PORTRAITS OF COURAGE: Rudolph Gulbrandson

Rudolph Gulbrandson was working on a farm in Donnelly, Minn., when his boss told him Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

“We didn’t know how bad it was right away,” said Gulbrandson of Wasilla. “It took us a while to find out how bad it really was.”

Gulbrandson had a draft card and figured he was going into the service sooner or later, so he volunteered in February, 1942.

“I had a chance to pick my service,” he said. He picked the Marines.

“They said it was hard to get into the Marines. I thought I’d try and see what happens.”

Gulbrandson said the motto of the Marines at the time was “Join the Marines and police the world.”

“I figured it would mostly be guard duty,” he said. “I found out different.”

He was sent to boot camp in California and then to a new outfit at Camp Linda Vista near San Diego. He was a rifleman with the 22nd Marine Regiment.

“I was just one of the guys,” he said.

One day, they were told to pack their gear and be ready to go in half an hour.

“We didn’t know where we were going,” he said

They boarded a ship and went to British Samoa for jungle training for several months. Then they headed to Pago Pago where the outfit was broken up and sent different directions. Gulbrandson was assigned to the 5th Anti-aircraft Artillery Battalion at Funafati, Philippines. He was trained on the 155mm heavy artillery gun, which was used to target seacraft.

He was the sightsetter to make sure the gun was aimed correctly.

Gulbrandson didn’t see much combat. He said there were several moonlit nights when the Japanese would bomb them. The Japanese could locate them easily at night since the Navy Seabees had built the airstrip out of coral that reflected the moon at night.

“One night they got pretty close and coral flew into my foxhole,” he said.

In late 1944 or early 1945, the unit was sent back to Hawaii to prepare to go to Saipan. Gulbrandson was chosen to take some leave, though, and when he returned he was sent to Camp Lejune, N.C.

When the war was over, Gulbrandson was sent to Japan for occupational duty and was discharged Feb. 6, 1946.

Twenty-two days later, he married a girl he had been interested in before the war and had kept in contact with throughout the war.

Before he left for war, Gulbrandson’s sister married his future wife’s brother. They were farmers in Minnesota until they retired in 1980. His wife died in 2005. He recently moved to Alaska to live with his daughter and son-in-law.

Gulbrandson said the war changed his life a little bit.

“I was undecided with what to do with myself,” he said. “I had thought about going west to be a cowboy.”

He also said Americans should be proud of their country.

“The U.S. is one of the best places in the world,” he said. “It’s worth defending.”