This site is dedicated to my paternal grandfather Norman Grant Nigh’s U.S. Army service during the Second World War. He was engaged in the Pacific Theater of operations, in the Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). Norman served as a Technician Fourth Grade (Tec-4 or T/4) with the 593rd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment (EBSR) of the 3rd Engineer Special Brigade (ESB), during which he helped shuttle troops and supplies to beach heads and patrolled rivers in New Guinea and Borneo.

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Norman was born in Greenfield, Indiana in 1912. Prior to the war, He was a tobacco salesman with a wife (Mary Ruth) and a young son (my uncle) when he was drafted to fight. He entered active service on January 21, 1943 at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Indiana and attended Camp Lee (Virginia) for basic training. He was then assigned to the 593rd EBSR, journeying to Ft. Ord (California) to join his company for specialized training before shipping out from San Francisco on January 9, 1944. He returned home from the war in December 1945 to Indiana, resumed his salesman job, and had three more children (including my dad).

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I never met Norman; he passed away in 1974, six years before my arrival on earth. I grew up hearing my dad and his siblings infrequently mention snippets of information ("he drove a river boat in Borneo") about Norman's wartime experience. I also recall, as a child visiting my Grandmother at her farm in Indiana, an old sword of my grandfather's dangling from a closet doorknob that gave me the heebie-jeebies. (It was a Dayak sword from Borneo that may or may not have been used for be-heading Japanese soldiers.) From what I understand, Norm didn't talk much about his time in the war. It seems like many men of that era, he just bottled it up and got on with his life.

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Fast forward to summer 2020, I (Norman's granddaughter), have found myself living in Manila, in the Philippines, a critical location for what Norman and his comrades, under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur, undertook in the Pacific. Although he wasn't involved directly in liberating the Philippines (he was in Morotai at the time staging for the invasion of Borneo), Norm was nonetheless awarded a Philippine Liberation Medal after the war for his participation in the New Guinea campaign. (He also had a pit stop here in Luzon the fall of 1945 after leaving Borneo and before traveling back to the U.S.) Thus, I have taken on this project to learn more about my grandfather’s service, and the Pacific War in general, since relocating to Manila. I figured a website is a good repository of the information I find, and hope it will enable me to efficiently share with others interested in Norman Nigh's WWII experience.

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