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Interview With Elbert Dixon
This is Steve Morris. Today is September fourth, 2004. I'm interviewing Mr. Elbert Dixon at the Hilton
Hotel, San Antonio, Texas. This interview is in support of the Center for Pacific War Studies, Archives
for the National Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Parks and Wildlife, for the preservation of
historical information related to this site.
Mr. Morris: I appreciate your taking your time.
Mr. Dixon: Glad to do it.
Mr. Morris:
Mr. Dixon:
I usually like to start with a little background, where you were born, who your folks were.
Fire away.
Okay. Well, I was born on a farm near Turney, Missouri. Turney is north of Kansas City
about an hour. That doesn't have any bearing on it (chuckles). The background doesn't
hurt anything, does it.
Mr. Morris: No, it's nice to know where everybody comes from.
Mr. Dixon:
Okay. Anyway, I was born there in 1926, the eighteenth of August, and, you want to know
about my parents?
Mr. Morris: Sure.
Mr. Dixon:
My father was Willis Dixon and my mother was Eunice Wray Gow, and they were
married in 'twenty-five, sometime in 1925, and I was born August eighteenth, 1926. In
1927 my father was killed in a hunting accident, and my mother and my sister and I
moved into Plattsburg, Missouri. Bought a house from my father's grandfather and we
lived there. She remarried and had two children. My sister, direct sister, is Cara Lee
Dickerson now. And we have two half-brothers and -sisters. When I was eight years old
my mother died. So my grandparents on my father's side took my sister Cara Lee and I to
the farm and raised us. It was during hard times, and things were pretty tough then. But
anyway we made it through it and probably learned a lot of hard lessons and learned
about economics in hard times and appreciated things in good times now.
Mr. Morris: How'd you come to join the Marine Corps?
Mr. Dixon:
It's, I guess, kind of a long story, but in high school I was a freshman and a man by the
name of Virgil Rogers was in the Marine Corps and had been, he came to an assembly at
the high school and spoke to us. He had his dress blues on and he had been awarded the
Silver Star and earned the Purple Heart on Tulagi. Which, Guadalcanal and Tulagi were
in the same operation. And that kind of made an impression on me, I guess, and I decided
I wanted to be in the Marine Corps. I had friends that were older than me that went on,
two or three of 'em left school before they graduated and joined the Marine Corps. So I