Eugene Brooks

Interviewed 10 April 1991
Eugene Brooks was born in Illinois in 1922 but grew up in Waveland, where he went to school and played four years of varsity basketball. He was drafted and left for Camp Atterbury on August 18, 1942. He was assigned to the 96th Infantry Division. Brooks spent 196 days on Leyte, where he met actor and conscientious objector Lew Ayres, who was working as an orderly in a field hospital. As the 96th left for Okinawa on the ship LST-1055, they heard Tokyo Rose comment, "I feel sorry for those boys on LST-1055. They'll never make it to Okinawa." They did make it, but Brooks was one of only 17 men from Company I that survived the Battle of Okinawa. He was discharged from service on March 15, 1946.