My name is Gerald Schaefer. I was born April
14, 1925, in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania.
I was the only child, and at age two months, my
parents moved from Pennsylvania to Coshocton,
Ohio, where I've lived ever since.
I attended Cushockton grade schools and
graduated from Cushockton High School in 1943.
I had a normal kid's job delivering papers on
grass, however I could make a little bit.
And in my sophomore year of high school, I got
a job at the local Western Union telegraph company
and delivered messages as a messenger boy for
three years.
After high school, the only place that would
hire anybody that was draft age was the local
Carnation Milk Company,
and I worked there for about two months until
September 6, 1943,
when I was called for examination at Fort Hayes
in Columbus, Ohio,
where they listed me as 1A.
On September 27th, they drafted me into the service,
and I reported to Fort Hayes, Columbus, Ohio,
where we tested for foul play about a week,
and I had interviews to find out what I'd like
to do in the service.
I requested service in the Army Air Force,
would like to be a maintenance person.
And they told me that there was no openings at
all in the Air Force,
so I'd have to choose something else.
And I chose the first two things in the book,
the anti-aircraft and artillery.
So after a few days of testing and they called
me in for another interview and asked me if
I'd like to, I did good on my test and my IQ
was high and they asked me if I'd like
to go into the Air Force in pilot training and
that they were low on pilots at that time
and previously they had to have two years of
college in order to get into this program.
So I accepted very quickly.
They told me I would go to basic training and
take tests during basic training to find
out if I could qualify for this college cadet
corps training.
On October 8, 1943, I reported at Jefferson
Barracks, Missouri in St. Louis for my basic training.
Our housing at Jefferson Barracks was about ten
by ten wooden huts with a pot-bellied
stove in the middle, which was our heat.
Every morning it had to be swabbed out with
water on the floor and soap, and every morning
it would freeze into ice.
In addition to our basic training, we took
tests every day, seemed like forever, and
And daily there was guys that would wash out of
the program, didn't pass this test or that test.
And a lot of guys that were in college, they
washed out.
And I was just wondering when my turn would
come to wash out.
Eventually the list came out of those that
passed the test and my name was on it.
They told me that there was a choice of three colleges.
We didn't have a choice, but there were three
colleges that we might go to.
One was Marietta College in Ohio, the other was
Kent State in Ohio, and the third, which
was both of those schools, was co-ed.
And then Rockhurst College in Kansas City,
Missouri, which was an all-men college and
taught by Catholic Jesuits.
And of course, guess where I went, to Rockhurst
College in Kansas City, Missouri, and this
was in January sometime in 1944.
At Rockhurst, we lived in a hotel and it was
close to the Rockhurst College campus.
Things were very strict there.
We had to get up against the wall and embrace
when an officer went by, and every lunch and
In dinnertime or breakfast we had to sit with
one hand in our lap rather than put two hands
on the table at the same time.
And we had all this in addition to our lessons.
Everything was harder here at Rockhurst.
We had to learn how to be officers and gentlemen.
was going to give it out later, we were
supposed to take it now.
The course was three months long.
At the end of the third month, we were supposed
to learn to fly Piper Cub airplanes, to get
familiar with an airplane, because our next
step would have been to Texas to learn how
to fly bigger prop airplanes. I managed here to
hang on academically and physically, but
we was into the program about a month and a
half when everybody that was drafted into
of this cadet training program was to be
automatically washed out, so we had to prepare
to go to
gunnery school.
From Rockhurst College in Kansas City,
Missouri, they put us on a train headed for gunnery
school at Harlingen Air Force Base in
Harlingen, Texas.
When we left, we had about a foot of snow on
the ground, and when we got in Harlingen,
it was tropical down there, and sunshine, and
that's the first time I'd ever seen palm trees.
And this was sometime early February in 1944.
Every school was just that.
We learned all sorts of small work, like
carving rifle, the Thompson submachine gun, our .45
sidearms, and the .30 caliber machine gun.
Our main weapon later would be the .50 caliber
machine gun, but the .30 caliber was the same thing.
a smaller scale version. Some days were spent
in the classroom learning about each gun.
Other days were spent stripping, field
stripping and detail stripping and care oiling
and cleaning
of the gun. Then other days would be spent out
on the range shooting, firing the gun.
When we were stripping the gun, some classes
had advanced course of stripping the gun with
gloves on, blindfolded.
This was to simulate if we had gun trouble at
night, and if at altitude with gloves on,
then we could take care of our problem.
When we'd go out on the firing range, we'd
spend a couple hours shooting and then a couple
hours running the targets, taking turns.
They told us that a .50 caliber shell cost ¢25
each at that time, and I don't remember
how many rounds the thing fired a second, but
I'm certainly glad we didn't have to pay
for them. At that time, a private, we earned
$28 a month. So, that would add it up to quite
a bit. Upon graduation from Gunnery School, we
were promoted to private first class, which
was quite an honor at that time. After Gunnery
School, we was all granted a
delay in route to go home if we wanted to, that
would be two weeks delay in reporting
to our next station, which was Lemoore Air
Force Base in Fresno, California.
I went home and then reported to Lemoore on
August 4, 1944.
I contacted a skin rash shortly after arriving
at Lemoore, and then I spent a month in the hospital.
But the main reason for going to Lemoore was it
was a distribution center.
All the pilots and co-pilots, bombardiers,
navigators, gunners, radio men, engineers
reported there after they graduated from their
respective schools, and then the reason for
this was to form us into groups of ten, which
would be our regular bomber crew, and then
later on to be sent to advanced air training.
Our crew was assigned to Muroc Army Air Force
Base at Muroc, California.
This base is still in existence, but now is
known as Edwards Air Force Base.
We reported there on January 11, 1945.
Muroc at that time had all sorts of airplanes,
but their main plane was the B-24 bomber and
the P-38 twin-engine fighter plane.
And everyone was there to learn how to fly and
work as a unit.
I was assigned to the lower ball turret, which
was kind of cramped, but I liked it.
I gave you the wrong date a bit ago.
I said January 11th, and it should have been
September 10th that we arrived at Muroc.
We learned and perfected our skills while at
Muroc, and as it turned out we were a pretty
good fighting unit.
In this area of California they were testing
quite a few new type planes.
I remember one was a big black flying wing.
I think it had about four to six engines on it
and it was a humongous noisy thing, but
I suppose it was meant to be some sort of a bomber.
Also one day we heard a real loud noise and we
discovered it was jets running a simulated
attack on our air base.
These jets we had never seen one before, never
even heard of, but when they were making their
simulated attack, our P-38s took off, which
would try to intercept them, which was futile.
But anyhow, the jets didn't do any good against
the P-38s because the P-38s would make a quick
turn in front of him and then the jet would
have to go miles and miles around to catch
up with him again.
So that was just losing battle, but those jets
were really something to watch.
Upon graduation, we received our wings and a
graduation certificate and was promoted
to corporal.
On January 11th, we reported to Hamilton Air
Force Base in Hamilton, California.
This was an overseas training base, and we
found out here that we would be going to the
Pacific area.
We were issued clothes for that area, and got
some jungle training and what have you
to learn how to survive in the Pacific.
From there, we went to Fort Lawton, Seattle,
Washington on January 27th.
This was an overseas embarkation base.
And on February 4th, we boarded the USS Gerald
to Honolulu, Hawaii.
This was my first experience with a large boat,
and of course I got seasick the first day.
The next morning I was supposed to have kitchen
duty, but I was too sick to attend that.
When the person came down to get me to take me
up there after calling me for quite a while,
I told them to just go ahead and shoot me.
I feel a lot better that way.
On February 12, 1945, we arrived in Hawaii and
was transported to the northern island
of Kauai and at Barking Sands Army Air Force
Base, and this was our step to our final destination.
While at Park and Sands, a General Harmon got
lost at sea and we, all the planes on
that base were assigned to sea search for
General Harmon and it was discontinued then
about the end of March when they didn't find him.
Our first day on the trip to Guam, we stopped
at Kwajalein for gasoline and stayed there overnight.
The next day, it would be March 31st, 1945, we
flew from Kwajalein to Saipan to refuel
And we stayed there for a night.
And finally, we arrived at Guam on April 4, 1945.
And we landed at Harman Air Force Base,
which was just renamed for the General Harman that
was lost at sea.
And this was on Guam Island in the Pacific.
We were now in the 7th Air Force, 11th Bomb
Group Heavy, assigned to the 431st Bomb Squadron.
It was our job to learn their ways of doing
things and to the best of our ability.
They had fought from their base at Hickam Field
in Hawaii, which was attacked, and they
lost many men at the Japanese attack on
December 7, 1941, destroying most of their planes,
losing many men and the partial destruction of
the barracks.
So they had fought up to this time from Hickam
Field to Guam.
It was our job to fight from Guam and go as far
as to Japan as we could.
The most important thing that we should learn
would be to do it their way.
They were successful in all their battles, and
they want to continue to be successful.
All the enlisted men were immediately promoted.
Our radio man was promoted to tech sergeant.
Our engineer was promoted to tech sergeant.
The rest of us were promoted to staff sergeant.
I was relieved to learn that 90% of the attack
from enemy aircraft was from the nose position.
I was relieved that I was the ball turret gunner.
A few days later, we were informed that the
armor gunner would have the ball turret position,
and I would have to take the nose turret
position, which is a typical Army way to do things.
We were thoroughly trained in every aspect of
the flying order, how they wanted everything,
And in a few weeks we were thoroughly ready for combat.
On April 27, 1945, we were one of twelve new
crews to attack Wolleyi Island.
This was a milk run, being it was our first mission.
We had our initiation to combat, we saw our
first burst of flak, found out what that was
like, and we dropped two and a half tons of
bombs on the island.
Everyone made it back and it was a successful mission.
The most bombs we ever carried was three tons.
We had four bomb bays in our B-24 Liberator,
and a lot of times three of these bomb bays
was taken up by gasoline tanks, which we needed
to get to our target and back.
These tanks were bulletproof rubber tanks that
were pulled up into the bomb bay and
then hooked up to our gasoline system.
I've seen as high as three bomb bays full of
gasoline and one bomb bay full of bombs.
One of my jobs was to go in the bomb bay prior
to getting to our target and taking the safety
wires off the bombs that would make them live
when they hit the ground.
All this was was a sort of propeller on the
front of the bomb.
pull the safety wire out, the propeller was
free to turn.
When this propeller hit the air on the way
down, it would spin off, and then the bomb
was live.
Our second mission on May 2, 1945, was over
Truck Atoll.
That was a major Japanese target, and there was
just a lot of activity there.
If we had planes leave every hour from Guam,
this was to harass the Japanese and keep them
awake all night.
This was a 1,265-mile target and we only could
carry a ton and a half of bombs that night.
When our turn came, we reached the island and
the bombardier couldn't see the island.
After we had passed the coastline, we could see
the phosphorus weight below, even the
tail gunner seen it, but the bombardier still
didn't see it.
So we continued on to the target, and then the
searchlights came on.
That was sort of an eerie feeling.
They'd get close and then get far away.
one got on us, and they all were on us.
Everything lit up in the plane just like a Christmas
tree. And the bombardier finally seen the
target, but we was past it when the pilot
was trying to evade the searchlights. We got
away from the searchlights and so
the pilot made the decision to go back and do
it again and of course several
people tried to talk him out of it but that
wasn't to be. That's what we went
there for and that's what we were going to do.
So we right right back and they
got us in the searchlights again but we got rid
of our bombs and got out of
there. Sometimes in formation when you've seen
flak you thought well they're shooting at the
other guys in the formation but
when you're in the searchlights by yourself
there's no doubt who their
Our third mission was May 7, 1945.
Our destination was Marcus Island, and we
carried two tons of bombs.
Marcus Island was a 1,910-mile round trip.
was one that the 11th Bomb Group had bombed
many times, and it seemed like the more we
bombed them, the more accurate they got with
their anti-aircraft.
I guess we gave them a lot of good target practice.
Of 11 bombers on this mission, we all returned unscratched.
One thing I should make a note of about the
B-24 Liberator bomber during the Second World
War, you just didn't hear much about it.
The B-17 Flying Fortress was in all the news
most of the time.
Later on the B-29 was all in the news, but the
B-24 was heard of very little, although
there was more B-24 bombers built in World War
II than any other plane.
So it was just the fact of where the news came from.
Although the 11th Bomb Group was equipped with
B-17s at the beginning of the war, the
The 24 had a longer range, and it was faster
and could fly a little higher.
So that's the reason it was used extensively in
the Pacific later on, since my time in
Guam and on. The only B-17 I seen was a rescue
plane that had a boat strapped underneath
of it in case somebody got shot down. They
could, if they were in the area, they could
release the boat. Otherwise, our rescue was
mostly Navy submarines that were usually always
in the area of our bombing missions.
Our fourth mission was May 10, 1945.
We dropped two and a quarter tons of bombs, and
our target was again Marcus Island in
the Pacific.
It went about the same as our third mission.
This time we seen the Navy submarine, which was
there for our protection if we got shot down.
And the reason we seen him, he was surfaced and
I guess watching the excitement on the island.
I think I should stop here and reflect a little
bit before we go on with our missions, how
things were and the situation on Guam at that time.
People today don't seem to realize what we did
go through and what sacrifices we made.
The war in the Pacific was just one big naval battle.
They called the shots, knew what islands they
wanted to take and which islands to bypass.
When they bypassed an island, it was against
the Japanese thinking that we would take each
each island as it came, and they could prepare
for that.
Instead, we bypassed islands, cut them off
without any supplies or anything, and made
the trip to Japan that much easier.
our effort in the war as the Army Air Force was
to bomb these islands that the Navy picked
out for us.
Of course, they knew where they wanted to go
and all that thing was planned by them.
So we picked out the strategic part of the
island of Guam and everything worked out real
well that way.
On Guam we lived in tents that had wooden
frames and a wooden floor in them.
The tent was just stretched over the frame to
make a pretty nice unit.
The officers lived in the officers' section,
and the enlisted men lived in another section.
We had a big Quonset hut, was our mess hall,
and things were laid out pretty nice.
So we had some Japanese in the hills around
that never surrendered or never had been gone to.
We, as a crew, had to pull guard duty on our
planes, oh, we probably drew about once a
a month, but we had no other duties other than
flying and cleaning our guns and what
have you, and, of course, we had a lot of free time.
Of course, some of this free time was spent on
going to school.
We had to have an assistant radio man, an
assistant engineer, and an assistant farmer.
Our tail gunner was the assistant radio man,
our upper turret gunner was the assistant
engineer and our nose gunner was me, was the
assistant armorer. What the armorer
did was just know the guns and be able to fix
most any gun while we were in
flight if something jammed up or happened to
the gun. So during the off
days our assistant, our tail gunner, went to
his radio school and our upper turret
gunner went to his engineer school and of
course we already knew about the guns
so I didn't have anything to do. It was a
tradition starting in World War II that
after a pilot or crew or whatever came back
from a mission, he got a shot of whiskey.
And that had continued through our tour of Guam
until we ran out of whiskey, and then
we didn't get any more after that.
Speaking of whiskey, if you had any whiskey to sell,
it sold for $50 a pip.
And if you wanted to buy any, it was $50 a pip.
That's the way it was.
And like a private, earned $23 a month.
And so that'll put it in perspective
as to how much whiskey costs.
Beer just wasn't available at all.
It probably was in the Navy.
Of course, they got all the good stuff.
We got what was left.
But there was no beer to be had, no whiskey
to be bought other than on the regular market.
And as far as pay goes, we received our regular pay.
And I don't remember, it was either 10% or 20%
for overseas duty.
And then on top of that, we drew 50% of our
base pay
for flight duty.
In order to qualify for that, we have at least
four hours
the flight training each month, or the in-flight.
For a staff sergeant, that ran pretty close to
$150 a month.
And as far as pay goes, we didn't get paid in
regular money.
It was all just like script.
It was printed on paper.
They were yen and Sen and what have you, like
Japanese currency, and there was no PX or
anything like that to spend the money at.
The only thing we could buy once in a while was
maybe shaving cream or toothpaste or something
on that order, but even that was scarce.
So money really didn't mean anything there.
Most of it sent home to save at home, but later
on when we went through hurricanes and
what have you, there would be money all over
the place, but nobody even bothered to pick
it up.
Speaking of guard duty, I can recall one night
when our crew was on guard duty.
We each had-we were responsible for two planes,
and our weapon was a .45 caliber pistol,
which we had shoulder holsters, and we carried
these at all times with us.
And one, in the middle of one night, the MP
come driving up in a jeep and after talking
to us, he was, he just got on the island about
the night before that, and his duty for that
night was to patrol the airstrip.
So he was kind of uneasy about that, so he
parked his jeep over around our area and across
the strip, so a couple of us got in our heads
and in the middle of the night one of us would
fire and as soon as we heard our pistol and as
soon as the other one heard the shot he
he would fire in return.
So the poor guy in the Jeep, when he heard this,
why, he fired his Jeep up and went clear down
at the other end of the runway.
We didn't see any more of him that night.
He thought we were firing at the Japanese that
was up in the hills.
I don't want to get into planes getting shot
down and men dying.
But you got to realize that we were all kids at
that time, 18 and 19, just got out of high school.
We had to learn to be men real fast.
We had very little choice as either be a man or die.
So we were all men when we went into battle on
our missions.
We did lose planes and we did lose friends.
To this day, I can't hear taps played on the
trumpet or anything.
It just drives me up the wall.
Fifty years later, on Memorial Day, all the
veterans remember.
I don't know whether it's a thing of
remembering, it's just a fact that you can't
forget it.
So that's more than enough on that subject.
About our dress code, usually in the service
you're told every morning what you're going
to wear and all that good stuff, but over in
our 11th Bomb Group there was no dress code.
Usually we cut off our pants and made shorts
out of them and wore no shirts at all.
You couldn't tell a general from a private,
which was okay with us.
Of course in the plane we had to wear our heavy
suits and what have you.
We had electrical heated pants, suit, vest, and
shoes and over that we put on our leather
police line closed to accommodate the cold.
We all had parachutes, but the only one that
really had a parachute on the turret was the
lower ball gunner.
He had a backpack and that's what he rested his
back on.
To get out of the airplane, all he had to do
was point the guns forward to the nose
and click two levers on his back, and his back
support was the escape hatch.
The rest of us had our parachutes close by, but
I think if the plane got into a real trouble
or anything like, you're just going to have to
find your parachute to put it on.
In my case, the only way out in the nose
turret, the bombardier, I had to put my parachute
on a shell, which wasn't tied down or hooked on
or anything.
And the bombardier was to shuttle a nose wheel,
and that's the way we would get out.
So what I had to do was, if we had a problem,
was to bail out, was to get out of my turret,
find my parachute, which probably wouldn't have
been there anyhow, and jump out where
the nose wheel was, that is, if the bombardier
got that job done.
So really there wasn't much in the way of
escaping if we did get shot down.
If we did get shot down, the Japanese were very
fanatical people.
They didn't like to take prisoners and life
wasn't going to be pleasant if you did get
shot down, but they told us if we did not to
surrender to a civilian.
I couldn't see the point at the time, but I
guess it seems reasonable now that if somebody
was bombing you and you've seen them fall out
of the sky and they've killed some of
your people why you'd want to do the same to them.
So if we surrendered to anybody, we
were supposed to surrender to a soldier or somebody
in a uniform.
Another thing about the accommodations,
our tents for the enlisted men had six cots in
each tent.
and each cot had a mosquito netting over it
where you tucked the thing in
so the mosquitoes wouldn't eat you up at night.
They were plentiful and big.
The showers were nothing more than barrels,
about four or five barrels with spigots on each barrel.
They'd come around with the water truck each
day and fill the barrels up, and the sun would
heat the water.
And, of course, it wasn't mixed. There was no
women there, so the showers were outside.
And you just took your shower and got out of there.
The latrines were all outdoor toilets with, you
might say, all about a 50-hole or something
like that.
Towards your clothes there was no facilities
for that other than a big 50-gallon drum was
between each hut.
And you had to carry your own water down and to
wash your clothes, so it's quite a chore.
I think that's the reason most people just wore
a pair of shorts and that way they didn't
have a whole lot of washing to do.
Our fourth mission was May 10, 1945, to Marcus Island.
We took two and a quarter tons of bombs with us
and dropped them, and we destroyed a couple
of airplanes that were on the ground.
Of course, that was in the group, not
personally ourselves.
About this time we heard of B-29 bomber
airplanes on Saipan, and once in a while one
would land
at our field on Guam, and we got to see what
the plane looked like.
And also there were rumors that if you were on
the island of Saipan where these bombers
were based, they were taking bets that the war
would be over within two months.
So although we couldn't get to Saipan by
ourselves, it seemed like a good bet even if
you lost.
May 16th was our fifth mission, again to Marcus
Island, where we dropped two and a quarter
tons of bombs.
We were getting reports that there was quite a
buildup on Marcus Island of troops, and
According to Okinawa, just as soon as this
island was taken, which would put us 350 miles
from the Japanese mainland, that meant that we
could carry more bombs and less gasoline
to get to our targets, although we had not
bombed the mainland yet.
It was about to come up.
Our sixth and last mission off of Guam was
again to Marcus Island.
That was June 4, 1945.
We carried two tons of bombs.
And one thing that did happen at Marcus, we
took a burst of flak in our plane and it caught
fire and up in the pilot's compartment, but the
fire extinguisher gunner got hit in the
leg with a piece of flak, nothing serious, but
it got him the Purple Heart.
After the last mission on Plum, we started to
get ready for our move to Okinawa.
We had to get our clothes together and packed
and everything that we had in the 11th Plum
group had had to be moved when the time came to Okinawa.
This was a pretty good stretch now.
Okinawa, like any island, had to be taken and secure.
That doesn't mean that all the enemy is gone,
but secure just meant that the island was
reasonably safe to take on more people.
The day the invasion started, just as soon as
the beaches were secure, our bulldozers
and engineering people were landing on the
island at the same time we were to be located
on Yontan Air Force Air Base, which was an
already existing strip at that time.
Of course, it had to be made to accommodate our
bombers, and so just as soon as that was
completed by we would fly our bombers in, get
set up, and ready to go for Japan.
Our ground crews and all their supplies and all
our supplies and everything was loaded
on to ships and transported to Okinawa before
our planes and our crews got there.
We arrived in Yontan Air Force Base July 2,
1945, and at the time the airstrip wasn't
long enough to accommodate takeoffs, but we
could land because we had no bombs and we
We didn't have a lot of fuel on board so we
could stop quicker, but if necessary we couldn't
have taken off because the strip just wasn't
long enough at that time.
The only accommodations that was there at the
time, there was a tent set up for us and
We were issued sleeping bags and our food was
sea rations.
On July 12, 1945, ten days after we landed on
Okinawa, we flew our seventh mission.
We carried two and a half tons of bombs to
Kikaga, Kaiyushu, Japan.
One thing that we weren't used to was when we
flew over Japan, we got aircraft flack
from every place.
We were used to flying over water and not
getting any flack until we got to the island
we were going to, but we get continuous flack
in and out from here on.
But this was a real pleasure mission for everyone.
The whole 11th Bomb Group had fought its way
from Hickam Field in Pearl Harbor, and we
were finally getting to bomb the Japanese
homeland and carry the war to them, let them
see how it feels.
Our primary target was closed due to bad
weather, so this was our target, and we hit the airfields
there and started a whole lot of fires.
But the mission was a complete success and we
didn't lose anyone.
One nice thing about flying out of Okinawa, we
didn't have any more 10 or 11-hour missions.
We could hit anything we wanted to now within
eight hours and get home.
On July 17, 1945, we went on our eighth mission.
We carried two tons of bombs and we went to
Chang'an, China.
This mission we had something that was kind of
unusual to us.
We had fighter escort.
Usually on our runs we went so far that the
fighters couldn't carry enough fuel to protect
us, but we had some protection along this time.
On July 18th, we went on our ninth mission.
It was a weather reconnaissance mission to
Formosa Island.
We didn't carry any bombs, just radioed back
the weather.
One thing we noted that we did get one fighter
plane that came from our nose position and
my first thought that he had already been shot
at, he looked like he was on fire from
the front, but then again I realized that he
was shooting at us.
So of course we returned the fire and
discouraged him, and at one stage we noticed a flashing
red light on the island, being that we were by
ourselves, the pilot didn't pursue the
red light.
He just told me to put it on a report and
someone else could take care of that.
weren't going to put ourselves in a position to
get shot down.
On July 27th, we went on our 10th mission.
We carried three tons of bombs to Kagoshima on
Kaiju, Japan.
We really had a nice target this time, was
marshaling yards, train yards, and there was
all sorts of rail lines coming into this place,
and when we got finished with it, I finally
got to see the results. We'd made a short bank
turn after we hit the yards and I
got to see the results. That place was a mess.
Everything was on fire and we
really done a good job on that trip. July 31st,
1945, we won our 11th mission
carrying three tons of bombs. Our target that
day was Nagasaki, Kyushu, Japan.
This was a strange mission.
Our target was the dock area of the gasoline
storage dumps.
We started quite a few fires and we had smoke
up to 5,000 feet in the air.
We were intercepted with five of their enemy
aircraft, but it was strange.
They'd just come up alongside of our planes,
they didn't fire or nothing.
Of course, we were under orders then not to
fire back unless they fired.
But we had experienced lots of times planes,
when we'd get anti-aircraft fire, that'd be way
off out of our shooting range,
and they were there just to tell the ground
crews what altitude we were so they could set
their ground fire to hit us.
But these guys were right up with us, so that
could have been what they were there for.
The only thing I can figure is they might be
like the pictures on the side of our airplanes
and working up the nose art.
But this was a strange mission.
After we got home, one of our jobs was to look
the aircraft over real well
black holes and bullet holes, and we found
several holes in our wing this time.
On August 6, 1945, we were on our twelfth mission.
We carried three tons of bombs to Kagoshima on
Kaiju Island, Japan.
That day we carried incendiary bombs, and
reports after the mission that we'd wiped
out 75% of their factory district, and we had
very little opposition that day.
We heard of the atomic bomb that was dropped on
Hiroshima, and the town was completely
wiped out.
Now we knew what the people over on Saipan were
betting on.
And we were hoping that the war was coming to a
fast close.
On August 9th, we flew our 13th mission.
We had three tons of bombs, and the target was
Iwakuni on Honshu, Japan.
This was one of their northern islands.
And on flying up there, on flying over the
ocean, we weren't over land at that time,
we noticed a strange haze in the air, it was
just like pink for some reason.
We thought maybe it was some of the results of
the first atom bomb, but as we were flying
up the East coast we noticed a strange cloud
formation over to our west, and at the time
the pilot asked the navigator to figure out
about where that was coming from.
The cloud just kept rising and rising over the
cloud cover that was already there, but
Our pilot estimated that it was Nagasaki,
Japan, and at that time the whole crew figured
that that was another atomic bomb maybe being
dropped there.
So next day we were to find out that that's
exactly where it was, and it was an atomic bomb.
So we got to see the cloud of the Nagasaki bomb.
As I remember this, Iwakuni, it was at the end
of a long bay, and we were flying down
the middle of the bay, and our orders were to
drop our bombs when the lead plane dropped
his bombs.
So it was my job to let the bombardier know
that when I saw the first bomb come out of
the lead plane.
So I saw the first bomb, told the bombardier,
he dropped his bombs.
As a result, I think every bomb that the whole
squadron dropped that day went to bay.
So maybe it was a good thing for our side and
their side both,
so we didn't need to kill any more people.
So I suppose we could just charge up.
They have to go on fishing.
We probably killed a whole lot of fish.
But at any rate, we caught them.
The Japanese probably had to skin them and eat them.
On August 10th, we got the word that the
Japanese had
asked to surrender.
And that certainly was all right with me.
But at any rate, as soon as the ships out in
the harbor
got the word, they started shooting their guns
up over the island.
And we had to put our steel helmets on,
because that shrapnel was coming down on us.
Our pilot come over and wanted to know
if we wanted to celebrate.
So two of us had guard duty that night,
but we were going to celebrate anyhow.
And he got about, after telling us,
he got about 20 feet from our position,
got hit in the head with one of those pieces of
flak. He didn't have his helmet on. So
we gathered him up and took him over to the
dispensary right away, and of course we headed
over to their tent to get some drinks, some
liquid refreshments. He had a bottle of whiskey
there. But at any rate, we had a good celebration.
On August 12th we went on our 14th mission,
this was only a reconnaissance mission off
the coast of China.
So thankfully that was the last one, and when
the armistice was signed on the battleship
But Missouri, our planes were fully loaded with
bombs, gasoline, and all crews were on
the planes.
We didn't think that they would actually sign
the thing, and we were only a little over
an hour away, so we were ready to go.
But thank God they did sign the thing, and the
war was over.
Shortly after the Japanese surrendered, our
next order of business was to strip everything
out of our planes and send every available
plane to Japan to pick up our prisoners of war.
After the planes were all stripped of their
weight, only a skeleton crew was allowed to
go, because they needed all the space they
could get for the prisoners.
After the prisoners was picked up in Japan,
they were flown directly to the Philippine Islands,
where they would get to go home from there.
They'd have to go through their medical treatment
and make sure that they were all right.
They had to be hospitalized and what have you
before they could go home, although everyone
wanted to get home now, but I think everybody
would agree that these guys deserved to go
first, and that they did.
Another thing I forgot to mention while we were
on Okinawa, that we went through two typhoons.
A typhoon is just a Pacific hurricane.
These were really high wind affairs.
Our pilots had to go position the airplanes
into the wind, and even just the force of
the wind drove the propellers around like a windmill.
Right after each one of these hurricanes, we
were sent out to look in the ocean for
survivors and although we didn't see any, we
sure did see a lot of devastation.
Even large ships were pitched up on the beaches.
A lot of our tents where we lived, our living
quarters, were blown down.
Ours in particular wasn't blown down but it
certainly was leaning.
I remember to go to sleep that night, I went to
the mess hall and found in an oven I could
open the door and crawled into and slept the
night out in the oven.
We probably could have went up and slept in our
airplane, but it was too far away to walk
and there was no transportation.
In order to get home, we had to have so many
points to qualify to go home, and this was
all due to how long you were there in combat,
how many battles you were in, and several
factors entered into it, but we all had enough
points in our crew to go home, but points
were held up because there wasn't enough
transportation available to take us home, and
some of the
flyable airplanes that would make it back to
stateside, there weren't all that many
that would go that far.
They were well-maintained and everything like
that for a ten-hour, ten, eleven-hour battle
trip, but they weren't fit to fly back to the
United States, many of them, but a lot
of the newer ones, why, could be flown back.
As it happened, three or four of our crew had
enough-our pilot and engineer and radio
man and some of the officers had enough points,
and so they got to fly back, but they made
as far as Kwajalein, the pilot felt that the
airplane wasn't safe enough to go on from
there, so they had to take a boat back from Kwajalein.
Meanwhile, the rest of us got assigned
different duties.
We could put in for most any ground job there was.
Yes, we couldn't fly anymore, and our tail
gunner, Tom Yashchenko, he wanted to be the
cook, so that he was.
He was the first cook, and I was a good friend
of Tom's, so he made me second cook, and well,
I really couldn't boil water.
I didn't know anything about cooking, but
learned little by little.
Then it wasn't too long after that that Tom
decided he wanted to be the company barber,
so he went to be the barber, and Lo and behold,
I was the first cook.
The first day I went in there, it was just a
big mess as far as I was concerned.
I didn't know what I was doing and I couldn't
keep track of the KP's and get the thing done
the way I wanted it done and so in the morning
before dinner was to be served why someone
come down and told me my name was on the
bulletin board to go home.
So I thought he was joking, but when I got a
minute, I ran up to the bulletin board and
by golly, my name was there.
So I went back and I told all the guys that my
name was on the board and I was going home.
They wanted to know what they were going to do
about dinner, because I was first cook.
I told them I didn't give a damn what they did
about dinner, I was going home, which
I did.
I went and got all my gear and reported to the
embarkation site and I was ready to go.
December 4th, 1945 is when they made me first
cook and on December 5th I was boarding the
U.S.S. Marine Cardinal bound for San Francisco.
This was to be a pretty good trip. I remember
the waves being very high and we were just
bobbing up and down in the water. About the
second day out, they broke the shaft that
drives the propellers on the ship, so we bobbed
So we bobbed out in the water for about a week
before they got the shaft all fixed and set
sail in for San Francisco.
And on January the 5th, just one month later
from leaving there, we arrived in San Francisco
Bay under the bridge and from there they put us
on another boat and went to Pittsburgh, California.
receiving station where we were processed and
then we boarded the train
January 12 to the 14th. I went to Camp
Atterbury, Indiana where I received my
discharge, and on January 15, 1946, I was home
at last.
Tape that might help you on the names of the
military bases in Sydney and Japan and China
and other places.
So that might be of some help to you.
Your first question as a messenger for the
Western Union, yes, I did deliver messages
like that.
My job as a messenger was to get the message
from the teletype operator, read it over briefly
to see if I needed to get a signature, if it
was important it had to have a signature
from the person I delivered it to.
Then I put it in the envelope and delivered the message.
One particular one that I can still recall was
to a cook at a local restaurant.
This was a lady cook, and so when I took the
message into the restaurant, I told the manager
that it was for this lady, and he called her
out so I could give her the message.
But as soon as she seen me as a messenger, why,
she kind of went berserk, and she was
sure it was a death message.
But everyone that worked there was trying to
calm her down.
And of course I was a little, I had to get her
signature yet after she did get calmed
down to give her the message.
So they finally got her calmed down and I did deliver.
But she's the only one that ever went ballistic
on me like that.
Question two, during the cadet training to
become a pilot, everybody was automatically
washed out. To explain that a little bit, most
of these cadets were enlisted people.
They enlisted in the service for a certain
purpose, and they get their choice of usually
what they wanted to do. But I was drafted. That
gave me a little more time to spend at
home before I had to report to service. And
after I was drafted, they found that I was
qualified, so they put me into this training.
But the reason at that time, they needed pilots.
A lot of our men were getting shot down, and
there was a shortage of pilots, so they had
to train them in a hurry, and that was the
reason that they took drafted people.
And so in the time I was there, why, they
evidently started meeting their quotas and
they was beginning to get more pilots than they needed.
So to relieve that situation they washed
everyone out that was drafted, which took care
of me.
But it wasn't like he was washed out for low
grades or anything like that.
They said that we were discharged from that for
the convenience of the government.
And that's what it says on my discharge papers
for that reason.
General Harmon, I don't know.
We were just looking for him and I don't know
much at all about him.
The only thing I do know is that he was in an
airplane and went down for some reason
or other.
They never did find him.
Question four about the attack from the nose position.
To begin with, the B-24 Liberator didn't have a
nose turret on it.
It had a plexiglass front, and there was a
couple of .30 caliber machine guns that was
mounted in the side fuselage, and I think the
bombardier worked those guns.
And of course, when the enemy discovered that
it wasn't protected up there, why, they get
all their aiming from the front of the plane.
That was our vulnerable spot.
So later the nose turret was added up there to
stop that, but at the time that I was in
there they were still attacking from the nose.
Number five and number seven, the
reason for attacking a small atoll like
Wolleyi, and of course Marcus was bigger,
but it was the same reason. The Japanese
expected when we first started to go
toward Japan that we would have to take every
island as it came, but the military wheels
didn't work that way.
We just bypassed these islands, and they were
stuck with all these men and supplies on the
island that couldn't get away, and their supply
lines was trapped.
So that was the reason that we never did take
Woolley or Marcus, but when we bombed them,
the Japanese thought, well, we were going to
take them or we wouldn't be bombing them,
but it was just a diversionary thing.
We would bomb them and they'd bring in more men
and more supplies, and like I said, then
And after we bypassed them, they were just
stuck there with a bunch of men and supplies
that they couldn't use.
Number six, did we have any contact with the
Japanese POWs while on Guam?
No, the Japanese were put in camps and the
barbed wire around them and well guarded.
We had no reason to visit them.
And so, no, there was no contact at all.
Contact with the Guamanians, like
fraternization and marriage, no, we didn't,
that was off
limits to all the army people.
The only Guamanians we seen was usually young
kids would come around, they of course interested
in everything and they would ask us questions
and want to do stuff for us like shine our
shoes and of course we didn't need our shoes shined.
All we ever did was wear shorts.
So that wasn't necessary but they were
certainly willing to do anything they could for us.
They just liked to hear us tell stories and
what have you to them.
were really nice kids. There's only one case of
fraternization that I can
remember. I didn't see it, but it was all over
the camp. We had gasoline trucks to
service all our airplanes, and one of the
gasoline truck drivers evidently went to
visit a girl friend or something, and while he
was there, why, somebody stole
his gasoline truck and of course he got
court-martialed and we were out of
gasoline truck. But I don't know of anyone that
ever did have a girlfriend
or came back to marry one or anything like that.
But as far as the Flyers went
why we just didn't have any contact. Whether
the ground troops there had any
contact, I really don't know, but no one ever
ever went back that I know of. I
heard a lot of that went on over in the
European theater. Of course there was a
lot of clubs and everything of that sort over
there already, and that was easy
easy access, but when we got on an island, it
was pretty well bombed out and leveled.
There was just nothing there, and the people
that were on the island were usually in a
camp all by themselves, and it was guarded too,
but fraternization was just something
you just might as well forget over there.
About going to Okinawa as the island was taken,
I was referring to Okinawa.
We never did take Marcus. It was a bypassed island.
Okay, number 10, spell Yontan. It's
Y-O-n-t-a-n, just as you have it spelled there.
The pilot that was hitting the head with the
shrapnel, his name was
Charles Upstill. He was a First Lieutenant, and
of course he was
unfortunate that night, but all it was the
scalp wound and that they stitched
it. He had bandages on his head the next day,
but it wasn't nothing real
serious. It just it scared everyone at the time.
Of course, we don't know how
serious those things are. But Charles was a
very good pilot and a very good man.
He's one of those persons you don't mind doing
what he tells you. Matter of fact,
he stayed in the service after the war and
before he retired he was a commander
at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.
Your question 12 about the missing planes and
killed people.
I think you've got to think back to the
Japanese attitude during World War II.
They were absolute fanatics and Hirohito was
their emperor and just about an absolute god.
it was the closest thing to brainwashing you'd
ever see.
Those people would, if they lost face,
would kill themselves.
Or they'd jump off a cliff or something like that
if they were trapped.
They absolutely did not want to be captured.
And if they did get captured,
they thought they were going to die a horrible death,
which absolutely wasn't the case.
that's what keep those people fighting. For
instance, the kamikaze attacks, those
people was just a living bomb. They just
sacrificed their life to dive
right into a plane. I don't think that was a
very rare, rare, very rare situation
with the Americans. We had a little regard for
our life and, of course,
that's what we were fighting for to protect
ourselves. The only chance we had
if we jumped out of an airplane was if we was
over over water the sea or
something like that. If we jumped out over land
why the civilians would beat
you to death which that's been proved many a
time since and they took very
very few prisoners. The ones they did take was
just living skeletons. So all of
our men that died, they usually were just kids.
We were all 18, 19 years old and an
old man was in his early 20s. So for somebody
to lose their life and, you know,
not even knowing life itself. Our lucky ones
got back and we married, had children,
and led a good life. But when you think back to
the kids that didn't make it,
that's really sad. Very few people today know
what Memorial Day is about. They
have no respect for the flag and and really
they don't even care. But for a
person that's been in combat, why we know what
this is all
about. Memorial Day has a lot better meaning
for us. So now if there's any
Any more information you need other than what I
enclosed in this packet or this tape, just
let me know by email or some other way and I'll
do the best I can for you.