Interview, Thomas Mangialino, USN

Thomas Mangialino (b. 1945) was born in Rochester, New York. He graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School and enlisted in the United States Navy in August 1964. He completed basic training in Great Lakes, Illinois, and went on to receive advanced training in boiler maintenance and counterinsurgency. He worked for a brief time on a submarine before being sent to Da Nang, Vietnam, where he served in hospitals for two years. Mangialino reached the rank of E-5 and was honorably discharged from the Navy in April 1968. He returned to Rochester and became self-employed in jewelry design and repair.

In this interview, Mangialino explains how he hated his first assignment with the Navy, where he had to clean boilers onboard a submarine. The work was hot and dangerous and he purposefully got himself in trouble in order to get out of it. After spending a month in correctional custody, Mangialino was sent to Vietnam, where he was assigned to work in hospitals. He notes that he largely enjoyed this assignment, but recalls unpleasant memories of sometimes overcrowded morgues. Mangialino shares that being in Vietnam “switched him around a lot” and that he had a very difficult time readjusting to civilian life after the war. He notes that he continues to struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that his military experience has had a dramatic, and largely negative, effect on his life.