Oral History Interview with Elbert Dixon, September 4, 2004 Page: 3

                                
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everyone was going to San Diego. I don't know if San diego was filled up or what, but
anyway I'm one of the few Marines in our area that went through Perris Island. And we
went to Perris Island, I was in Platoon 602, Third Battalion. they were taking pictures
and of course I'd, now I was interested, but they didn't take a picture of our platoon. I'd
give anything to have a picture of it because, to see the people and just how many people
you would remember.
Mr. Morris: Right.

Mr. Dixon:
Mr. Morris:
Mr. Dixon:

Well, anyway, boot camp, and I said this to somebody yesterday, you know, I was on a
farm, we didn't have running water, you went outside to the bathroom, and back in the
'thirties things were pretty tough. In Perris Island, even though there was somebody on
top of us all the time chewing on us, we had running water (chuckles) and we didn't have
to go outside, so it really wasn't, I didn't get home sick, home sick wasn't a thing that even
entered into my mind. And I wondered about that, was it because I had lost my parents
and had sort of an unstable life up to that point? Maybe that's what it was, I don't know.
But anyway, boot camp, it was boot camp. We had thirteen weeks of it and I learned a lot
of things and I think am a better man having gone through boot camp.
Did the training, I guess that's why it's called basic training, so you weren't given a
specialty at this point or anything?
No, you know, and people don't believe this, and I guess I kinda, I know it was that way,
but I wanted to be a rifleman, I wanted to go overseas, and now something that I didn't, I
haven't said, but in the interim between graduating from high school I had an uncle
that lived in Kansas City and there was a trade school down there, Midland Radio and
Television School. And I wanted to get in radio for whatever reason, and so I went down in
May and enrolled in that school and went to radio school and stayed with my uncle down
there. And he lived in North Kansas City and we drove probably fifteen miles into Kansas
City and back every day. The thing, it was an interesting thing, there were I think about
between two hundred and fifty and two hundred and seventy-five students going there,
and about ten of us were men and the rest of 'em were women. That was hard to handle, of
course, but, anyhow, I'm joking. One of the things that I didn't take and could have taken
and it would have helped me, but it was code, Morse code. I learned to build radios, I
learned all about the theory and I could build a radio and did build a radio. So I went to
school there up until the time I was drafted. When I left I was still going to radio school.
Back to, did I have a specialty then. There wasn't, and I kept saying I want to go, I want to
be a rifleman, I want to go overseas, and believe it or not, the kids, I mean, we wanted to
get the Japs. I mean, the Japs were after us and we wanted to avenge what had taken place
at Pearl Harbor and what took place in all the other places that we'd heard of up to that
point. So that was the primary objective, believe it or not.

In boot camp you don't, you're not assigned to anything. You just go through boot camp,