Albert C. Coleman, WW2, born Dec. 23, 1919, Flint, MI. He enlisted in the USN at Detroit, MI, on Feb. 2, 1939, and was sent to Newport, RI, for training. In June he was shipped to Brooklyn Navy Yard and went on board the USS West Virginia.
During the Pearl Harbor attack he was not on board the ship, but was at R&R Camp about 20 miles from Pearl. When he got back to Pearl the fighting was over and he went aboard a destroyer tender at the north end of Ford Island. The next day he was transferred to the receiving station for permanent duty and stayed until June 1943, and then was transferred to new construction at Harbor Island in Seattle, WA. He traveled back to the States on board the Wee Wee as a passenger to Bremerton, WA, where assigned to the destroyer USS Franks (DD-554).

He left Washington for the South Pacific and his first battle was the Gilbert Islands Campaign. Also, participated in battles at Guam, Marshall's, Leyte Gulf, Boganville, Iwo Jima, Saipan, Peleliu and Okinawa and several other small battles.  He made WW1 in July 1945 and was transferred back to the States. He was discharged Jan. 2,1946, and a month later joined the Reserves until retiring in 1979 as WW2.

He has been a missionary in Alaska since 1986 and is presently planning on going to the Philippines and working with the street people and the homeless. His wife passed away in 1979 and he remarried in 1992.

Reprinted with permission from Turner Publishing