John Giganti • Day of the Kamikaze • November 25, 1944

“I was a little Italian boy grew up on spaghetti and meatballs, I didn’t know nothing else. And they were feeding us baked beans twice a week, chipped beef, and something else which I don’t want to mention, people know about. So, I said, “you’re off watch,” and I goes up in the galley, about 12 o’clock at night, I put my nose against the screen, and the cook would be cooking steak and eggs. There was a little short fellah, and he looked and me and said, ‘Whaddya want, sailor?’ and I said, ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘Want a sandwich?’ ‘Oh, I’d love it.’ So he made me a sandwich and I went to bed. After a couple of days later, I went up there again. He said, ‘You back again? Whaddya hungry?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you become a cook?’ I said, ‘I’d love to.’ He said, ‘I’ll see what I can do for you.’ So after about three weeks, I got in the galley, and we became good buddies. In fact, I was best man for him after the war.

“ I was in the galley serving. I was talking with this fella [Joseph LoMastro]. He went up on topside, and we secured everything. And ah…when ah, general quarters was over, I found out he got blown away. They never found his body or anything. And that was the end of him. His wife was expecting a baby. He came from Raritan, New Jersey. That I’ll never forget. The only thing I regretted was that I lost this friend who was gone, he never came back. There was nothing else I could do.”