Stories tagged "World War II": 13
Stories
Beginning of the End
“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…
Encountering Prisoners of War
"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.…
Iwo Jima
“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…
Life on Tinian
“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…
Pacific Island Hopping
“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…
B-29 Radio Operator
“We were completely in the dark. We had no idea how we progressed from step to step. The first time I saw a B-29 was in Pyote, Texas. I had no idea where B-29s were stationed, but of course, it's a bomber, and apparently, it was being used somewhere…
Learning Morse Code
“My knowledge of Morse code was basic – just dots and dashes. I didn't know what specific combinations meant and the only distress signal I recognized, was SOS: three dots, three dashes, three dots. That is the only thing I knew. But as far as all…
Rationing during World War II
"Yes, rationing started early. People who owned cars would get a ration stamp for five gallons of gas per week. Of course, there was a black market too, with counterfeit stamps just like today. But for the most part, there was quite a bit of…
Enlisting in the Army
“Well — I heard a lot of talk about it and I saw a lot of it in the movies, and I was too dissatisfied with my job in the defense plants — it was a dirty job and we had several bosses that I didn’t care for at all — to me they didn’t know any more…
Living and Surviving
“Sometimes it was just — in the middle of the day they shut everything down. And then at night a lot of the times it would be no lights at all. And that was the bad part, at night when there was no lights, ‘cause everything was dark.”“When I went to…