Remembering CAPT George McGinnis, USN, Cryptologist

Interview with Captain George McGinnis:

This is an interview with Captain George McGinnis, U.S. Navy retired. The interview occurred on 9 December, 2002 at Corry Station, Naval Technical Training Center in Pensacola, Florida. The interviewer was Peg Fiehtner.

PF: Is it all right if I refer to you as Captain?

GM: George.

PF: George, all right. I’d like to start this by asking you what brought you into the Navy in the first place – Naval Reserve as I understand it – in 1941?

GM: Okay, it’s hard probably for anyone today to realize the situation that was occurring over in Europe starting in ’39 when the war between Britain and Germany started, but it made quite an imprint here in the United States. It was obvious to most of us that war was going to occur. If you didn’t realize it yourself, your friends who had been in the military at some time or other were telling you that. In my case, I was in college at Santa Barbara in California and one of my Professors was a Reserve Officer, Naval Reserve Officer and sometime back in ’41, he said, you know, you ought to start thinking about getting into the Navy and getting in early because if you’re too late, all the good jobs will have been taken and I thought this was a pretty good idea. He talked to several other people in a kind of selected group that he’d somehow figured out and I was the only one who took him up on it.