Today is December 6,
2023 and my name is Adina Langer.
I am a Curator and
oral historian at the Museum of History
and Holocaust Education at
Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
And I'm here today at the home of Melvin Price who will
share his memories of serving in
the Army Air Corps during World War Two.
So can we please start? Can you state your full name?
My name is Melvin Price. And
normally I go by the name of Mel,
which I prefer, and that is what I'm really known as.
All right, so Mel. And do you agree to this interview?
Yes, I totally agree to it.
The words that I will tell you are strictly my own words.
Absolutely. Thank you. Can you
please tell me when and where you were born?
I was born January 23, 1926,
which means that I'm 97 years old and
I'm 50 days away from being 98 years old.
I was born in Dunkirk, New York,
which is on the shoreline of Lake Erie.
It's actually about halfway between Erie,
Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York.
Dunkirk has a great harbor and
it accommodated many things because of the harbor.
And what was your neighborhood like where you grew up?
Our neighborhood was strictly blue collar.
There, there was just about everybody had families and,
there were plenty of places to work.
Dunkirk at the time was a population of 23,000
and there were mainly industrial.
The largest one was the American Locomotive Company,
and then there was also Van Raalte, which
manufactured leather women's gloves of
high quality and also underwear.
And then there was a canning factory,
also a plant that manufactured shovels,
and also a smaller one that manufactured valves.
And there was also another steel plant
in Dunkirk of a smaller size,
but they specialize in special steel.
And what were your parents names?
My father's name was Martin,
my mother's name was Helen.
What kind of work did they do?
What's that again?
What kind of work did they do?
Oh! My father worked at the American Locomotive Company.
And this company manufactured
steam locomotives from the very beginning until the end.
And and and once it was completed,
it was sent out to the railroads.
My father's job was in charge of a pattern shop.
The way this is, there
were pattern makers which would make
wooden simulations of what
was needed into a metallic state for an engine.
and these pattern makers would
manufacture this and also make core boxes,
which would be the interior,
rather than have a solid object.
They would send these patterns out to
different foundries to be
cast or simulated in other forms.
And then the patterns would be in storage,
it would be a huge building.
And my father was in charge of all of the storage and it was
amazing how he could recall
exactly where one particular pattern was called for. And
it had an elevator and they would
find a pattern and ship it to
the foundry for manufacturing.
And and my mother, she was a homemaker,
which was typical in the times,
in the times we're talking about in the 1930s.
Did you have any siblings?
Yes, I did. I had
an older brother and I was a middle child,
and I had a sister.
My brother did suffer cancer and died at an early age,
and I recently lost my sister
just about a year and a half ago.
What were their names?
My brother's name was Marshall
and my sister's name was Mildred.
It sounds like your family liked the letter M.
It it seems as though we were all M.P.,
Martin Price. Yeah. And all the way down the line.
I don't know if that's a coincidence
or if it's just something that happened. Yeah.
My brother was drafted, by the way,
and and he served just about six months in
the field artillery and
was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.
And for some unknown reason
that I don't really know,
he got a medical discharge and he was sent back home.
So before we get into the war, I want to go back.
Do you have a sense for how
the Great Depression had
impacted your family or your community?
The impression—.
The Depression. So the stock market crash and Yes.
Yeah. The Depression had
a devastating effect on all of the families
because most of the workers were
dependent on manufacturing products.
And families really struggled.
The families were too proud to apply for
welfare. And they tried to do this on their own.
My father, in fact, my
our family is one of the lucky ones
because he was able to work
possibly about three days a week.
But that's not the case of my wife, Marie.
From now on, if I refer to my wife,
I will use the name Marie.
Okay. Well, well she did tell me about her family.
She had a sister and and three brothers,
and her father was laid off.
He also worked in the American Locomotive Company.
And she told me many
times that they had really nothing to eat.
But the older brother was a carpenter,
and he was able to find
various jobs and make enough money to support the family.
And that really stuck with her.
In fact, it carried on into our marriage
and because of the hardship at her teen years,
she was very careful on how we spent our money. And
thankful for her that I am in a position I am today.
Do you remember dealing with rationing,
ration coupons or things like that?
Yes. Rationing started early and the rationing
was, people that own cars would
get a ration stamp of five gallons per week.
And of course, there was a black market
also where there were counterfeit,
just the way it is today.
But, but, but for the most part
there was quite a bit of honesty
and as far as other products go,
I believe that maybe once a month you would get
a coupon for sugar and butter and a few other items,
but it wasn't very much.
It was more or less basic.
Were you, was your family fond of President Roosevelt?
It wasn't a question I had
previously asked, but I'm curious,
given the depression and the neighborhood,
what were, were they fond of President Roosevelt?
I don't know about the neighborhood, but,
but I really think that our country is
really lucky and blessed
that Roosevelt was our president.
Apparently others did too, because I believe
he was elected for a third term,
which is unprecedented because it is not the case anymore.
But he did have,
even though he was an invalid,
he did do many things like meeting with
partnership with, with other countries during
the war of course our side was the
Axis.
Yeah, so and Yeah, he he did a lot with trying to
fix the depression too. I had
the highest respect for for Mr. Roosevelt.
So going back to your family,
was religion important to your family?
Religion was a very
important. It was under the leadership of my father.
And I'm a Roman Catholic.
And it was mandatory that we attend Sunday mass.
We would walk to church about five or six blocks,
and for some reason,
we always went about a half hour early.
And we would sit in the pews,
the kids would go in first.
My mother and my father would sit on the aisle.
And as soon as we got seated,
bear in mind this was a half hour before mass started,
he had a little black prayer book
and he would pray all the time,
and at the time it
didn't really seem to have any bearing on me,
but, but then he did tell the story, of course,
my father is a World War One veteran
and he more or
less kind of kept things to himself of what he did,
but one story that he did tell was that they were over in
France and they were
sitting on a bench eating their chow.
He was there with eight others,
and a German shell came in and
exploded nearby and killed all eight of them,
and he was the sole survivor.
So I kind of think probably a divine providence played a major part.
And it was so strongly embedded in his mind
that somebody was looking on after him.
But but I didn't realize this until later on in
the years. That was the most beautiful part of my life.
We had great friends and in the '30s
we had to improvise things.
And as I mentioned before,
Dunkirk is on the shore of Lake Erie,
and our house was
only a few houses away from the shoreline.
The most important thing was swimming.
And we would go
as much as possible throughout
the day to swim almost every day,
and up north, the water temperature never reach higher
than 66 degrees and it was okay. The first dive
it was the worst. But our main objective
was what we probably call a table rock.
It was quite a distance from shore and
those that could swim would
swim out and try to find the rock.
And once the rock was found, well,
then everybody came to the rock, and it
only had about a foot of water over the top of it.
But some of those
that could not swim that great distance,
there was another smaller rock,
which we call a secondary rock rock,
and those that weren't so proficient in
swimming would swim for
that rock and then take a break and then continue on.
But but that was a daily occurrence for us.
And other things that we did if we were not swimming,
the way the shoreline is in in Dunkirk,
there's a shale at the bottom of the water and
it extends at a great distance.
And what we would do is to wade out
probably about 6 inches of water,
and we would peel off a bit of shale,
trying to get as big as possible,
probably like the size of dinner plate or not.
And then what we do is go back on
shore and then we would skim it out.
And I'm sure that you've seen all of this before,
but we used to do the shale thing.
Well, by being exposed day after day into the sun,
we used to get sunburned. And
after about three days,
our skin would start to peel.
And then we'd have to take a break or two, a day or
two until our skin would thoroughly peel off.
And then what we would do is repeat it.
Do the same thing again.
But ofcourse today we know that it's a cause of cancer.
But at the time cancer was unknown.
And in the evening we would always
go to the shoreline. And like every shoreline, there's the driftwood
and what we do is build a little fire.
And usually on many occasions, we would hunt
out one particular type of wood.
And we would break it in a half,
and make it about the length of a cigarette.
And what we would do we would blow in it.
And if we could actually blow through it,
well then what we would do is put the tip into
the fire and we would take a couple puffs.
But it was not a big deal at all to do that.
Just I haven't got a clue as to why we did that,
but, but I've never been a smoker, by the way.
I've never smoked a cigarette at all in my life.
Another very important thing is
that once we had the fire going,
what each one of us would do would get
a potato. And we would take it to the fire,
and when the fire died down into embers,
we would toss in the potato.
And when it turned a real black,
well then we would break it open and eat it. Well
yeah, a potato sounds like
a simple thing, but it was not
so. Many of my friends would want to do this,
but they had no potato.
So I would ask my mother,
is there any chance that we could give him a potato? Him a potato?
She always did that.
Everybody had a potato.
That's wonderful.
In the winter time, there's
no swimming and a little bit too
cold to do to do this fire thing,
but Lake Erie is the shallowest lake of them all,
and it freezes quickly. Well in the spring time
Once the ice is breaking off and and we got a clear water,
what we would do is to go to the shoreline, and
look for iceberg, a round piece of frozen ice,
probably eight to ten feet in diameter,
and we would have sticks.
And what we would do is to jump on
these icebergs and pull ourselves away into deep water.
And that was great fun to do that.
It's funny, I was just going to ask
you about whether the lake
froze and if you remembered it.
Did you ever walk out on the frozen lake?
Yes, we did. In fact,
I look back and see and think, wow,
we shouldn't have done that as kids,
but what we would do is to go out there
and and Dunkirk has a break wall,
and the object was to
go from the shoreline to the break wall.
Well near the break wall,
we're walking on the ice and
the ice is waving back and forth and we called it rubber ice.
But I look back now thinking
that if we ever fell through,
it would be impossible to get back.
But it was only spots in
the ice that was so
thin was usually almost like green and color.
So we knew what to expect,
but for some reason we would like to go
on that for a short distance and then scoot back.
Pretty daring kids.
So do you have any early memories of aviation? Of flying.
I always did. When I was about 15,
I I used to see these planes flying
around and I was
rather fascinated by that and I was thinking, you know,
I want to do that some day. And also occasionally there were
blimp that came across the area.
And I have no idea what the blimps were,
but they were based in Akron, Ohio.
And since I had this desire to,
to try to fly, well,
I peddled papers by the way,
and probably made $0.50 a week.
And we did get an allowance,
by the way, in the family.
Our allowance was $0.05 a week,
and sometimes it was missed.
But there was a plane that was going to come to Dunkirk.
It's a Ford Tri motor.
It's a German type of plane, and
it was going to offer rides and as soon as
I heard that well then that's,I'm going to do this thing here.
Well, it was very capable
of taking off in
short runways and landing in short runways,
and what this was was just a grassy strip,
but the length was enough to make the aircraft airborne.
Well, the price was $0.50 and but was big money.
But I had the money,
so I went for a ride and
it lasted probably about 15 minutes.
It would take off circle the city,
go over the lake, and then come back.
After experiencing that, I was still in high school,
I heard about the aviation cadet training.
I figured that this is one thing I wanted to do.
I graduated valedictorian in my high school class.
And I said I'm
going to have a complete shoe in on this thing here.
Aviation cadet training would be a pilot,
co pilot, flight engineer, bombardier or navigator.
And I felt that
I would be able to do all of these things.
But of course it didn't turn out that way.
So we'll get to that. Just going back to flying,
what did you love about flying?
I don't know. It's just, you're up in the air,
you're breathing a different type of
air and you can see things on the ground
that possibly you would
never see. How did your family get the news,
when you were growing up?
My father had a radio.
And of course, we also took the daily newspaper.
But as a whole,
I never listened much to the news.
Of course, my father did listen to the news.
And particularly on a Sunday,
he would put on
Bishop and hear Fulton,
Sheen, I believe the name was.
He was the bishop and he
would speak religiously for a full hour.
And my father, all every Sunday, would listen to him.
But as far as kids listening in,
we knew that there was a conflict going on
and it didn't really affect us too much.
What do you remember about hearing about
the attack on Pearl Harbor, specifically?
That I thought was
such a cowardly act on the part of the Japanese,
because prior to this,
envoys, we're still in Washington talking peace.
And at the same time,
the Japanese were preparing a fleet of
aircraft carriers and other vessels
to do a snake attack on Pearl Harbor.
And that is when I really
got glued to the radio. Especially when
President Roosevelt said that this day will live in infamy.
And even today, that one simple phrase sticks strongly.
You were in high school at this time, right?
Yes, I was.
What was the name of your high school?
Dunker Industrial High School.
Did your high school participate
in any activities to support the war effort?
Yes, we did. Of course,
there were bond drives and
people were asked to buy war bonds.
And in my senior year,
for some reason, we formed a drum corps
and the instructor was from in adjacent city of Fredonia,
which was also a music college,
and I don't know if it was,
I don't think it was a student,
I think it was one of the teachers.
She would come and
we formed a drum and bugle corps
Well, there was a bond drive going
on and what they did was to
bring in a captured two man Japanese submarine
and it was on the trailer.
And our job was to dress up,
go out on the street and then escort
this to the square in the city of Dunkirk.
And at that time,
there were speeches made to try to increase the,
on the participation in people buying war bonds.
But that probably was just about the only one,
but truthfully, it was big time.
You know, to parade down the street, you know
it was probably about maybe a two mile run.
Wow. So you mentioned
your interest in flight cadet school.
What did you know about
the different branches of
the military when you were in high school?
I don't know. I was very familiar with Army, Air Corps and Navy,
and I didn't know much about Marines.
But, but I know one thing
for sure is that I would never want to go, into the Navy.
But as far as far as Army and Air Corps goes,
that that was fine.
But I would like to tell a story here.
Marie's, brother was in the Corps of Engineers
and he trained in
the States and then his assignment was to go to Europe.
So they boarded a transport plane which is a C-54,
which holds possibly about,
maybe 125, maybe 150 individuals.
And when they were on the flight to Europe,
they passed over Newfoundland
and the plane crashed. And it crashed into
the mountains and everybody on board was
killed except two people and one of them was Marie's brother.
And they were both severely injured.
And being in a Northern area
they needed to start a fire.
And I don't know if he was a smoker or not,
but what he did was to
open his wallet and pull out
a couple of dollar bills and
would crumble them and start a fire.
And and this happened at night
and then in the daytime,
he and his companion crawled through
the forest area and finally found a roadway.
And they lay there while until a passerby found them,
picked them up and put them in a hospital.
And he was in a hospital in
Newfoundland for a short period of time,
but then he was returned to
the States and he spent, I believe,
about six months in a hospital because he suffered
severe back injuries. He would
discharge, being 100% disabled.
Wow. So, making the decision
about which branch to apply for,
did your father give you any advice about
the military or about
the possibility of going overseas before you joined?
No, he never really talked about that too much,
but his family was was high, high in the military.
He had brothers that also served in the military.
And he wasn't very
familiar with this aviation cadet training either.
But when when we talked about this,
he seemed to be okay.
Because he did seven years
in Europe in all the major campaigns.
And he did his bit for the country.
And he thought it was probably time
for possibly me to do something too.
But he was not against this at all.
There is a possibility that I could have been
drafted. And of course being drafted who knows where I would go.
But since I had
an opportunity as applying for cadet training. But
but prior to this I
was preparing myself for cadet training.
The country formed a Civil Air Patrol.
I don't know if, if you're aware of this or not,
but it was civilian pilots that would patrol
the coastline and their private planes
looking for possibly the enemy,
being maybe submarines or or whatever
and we did drill.
It was almost like military to civil air patrol.
We had uniforms and once a week we would go
to an armory and we would drill there.
I kind of thought well, I I got to the rank of Corporal
and I kind of thought probably
that this might help me a little bit.
But once I got into them anything.
So tell me what happened with the training?
So you mentioned that you didn't get into
the aviation cadet training as you had hoped. What were,
where did you end up doing your training?
I was 17 when I was in this cadet training program.
And so when I turned 18,
a few months later, I got a notice to report for duty.
What I did, was to board a train and we went
to a military base in Long Island.
And it was a mixture of
just about everybody. And in the Air Corps,
not necessarily people in my program
were sent to Beloxi, Mississippi,
And in Beloxi, Mississippi,
we had a mixture of just about everybody.
It was an Air Force Base,
Kessler Field, which is still active today.
And while being there, we were
tested in various different avenues
and, one of them was to go into
a pressure chamber with an oxygen mask
and there were instructors also in there.
And what they would do is to
simulate an altitude of 12,000 feet.
And if you felt like you were passing out,
what you had to do was to put your oxygen mask on.
And in a few cases,
some of those actually passed out and couldn't do it.
So immediately they they were
depressurize and the instructors would attend to them.
And we were also tested for Morse code
prior to this. All I knew was that
Morse code was just dots and dashes.
I didn't have any idea as to
what certain dot dashes would mean
as far as a letter goes,
And I didn't know that
Sos was 3 dots 3 dashes and then 3 dots.
That is the only thing I knew.
But as far as all the alphabet, I had no idea.
Well, we were tested,
two signals would be sent out
and they were very similar to one another.
And you had to determine
whether they were yes or no being similar.
And and that lasted quite a while.
Also we had coordination training where there would
be held like two sticks
in in there on on a wire and they would be at a distance,
and the object was to try to get
them so that they would be extremely parallel.
That way you could tell if if you
were able to coordinate
different objects at different lengths.
And we also went on a 25 mile hike.
We were all together.
And at the very end,
I went before a psychiatrist. And he
would interview me probably to
see what kind of individual I was.
And that the time I've got it
made because I feel that I've passed all these things.
Well, at the very end of
basic training, here comes the news.
Nobody out of all the other soldiers
went to cadet training.
And those that scored the
highest were sent to radio operator school.
Yeah you know, those with popular lower scores were sent to gunnery schools
or else possibly any other area of service.
From Beloxi,
Mississippi, I was told
I was going to radio school and we went to Sioux Falls,
South Dakota. It was in the winter time.
And in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
we had classrooms and started to identify dobson dashes.
And we started like four words per minute.
They would send out dots and dashes and well,
prior to that, we were told three dashes would be
an O or an A would be a dot and a dash, and so on.
But everything was very close, especially the dots.
Like H was four dots. And to hear
three dots and then hear four dots,
it was really hard to decipher what it was.
But we started at four words per minute.
And built a classroom,
possibly about maybe 15, 20.
And there were three instructors and they were civilians, and
they were extremely good people.
They wanted to hammer this into your mind.
My understanding is that younger people
are able to capture new events rather than somebody,
say, 30 years old. It's true today.
So after doing four words per minute,
there's no way that I've been able to do this thing.
The object was to do 25 words per minute.
And I said, there's absolutely no way.
Well, it wasn't just Morse code,
you couldn't sit there all day and
be hammered with all the dots and dashes.
So I was actually a radio operator mechanic,
and the mechanical part of this was
to actually build a receiver.
And the receiver in them days was very simple.
You had a radio tube,
you had a transformer,
a condenser, and a resistor.
And what you had to do was
determine from a schematic exactly how to do this.
And we were able to build
a radio and then tune it in and get a station.
That's amazing. So when you
were sent to radio operator school,
how did you feel about that?
What were you feeling at that time?
Well, I was highly disappointed, naturally,
because it's not what I spent years building up to.
One thing I can say is that well previously I
said that nobody went to aviation cadet training,
but I was friendly with an elder man and he was
a flight instructor and even he was not assigned to this.
Apparently, as I look at it today,
there was a shortage of radio operators. And even today
I feel that to be able to be able to,
send out words by dots and dashes and
also to interpretate them and
sent to you would be much harder to learn than,
say, a navigator bombardier or a pilot.
A pilot can learn to fly in about two months.
And a Bombardier, I believe after
about one month of training to
familiarise yourself with the Norton Bomb Site,
you could really do the job.
The navigator, probably a little bit different.
You might need to have a little bit of moxie to do that.
But I spent nine months
training as a radio operator and mechanic.
After being able to pass four words per minute,
we would go to six words per minute. And then
eight, ten 0and finally get up to a higher number.
And it's really surprising how you could accomplish this.
Like I mentioned, the instructors were extremely good.
They were highly concerned.
They wanted that student
to reach the ultimate 25 words per minute.
Now, I do know that some couldn't do it.
And I don't know what happened to them.
Possibly, they were dispatched to
an aircraft carrier even though they
weren't reaching the [undecipherable ]25.
One final thing was that of course
we were sitting in a quiet classroom
and then the final thing was to board a training plane.
It held about ten proficient radio operators
and the plane would fly
around and we would contact the grown station,
they would call us back
and then the most important part of being an operator is
to have the ground station
know exactly where you are at all times.
But I I did reach that
and then once I graduated from that,
I was assigned for training in Pio Texas.
And it took well we had to leave then and
and they said that you need to
report in 14 days to Pio Texas from Sioux Falls South Dakota.
So what I did, I went back
home and this is this is the time
when I proposed to Marie for marriage
and I really loved her mother. I really did.
And I always talked to her. And
her older sister was always
throwing wise cracks at
me when I was dating prior to the war.
Well, you know, a woman, you know,
she's never on time. Her date is 07:00 O' clock. No wait,
she's upstairs preparing herself. Well then at one time,
her sister Anna said to me,
she's not ready yet, so, what do you say
that you and I go out together? But
she was married. Her husband was in the infantry.
But it was just a joke.
But during this period,
they knew that I was going to Texas
and I said goodbye to Anna and Anna said to me,
you know, I'm never going to see you again.
And that kind of struck me a little bit because,
you know, what what she meant.
But then I did go to Pio,
Texas and this is where we found our crew.
So before we talk about the crew,
can you just lay out what
were what were the duties of a radio operator?
You mentioned getting the Morse code
and sending the Morse code.
Was that the primary duty? What were the duties?
Well, the primary thing is
to notify the ground station exactly where you are.
That was the primary thing.
And then overseas, it was to
monitor the receiver in
case there was a change of target.
Change of target could, well usually from Tinian to Japan,
there were two weather fronts. And some of them were pretty rough.
And also targets in Japan,
there's a primary one and a secondary
one. If a wave of bombers went
before one of your primary targets
and had great ground resistance, we'll then
we were told to go to the secondary target.
And of course, there were two things right there.
And also to be able to find our position,
like in the states, overseas
were different because nobody
needed to know where you were going because
the Japanese were picking up all of those radio signals.
And by the way, the dots and dashes were all coded.
It wasn't plain English,
like have a good day.
No way! It would be dots and
dashes for have a good day or whatever.
But if our navigator lost track of where we were,
that was his responsibility also to know where we are,
and he would get the position in
longitude and latitude and then send it to
me. And we were side by side in the plane by the way.
And I would radio
back to our base and tell them where we are.
I see. So you mentioned
you got to Texas and you got your crew assignment.
So was this when you found out what your unit would be
in the Air Corps and who you'd be working with?
Well, we were totally in the dark.
We had no idea,
all we did was go from step to step.
When we were in Pio Texas,
that's the first time I saw a B-29.
And I had no idea where where B-29s were.
Of course, it's a bomber and apparently it was
being used somewhere in this war.
And our crew was assembled in
and I feel that I'm one of
the lucky ones because our captain,
I mean, our pilot,
he's called an airplane commander and he's the pilot.
He was from Fort Worth, Texas.
And the co-pilot was actually called the pilot.
And then there was
a flight engineer that was responsible for monitoring how
the engines are functioning
and also the hydraulics and the plane
that would operate the bomb bay doors
and landing gear and everything else,
that was a very responsible job. The pilot did have
some of them instruments,
but not as much of the flight engineer.
And as far as a bombarder goes,
he didn't really have next to nothing to
do except at the target area.
And also we had four gunners,
There was a tail gunner and they
had two 50 caliber machine guns
plus a 30 millimeter cannon.
and then on the right side of
the plane and left side of the plane were
gunners and there was like a little bubble where they could
look out and have about 100, 180 degrees vision.
And the guns were controlled remotely, that they did have
a handheld device that they would be able to aim
at a target in the turret with
the guns would respond to whatever was there.
And the main gunner was called central fire control.
He was in between both of these gunners.
and he was sitting up on a pedestal and
his head was up at the top of the plane in a dome.
And he had 360 degrees vision.
And he was the master gunner.
He could fire all of the guns in the plane,
with the exception of the tail gunner.
And the bombardier also
was able to control one of the turrets in the front.
What did you think the first time you saw a B-29?
I never saw anything like this thing.
It was such a massive plane and the size of
the propellers were something just about unbelievable.
And as far as the inside goes,
it wasn't really too crowded.
I've been in
other smaller size bombers and it's really cramped.
But there were plenty of room. And of
course the crew was almost shoulder to shoulder,
and especially the navigator and I,
we corresponded, you know, constantly.
And it was an aircraft
that was pressurized and also heated,
and it was unique [undecipherable] structure because
all the other planes in
the Army Air Force were not pressurized,
and the flight crews all had to
wear heavy jackets all the time,
but we would just have
a simple flying suit
and be real comfortable at any altitude.
Tell me about the layout inside the plane?
So where, where were all the different people?
Well, well, starting with the bombardier,
he was at the nose of the plane.
And at the nose of the plane,
it's just loaded with windows.
He had the best view. He
could see everything that was going on.
And the pilot, I mean the airplane commander,
who as I mentioned before,
I was lucky to have them,
all of the flight instructors
wanted to be with him when we were
training, but B-29 was unfamiliar with him.
But he did have a background of
flying bombers. Prior to
being assigned to assemble a crew for B-29s
he flew B-24 out of Australia.
And his bombing raids were going North, Guadacanal,
New Guinea, and also Layte in the Philippines.
And he did have 25 missions.
And what he would always do
is save one bomb before our return.
They passed over
a Japanese ship and the bombardier bombed a ship and sunk it.
He was highly decorated.
But he had his personal reasons
for wanting a second tour.
He got his 25 missions.
And 25 missions is really
the magic number. If you reach 20, if that's a big word,
If you reach 25 missions,
well then you could return back to the States.
And I'll review again,
in the in the front area was
the bombardier airplane commander.
pilot, co pilot,
flight engineer, navigator
and me. In the back
and access to the back was a tunnel.
And you'd have to more or less
like swim through this tunnel,
it was about 30 inches in diameter.
And if you wanted to go from
front to rear or rear to front,
you'd have to go through this tunnel. And in the
back where the right scanner,
left scanner, central fire control,
tail gunner, and also a radio operator,
I mean radar operator.
And all of these jobs,
did they all have special equipment? What's that
again? Did all of these different positions
operate special equipment?
Well, yes. But I was really
surprised that the amount of equipment for
radio operator was was almost similar
to what we were seeing in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
Apparently, they were preparing
for B-29s in a course that we were never told.
So, tell me a little bit more about that equipment?
What did your station look like inside the plane?
What did the equipment look like inside the plane?
You mean as a radar operator?
Mm hm.
It was a large desk. And it was
from ceiling to the floor with transmitters
and also a receiver and
also other objects which I can't quite recall,
but it was a tremendous responsibility.
So, you mentioned the importance too of
the ground crew that serviced the plane.
Do you want to tell me a little bit
about those ground crews?
Well, ground crews in
the states were not
as dedicated to the plane as those overseas.
And they were a little bit sloppy, in my estimation,
about maintaining the plane,
because almost every flight that we had
a training flight involved some sort of malfunction.
Many times they would have to shut
down the engine and feather it.
I don't know what you mean by feathering it,
but cannot answer me,
but I will tell you what feathering is.
Airplane propellers have a slight angle
and as they rotate, kind of like
weaves itself through the area and it pushes the plane.
Well, if you need to shut down
the engine because of a fire
or a malfunction of the engine,
you would have to feather the plane. So by feathering
instead of it being at 90 degrees to the fuselage,
you would make it parallel.
Now, if you wouldn't do this
and the engine was shut down,
it would windmill. And it would exceed
the normal rotation of an engine that was functioning [needs confirmation]
and then it would dis disintegrate and blow up.
So that sounds really important that they would , that they did this maintenance.
Oh yes! Yeah. Yes. Well, many times we kind of feathered the engines
and then also engine fires.
Well, engine fires would be oil and also gasoline
and it would be up to
the operator that had
monitored all of the engines.
Flight engineer, that's what I'm trying to say.
And it would be up to him to shut off
the fuel and try to extinguish the fire.
Well the flight did have an extinguisher,
which hardly ever worked. And
if the firewood was still pretty heavy,
the pilot would go into
a nosedive and blow out the flame
then. And this was very common,
but we were told that once you get overseas,
you're going to have a ground crew that,
is strictly devoted to the one aircraft and
it would be much different.
So what do you remember about landing?
What was it like to land one of these planes?
You know it's very strange that during training, most of the
there was a lot of training where
the airplane commander would
take off and land and
then practice again and keep repeating.
The strangest thing is that the bomb bays were always empty, and
he was flying an empty plane. Overseas
you're not flying an empty plane.
What you're doing is putting in
10,000 12,000 14,000 pounds of ordnance.
And then I can't quite understand why they didn't put some dummies
or something into the plan for that.
And the bombardier was also training. Pio
Texas is halfway in between El Paso and Fort Worth and
it's all desert and there's oil wells.
And there's a small town, Stockton, Texas.
There was a little building with
a smokestack and the object was for the bombardier to,
it was a practice bomb.
It wasn't nothing more than a cylinder filled with sand,
weighed about a 100 pounds and
the object was was to try
to drop that bomb into the chimney.
And I don't really
know how efficient he was as a bombardier.
And as far as the gunners go,
there were training planes,
fighters that, that would
attack us while we were training
and then the gunners would use camera bombing,
I mean camera shooting.
And then there were no blind spots in this, by the way.
And then they would show the film later
on to show what
the performance is for the Gunners. Well at one time,
this one gunner is tracking
the fighter and what you're doing is he's
still shooting and he
goes right across the wing of our plane.
In other words, he would have shot down on our own plane.
Great. So you were telling me about your crew.
Can you tell me the name of your commander?
Yeah, Virgil Stevens.
He was from Fort Worth, Texas, and
he was a captain. I'm extremely lucky to have them.
And how many crew members were there total in your B-29?
11, 11 crew members.
And they all had different skills?
They all brought their different skills.
They all had separate training?
Oh, yes. Yes. And everybody had to be proficient.
Virgil Stevens, who has gone through a war of Australia,
he wanted to make absolutely sure that
every crew member was really up to par.
He did monitor me real close.
Well, as I mentioned before,
we were in a classroom doing 25 words per minute.
Well, that's a nice quiet classroom.
Well, here comes a B-29
and I'm sitting in there and
there's four engines, massive engines,
2000 horsepower, two on each side,
and the plane is rocking in the sound of the engine.
I could not do 25 words per minute.
I could get as high as 20.
And
Virgil Stevens would be
checking on the performance of his crew members.
And he said to me one day he said Mel, he said,
when are you going to get 25 words
per minute? And I said I
will get it. I said it's a little bit
difficult but I promise you I will get it.
And I did. Also part of the training,
I'm not too sure about our navigator,
if he was really the type of man that he was looking for,
but anyway, he was there. One time
we were flying at night and we were over New Mexico
and the pilot radioed
me that I need to find out where we are,
the navigator couldn't do it for some reason.
So the way it is,
the pilot would fly a steady course and there were
ground stations that would be able to track you
and they were, there were three of them. It's
spaced 120 degrees apart and they
would send out signals after hearing
my signal and where the crosshairs came from the tree,
well, then that was our position. And of course
the pilot knew which direction he was going,
so anyway, he could
turn around and then return back to base.
It, our final training preposition in
Pio Texas was to take a long flight into States
and what we did was was to board the plane about
midafternoon and it would be a 3,000 mile flight,
which is equivalent to the flight to Japan.
And we still didn't know.
I believe even the officers didn't know.
So we flew to Rochester,
Minnesota and and we
were struck by lightning a couple of times.
Well, Rochester,
Minnesota, I'm not sure about the mileage,
but it was beyond
the length where I could send
a signal to the ground station
because our transmitters on board the plane,
we're not as strong as what
they were at the ground station.
So to, well
there was only a small antenna at the top of the plane.
And it was sufficient for say,
4 or 500 miles where
you could converse back and forth.
What I would do, well,
the plane was outfitted with a trailing antenna,
and since I had the
report being up in
the Northern States to
the ground station to tell them where we are,
I would notify the airplane commander
that I'm dropping a trailing antenna.
Well, a trailing antenna had weight which
resembled a pair and it would spool down,
it would be about 200 feet long,
and that would be the antenna
and it was extremely
loud, even in my receiver when I was sending,
and then once my work was done, well,
then I would tell the captain that I'm bringing back
the trailing antenna. Well, from Rochester, Minnesota
well, by the way, we were struck by
lightning twice up in the area.
It didn't really affect the plane,
but it did rock,
and I know that I wasn't wearing
a seat belt and my head hit the ceiling of the plane,
but from there, we flew eastward to Cleveland.l
and then our bombardier's objective on his flight was to
camera bomb the blimp hangers in Akron, Ohio.
Even today that, that's where the Goodyear blimp is,
that that's the home port.
So he would do that and then we
would return back to Texas.
Well, many times some of these crews
would more or less simulate
a fake malfunction with the plane and do a landing,
say in Chicago or some nice city
and then enjoy a little bit
of life outside of the military.
If that ever happened,
they would have to repeat and do it
again until they did the whole thing.
And that would and that was the last thing that we did there.
But I probably said enough about training.
But but there is one incident that you're good to go. Mmm hmm.
Okay. Well, as we were flying, well,
our left gunner, he knew quite a bit about airplanes,
not necessarily a B-29
and as we were
flying in in Texas over the intercom,
he told the pilot that he can
smell fuel coming out of the bomb bay.
So the pilot said,
well go in the bomb bay and see if you can find out where
the leakage is and make sure you have a parachute on.
Well, I guess you probably already know the answer.
But anyway, I'm going to keep on going.
Well, in the bomb bay there's a cat walk where you
can walk around the entire bomb bay,
and he was reaching in some of
the lines and and then he
radio back to the captain that he couldn't find it.
So what he said is that he's going
to lay on the closed bomb bay doors
and reach in for
some of the fuel lines to see if there's any leakage
and lo and behold,
he pulled the wrong cord and opened the bomb bay
and out he went.
And when the rear gunners,
to radio, the captain, Franz
just fell out of the plane.
So we were at about 12,000 feet then
and do you see a chute?
Do you see a chute? And nobody said no, we can't see one.
Well finally we saw his parachute and what
our pilot did was to radio
the base that he's lost a crew member,
so he put the plane in the dive and he's flying over
the top of the oil wells and he's circling, Franz,
that was his name, circling him
and then we we see
the ambulance coming and then to pick him up.
But he wasn't injured at all.
Well, we continued.
Well, apparently it was nothing
of importance even though everything is important.
So when we got back to base,
we come to our barracks
and hear Franz is sitting up on
his bunk really enjoying himself.
And anybody that bails out, well you know
normally we wear a pair of wings
which has a wing on each side and also a center.
Well, in his case,
he would get half of a wing and he could wear it.
Well, what he did was to
seek out who packed his parachute.
Well, every, well, there there was a huge hanger and there
were all women in there that would pack parachutes.
So he got a box of candy and they went to meet
this woman that packed his parachute.
And did he meet her?
Yes. Yes.
Did they hit it off?
No. No. It worked out well.
Well, after we finished this long flight of 3,000 miles,
we were sent to Topeka, Kansas.
Topeka, Kansas had an airfield
and that was a staging area.
That is where we were equipped with all of
our overseas equipment. And
we still didn't know our destination.
We were given a 45 caliber pistol.
canteen, a survival knife,
which I will show you later
and also a medical kit
which contained two syringes of morphine.
So if you were injured, you
could shoot yourself to kindly of ease the pain.
And we were issued an oxygen mask plus flying clothing.
From there we went to San Francisco.
And north of San Francisco is Hamilton Field
and from there we didn't stay very long,
from there we boarded
a C-54 transport plane and flew to Hawaii.
And we only spent hardly an hour or
two and actually to
refuel and possibly a change of pilots.
And then from there, our next stop was Johnston Island,
which is nothing more than
a little island with an airstrip.
And it's only used
to refuel aircraft that are in the air,
not necessarily B-29,
but any other aircraft,
could be Navy, whatever.
And then from there we made a landing on Kwajalein. And
that is when it really, really hit me.
What in the world am I getting into?
What did you know at this point?
What were you, how did you feel about being in
the Pacific? Prior to that
I figured it was an excursion.
You know, it would be more or less a piece of cake.
But Kwajalein was steamy
hot and smelly and everything
and we did spend quite a bit of time
there in and I was thinking,
what kind of cards am I being dealt?
We still didn't know our final destination,
but from Kwajalein, we went to Guam.
And Guam, it was almost similar to Kwajalein.
It was hot and sticky,
had plenty of snakes and tree frogs, huge frogs.l that
were up up in trees,
something very unusual to me.
Well we we only stayed there for a day or two,
and then from then we went to Tinian.
And that is where our final destination was.
What was the name of your unit?
Did your unit have a name?
Did you have a name for your plane and your unit?
Was there a specific name?
Well, we didn't really have a plane assigned to us.
The way this was, planes
were being lost over Japan big time.
Not necessarily by a military action in Japan,
but malfunction of engines.
But B-29 were being
built in three different cities in the country.
And every plane, every new plane
would would carry two new engines
in the bomb bays, because engines were
the the the main function of flying this long distance.
We never had a plane assigned to
us because the the hardened crews that they were flying,
these planes that did several mission to Japan,
they would qualify for the new aircraft and
the aircraft that they were
abandoning would be sent to somebody else.
So we would actually bounce around. Altogether
I flew in three different planes,
one Nippon Nemesis, the other was Stardust
and one of my favorites was Goin Jesse. Them three planes.
So before we talk about your missions,
can you tell me a little bit about what you
did at, in Tinian when you weren't flying?
What was life like there?
When we were flying, well
we used to fly out. Well,
actually in between missions
we would still go airborne and cruise around the islands,
and it was mostly to give bombardier training. In between Tinian
and Guam is an island called Rota
and we would head into to Rota
and our bombardier would drop one bomb.
It was a live bomb by the way,
not a practice bomb.
He would bomb a target
on Rota just to sharpen his skills.
And of course, I
would have to report to the ground station,
our position all the time
because we were a long distance from Japan
and if they would pick up any of my transmissions,
it would be meaningless.
And being out in the Pacific
I realized that in between Tinian and Japan,
there's no friendly territory and there's it's a lot of water.
Pacific Ocean is a pretty big stretch of water and
what I would do,
as much as possible go swimming, and
Tinian itself is all coral, it's only about 6 inches of topsoil.
And the natives did grow sugar cane
there as well as side pan growing sugar cane.
That was the name, the domain agricultural item. Well Tinian
doesn't really have any beaches,
it's all coral cliffs.
Some are not too high,
and some are well I would say about
150 feet. Well where we
were stationed in our quarters, there was a little cove
and somebody had placed a long rope and anchored
it and the rope would go all the way down to the shoreline.
Well, I really want to do that as much as possible.
And prior to doing that,
I would get on one side of the cliff and look over
the side and kind of eyeball the shoreline.
And then what do I see in the shoreline? Sharks.
So I would grab chunks of coral and toss them out at,
at the sharks and then they
would take off and leave the area.
So then I would go to the rope,
slide right down, and swim out.
And we didn't have any bathing suits.
We would swim in nude and swimming out in the coral
and I would open my eyes in the salt water
which is which is a no, no, but I would do it and
there were loads of fish, I mean
brilliant ones, red ones and everything else, and
I would spend quite a bit of time there.
And as far as like like the beach,
it was nothing more than
a place about maybe 20 feet long and it was
a bits of dust from volcanic ash or whatever.
And then to get back up again,
have to go hand over hand over the rail
and at that time,
I was able to do it, but
there was no way I could do that today.
What was that? And also, I mean,
if you mind to continue to elaborate,
Saipan was invaded first and
the flat area was completely
controlled by our American forces
and the remaining Japanese would go up in the mountains
and our Marines felt that it was not worthwhile
to try to get to them
and they suffer unnecessary loss of life.
So it was still an active part.
Several times what I would do is
to hitch a ride and go to the airfield
and go to the shoreline of Tinian,
which is only about a mile away from Saipan
and I would watch these Navy dive bombers
come in and they would be
bombing the mountain areas where
the Japanese were holed up.
And also another occasion when we were flying,
if I was outside,
I would hear a loud explosion and smoke.
And at the flight line it would be
returning planes that crashed on the runway.
And I would go out there,
and I do have pictures of this,
and it, the flames consumed
everything almost in its entirety.
There are only a little bits of here and there.
But as I look at it today,
we never did it actually,
but as I look at it today, well,
in the rear compartment where the gunners are
they entered the plane through
a smile opening in the side that was the tail gunner,
radar operator, and also the gunners
and then in the front compartment,
the way we got into the plane was either through
the bomb bay or else from the nose wheel
and we would kind like scoot up,
put our feet on the tires,
and get up into the plane.
Well, if we were to do an emergency landing,
it never [undecipherable] me at the time
that the only way that we ever could have got
out was to go
through the tunnel to the rear of the plane.
And upon the, making a landing,
the plane always caught on fire,
always it consumed everything.
Was that because of a explosion inside the the engine or?
Well, it could be a combination
of not necessarily an engine,
but because a B-29 could fly and maintain
altitude with two engines operating both on one side.
If you had to shut down two engines,
you could maintain altitude for a short period of time,
but slowly, it wasn't enough power to maintain.
But as far as these planes crashing,
it wasn't necessarily a loss of an engine,
because we did many landings with
shutting down an engine and
operating with just three engines,
but more than likely,
it was being hit in Japan
either with flank or else fighter planes.
So it is of course, hydraulics
are a main part of operating everything
and it could be that some of
the hydraulics failed and the plane
wasn't able to break or lower the landing gear.
How important was that landing gear? Like
what was that landing gear?
That was your wheels and everything.
Well, the landing gear
was a very sophisticated landing gear.
It was extremely hard to duplicate.
It was made in the Mariana, Georgia.
And it was very well built.
We never did ever have a problem with the landing gear.
That's great. I mean, I know we were
right next to that plant where
that landing gear was made. You were!
So it's good to hear. Kennesaw is right by Mariana.
I know I'm getting off the subject,
but after the war
ended or else even prior to the end of the war,
the Russians were trying to duplicate a B-29,
because they did get their hands on a few of them.
And they were, they built about 2000 and they were very faulty.
And the main thing is that
they couldn't build a landing gear.
The Russian couldn't do it.
Only the Georgians could do it
and they tried to buy them from this country,
but our country wouldn't sell them.
So, before we get into the missions you flew,
I was just curious one more thing about life on base.
What was the food like? And you know,
what was it like to just live on base?
What did you do and—? Living quarters
were probably as worse as you can get.
We lived in a tent and we slept on cots,
no mattress, no mattress,
no pillow, dirt floor.
It was really tough to do.
I mean, as far as a pillow goes,
we have to roll up some clothing
for a pillow and and that's
the way it was. And most of
the time when I was there I did spend it in there but
there were a few Quonset huts.
And some of the hardened crews,
were in the Quonset huts and
after living in the tents, if there was
an opening and we were sent to the Quonset hut.
And there was a tough feeling
because why is the vacancy there?
And of course it's quite obvious that
the vacancy is there because that crew did not make it.
And as far as bathroom,
what there was what was a building,
a wooden building with we screen porches,
and there was a plank with holes and
that was the way our bathroom was.
Did you ever get any fresh fruit or vegetables
or fish or was all your food from rations?
No. No. The food was terrible.
The food was a duplication over and over again.
And the main thing I like was the homemade bread.
We would get a lot of hash every day, almost
hash. And the so called butter was in large cans,
and it came from New Zealand,
and it was almost like grease.
And the milk was all powdered milk.
And potatoes were powdered potatoes.
I'm a little surprised that,
that we were fed so poorly. When I went into the service,
I weighed 172 pounds
and because of the type of food I was eating,
I had lost ten pounds.
I came back, I came back and I weighed 162 pounds.
So tell me about the missions that your unit carried out?
What were some memorable missions?
Well, our bomb group was,
of course, I was in the 20th Air Force
and the ninth bomb group,
fifth squadron and our particular plane
to designate the ninth bomb group,
it had a circle X on the tail.
And other bomb groups had like an R or
some other letter of some kind or other designation.
But I personally feel that
our bomb group was the most dominant one of them all.
Because clippings in newsreels,
I see it always seem to feed feature a
B-29 with a Circle X on the tail.
The main functions of the ninth bomb group was at
the beginning of the war to
load the planes with percussion bombs,
which meant that they would explode on a target, and probably
have affect 2 or 300 fields to the side.
But then for some reason they realized that Japan
itself is constructed of paper and wood.
So because of that,
they figured that they should switch to incendiary raids.
And the way it was, there was a cluster of, of bombs,
they weighed about 37 pounds,
probably 3, 4 dozen and there was a tail fin on the edge
and also nine metal straps that held
them at the cluster. And that a bomber would drop them.
The tail fin would point the bomb
downward and then the tail fin would fall off,
and then the nine straps would explode.
And once they got exploded,
well then the incendiary bombs would separate
and then they would separate to the extent of
about a half a mile to one side of
the plane and a half a mile
to the other side of the plane.
So as far as the length of it
goes because they're being
dropped simultaneously and not as a cluster,
it would cover about 1 mile.
So one B-29 would be able to set fires
about 1 mile wide by over mile long.
And that alone would burn up all
of the civilian homes.
Okay. That was two of
the objects that our group was assigned for.
Another one of them was to drop mines.
Our group I never went on a mine mission,
but our group dropped
mines into waters off the coast of Japan,
the Sea of Japan, the Pacific side
and the mines totally encircled the island in Tokyo Bay,
which was the main port in Japan.
It was totally mined and ships could
not enter the harbor.
But the readings that
I had done had said that the mines alone
sunk more ships than the entire Navy combined.
That seems like a big statement to make.
But one thing about Japan,
they have absolutely no resources
whatsoever. They haven't got rubber,
iron, or coal, or coke, or petroleum.
So everything had to be imported into Japan
and that is why it was so important
to more or less blockade the entire island.
And of course, by doing this,
even food that was
imported to people where were actually starving.
Were these things you thought about at the time?
Like how did you think about,
what did you think about dropping these fire bombs?
And did you think about the civilians?
I give a lot of credit
to the people that were in this bomb group.
There were no cowards, believe me.
I mean, all of these guys,
whether they were 19 or older.
At the time, I thought all that we
were doing was just bombing
industrial plants and stuff like this.
And the thought, never entered my mind
that some of these items [needs confirmation]
were killing innocent civilians.
And at the time,
none of us ever thought about that.
It does seem to hurt once in
a while because everybody has a right to live.
But it was a war,
and it was run by people
that love war and they
were trying to expand their empire.
Getting back to Pearl Harbor,
I can't really see why
Japan was trying to attack a country
which is so far superior
to them in size and also industrial complexes. Yeah.
But Japan,
in the early years overran
China probably in the early '30s.
And they also overran both Koreans,
and they had no mercy whatsoever that they beheaded,
they killed, they wrecked the woman
and they were truthfully barbarians.
And to the extent we,
to a certain degree thought how brutal they were
They didn't seem to have
any regard at all for human life.
All they wanted was power
and money more than anything else.
And they, even after accumulating China and Korea,
that they still weren't satisfied.
Well, the other fourth item,
as far as B-29 was after the war ended to do POW missions.
POW missions were to load
planes with medical supplies and food,
and seek out the prisoners of war camps.
And our intelligence knew exactly where these camps were,
and I did fly too on those missions.
And what did you remember about
those missions? What, how did you, how did they work?
Well I did mention our primary target
was POW camp outside of the Kobe Osaka area.
And it was up to the navigator to,
to, to, to get us there.
Well, he missed it by
about 200 miles and we were went south,
but of course we were fully aware of how
to get to this Kobe Osaka area,
and what we did was to go through the inland sea and,
and then it hit the area and we did make passes and,
and we could see these POWs in,
in these enclosures. They were not in the yards,
but they were waving to us through the windows.
And we were flying at about 500 feet.
And we would drop palettes of food supplies,
hoping that they would land in
the compound area so the prisoners would get them.
But I doubt very
much if they landed where they were supposed that,
the Japanese who were starving would pass them on to the POW.
But on this particular mission
the very last parachute was a medical supply parachute.
It was blue in color.
And the third or fourth pass across this area,
the, the bombardier dropped the parachute
and it floated out to the sea and,
it was nowhere near the target area
and what I could see was
Japanese fishing boats scooting over to,
to retain this. One of our last,
drops with the food
the parachute came out,
it was immediately deployed
and it had a wooden palette.
Wel what happened was that the shroud line that held
the pallet did not
disengage and what it was doing was slapping
across the side of
the plane and the parachute was fully open
and it was extremely dangerous
because there was no way that
the plane could fly with all of this drag.
And our pilot said somebody has got to go into the bomb bay
and cut the shroud line
to get rid of this pallet that was banging the plane
and also to get rid of the plane of the parachute.
Well, who's going to volunteer? You're looking at him.
What I did was put a parachute on
and took my knife
and I've got the knife right here.
And what I did was to walk across, the cat walk
and I'm looking down and we're
only 500 feet and all I can see is
ground and civilians shaking their fists at us.
And I was able to cut
the shroud line. It was probably about this wide and about this thick.
It was a real heavy.
It took quite a bit of work to do it. And then
I was able to free it and then come back into the plane.
But it was a very dangerous thing to
do. And who is going to volunteer?
Wow. But like I said,
they were dedicated people.
So tell me about your impressions of Iwo
Jima and what the Marines
did there and why it was important to you?
Well, I do have deep feelings for Marines.
Our very first mission,
was the worst one.
We were flying Nippon Nemesis,
which was the first plane. After we completed
our mission our plane was badly damaged.
There were 72 holes in
a plane and the bomb bay doors would not close.
And our pilots said that because of
the drag with the bomb bay doors not being closed,
it's gonna create a tremendous drag, and
burn a lot of fuel and we
were never going to reach Tinian.
And prior to that, we had
a meeting one time saying that if for
some reason we were on a raid
and couldn't get back to base, what would we do?
There were several options.
One would be to land in Japan and be
a POW and get
beheaded because that's what Japanese were doing,
Or else to fly to Russia,
which at the northern tip of Japan
was probably about 200 miles away.
Well, at the beginning of the war,
I wasn't there then, but when B-29's were first started to
do raids and ran
across a circumstance like what I just described,
they would go to Russia and them
crews were actually captured. Approaching Russia
the Russians would send out fighters to escort the B-29,
not knowing whether it was going to be
a raid on their territory or not.
But then they would land and like I previously mentioned, the
Russian did build planes, and they had
the captured crews teach
the Russians how to fly the plane.
And there was only one incident where
one crew was sent to Persia,
which is Iran, and that crew was sent back to the states.
But other than that, I don't really know
how many we were doing this thing,
but that was really a no no as far as going there.
And then the other option was to take your chances
and try to make Iwo Jima. Well, prior to this Iwo
Jima was controlled by the Japanese. And
the flights going to Japan would be attacked by fighters
that were based in Iwo Jima and
then after planes returning from the target area,
they would be hit again with fighters from Iwo Jima.
So, it was very important to capture
Iwo Jima being held by
the Japanese to eliminate this obstacle.
Because Iwo Jima is directly on
the flight path to
Japan and there was no way to avoid it.
Flights would not fly over,
they would probably fly about 50 miles
either west of the island.
But still it was not sufficient.
One thing, the very first base for B-29 was on Saipan
Tinian was not occupied then or invaded and
the very first B-29's that did fly
mediocre raids on Japan at high altitudes
when the planes had left, that
the planes at Iwo Jima were fully
aware that there were no planes left there,
so what do you do? They also
had small bombers on Iwo Jima.
And when the B-29's would leave for Japan
these planes would fly at
a very low altitude, undetected by radar.
And what they would do is to bomb the areas in Saipan.
But that came to a close.
But getting back to my feelings about Iwo Jima, well,
Iwo Jima was only secured about an hour, an hour
I mean about a month
before I started my flights. And of the Marines,
7,000 were killed and just about 20,000 were injured. And
it was one of the most bloodiest conflicts
that the marines ever had.
And I haven't since mentioned many of them.
But once the Japanese were
thoroughly eliminated on the way back,
our pilot did say that I work going to land on Iwo Jima. Well Iwo Jima is
nothing more than coral sand.
No trees of any kind
and it's only got a small fighter strip. And any
B-29 trying to land,
the tower would wave them
off because they didn't want you to come here.
But anyway, B-29 did land and we were
able to land and able to get
some added fuel and close
our bomb bay doors and then continue on and then
land in Iwo Jima I mean in Tinian and Iwo Jima labeled us
as
their being hospitality for us.
But just because of that,
there would be no way that I would be here talking to you
today. Because to land at sea,
that there was in most cases,
no rescue available.
But I don't know if it's part of your questions or not,
but towards the end of the war,
there was from Iwo Jima to Japan,
what is called a life line.
[undecipherable] would be an aircraft carrier
and then cruisers and destroyers
and the closest to Japan would be destroyers.
And the people at Iwo Jima also the Navy knew in
advance that there were B-29 flying in
this area and the submarines, some of them
within 25 miles of the coast of Japan.
And they were spaced,
possibly about 50 miles apart
and I gave these submarines a lot of
credit but because they could have been hit real easy.
But we never had to use them,
but the process was
that if you were
hit bad enough or else
had some malfunction with your aircraft,
you couldn't make it back to
base and you had to land at sea,
which is called ditching.
The the radio operator would
press down on his key and send a solid signal.
No dots and dashes, a solid signal. And the submarine would home
in on the signal and and and knew the distance and
also how far away they were from the flight path,
and they would correct themselves and then the plane
would then they would
surface when they thought the time it was right and,
and then rescue the crew if they were able to get out.
But but many times the crews were not able to get out.
But there were many that were saved.
And many times when you would
ditch at sea the plane would catch fire
and part of our training also
was if you're able to get out of the plane,
how are you going to surround the fire?
So we did extensive practicing in Pio Texas
in swimming pool.
You would swim underwater
and when it's time to get a breath,
you would flutter up near
the surface and form a little pocket of
air and then take
a gasp and then swim down again and then swim away.
But I don't know how effective that would be.
But because the plane would expel life rafts
and I don't know if they would be
farther away from fire or not. Of course,
if they were in the fire they would be consumed.
But what I'm telling you,
I don't know if it would work or not,
but anyway. I was well prepared for this.
That's why I was doing all the extra swimming,
feeling that if the occasion ever arose,
I would be able to do it.
So what's your greatest memory while flying in the Pacific?
I've got a few that kind of stick with me
and seeing people die in flames,
really hits me. When there's actually nothing you can do.
I've seen many and on one of our missions,
we had to go to Okinawa. But because we couldn't
reach Japan or any other destination and
we landed at Iwo Jima,
at Okinawa,
I know I'm stumbling a little bit,
but I'm trying to get it straight.
We landed at Ok,
Okinawa and we had our planet next to a fighter strip,
and we actually landed on this fighter strip
and we were able to do it because of
our good hydraulics and I'm in up front of the plane
and what I'm seeing is
a long line of fighter planes coming back from a mission
and these planes are coming in,
flying at a real low altitude at the runway
and when they came to the tower,
they would shoot straight up in the air.
And they would flip their landing
here out and may make a wide circle.
There must have been probably about 30
of these. And they're all doing this.
And it was really a great air show to see all of
this. And one of these that's coming down,
he's not doing this.
He's going and going
and this is right in front of
me a couple hundred feet away.
And the plane hits a bank and then starts on fire.
And I go over there and I see this pilot in
the cockpit being burned
alive, I don't know if if he got killed
with a crash or else with the fire.
But one thing that's strange is
that outside of the plane was a women's shoe.
And apparently he had
a wife or a sweetheart back in the States,
and he just wanted to keep that with him.
But after seeing this
and there's absolutely nothing I could do,
I just walked away.
I couldn't look at it anymore.
And then on one of our POW missions,
our military was also in Shanghai and
there was a POW camp in
Shanghai and our mission was to go to
that Shanghai POW camp and
do the same thing and drop the food and medical supplies
just before coming to Okinawa,
which was on the flight route, we blew an engine.
And usually as you're flying,
if you have any type of
malfunction what you need to
do is to make a landing as soon as possible.
Well, we did make
a landing on this fighter strip and we parked our plane,
and what we needed to do do to get an engine from Tinian,
which meant that we spent about two weeks on Okinawa.
And during that time,
we were the only B-29 there.
And what they were doing,
they were bringing in POWs from Japan
and it was only a matter of a few feet away
and this plane comes in and I'm looking at
these POWs coming out of
the plane and they're looking at the tail of my plane,
you know the Circle X.
And apparently that they had recognized
that from some of
the bombing missions, from our bomb group.
Well, I went over there to talk to them,
and believe me, they were tortured and brutalized, and
they were skin and bone and their clothing was all
tattered and they were hugging me and
then talking to me. And that hits me
as to one of the things
that people that have gone through the war and then
showing gratitude to another person
because of this life saving occupation of Iwo Jima,
I have met several Marines. Any Marine function
I always attend. I've met, one time
I was in [undecipherable] doing something and here's a guy
coming towards me and he's wearing
a hat Iwo Jima. And I said hi
and I walked a few steps and turned around and so did he.
And we turned around and I said to him,
were you in Iwo Jima? He said yes.
And I said were you in the battle? He said yes.
And we talked about a few things. And also
I have grandchildren are highly interested in
military and we visit Parris Island which is a Marine base.
And we go through all of
the artifacts and also the history of the Marines.
And at one time when I was there, well when you first get in,
they ask you, I mean enter the museum.
Well I know the base first,
you have to show your ID because it's heavily guarded,
and I would show them my
South Carolina driver's license
and they would tell me to pull
over to the side. And then
a Marine would come
and quiz me about different things,
wanting to know why I'm in here and
we are here for the museum which is open to the public.
Of course, they do screen pretty closely what to
do and when I've entered the museum
that they quizzed me and I told them that I was a B-29er
and I'm familiar with with Iwo Jima
and we walked around and this guy,
he went upstairs to talk to
the manager of the museum, probably curator.
I don't know. More than likely, yes.
And and and then he come down, he says, look,
I want you to come upstairs here.
And there was a Marine there that was on Iwo Jima. And
he was in a wheelchair and his son was there with him,
and they did make
frequent visits to the museum. And we had
a discussion about the Marines, what they did. And
one of the most important things to
as far as Marines go to me is, I did
tell you that I do
attend all of these functions symposium with Marines.
Well, the Yorktown in
Mount Pleasant is strictly
Navy. Of course Marines are part of the Navy.
They were celebrating the 75th anniversary of Iwo Jima.
And what he invited was
a gentleman that was
awarded to the Medal of Honor, Woody Williams,
he was there also.
And it was a great function.
I went with one of my neighbors and
we were more or less sitting in the background.
And the Marines, the marines were doing their celebrating, and
Woody Williams was sitting by himself in the first row. And
I said to my neighbor, you know,
I'm going to go there and talk to
this guy, so I went over to him
and I introduced myself. You know I'm a B-29er
and I asked him,
you'll be the awarder of the Medal of Honor.
And how did you get it?
Well, he was a flamethrower and he had
the gun and behind him
were two other Marines were carrying the fuel tanks.
So he went from hole to hole and
he would shoot the flame into
these holes. And never got wounded,
but he was a prime target
because the Japanese were all in,
in dugouts and the Marines
came ashore and they were prime targets
and, and they were mowed down big time.
But he was brave enough
to stand a wreck and do this thing.
And I told him, I said, you know,
I really need to thank you for what you
did. He said, you know,
you're the first one that ever told me this. And I said,
well, I think it's kind of hard for me
to believe. And I said, you know,
I was only 19 when I was
flying. And he said we all were. And he said,
I need to thank you. He said it to me for flying
B-29 and because after his invasion of Iwo Jima,
they would have to go to another Japanese held island.
And that kind of put the end to him.
But there were 14 Marines that were awarded
medals of honors and all 13 of them have died.
He was the only one, he just recently
died and he was highly recognized.
In fact, when he died,
it was only a matter, maybe six months ago when he died.
And it was kind of sad for
me because I have talked to him several
times and he was
actually brought to the Capitol
and he laid in, state there.
And I think that was really something great
to acknowledge a man like him.
That's wonderful. So what made
you want to take photographs when you were overseas?
And what kind of a camera did
you use? Can you tell me about that?
Photography was my hobby.
And I had a simple box camera
and the film had a paper backing on it,
and I had a couple of rolls of film,
and as I took pictures overseas, I ran out of film.
So, how do you get the film?
I got to be friendly with the fire chief,
there was a fire station then near our bomb group,
and I got to know him quite well well.
Well his hobby was also photography,
and he had a dark room with
all the equipment for developing
and printing and also enlarging.
So talking to him, he told me to go over to
the reconnaissance division at
the airfield and trying to get a roll of film.
Well the film did that had, I was using, was
not a high grade film,
but the reconnaissance division uses this film for flying
over Japan and photographing
the different areas so they
could determine where the next bomb ray would be.
Usually, if a single plane flew over Japan,
that there was no ground reaction,
they were untouched.
Well, the film that I got from them was
a high density film in a vacuum can
and it was about 6 inches wide.
So there's no way it's going to fit in my camera.
So what I would do was to practice
cutting the same size film that my camera took.
And of course, I had to do it in total darkness.
Once I was able to do this,
I would put the paper backing on it and
then load my camera and I'm good to go.
And do you remember the make of
your camera? What type of camera?
Yes it was a Kodak, I believe it was a model 620.
It was a cheap type of box camera.
You could pull it apart and it would be
very easy to load it and everything.
Did you have to hide
your photos from sensors or anything like that?
No, no, no.
We could do just about anything as far
as jurisdiction goes and
following the rules while being overseas,
we were untouched. We could
dress the way we wanted to dress, and
it's not like the way it would be say in the states.
In other words, we had great freedom.
More freedom when you were
overseas than you did when you were in training?
Oh, no question about it.
Were there some memorable pictures
that you took? You remember taking?
I think probably all of them are.
I really can't, well, there's one that I really like.
It's a picture of me the way I live,
I lived or dressed when being overseas.
There was no dress code.
You could wear whatever you please.
So when you were serving,
whether it was in the states or overseas,
do you remember interacting with
women auxiliary units or women
who were in the military at all? With other servicemen
you mean? With women.
Women who were in service. Personally,
I never had any interaction with any woman.
I know that there were
women that did great work in the war,
especially the woman, it's called Wafs.
The most important thing that they did was to transport
fighter planes from the States to
Russia the fighter planes that the Russians loved.
And our pilots didn't like them one bit because
we had fighter planes far superior.
It was a P-39 and it
was made by Curtis Wright in Buffalo, New York.
And these women would pick up the plane, fly to Alaska.
And either they fly to
Russia or Russia would come and pick up the planes.
You mentioned the parachute packers too,
so you knew that there were there were women
who worked packing the parachutes. Yes.
Did you ever did you ever talk to them? No
No. That was only in Pio, Texas.
As far as overseas
goes there there were no women at all over there.
Well, well, there were
some nurses but but other than that,
it was strictly all male.
Did you ever have to go to the infirmary?
Did you ever interact with the medical staff base?
No. No. But as far as any type of thing,
what was very common was diarrhea
from food that was too old or not the proper mix,
but I avoided all of that stuff.
And mostly it was chocolate, chocolate milk.
The chocolate milk was bad or
the chocolate milk was something? Contaminated
possibly.
What about army chaplains?
I was curious about this because
you mentioned your Catholic faith.
Was there a chaplain or someone else assigned to your unit?
Well yes.
The chaplain was actually a priest
and overseas there was actually
a chapel for services.
It was shared by both Protestant
and other religions of any kind.
But I do recall that,
well, I always went to church every Sunday.
And what church was like,
they would park a truck out in the field and drop the
tailgate and spread a cloth
across the tailgate and and,
and serve mass off of that
and we would sit on the ground.
But also as far as our crew goes,
I believe even to this day,
that I was the only Christian.
In preparation for a mission 10:30 in the evening
well, I specify evening because we're
talking about daylight missions to Japan.
At 10:30 I would attend
and attend mass and receive Holy Communion and then at the very end, the priest or chaplain,
whatever you want to call him,
he would say drop to
your knees and thank
the Good Lord that you are still here, and
that you will return. And at takeoff time
there was also a chaplain alongside the runway, that
would bless each plane as we're taken off. So truthfully,
religion overseas was a big part of me.
You mentioned you were the only Christian,
how did you know, did you talk
to the other members of your crew about religion?
We did have discussions and our
bombardier was an atheist and and he was so proud, he used to brag about
being an Atheist. And as far as the rest goes,
I don't really kno, too much about them.
but I know that they've and they never turned
any religious services at all,
but being strong in religion,
I know our CFC,
our central fire control, the gunner,
he was possibly about maybe
in his late '20s and he was married with two children, and
he would always go to town, and seek out companions,
and I feel that if he had any religion,
he certainly wouldn't do this. If he had its back home.
But I never got into stuff like that though.
Did you have any interactions with
native people that lived
in the islands where you were serving?
Not really, a whole lot.
I did try to take photographs.
Well, the natives, by the way,
we're dark in color.
And it seems as though every day they
would be whiter and whiter to us,
but they were gathered together
into a compound and it was heavily guarded
and I did attempt to take pictures of them,
and I failed a few times,
but I was able to get a few pictures,
and then I recall
one time when I was walking down the street,
there were some native woman with a military and
and I took a picture of them
and they did say don't show Japanese soldiers.
Apparently, the Japanese were
really exploiting the woman.
So they were gathered in a compound,
was that because the military had taken over
all the other buildings that were there? Just about
as far as the buildings go,
I don't believe I I've ever seen
a structure where a family lived.
Any building that that was there was
actually done by the military.
And I know that in the compound,
they really weren't treated that that well.
They would just gathered together
and as far as the bathroom goes, and I've seen it,
that they would scoop out a hole in
the ground and then do whatever they had
to do and then recover it. And yeah.
And yeah, I know you didn't speak with them,
so you don't know if they spoke English or if
they had their? Well it was more or less broken English.
Okay. I don't know if they had a native language or not.
Now, you mentioned that
you were already engaged
to marry Marie, your future wife.
You had gotten engaged when you
went home before you were shipped overseas.
Can you tell me about meeting her
and then also about how you kept in touch,
how you sent letters maybe during the war?
Okay. Well, how I met Marie well across the street from me
was a woman the same age, Mildred
Hules was her name. And she was
always more or less trying to pursue me,
but I didn't have the least bit of interest in her.
A friend of mine and I were walking in the evening,
one time down the street,
and Milly Hules and Marie were walking together,
and we met and
we introduced each other and then
we decided that we would walk Marie home.
Well, then we did. We
talked a little bit and said how
about double dating next Sunday,
and we'll go and see a movie.
And they agreed to it. Qnd we will meet at Marie's house.
So my buddy came over to get me
and we both walked over to Marie's house. And we met,
and who's going to go with who? I mean
Milly Hules thought that
I was going to pick her, but I didn't.
So, I took Marie.
And then we went out,
and then after the movie,
we stopped in and had a Sunday
and then we walked Marie back home.
And I asked her if she would want to go
out again next week,
and more or less to do the same thing. And she said yes.
So from then on, we kept dating and dating.
Well, once I I left for the service,
she was still available.
So my friend that was with me when we were double dating,
he used to go to her house and try to date her.
And of course, she turned it down.
And my brother, he used to go from woman to woman.
You know that that was one of his things.
And when he would discharge and I was gone,
he went to see Marie and
asked if she would go out with him.
And he said that I did not have
much experience dating woman.
And he would like to go with her and she wouldn't go.
And I know that she did turn down several men.
But she did write to me a lot.
And whenever I had a chance,
I would phone her and we would talk
and I always communicated with her,
and never with my mother and father,
because she actually turned out to be number
one. And the same thing,
when I got back from Tinian to Oakland,
California, the first thing
I did was to send her a telegram to her.
Did you save any of the letters she wrote to you?
She did save some. And in fact, I didn't notice,
but they were loving
letters and the wording came from my heart,
and I never knew she had these.
And after she passed away,
I started to go through well she kept
a journal and and it happened to run
across one paper where
I had written to her with strong terms of love.
And when she died,
I was the last person
to say goodbye to her at the coffin,
and what I did was take this paper and I put it with her.
And what and actually what that amounted to was,
may God keep you safe for me.
And here I'm in the war zone and I'm
thinking more of her than that of myself.
But that is with her right now.
Did she tell you while you were serving
overseas what her experience was like at home?
What was she what was it like on the home front?
She never said really too much.
With the exception of being
pursued by suitors more than anything else.
But she was preparing to get married without any doubt.
So tell me about your experience of the end of the war.
How did you find out about the bombings of Pearl Harbor,
excuse me, not Pearl Harbor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
and what was that like?
Yeah, well, on the way to the flight line,
well, we always went by truck.
And usually the Gunners would go first
to check the amount of ammunition
and then I would leave
about an hour and a half later with the officers.
And on the way to the flightline
was a compound, heavily guarded.
It was the 509 bomb group.
And it seemed strange,
it was up on the side of the hill and
we never saw any of them fly.
They didn't have any plane designated to our knowledge and
it did bother us quite a bit that they were
there. And of course that was group that did the
nuclear bombing. And what was the other part of the question?
What do you remember about your experience?
Oh okay. All right. Yeah. Well, once the bombs were dropped,
we didn't know anything by the way,
probably the people in the States were
the first ones to know about this.
And people asked me, how did I feel?
Well there was no great celebration at all
with any of us. I don't know, but
apparently, we were pretty hard core or something
from what we've been going through for a whole year.
But we were just glad that,
that the war ended and it was time to go home.
Well, our crew was broken up.
And I was friendly with other crew members also.
It wasn't just our own crew.
And I figured it was
time for me to go home and I wasn't going home.
And I believe the Gunners that were
less serviced than me probably went home before me.
Well, I soon found out why.
I, I was called into an office
and an officer talked to me and said,
we need radio operators, real bad.
Like I told you before,
the training was the longest
I've been a crew member. And they
needed radio operators to start a new bomb group in Guam.
And if I would agree to sign up for three more years,
they would upgrade me to the top Master Sergeant.
And I refused because I had enough.
I wanted to go home.
But they still held me back thinking possibly I
would change my mind. But I didn't
and finally, we were getting
back to this new bomb group in Guam,
there were some volunteers,
but I believe that
the crew more or less came from the States,
because I doubt very much that anybody that went through
one year of war was ready to resume another operation.
But this was in 1946
and then I was told that once the Bomb group was formed,
that they would go to the Philippines.
Well, the way I look at it today,
Korean War was in 1950.
They were preparing in 1946 for
the Korean War and B-29s were based in the Philippines.
And the Philippines were
easy access to Japan and also Korea.
But finally, it was time for me to go home. And I got a
notification and I was
told to take everything with me
except a 45 caliber pistol.
I had to surrender that. And
as far as all the other equipment,
I was told to take it with me.
Well, Tinian has a small harbor and
a group of us went to the harbor. What we had to
do was to go to Siapan to
pick up a ship that will take us to the states.
The harbor at Tinian could not
accommodate any large ship of any kind.
We boarded this LCI which is a landing craft infantry.
It's a type of invasion
vessel where infantry would stand
and then once it reached the shoreline,
the front would drop down like a ramp
and then but anyway,
it was about maybe a 20 mile ride in that LCI to Siapan
and it took probably about
a half hour or so. Some of them got sea sick in that short ride.
But we stayed in Saipan for a few days
and then the ship that we were going to take,
what they call a victory ship. It had a sharp nose,
it wasn't one of these freighters
with a blunt nose and it was
a fast vessel and it was called the Marine Dragon.
So we took the LCI again to the ship and boarded the ship
and it was actually made into a troop carrier.
And there were bunks about three high and the ship left
Saipan headed for the States
and it was not just a boat ride,
We were told that everybody
had to do some sort of work on the ship.
Well, after a day or two,
there was a roster came out and
my name was on there where I needed to report
the following day for
kitchen duty and report to the mess sergeant.
So I was with a bunch of others,
went there and reported to the Mess sergeant.
and he looked at me and he said you were a B-29er?
And I said yes. And he
said you're not going to do any work
on this ship and he
said I want you to go back to your bunk
and he gave me a whole cans of food.
Food that we never ate for a whole year
you know, a lot of good stuff,
chili and vegetables and everything,
fruits. Well, when I got back
and then all the others came back for the day,
I shared all of this with
everybody because everybody was starving for food.
And that's the way it was. It took
14 days from Saipan to Oakland. And
I remember distinctly that
when we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge,
everybody yelled and screamed like crazy.
And when we approach Oakland,
that there was a band playing music
and we were given physicals and
also uniforms and as
a designation as to where our separation would be.
And that's the time when I sent a telegram to
Marie. And they're giving us
these physicals and they're drawing my blood and
my blood is a real dark red and I'm
looking them alongside of
other blood samples and there actually blood color.
And I'm thinking, what in the world is this?
Of course, it didn't mean anything. So from Oakland
I took a train to Atterbury, Illinois,
and that's when I got my separation.
And I was still allowed
to keep everything that I had. And I did take it all home.
So, what was your final rank? You know and all told,
how long have you served overseas?
Well, I was a staff sergeant,
that's a pretty high grade
and in fact, there were two staff sergeants
and and the gunners were a lower rank.
Had you started as a staff sergeant
too or did you become a staff sergeant or
you promoted while you were overseas?
Well, I left the states as a as
a regular sergeant and overseas I got promoted
because of my position.
The biggest positions for
enlisted men were radio operator
and also the central fire control. And all told
how long had you been away from home?
Did you go home at all between the trip
when you between Texas and coming back?
Well, it was just the one time when we when we finished
our training as a radio operator
in that DeLeon route to Texas.
And after that there was no term or anything.
And that had been what, 1944? And now it was 1946.
Yeah yeah. In that neighborhood.
okay!
So what was it like for you to come
home and restart your life as a civilian?
It didn't seem like too much of a transition.
Of course, you had to get all
new clothing and everything
and thankfully,
I was able to get four years of
college under the GI Bill of Rights.
And possibly that is what
I was really aiming for. But at an early age
I was thinking I wanted to be a surgeon.
And love conquers all.
For me to go away for 4-7 years and not get married,
or else there would be no way to
possibly do marriage in
college at the same time at that time.
So thankfully, I got four years of
engineering and I feel that it was a big help to me.
I love to study.
I do to the very day.
Where did you, where did you go to school?
It was a corresponding school,
and it was very difficult,
by the way. I had to study and of course,
we did get a lot of guidance and as far as paperwork goes,
I would write it out and then my wife would, Marie,
she would type it out and then I would mail it.
But it was well recognized and it was great.
I learned a lot from it.
And were you working
at the same time you were doing this correspondence?
Well, I did have
a job at the same place where my father worked.
But I wasn't really too happy with it.
I did hear about Bethlehem Steel which is
outside of Buffalo. It's about 45 miles away.
And I felt that with my education and smarts,
that I could do well over there.
So I I did write a letter to
the employment office listing some of
my qualifications and I got a response that they
forwarded this to a department head
and he was very interested in talking to me.
So what I did, I went there and I was immediately hired.
I served as a planning engineer.
I did have immense background in mechanics.
And before long I was rapidly promoted,
supervising groups of hourly workers.
And I worked for 30 years,
and I was aged 55 then,
and at the time, they were
offering lump sum pensions or else continue to work and
it was going to be a one time offer. And else you could
work until you wanted to
retire and and be on a monthly pension.
Well, Marie told me, retire. Well,
I made good money at
Bethlehem Steel. She didn't have to work.
That there was absolutely no sense at
all in her finding a job,
even though she had worked
before after leaving high school.
And her job was to raise the
three kids and provide
good meals and do whatever it had to do.
And it worked out real well.
I'm so glad that she,
that didn't have to work.
But but she did have a lot of friends. And they used
to go out for dinner and do all sorts of things,
which I was very well pleased with.
What kind of work did she do
between high school and getting married?
She was working in a department store.
And did you get married right away in 1946?
Well, I was discharged in
in April and we got married August 10.
Well, my brother, he was going in dating a girl
and they never talked about marriage.
Well, as soon as he found out
that Marie and I were going to get married,
his girlfriend said that
he's not going to get married before you.
So they did push it to the limit and
they got married before us.
And when was your first child born?
It didn't take long. It took
about nine months. That's what it was.
And what were your children's names? What was what?
Your children, what were what are their names?
My oldest daughter was Margaret.
She passed away.
And then there was Judy.
She lives in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
And then my son Jim,
who you already met.
And Jimmy is my lifeblood.
He does everything for me.
He forbids me to step a foot on
the ladder or change a light bulb or anything.
So, thinking about how the world changed, you know,
after World War Two,
there were some major things
that happened in the United States,
including a Civil Rights movement.
Were you aware of kind of what was going on?
I know you you know you grew up in New York,
and then eventually you came and moved to the South.
Well, being in the service,
I really didn't follow it too close,
but there was one event which really hurts me.
I was at a Christmas party.
I do got to get a lot of invites from
my neighbors because my neighbors are beautiful people and
they more or less looked after me.
But anyway, at this Christmas party,
it was more or less a family affair and there was a woman
there that she was aware of
me because of my neighbor possibly telling her who I was.
Well, she was an activist and the thing she sent to
me, how I was
involved in the Air offensive against
Japan with the innocent people and everything else
and she never showed any concern
whatsoever about the loss of life,
of troops or the sacrifices of
this. And I didn't
give her the satisfaction to
give her any kind of an answer.
And all I said was, look,
you have your opinions and I've got mine.
But years later, she had a party again,
probably four years later,
and she came to me and she had a whole different tone.
Apparently, she gathered all
of her negative thoughts together and realized,
hey, wait a minute, you know, there's people
that made big sacrifices.
And we talked a little bit about,
you know, religion, you know,
during the war, and the role it played for you.
I realized I hadn't asked,
did you know any Jewish soldiers?
Or any Jewish people?
I had loads of Jewish friends and I mean,
real, real good friends when I lived in [undecipherable] West,
Dr. Solomon, who was one of
the best eye surgeons in the country and his wife was
an attorney and they had two boys
and they were the finest people you would want to know.
And that they were always visiting
me and I would visit them
and then I did have other friends.
And as far as a Jewish person goes,
it's just like me or just like you.
I really can't see a difference in,
it has always bothered me from my early ages as to
why people are against
Jewish people or even
against their country and their values.
I've never been anywhere close to that.
Were you aware of
did you know about what was going
on in Europe with the Holocaust?
Did that come did you learn about that later? Or
I'm curious? No, I followed that very close.
Yes in fact, I took it
DVD's from the library and if I run across a German one,
which possibly has a little bit of
background for the Holocaust,
I will pick it up because I
just loved to read all of that stuff,
but I was fully aware of the Holocaust in my early years and
I find it so hard as to why one individual,
Adolph Hitler, they were working
his subordinates over to establish this genocide.
And particularly, well of course, they were after
Catholics and also African Americans too.
But their main focus was on Jewish.
That they would break up families,
that they would
take over their assets,
their buildings, businesses, and whatever.
But as far as the internment camps go,
I find it so hard that a common soldier being
brainwashed by his superiors to strip people naked,
put them in showers,
and then put them into a chamber under false pretenses and
who's going to turn the valve? Or who's
going to drop the pill?
And also who's going to dig this big trench? And also
who's going to run the bulldozer?
I've always talk, how can anybody have stuff like this.
I did follow the Nuremberg Trials very closely. And
I did have a real good DVD about
Eichmann as to how
he started and when he moved to South America.
I'm reading up on all of this stuff here. So, excuse me
looking back at your life,
at the war, and its impact,
why do you think it's important for
students now to learn about World War Two?
It's it's possible that those that actually
did something of value don't speak up.
Well, I as one
for years and years never talked at all about anything.
And I did mention that I did have all this equipment.
Well after about ten years of marriage,
my wife said, you know we need to destroy
all this stuff because
it's bringing back too many memories.
So what I did with dig hole. You know,
I actually brought back
a 50 caliber machine gun bullet. And
I put that in there and also the medical kit with
the morphine and some of the other stuff,
well, my son Jim,
he used to play around with some of the stuff like
the oxygen mask and stuff and my helmet and
as far as communicating
in a plane when we had a throat mic
there were two discs that that would
go around your tonsils and they'd
wrap around and then you would plug it
in and that way you could talk to everybody in the plane. And
we discarded all of that stuff.
But a few years back,
my grandson talked to me and said,
you know, there's a guy in
North Carolina that's got a helmet Mel Price and
he wanted to know if that was
the one that's living in Mount Pleasant.
And I really haven't got any idea because I thought
that we destroyed all of this stuff here. But uh—.
So—. Did I answered the question.
So your wife kind of felt it was
time to say goodbye to those memories,
but at the same time,
I know you told me that you talked to
students, you know, at your high school. Oh yes.
Eventually you decided to talk about —.
Well I was I never did speak to anybody.
I did attend military functions
and for some reason people will seek me out.
And then of course,
after them telling me what the purpose was,
well then I agreed to it
and they were interviews and also phone conversations,
but in Wanda High School,
which got 4,000 students,
they have an ROTC class,
and it is big and it's geared towards the Air Force.
Well, the people that run it are
two female military personnel
and also a couple of retired officers.
And I got a phone call and
they asked me if I would come and speak to the ROTC class.
And then I wasn't really too sure about that.
But anyway, they asked
me to come over so we could talk a little bit more.
So I did. And then I thought
it was a great thing because
these students were interested in military,
and the proper source was lacking to tell.
So we set up a time here and
they told me where
to park and then a student escorted me to the office.
We talked a while and
then I went at the head of the class
and there were well over 100 students.
And I did ask them,
well, what should I
talk about and what I shouldn't talk about?
And they said just talk.
Well, the whole staff also and some of the teachers,
stood in the background
and I spent a whole hour talking to them.
And then there was a question and the answer period.
And then finally the bell rang and
it was time for them to go to another class,
So I go back to the office
and I said, well, I hope I did well and I'll be leaving.
And they said, wait a minute,
you aren't ready to go because
there's three more classes to go.
And I did a second one,
and then it was lunchtime.
I just drank water
and then I did the third one
and the fourth one was the last one.
Altogether, there was possibly 500 students in there
and I was told that what I was
telling the students was stuff that
they had never ever heard of before.
And as I'm speaking, I'm looking at these kids, you know
they're high school kids,
probably 16, 17 years old, seniors, freshman
and their eyes are glued to me, really,
that they're not talking
with their neighbor or anything else.
And after I got, in fact,
I'm looking down in the first row is this one girl.
She she looked at me and and she's looking
and looking. Her eyes she wouldn't take her eyes off of me.
And after I got through,
she walked over to me and she
handed me a crumpled dollar bill.
And she said, Mr. Price,
can I buy you a bottle of water? Oh my God.
So what do you
hope students will learn from your experiences?
Well, as far as
what was done to establish our freedom,
I talked to people in their '30s and '40s,
and I will throw a few things at them
and they don't know where Tinian is,
they never heard of the Mariana,
they never heard of a B-29.
In fact, I was asked one
time what sort of passenger plane is that? So
there's totally a lack of knowledge.
I don't know if there's a big gap or not, but
I don't believe even even today,
that they really coming out and
promoting any of these things.
But people that have gone through this, and meeting,
people at the same level as what I've gone through,
it really makes my day.
Yeah. And why do you
think why do you think, it's really important that we remember?
Well, our country has
the greatest freedom of any country in the world.
You can do almost anything or say
anything, and get away with it.
Especially the freedom of speech.
And people can demonstrate
regardless of what the purpose is and
they aren't bothered. And there are
many times that I feel that in these times.
As of today, we're lacking a lot on the leadership.
I believe that there
are a lot of brilliant people out there
that could do a much better job
as to what is being done today,
especially in the military.
I'm orientated towards military, so
military means a lot to me.
And a previous question you would
ask me before was about aviators.
Well, you never asked me
about leadership of the military.
Well, I have the highest respect
for General Patton. He's my idol.
If you would ever seen the movie,
he starts off addressing the troops,
never let this, SOB die for his country.
No I'm not saying this right.
Never die for your country,
let that SOB die for his country.
That's when General Patton said it.
And then I feel that he was one of the greatest ones.
But of course there was
Eisenhower, Bradley and of course in
the Navy there was Nimitz, Bull Halsey.
They were great. And B 29 when they first started,
they started in India. And they
were flying the hump and establishing a base in China.
Well, that was not going to work.
General Macarthur who was the Supreme Commander,
he had jurisdiction over everybody,
the Navy, and Army, and Marines.
And but by establishing this base in China,
Japanese would have access to it and it wouldn't work.
And General Macarthur who was,
I'm going to say, kicked out of Batan,
he said, I shall return.
That's his slogan. Well, for political reasons I
believe he wanted to build B- 29 bases in the Philippines.
And everybody else especially the Navy,
Nimitz and Bull Halsey said that we've got to go to
the Mariannas and how
are you gonna, you you are gonna to get there 1,500 miles away
and they said that's the way
we're building a new plane that's capable of doing it.
And that they be one out.
The original commander of the B-29 was General Hansel,
and he was a start in general
for the first B-29 that flew out of Japan,
And he was very conservative.
He wanted the plane to fly at 30,000 feet
in the do to [needs confirmation ]bombing then. Well,
at that high altitude,
the flat guns could not reach that altitude
in the planes that
Japan had could not reach that altitude.
But at that high altitude,
only about 5% of the targets were ever hit.
And everything else was just
wasted. And at that time
that they were fighting the Gulf Stream.
That is when the Gulf Stream was first discovered.
Up until then, nobody knew about the Gulf Stream.
And what it meant was that it was directly over Japan
and the planes would be flying against the Gulf Stream,
which was over 200 miles per hour
and the planes would
be only cruising at a very slow rate.
And of course the ordnance that
was dropped would be swept away
also. Well, he insisted upon 30,000 feet.
and then the Supreme Commander,
General Arnold that was based in Washington,
he said, we are not going to win the war this way.
So they replaced him on Saipan with General LeMay. General LeMay
he was experienced in
Europe with bomb groups and then he took over.
And the first thing he said was
what we are not going to be doing 30,000 feet anymore.
The planes are going to fly at a much lower altitude,
which would be 10,000 feet,
some cases 5,000 feet.
And he also said that
there'll be no promotions and no decorations
and the crews that are
there are going to be there till the war ends.
It's not going to be the 25 mission
that was prior to General LeMay.
Well, and these bombing raids
5% or else 5 planes would not return.
And if you do the Math, you've got 100 after 20. 20 times 5
equals 100. So if you flow in 20 missions,
you still got five more to go.
And he said that the crews are going to stay
until the war ends. And that's what would happen.
And then he also said that since
the Japanese were not having as many fighters anymore,
he was going to leave all the gunners
back at base and not carry any ammunition at all.
And the ammunition for all
of the guns weighed about 2000 pounds.
So what it means is that instead of
the 10,000 pounds at the plane was designed for,
you could increase it by leaving the personnel plus
the ammunition at home and two extra bombs. Huh
so his strategy really changed how,
how the war kind of was carried out.
Well, when I look at it,
I almost feel that
he was sending us out more or less to be killed.
Yeah. That's really what
it amounts to because all of these,
well, in fact, behind me was a steel plate armor plate,
it was about 3 quarters thick and it was about six foot tall
and that was taken out also.
That's terrifying. So is there anything I
haven't asked you about that you want to make sure
that we have for our record?
I don't know what,
possibly you've covered everything.