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Pfc. William Hudson

Another New Yorker was Bill Hudson, born and raised in upper Manhattan. Like Fabregas, most of his childhood activities centered around street games, usually stickball and hockey in his neighborhood streets, or pickup gymnastics competitions on the various bars out in nearby public parks. “We organized [it] ourselves,” he recalled of the activities, “[we] didn’t have the little league or anything like that” as are common now.

Unlike Fabregas and so many others at the time, Hudson seemed to have a somewhat more comfortable finances at home. He remembered that he and his “gang” could get around and do pretty much as they pleased without much trouble:

“New York City was a wonderful place to live. We could get on the subway and go downtown and see a show. We could see the big bangs at the Paramount or the Strand Theater for thirty-five cents, or see a stage show and a good movie. We’d go to the movie for a dime and eat a hotdog for a nickel. I just had a wonderful youth.”

Slightly too young to join at the time of Pearl Harbor. He likewise had to wait about two years, graduating high school six months early in January 1943. Out of sync from the typical student calendar, he enrolled for a semester at New York University while he waited to turn eighteen, then taking a summer job as a lifeguard at an outdoor swimming pool. He remembered that in the months that typically should have been an exciting time for a young man, he knew where he was soon headed:

“I knew I was going to join the Marine Corps at the end of the summer… I was eighteen in May, and if I didn’t join something, I was probably going to be drafted. I didn’t want to be drafted in the Army, so I decided to join the Marine Corps. I thought they were tough and I wanted to fight.”

At one point his father caught wind of his decision and approached him about it. “I understand you’re going in the Marines,” he remembered his father asking him one day. When the younger Hudson replied to the affirmative, he was then asked, “why don’t you go in the Navy? You’ll have a bed to sleep in, you’ll have three squares a day, and the water is pretty good from the cooler.”

“No, I want to be a Marine” he replied confidently. “I want to fight.”

Not long after, Hudson went down to an induction center in lower Manhattan, a building at this point now only designated for those who had received draft notices to report in to, not volunteers. Once inside, he saw a line formed up for each of the services, but fortunately for Hudson, no one there was much too worried about the formality of joining at a recruiting office so did not give him any problems. His decision already made, Hudson simply stepped into the line for the Marines and “volunteered” with the other draftees.

When he eventually reached the processing desk, he remembered “the guy looked me over [and] talked to me for a little bit,” then had him sworn in. That was that, he remembered, “I was in. I was eighteen years old and ready to go.”