Today they are referred to respectfully as the "Greatest Generation," but according to Fulton World War II veteran Richard White, he and his peers did not consider the sacrifices they made during that conflict to be particularly special.
"Everyone felt like it was our duty to serve," White said. "None of us made a big deal about it, it was just something you did for our country."
White was with the U.S. Navy from 1944-46, serving in the Pacific theater aboard the super-dreadnought battleship U.S.S. Pennsylvania.
He enlisted with the Navy at 17 after finishing high school in Carthage, Missouri and marrying his high school sweetheart, Evelyn. White said he chose the Navy because at the time, "they were drafting everybody into the Army and sending them to Fort Sill (in Oklahoma)." Having grown up in Oklahoma, White said he had no interest in going back there.
Instead, he was sent to the Farragut Naval Training Station in Idaho, where he said there was snow 6-8 feet deep.
"They used to take bulldozers out to clear the drill field," White said, also making note of rowing exercises on the lake in the middle of winter. "When we got back to dock I was frozen in my life jacket."
White was shipped out of San Francisco aboard the U.S.S. Pennsylvania (also known as the Keystone Battleship).
"We went to Pearl Harbor, and I had a half day off," he said. "I had heard about the beach at Waikiki, so I went swimming on Waikiki."
White said his duties aboard the Pennsylvania depended on what the ship was doing. His steaming duty was communicating with the bridge from the No. 1 engine room. In battle, it was White's job to load shells to the 40 mm magazine gun above him.
"If the ship had gone down, I wouldn't have made it out," White noted of his station.
While aboard the Pennsylvania, White saw action throughout the Pacific, including the Marianas and Admiralty islands and Guam.
White specifically mentioned taking part in the bombardment of Saipan, noting that he was there when the first atom bomb was dropped.
The Pennsylvania also was part of the bombardment at Wake Island, where White said the Japanese launched a torpedo at the ship that, fortunately, turned out to be a dud.
"One of the officers climbed up, tucked it under his arm, and dunked it over the side," he said.
The Pennsylvania then went on to Naval Base Buckner Bay in Okinawa where White said they took on an admiral and his crew.
"We were to be the flagship of the second wave to go into Tokyo Bay, but then they dropped the second bomb," he said.
It was while they were in Buckner Bay that near-disaster struck.
"My ship was torpedoed 58 hours before the war ended, and 20 good men lost their lives," White said. "A two-man torpedo plane came around and dropped that fish on us. If we had been at sea we would have been sunk."
He said three tugboats pumped water from the Pennsylvania while the crew worked to weld shut the hatches and shore up the support "to keep the walls from caving in."
"We had no lights, no power of any kind," White said.
The Pennsylvania was towed 1,300 miles back to Guam, where it was put in floating dry dock to patch up the 30-foot hole White said the torpedo had blown into the side of the ship.
From there White said the Pennsylvania steamed home to Bremerton, Washington - a trip he said took extra time because three of the ship's four propellers were out of commission.
"We were going on one screw, three knots per hour," he said. "It took us three days."
White said the Navy was offering double pay to seamen who agreed to sign up for two years of occupation service in Japan, but he wanted to go home to his wife. He was discharged at Lambert Field in St. Louis, "on the first day of Spring in March of 1946."
After the war, White went back to Carthage where he got a job at the A&P Grocery while he applied for optometry school. After graduating from the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, White again returned to Carthage, but said there were not a lot of opportunities there.
"I had a chance to buy a doctor out in Fulton. We moved here in January of 1954, and I've been here ever since," White said.
White worked in private practice for almost 40 years and also spent 30 of those years working half days at the clinic at Fulton State Hospital.
His civic service to the community included a stint on the Fulton School Board from 1961-63, participating in the city's Long Range Planning Committee and the early 1960s and 13 years as chairman of the board for the Fulton Housing Authority. White is also a co-founder of the local Dementia/Alzheimer's Support Group after caring for his wife - who died of Alzheimer's in May 2009.
Asked what his main recollection of what life at war was like, White said, "when you're 18, you're not afraid, you never think about getting killed." But mainly, he said, "I missed my wife."
"Every time we hit port I got a stack of mail - always sealed with a lipstick kiss," White said.
White said the most emotional thing he remembers from his war experience was when his crew buried six of its members at sea.
"There were hundreds of sailors in their dress uniforms, we sang the Navy hymn ... and slid them quietly into the sea," White said. "There must have been 100 sailors on deck, and not a single eye was dry. I never will forget it - I can still close my eyes and see it."
White had the opportunity to go on a Central Missouri Honor Flight in September 2009, an opportunity he said was one of the best things he had ever done.
"When we walked into the airport at Baltimore, as we entered the terminal there was a row of sailors on the right and a row of Army on the left and they clapped and whistled, and every guy there had tears in his eyes. It was fantastic," White said. "It's the most wonderful experience you ever could have. Everyone should go."
Richard White's scrapbook with photos from his time in WWII