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Mr. Doig: Right.
Mr. Metzler: Were you trained to shoot a firearm or anything like that? Mr. Doig: Yes, at Great Lakes we did fire a rifle but they didn't really trust the sailors that much with fire arms. Mr. Metzler: How long did boot camp last? Mr. Doig: Three months, twelve weeks. I went home on leave and came back. I was assigned to Navy pier in Chicago. I went to the diesel school. I spent three months in diesel school. Mr. Metzler: Diesel school means learning how to repair diesel engines? Mr. Doig: Right, how they run right from the ground up on a diesel. I took an aptitude test and I wound up in that class. The whole Navy pier, at that time, I don't know if you're familiar with Navy pier, but the big long pier stuck out in Lake Michigan. They had kinds of different schools there. They had air craft gunnery school and air craft school, mechanic school. They had chef schools, teaching guys how to be chefs in the Navy and all sorts of varied occupations in the Navy at that time. Mr. Metzler: So it was a big training facility? Mr. Doig: I remember that one of the heroes at the time was Joe Fosse who was a pilot at Guadalcanal and later became governor of Utah, I think, and he came and gave us a speech about how the guys were repairing his planes after he came in all shot up at Guadalcanal. These were the guys he was speaking to. Mr. Metzler; How important a mechanic was... Mr. Doig: Yes, what your job meant something when you came in with a riddled up plane and they put it back together so you could use it. Mr. Metzler: Where were you housed when you were there, being trained at the pier? Did they have housing right there on the pier?
Mr. Doig: Yes, it was a great big barracks. They had different schools in different areas. They had a couple of ships in the lake where they were landing airplanes on. They'd take off on land and land on the decks of these converted carriers and it was a training ground. Mr. Metzler: You say converted ships. You mean other ships that were converted to carriers?
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with James Doig. Doig joined the Navy in December of 1942. He completed Diesel School, repairing landing craft engines. Beginning August of 1943, Doig served in the fire room aboard USS Ashland (LSD-1). While he was aboard, the Ashland participated in the assaults on Kwajalein and Eniwetok. In the late 1944, Doig was transferred to USS Kenton (APA-122). They transported troops to the Philippines and participated in the Okinawa invasion. Doig was discharged in February of 1946.
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Doig, James.Oral History Interview with James Doig, May 13, 2004,
text,
May 13, 2004;
Fredericksburg, Texas.
(https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1604529/m1/4/:
accessed July 16, 2024),
University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu;
crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.