Encountering Prisoners of War

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"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. Usually, if something malfunctions while you're flying, you need to land as soon as possible. We landed on a fighter strip, a temporary runway for fighter planes, and parked our plane. We needed an engine from Tinian, which meant spending about two weeks in Okinawa. During that time, we were the only B-29 there. They were bringing in POWs from Japan. These POWs got off the plane just a few feet away from us and looked right at the tail of our plane, the Circle X. Apparently, they recognized it from some of the bombing missions flown by our bomb group. I went over to talk to them. They were clearly tortured and brutalized, with nothing but skin and bones with tattered clothes. They hugged me and talked to me. This experience really hit me. It showed how people who had been through the war could still show gratitude to another person.