Boyd Williams, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, May 5, 2004: Saving the legacy tape no. 649

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B YD WIL lAM y 5 20 hard tim s but w got through all right. In high sch ol w ort f kn w- I hadar al good friend well, three or four friends in the same grade in high school and we all kn w we would be going into the Navy together probably as soon as we could. I think it was April of '44 we enlisted in the Navy, about five of us together and we went to Boise one weekend and had our physicals. We were staying at the Idanha Hotel-it's quite a landmark there in Boise-and we had our physicals there on a weekend, I believe, so we could get back to school. But we were all accepted. So about two days after graduation in May in '44 we left for Farragut Training Station up in northern Idaho. It's up by Lake Coeur D'Alene and Lake Pend Oreille. BEC: So why did you all decide the Navy? BOY: Well, there'd been quite a few guardsmen, national guards, pulled out of Idaho. They had an engineering company in Rigby for a long time and they were called out in 1941, even before the war actually started. So we had a lot of buddies going into infantry with the guard. We sort of figured we'd go into the Navy. (We'd) rather be on a ship than in a foxhole (laughs). BEC: Some of those units were really decimated, weren't they? BOY: Oh, yeah. Some of those guard units were in New Guinea and some of the islands over there for four years. But we did decide on the Navy and about two days after we graduated from high school, we took a bus and left for Farragut, Idaho. We had about six weeks boot camp training there. While there, we took aptitude tests to see what we were best qualified to take, to be in the Navy there. I'd had radio school in high school for one year, so I knew the Morse code and basics of radio technology. After a few tests they said I'd be good as a radio operator. I said, "Okay, that's fine with me." So three of 4