"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, I could do…

"The transition didn't seem like too much of a transition. Sure, I needed all new clothes and everything, but thankfully, the GI Bill allowed me to complete four years of college, and possibly that's what I was really aiming for all along. But at an…

“Once the bombs were dropped, we were completely out of the loop. Probably, the folks back home were the first ones to hear about it. People asked how I felt, but there wasn't any big celebration among us. Maybe it's because we'd been through a…

“Yeah, well on the way to the flight line, we always went by truck.  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.  On the way to the flight line was a…

"On one of our POW missions, our military was also in Shanghai. There was a POW camp there, and our mission was to drop food and medical supplies, just before our stop in Okinawa, which was on the flight route. We blew an engine flying there.…

“Our very first mission was the worst one. We flew Nippon Nemesis, which was the first plane. After we completed our mission, our plane was badly damaged. There were 72 holes in the plane and the bomb bay doors wouldn't close. Our pilots said that…

“When we weren't flying, well, we'd still go up in the air. Actually, in between missions, we would take off and cruise around the islands, mostly for bombardier training. Between Tinian and Guam is an island called Rota, where we'd head for our…

“Prior to that, I figured it was just an excursion. You know, a piece of cake, more or less. But Kwajalein was scorching hot and smelled awful. We spent quite a while there, and I kept thinking, what kind of cards am I being dealt? We still didn't…

"After we finished this long flight of 3,000 miles, we were sent to Topeka, Kansas. Topeka had an airfield, and it served as a staging area. There, we were equipped with all of our overseas gear. We still didn't know our final destination. They…

“It was our final training preparation in Pyote, Texas. We were to take a long flight across the States. What we did was board the plane around mid-afternoon. It would be a 3,000-mile flight, equivalent to the flight to Japan. And we still didn't…