Emil Kesselman was born in April 1927 in Jamaica, New York. He had one brother, George, who has since passed, and a sister, Geraldine, who is still alive [Annotator’s Note: at the time of the interview]. His father was a butcher, and George worked with him in the butcher shop, while Kesselman made deliveries. His father was from Galicia, Poland [Annotator’s Note: what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine] and immigrated to the United States when he was around 15 years old. His father’s business did okay during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States] until the bus stations were moved closer to the subway and farther from the butcher shop. His father eventually went bankrupt and had to close the butcher shop. George went to work and Kesselman shined shoes for extra money. He attended public school and played football in high school until an injury ended that. He also played baseball. In the winter, they would ice skate. He loved sports. Kesselman had no intention of going to college. The war broke out when he was 14 or 15 years old. He heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] when he came home from the movies and his father had the radio on. A year or two later, his brother went in, then his sister, and then he went in when he was 17 and a half years old. He had been working at Laguardia Field as an airplane mechanic. Everyone around him was joining up and he pestered his parents so much that they finally gave in. He chose the Navy because his brother, who he looked up to, had joined the Navy.

Emil Kesselman went through boot camp in Samson, New York [Annotator’s Note: after enlisting in the US Navy in November 1944]. It was very cold. He was sent to San Diego [Annotator’s Note: San Diego, California] for advanced training at the end of January [Annotator’s Note: January 1945]. On the train ride from Buffalo [Annotator’s Note: Buffalo, New York] was the first time he had seen mountains of snow. The trip lasted five days, and it was 85 degrees when they arrived in San Diego. There, he attended yeoman school and learned shorthand typing to do clerical work. If they failed out, they would be sent overseas. Iwo Jima [Annotator’s Note: the Battle of Iwo Jima, Japan; 19 February to 26 March 1945] and Okinawa [Annotator’s Note: The Battle of Okinawa, code named Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945; Okinawa, Japan] were going on at the time, so they studied hard because no one wanted to go overseas. They got liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go to Los Angeles [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California] a few times which was nice, they ate very well there. Kesselman finished 23rd out of 50 students at the yeoman school and was promoted to Seaman First Class. He was the shipped to Shoemaker, California [Annotator’s Note: The US Naval Training and Distribution Center at Camp Shoemaker near Dublin, California] to head to Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. Once there, he was assigned to do clerical work in an office where the men were billeted. He worked in assigning men to ships where they were needed. He arrived in Guam in June 1945 and the war was over by August 15 [Annotator's Note: following the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. Because of his position he was able to select where he wanted to serve, and chose to stay on Guam working in the receiving station. He eventually got orders to go to San Francisco [Annotator’s Note: San Francisco, California] and then hoped to get back to New York around April or May 1946, but there was a railroad strike and he could not get home so he was assigned to the USS Pickaway (APA-222), and went right back to Guam. Had he simply stayed in Guam in the first place, he would have been out by then. [Annotator’s Note: Kesselman laughs.] By 20 August [Annotator’s Note: 20 August 1946] there were orders that everyone had to be out, so he got lucky and was discharged from the ship. He arrived in Lido Beach [Annotator’s Note: Lido Beach, Long Island, New York] and called his parents to let them know he would be discharged in two days. He started working as a payroll clerk and eventually became the personnel manager at Brillo [Annotator’s Note: Brillo Manufacturing Company]. He got married and had a son. He was called back to the Reserves and was sent to Key West, Florida. Around March of that year [Annotator’s Note: year not indicated]. The reserves got all the work details that no one else wanted to do, like latrine duty [Annotator’s Note: cleaning the bathrooms]. [Annotator’s Note: The interview is interrupted.]

Emil Kesselman [Annotator’s Note: called back into the Navy Reserves for the Korean War after serving in the Navy from November 1944 to May 1946] was stationed in Key West [Annotator’s Note: Key West, Florida] with “SurAsDevDet”, Surface Anti-submarine Development Detachment. He was yeoman [Annotator's Note: a sailor who specializes in clerical and administrative work] to a Lieutenant Commander at a destroyer base where radar and sonar equipment was being tested. Kesselman’s Uncle Louie, an electrician, worked at the Special Device Center and had invented several items. One morning during inspection Kesselman was called out and sent to the main naval station for additional duty. He had not been told anything, but Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] was there on a working vacation. He went aboard the USS Williamsburg [Annotator’s Note: a US Navy gunboat which served as a presidential yacht from 1945 to 1953] for a meal. They then went to the base commandant’s house where the Presidential entourage was staying. Suddenly, the president entered and addressed Kesselman who was incredibly nervous, it was surreal. Kesselman was assigned to the president’s correspondence secretary typing letters which he did for a few weeks. He was told one day to arrive the following morning in clean uniform with shoes shined. Kesselman did not know who the man was, but it turned out to be Admiral Dennison [Annotator’s Note: Rear Admiral Robert L. Dennison, Naval Aide to the President] who was preparing a photo op of Truman working with Kesselman. The picture was in newspapers around the country the following morning, and on the television though not many people had television sets at the time. After that he was treated with kid gloves by his superiors.

Emil Kesselman’s discharge date was set for August 1950 and he went home to New York, and to work at Brillo [Annotator’s Note: Brillo Manufacturing Company]. He stayed with the company for 21 years and then worked elsewhere, retiring in 1992, but continuing to work part-time. At the time, it did not mean much to have served, because everyone did. Today [Annotator’s Note: at the time of the interview], Kesselman is repeatedly thanked for his service. Those who served in Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] got no recognition whatsoever. Kesselman went to college using the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] to better himself while he was at Brillo.

Emil Kesselman liked being a civilian and a father, and did not have any ideas of going back in the service [Annotator’s Note: after being discharged in August 1951]. The only big difference between the World War 2 Navy and the Navy during the Korean War was that Truman made everyone equal, Black [Annotator's Note: African-American] servicemen were not restricted to being cooks for example. They had been treated as second-class citizens. He had no problem because he always went to school with Black people, but men from the South [Annotator's Note: Southern United States] had some problems with it. His time in the service made a man out of Kesselman. Before the war, he worked as a mechanic at Laguardia Airfield after high school. After the war, he went back and asked for an office job there, but was told those jobs were for women so he found a different job at an insurance company for a few months until he went to Brillo where he was paid better than at the insurance company.