So Mr Dean asked the Times-Age to conduct the interview, hoping a third party would elicit a tale or two.
Mr Simpson, who turned 90 this year, described to the reporter how it was possible back then to join the navy ranked as a "Seaman Boy" from the age of 15.
He joined at 16, in 1941, back when New Zealand's navy was called the New Zealand division of the Royal Navy.
"I've always had a love, always enjoyed anything connected with the sea."
Mr Simpson, from a family of nine, said his dad told him "out you go" and get work from the age of 14.
His mother was delighted he was joining the navy, he said.
He trained at Motuihe Island, in the Hauraki Gulf, for seven months, among 50 boys.
"I came home on leave the day that Pearl Harbour was bombed. [December 7, 1941].
"Next morning, got a telegram - come back to Auckland."
The boys shipped out on December 11.
Mr Simpson was assigned to the light cruiser HMNZS Leander, while the other half of the class went on her sister ship, HMNZS Achilles.
He was proud to serve on Leander.
"It had a wonderful record," he said.
He said life as a teenage boy on a ship was tough, as you did not become an ordinary seaman until 18.
"You're at the bottom of the ladder.
"Any dirty work, anywhere, any job that nobody else wanted, you got it."
He said it was a "fantastic" crew of 750 and he loved his time with Leander.
"Never once heard anyone arguing.
"We all got on well."
That camaraderie would serve everyone well on July 13, 1943, at the Battle of Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands.
HMS Leander and the USS Honolulu and St Louis were severely damaged by torpedoes while engaging a Japanese task force.
Mr Simpson remembers the impact of a one-ton torpedo into the side of his ship.
"The whole ship just stopped. "When it hit, 8000 tons of ship came out of the water by 10 feet.
"We dropped back down.
"The oil tank had been ruptured, when you smelled it, you just about lost your breath."
He said the hole, in 4-inch armour plate, was big enough "to drive a bus through".
"The rear engine room was blown to bits," he said.
"If that torpedo had been a metre fo'ard, I wouldn't be here."
Mr Simpson proceeded to the quarterdeck, where he found the ship's captain, Commander Stephen Roskill, with a leg wound.
He remembers a boy coming down and approaching the captain with a large bag.
"The boy said to the commander, 'what do I do with this?'"
"He held the bag open, it was filled with body parts.
"The commander said, 'throw it over the side'."
The ship stayed afloat, which was just as well.
Mr Simpson said if they had swum to Kolombangara Island they would have likely been killed by the Japanese.
Instead, they limped the ship to shore and beached Leander at high tide.
"As the tide went out, the Americans came alongside with barges and poured concrete into the hole.
"Where it all went, blowed if I know, but it must have done some good because we got to seven knots."
That was the end of his favourite ship's war service.
Leander was repaired in dry dock in Auckland and then refitted in Boston, US, with Mr Simpson still crewing.
However, he was transferred to the Achilles while in England, spending time in Portsmouth training for the Normandy invasion.
He said it was "most annoying" they weren't used in the end, after all that training, but it was probably just as well.
Mr Simpson continued with the Achilles on convoys in the North Sea, as far as Russia.
He finished with the navy in 1952, as a petty officer second class, in order to work on his wife's parents' farm in Wairarapa.
