go up on, on the fan, we had us some marines on the ship. Every major ship in the navy had marines on it, I think just to give it a little class [Chuckling] or something like that, and we kind of resented them, because…of course the chow lines were long, like that and the chow line went right through the marines’ compartment, just before we went in, and they didn’t have to stand, all they had to do was stand up [Laughing].

Milligan: Stand up, and it snaked all the way back around the ship.

Browning: Yeah, and…they had a quad, four anti-aircraft guns on the bow of the ship, that’s all they did, 12:00and sta…stood the captain watch, that’s about all they did, and sat around and polished their brass and [Chuckling] things like that. We kind of, kind of resented them, they’d say, “well, the marines are part of the navy,” and we’d say “yeah, yeah, the worse part” [Laughing]. Well we went out and came back in and finally, and the interesting that, thing that happened to me…a, a fellow who was two or three years older than I, Walter Johnson, from here in Mount Sterling, he went to the University of Kentucky and was a basketball player, he was only about five feet three or four, but that was before they had these seven feet people…and he was a great basketball player and he was drafted (clears throat) and I was, before I went overseas, I went over to Oakland, California, which is an environ of, as you know, of San Francisco. I don’t know what I was doing over by myself and I walked down the street and somebody said, “Hey Browning!” I looked around and it was Walter Johnson, 13:00he was leaning up against the side of the car there and I said, “what in the world are you doing here?” ( ) “I was in town waiting for Coco Jackson,” that’s another fellow I knew in (CNT?) he's over at Alameda Naval Air Station out there, and waiting for him, we are supposed to eat here in this restaurant.” Well, he never did, I talked to him a while, he never did s…Coco never showed up, there were two restaurants by the same name, and he was at the other one. We went in and ate together and…I said, “what ship are you on, Walter?” And he said, “I am on the Indianapolis,” and I remember saying, “is that a light cruiser or heavy cruiser?” And he said, “one of the other.” And we talked and visited a while. I went by the next day and saw Coco Jackson…and, and visited him, and he wasn’t, he didn’t seem like he was a week or ten days after that we sailed and, to Pearl Harbor, and when I got to Pearl Harbor, I looked at the newspaper and the Indianapolis had been sunk. It took, they were loading the pieces to the atomic bomb on it while we were talking and they took the atomic bomb to, 14:00to the Pacific and dropped it on Japan, and that ship was, was going back from where they dropped the atomic bomb off back to Guam, or one of the others, and was going from Guam back to the Philippines and this is in August. The war di…didn’t last two, two or three more weeks. And went from one naval district, or something like that, to another, and probably the last Japanese submarine in the Pacific torpedoed that thing and the navy lost that ship. They were, it went down, the sharks ate a lot, a lot of them and Walter got killed. He was killed. And the sharks ate a lot of them and the navy wasn’t even looking for the ship. And…I think they lost eight hundred men, shark, as I said, the shark ate a lot of them. And a navy patrol plane came by, flew over, and saw an oil sleek down there and started circling around and saw these people and went out there and rescued the ones that were left. 15:00And what did they do? They court-martialed the captain [Chuckling] and the captain, they kind cleared of him but they ruined his reputation and after the war, it weighed on his mind so much that he went out on his front yard and killed himself, you know, but they… Milligan: Why did they court martial him?

Browning: They said he wasn’t zigzagging and they brought the Japanese…the captain of the Japanese submarine to testify against him when they had the court martial [Chuckling] and the captain of the Japanese submarine said, “he didn’t make any difference whether he was zigzagging or not, I would have got him anyway.” But…anyway… Milligan: But how did they catch the Japanese submarine?

Browning: Huh?

Milligan: How did they catch the Japanese submarine?

Browning: Well it didn’t get sunk after the war, you know.

Milligan: But they, they captured it.

Browning: They—no, no, the captain of it I said, the captain… Milligan: Of that submarine.

Browning: Yeah, the… Milligan: Right.

Browning: …it’s, it, and the crew, the Japanese crew survived the war but they brought him back to testify… Milligan: Oh, I see! 16:00Browning: …testify against the captain, and… Milligan: So you were in Pearl Harbor while that happened?

Browning: We were operating at Pearl Harbor like that.

Milligan: Right.

Browning: And I was on Waikiki Beach when they announced the—of course you had a false, they, a false armistice, or false end of the war, they did that in the first world war too.

Milligan: Tell me about that.

Browning: Well that they, there was a rumor got out that the, that the Japanese had surrendered and they hadn’t in two days, two or three days later they had, but I was on Waikiki Beach when they did su…did surrender like that. But, a…and we, they took us out—am I telling you more than you want to know?

Milligan: No, you’re telling me what I want to know.

Browning: Okay. They took us off the ship. See they had a, a, a lot of…soldiers and sailors that had were high time. They had…they’d gone—been in since 1941 and they, they wanted out.

Milligan: Oh, yeah!

Browning: And, and, and they took our ship and took the air crew off, which I was part of, about four-hundred and fifty men and got a bunch of cots and stuff and put on the hangar deck where we kept the plane down there and made two trips to the United States, San Francisco, bringing those back, 17:00you know. And they took the air crew off and sent them out to Barber’s Point and I, and the first morning we were out there, the next morning, they mustered us down there and we picked up trash all over the, the—we went out along side of the road and we’d, (gawly?), if this the way it’s got to be for a month, [Laughing] you know. That’s the last, last…work we did. We had liberty every night, we could go on in to…Honolulu. We had two real nice beaches on the base, and we’d go out there and scuba dive and we’d muster in the morning at seven o’clock, you muster, you understand that term?

Milligan: No.

Browning: Well, they—roll call, roll call.

Milligan: Okay.

Browning: And we had the whole day to ourselves [Chuckling] it was the, it was the best duty I had in the navy. But anyway… Milligan: What was your job on the ship, when you were out?

Browning: Well, I, I’d, at, I really didn’t do a whole lot, really didn’t do a whole lot after the war was, was over. Of course, 18:00there wasn’t any use to fool around machine guns and bombs and things like that, not a whole lot, I stood…stood guard duty on the ship, I don’t know who we were guarding against, because there wasn’t any [Chuckling], any… Milligan: Is that what you did while the war was still active? Were you, were you doing guarding?

Browning: Yeah. Of course I said we, we went overseas…probably in June of ’45 and then the war was over in August…of ’45…not much of anything, and then, finally we…came back to the states in…October of ’45, came down…then came through the canal, which was an experience, to the Panama Canal, that came up to Philadelphia for, for Navy Day… Milligan: Yeah.

Browning: …of 1945 and then I came home on leave…and then had orders to go to Memphis, Tennessee at the Naval Air Station down there and I finished up my…naval career 19:00down there.

Milligan: What was your experience in Panama Camal—Canal.

Browning: Just interesting, you know… Milligan: Well… Browning: …it was just interesting and...

Milligan: Explain that to me a little bit.

Browning: Well there is—I just finished reading on, a book on Teddy Roosevelt, of course he was instrumental on getting the canal built, one of the greatest engineering feats, you know, up until the, well the, probably during the twentieth Century. The French had tried to build the canal and yellow fever had almost wiped them out, and…we bought out their interest and…it was just quite an operation, you know, the lock, going through the locks and anything like that. Teddy Roosevelt would…have a fit if he were living to know that we gave it back, gave [Chuckling] the canal back to, to Panama, but they apparently have done a pretty good job of running it. I haven’t heard anything out of it. But we came up the Navy Day at Philadelphia, and then in Memphis I didn’t do anything much down there, just putting in time ( ) and I mean, I got discharged…the eleventh day of July 20:00of 1946, and…really few high points in my life. One of them was when I joined the navy, one of them is when I got married, and the third one is when I went to work at the post office. I worked…and I used to it’d be, after World War II, they, they had turned ten million people, solders—I mean soldiers and sailors back on the civilian market, and jobs were scarce, very scarce, and…my brother and I both take the civil service examination. Back in those days, they don’t do it anymore, I don’t know why they didn’t have them, because they should have, a, a veteran got five points when he took his…civil service exam, they got five points; as a disabled right you got ten point, and it was fair, a little reward for people that served, they don’t do it anymore. I don’t know why they don’t. but anyway…my brother and I both took it…the civil service examination, in, in nineteen-forty-ssssss…forty-eight, 21:00forty-eight, al…almost, what two years after I got out of the navy, he and I both went to work at the post office. My, my brother was assistant postmaster and he, he died in about ten years, and I worked at the post office for thirty-five years.

Milligan: Whoa!

Browning: So, I would not have gone to work with the post office, I wouldn’t have got the job, if I had been in the navy, and I was going with my wife then and didn’t have a, a job that amounted to anything. I certainly couldn’t afford to get married. So I got, went to work at the post office in July 1st of 1948 and I started making big plans. I would not have—so it was a, it was a, a life changing thing that I went in the navy. So, and I started making big plans about getting married and got married in November (of this?), so it was, it was a turning—kind of a turning point in my life.

Milligan: When you were seventeen and thinking about going in to the navy, were you thinking all those things that I can go in and it will help me throughout 22:00the rest of my life, or… Browning: No-no, no, I… Milligan: …what, what were your thoughts?

Browning: An ( ) adventure, (kind of?) seventeen-year old kids don’t have any sense.

Milligan: Weren’t you worried that there was a war going on?

Browning: Naaah, you’re not going to get to the war, you’re not going to get hurt, but none of my, my, my…I, or none of my brothers were in any combat. Now, I take that back, my brother…that, that worked at the post office with me was out on Okinawa…before the war was over and, and they were bombed some, they, he was tower control operator, controlled the airplanes at the Naha airport there, and…they had a big typhoon, I guess in ’45 or early ’46 and, and about blew the—you know what I am talking about, typhoons.

Milligan: The weather, yeah.

Browning: Okay. He lost everything he had. It blew everything except the clothes he had on his 23:00[Chuckling] b…on his back [Laughing].

Milligan: Was he out in it?

Browning: On his back, and…but none of us were…other than that, he, none of us were ever, ever… Milligan: Did you write home to your parents?

Browning: Oh yeah, not as often as I should, I’m sure, because I, I didn’t know then how much they valued them. But my mother was very fateful about writing. And…my father, and going to boot camp…of course I hadn’t been in the navy but about a month, and I called home and we had a line we could call home, and I called home and the family was around on Christmas Day and, and I was homesick and I guess I showed it. And about four or five days later (clears throat) I was, we were doing in, working in, in the gas chamber…tear gas and you put, you go in there and put your gas mask on and…you know, teach you how to, how to do that. 24:00And I—somebody came down and said, “they want to see you up to the guest house.” So, I couldn’t imagine that, and I went up there and there sat my father, and it was a really mistake, because I couldn’t visit with him over an hour, and he had ridden all the way from Mount Sterling to Chicago, and…and I, I really hated that, but we visited a little bit, because he, I guess I was so homesick [Chuckling].

Milligan: [Chuckles- Milligan] that’s really sweet.

Browning: Yeah, yeah. But…I was telling another fellow out there a while ago, I was in the Navy I said, “this country is very young, you don’t think so, but it is very young.” I said, told him that I have been out of the navy sixty-two years. I was born closer to the Civil War than I was when I got out of the navy, now think about that, of course the Civil War to you is up [Chuckling] two-hundred years ago.

Milligan: Coming up on the sesquicentennial, yeah [Laughter – Milligan].

Browning: Yeah, but that just, to prove to you and 25:00I, and…it doesn’t have anything to do with this, but…the man that built my house, Mason (Young?), had an uncle that was killed in the Mexican War in 1846, a hundred and sixty years ago.

Milligan: Yeah.

Kirk: Yeah.

Browning: And that’s getting…the old fellows, that’s getting back over territory. [Laughter – Brown, Milligan and Kirk]. But I have… Milligan: Did you find the adventure you were looking for? Do you… Browning: Do what?

Milligan: Do you, do you feel like you found the adventure you were looking for?

Browning: Yeah, as I told you, it was a turning point in my life, bring back a lot of memories, and…and I got to see a lot of things that I would never seen, I hadn’t been hardly anywhere. Of course I had a sister that lived in Ohio, I’d been up there, and I went, in 1947 I went to North Carolina, my brother was in the coast guard down there, and went down and visited him, but I hadn’t been any place, and I…seeing San Francisco, and New York City, and Philadelphia, and going through the canal, and been to Honolulu, or (duh?) [Chuckling] and somebody else paid for it [Laughter 26:00– Browning, Milligan and Kirk].

Milligan: Where did you meet your wife? Did you meet her when you got back?

Browning: Yeah. Well…she ( ) on Main Street here.

Milligan: In Mount Sterling?

Browning: Yeah, and…I o…in 1947, I guess they knew they were going to hire us…at the post office, you know, I had taken my civil service examination, and…during…Christmas of 1947, my brother and I, they called us in, worked us extra, you know, just to, during that, during the season and we had a little 1929 Model A parcel post truck [Laughing] no telling what it’d be worth now, and I forgot it, but my wife lived out on Main Street, and I went out there on Christmas morning and had a special deliveries for her, package, you know, like that. And I had forgotten it but that’s the first time I ever saw her. We’ve been married almost sixty years.

Milligan: So you met her on your delivery route.

Browning: Yeah, yeah [Laughter – Browning, Milligan and Kirk]. Isn’t that romantic?

Milligan and Kirk: Yeah.

Kirk: Very romantic.

Milligan: That’s sweet [Laughter – Milligan] Browning: Ah mercy! 27:00Milligan: Well I think that’s a good, that’s a good story, I mean you, you met a lot of people… Browning: I… Milligan: …you saw a lot of things in your life.

Browning: And I don’t have any trouble talking, do I? [Laughter - Milligan, Browning and Kirk] Milligan: Ha! That’s good!

Browning: Yeah.

Milligan: That’s good.

Browning: Yeah. Where are you from?

Milligan: Originally?

Browning: Huh?

Milligan: Originally?

Browning: Yeah.

Milligan: Oklahoma.

Browning: Oklahoma!

Milligan: Mm-mm, yeah.

Browning: What part?

Milligan: Southeastern.

Browning: Yeah.

Milligan: Yeah, so you, you went through Norman, you went through Fort—not Fort Sill, that’s up in, that’s the navy one in Norman.

Browning: Yeah. Well they had a, a…Norman had a naval air technical training center where I went, and south of Norman, they had a naval air station, and down to Ardmore they had a gunnery school. I wanted to, I wanted to be an aerial gunner, aviation ordnance-men, aviation machinist mates and aviation metal smiths, were eligible for aerial gunners. And I applied for that, but I was too tall. I was six-feet-two inches tall, and those 28:00turrets are little old things like that. And not only that, we w…we worked on this airplane that they’d brought back up from the fleet…had worked on them, sighted in the guns and things like that. They brought one in there, machine gun, machine gun [Chuckling] holes all way through there, I didn’t much want… Milligan: You didn’t want to do that afterwards?

Browning: I didn’t much want to get into that.

Milligan: Do you still keep up with people that you met while… Browning: Never… Milligan: …you were on your… Browning: No, no I didn’t know any of them. There was one other fellow from here in town…that I went in the navy with him, he is dead now. But another thing too, that’s w…right interesting, I think, is that of course I was with people from New York and New Jersey, and Minnesota, a lot of Swedes from up in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, and incidentally I found out that they were, the Swedes and the Scandinavians are, are pretty decent kind of people, I found in the navy and, and e…ever since then, that, 29:00I don’t mean all of them of course, but…you could pretty well depend on what they tell you. And New Yorkers and New Jersey, of course they knew all about Kentucky. They knew we went barefooted down here, and drank whiskey all the time, and everything like that. They knew all, all about it, and they ribbed me about it, being from Kentucky, and it didn’t take me long to, to figure out that I tried to be on my best behavior, you know, I didn’t want to say, “ain’t,” or…I didn’t want to add anything to the coals as it where.

Milligan: Mm.

Browning: And there was a fellow in the navy up there in boot camp from down here in Hazard, or Harlan, down the southeastern Kentucky when it was rough down there, you know, down there. And one day I went over there and he had a crowd of people from up in New York, telling them about shooting across the street at each other and murdering each other… Milligan: Oh no-o!

Browning: I could, I felt like saying, oh shut up! For heaven sake [Chuckling], so…oh mercy. I watch it, but I remember…I’ve got a…a picture of…of my company in boot camp, 30:00and I can remember those faces. I can look at, there is a hundred and some people and I can remember most of them.

Milligan: Whoa!

Browning: And some of them I remember their name. I don’t know why that would be, but...

Milligan: Do you remember what, what it was like the day that they announced that the Japanese had surrendered?

Browning: Well it was a celebration.

Milligan: What kind of celebration?

Browning: Well…everybody started moving around, we went in Honolulu, and I, I think some of us got a taxi and we drove around, you know, and waved at people and [Chuckling] cheered and everything like that, yeah. But I tell you what, I went to Morehead after I retired from the post office, took some, went three semesters up there and take—and took…some fun courses you know, geology and stuff like that, English composition wasn’t that fun [Chuckling]. Anyway…there was some smart aleck, and of course, I was fifty-seven years old, and…there was some smart aleck kids there and they got, in philosophy class when they started talking about whether we should have dropped the atomic bomb or not. 31:00And I realized that I was old enough to be their grandparents and, and I tried to guard against being I know it all and this is the way it was, they didn’t want to hear that. I knew they didn’t want to hear that. But you can only take so much, you know, and this black boy from up in New York or somewhere he was talking about dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese and this and that and the other, and I, I finally said, “I’m going to tell you something, I was on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. If they hadn’t dropped that atomic bomb, I would have been in, in the invasion of Japan, which they say we would have lost a half million men, and I have no doubt that that’s true.” And I said, “not only that, I may have not have been here, and you may have not been here, because your grandparents may have gotten killed in the invasion.” I said, “no, the Japanese and the Germans, if they did—and the Germans were working on the atomic bomb too; if they would have got it, they would have dropped it on us.” 32:00And…Hamburg, Germany was bombed one night, we—the Germans—the British bombed them one night, and we bombed them all the next day. And they had what they call a fire storms, and the wind was blowing over the North Sea, and it just kept, you know, just like a, a blast furnace, you know like had killed eighty thousand people in one night, burned most of them up. They were just as dead if they had been—had a atomic bomb dropped on them, so you know, everything is relative, like that, but… Milligan: How did he take that?

Browning: Huh?

Milligan: How did he take that, when you were… Browning: I don’t know, I [Chuckling] I didn’t… Milligan: Yeah [Laughter – Milligan and Kirk] Browning: [Chuckling] Actually I… Milligan: Just wondering.

Browning: …I didn’t, didn’t really care [Laughing].

Milligan: Well, do you have any questions that you wanted to ask, Belinda?

Kirk: No, you, you’ve covered what I, I thought I wanted and you did.

Browning: I probably told you more than… Milligan: You’re good! No!

Browning: I probably told you more than you wanted to know.

Milligan: You’re a good interviewee! You should… Browning: [Laughing] Ah mercy!

Milligan: You just told it exactly like you… Browning: But I tell you what, life has been a good—I wouldn’t have missed it for anybody. Ah, 33:00ah, you know, it just…just, just, it’s interesting.

Milligan: It sounds like it…you were very fortunate in, in being able to, to play it out like you did and see what you wanted to see, and have the adventures without having to do too much combat, or any combat.

Browning: Yeah, yeah.

Kirk: I mean it’s just… Browning: Well, wars are interesting… Kirk: …fortunate that you came back ( ).

Browning: …but you can get killed doing that.

Kirk: Yeah.

Browning: I mean, that’s dangerous occupation [Chuckling].

Kirk: It is! That’s why, I mean being seventeen and kind of wistful and ready for adventure you were fortunate to get what you wanted ( )… Browning: Well that, you couldn’t get people thirty-five, forty years old to do what seventeen and eighteen year old kid would do like that.

Milligan: No, not very often today can you [Chuckles – Kirk] either.

Browning: Yeah…well I’ve often sai..., you’re, you’re past that age, aren’t you? You are not, you are not seventeen, are you?

Milligan: No.

Browning: You are not a teenager, are you? You can… Milligan: Not anymore, thank goodness.

Browning: …you can thank me for that [Chuckling] if you want to, but I’ve often said teenagers don’t have much sense, that’s why the Lord put the parents in charge of them [Laughter – Milligan and Kirk], and when they absolve that, you can see what happen. That’s right, I remember, I remember what it was like being a teenager.

Milligan: Yeah.

Browning: They don’t have much gumption, too many things going on in their life [Chuckling], and I raised two boys, so I know what I’m talking about 34:00 [Chuckling].

Kirk: Good. There is one question I was wondering if, if you have an opinion about it. I’ve no…I’ve noticed from talking to all these people, that a lot of Mount Sterling boys, Montgomery County boys, joined the navy, okay, which just seems sort of foreign. Do you have any idea w…I know why you, you joined the navy because you wanted to be in the, your brothers were in the coast guard, but is, was, do you have any other i…opinion of why have so many of them joined the navy?

Browning: No, I, that’s a good question. I never thought about it. I wake up at two o’clock in the morning and I’ll think about that, try to come to [Chuckling] c…some kind of conclusion [Chuckling]. Oh. This, this has nothing to do with it talk about joining the navy and stuff like that (clears throat). We…Irene and I have been to Europe four or five times, I guess. And this has nothing to do with this subject, you understand?

Milligan: Mm-mm.

Browning: And…we would, we would go over to…we were over in France, down here in the—well 35:00we got a world war marker, it’s an old one, I’ve got a new one…out here, they had one down the courthouse, this marker out here, and the reason the, we had…because the, because the blacks made them take it down, because the blacks of Montgomery County in the first world war were down here separate. It said colored, they didn’t like that. So they made them take it down and put a new one and we brought the old one and put it out here, maybe thirty or forty names… Milligan: Yeah.

Browning: …on this World War I… Milligan: Yeah.

Browning: ...that got killed during the first world war. A little town is not as big as Mount Sterling, would have three hundred names on it, they were killed in the first world war, and…it just wiped out a whole generation of British and French and German, but twenty years later the Germans are ready to go at it again, [Chuckling] I mean, I can’t understand that, and a, and a little… Milligan: Do you want me to… Browning: …beside that, we were, went to, went to France one time, and 36:00we had a…tour guide (clears throat) named Peter, he was a British man, and…he did a good job, did a good job of, really fond of. We went down to D-Day beaches for, and down to southern French and came up, back up going back in Paris through the first world war battlefields, and Peter was talking about what the British and what the French did, and the, the British don’t think we did anything neither war, I don’t think (clears throat) and he was talking about that and never mentioned America. And I told my wife is it all right I can’t, I can’t let Peter get away with this [Chuckling]. As I told you, I love history. Two or three days later, I said, “Peter, this is your tour, and I guess you can conduct it anyway you want to, but I must say I am disappointed that you didn’t mention what the American did in the first world war.” I said, “the Kaiser wasn’t about to invade the United States.” And I said, “we…we took, we were philosophically aligned with the British and the French more than were Germans, and we tried to help you.” 37:00And I said, “in helping you we got, got into the war.” And I felt like I hadn’t given him the tip yet, and he was kind of [Chuckling] a captive audience, and I said “Not only that, Peter, we lent you billions of dollars and you never paid one damn penny of it back.” He said, “( ) both have to take it under consideration.” [Laughter – Milligan, Kirk, and Browning.” Ah mercy!

Milligan: It’s still, the conversation still goes on [Laughter – Kirk]. Well, I’m going to stop this, unless you have something else you want to add?

Browning: Oh, I’ll think of something else [Chuckling].

Milligan: Well I know you can go on for days [Laughter – Milligan and Kirk] Browning: No, not all day [Chuckling] well you might as well talk to me as somebody else because [Laughter – Milligan, Kirk] you know, well, it, it, it’s been, it’s been, it’s been an interesting thing, an interesting thing, and I tell you what, that, that keeps you—of course I’m t…eighty-one years old, and I had somebody the other day, I was somewhere, and they said, “you know ( )” and I said, “eighty-one years old,” and he said, “well you certainly don’t look eighty-one,” and I said, “well I was careful 38:00who I chose as ancestors.” [Chuckling] My folks lived to be ninety-six and… Milligan: Whoa!

Browning: …my brother lived to be ninety-eight, and… Milligan: Whoa!

Browning: …Well… Milligan: I just… Browning: …but, you got to stay interested in what’s going on down here.

Milligan: Yeah, that’s true.

Browning: Absolutely, you’re, or you’re dead and still here [Laughing].

Milligan: Well, I just interviewed Mr. Crabtree and he is ninety-four, so it’s… Browning: Yeah, he is ni…he is a very nice fellow, a real gentleman.

Milligan: Very, very nice.

Browning: A real gentleman.

Milligan: Well, I, if it’s okay I’m going to, I’ll go ahead and end it here and we can… Browning: Now, now… Milligan: …go out and… Browning: …if you publish that and make a lot of money, I expect you to share it with me.

Milligan: That’s right, if I’m, if I make a million dollars off of this, you will be the first one.

Browning: How much you’ll give me? Ten thousand dollars [Laughing]?

Milligan: Ten percent.

END OF INTERVIEW”