Interview with Pacific B-24 Pilot Kay Morris

8/7/09-- It’s a long way from Rigby, Idaho to the war-torn skies over Okinawa and Japan, and many years have passed since young Kay Morris flew as a B-24 pilot in World War Two, but thanks to good health, a good memory, and a mother who liked to scrapbook, Morris’s war experiences are as meticulously recorded as if they’d happened yesterday. Every letter Morris wrote to his future wife, from basic training through the end of the war, maps, photographs, chits, dog tags and patches, they’re all there, most bound up in a scrapbook covered with white silk from the parachute Morris brought back from the war.
Kay Morris started life on the Snake River Plain, in Idaho’s premier potato-growing region, and went off to school at nearby Ricks College, a Latter-day Saint-run school now known as BYU-Idaho, before transferring to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Morris joined the Army Air Forces in April, 1943, and was selected for the Aviation Cadet program. He trained at San Antonio, Texas, deciding to go into multi-engine aircraft because “I didn’t like aerobatics particularly”. After earning his silver wings on August 4, 1944 in Altus, Oklahoma, Morris was assigned to the 494th Bomb Group, 865th Squadron, a B-24 Liberator outfit that flew medium altitude bombing missions against the Japanese.
Angaur Island is located South of Peleliu at 6 Degrees 55 Minutes North Latitude 134 Degrees 8 Minutes East Longitude. Angaur Island is about 2 miles long and one and a half mile wide Morris’s photo of Anguar during the war, airstrip at upper right. (Courtesy Kay Morris)

The 494th Bomb Group was nicknamed ‘Kelly’s Kobras’, in honor of General Laurence B. Kelley, who led the group. Created in 1943, the 494th was assigned to the U.S. 7th Air Force, the 494th arrived in the combat zone in August 1944. The group history describes the arrival of the advance echelon in less than idyllic terms. The group was dumped on the island of Angaur, “the meanest of the Palau Group...Though all organized resistance had ceased in the estimation of the communiqué writers, there was still plenty of the unorganized variety, and few if any of that first echelon will forget the first weeks of trying to cope with Jap snipers, land crabs, pup tents, K rations and the jungle growth separately and collectively. Pelelieu Island, on this 30th of September '44 was still in the process of being separated from its Japanese defenders, and the strip at Angaur was far from complete. The Advance Echelon wondered if it would ever see the rest of the Group again.”
(484th Unit History, http://home.att.net/~kelleys_kobras/494history/written.htm)


By October, the group was flying missions, bombing targets in the Phillipines.

A 494th B-24, photo courtesy of Kay Morris.

Initially a copilot, he ended up as the aircraft commander of his own Liberator, flying out of Angaur, Palau. The island had been taken by American forces in fierce fighting in September and October 1944, a battle that cost 264 American lives and over 1,300 Japanese lives. The strategically important island gave the Americans a vital airfield from which it could bomb Japanese targets in the Philippines. Photos show a small island with a runway and not much else. “We were in tents,” he recalls, “four officers to a tent and six enlisted men to a tent. There wasn’t any entertainment or anything to do, really. It was pretty boring. We spent a lot of time resting between missions. Sometimes there were movies and of course there were card games. Morris also did his best to practice his Mormon faith, and wrote letters to his sweetheart and family back home.

Morris remembers that the missions from Anguar to the Phillipines were relatively short ones. However, they were not without their dangers. Morris remembers one plane in his formation going down after its wing was shot off.

Map of 7th Air Force Operations. (Courtesy Kay Morris)
Later, as the war moved closer to Japan, the 494th flew out Okinawa and bombed Japan proper.
In the Pacific, the B-24 was classified as a medium altitude bomber. The B-24 was a four engine bomber that normally carried a crew of ten—four officers and six enlisted men. Officers included the pilot and copilot, bombardier, and navigator. The enlisted personnel was comprised of the flight engineer, radio operator, ball turret gunner, two waist gunners and a tail gunner. High altitude bombing was the job of the advanced, pressurized Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The B-25 Mitchells handled the low-altitude bombing.

According to Morris, the most important man on the crew was the navigator. “Most of our missions were eight hundred miles over water,” he remembers. “You had to rely on the navigators pretty heavily.” Not only that, but unlike their counterparts who flew over Europe, the Pacific bomber boys of the 494th flew in formations of only six airplanes, with limited fighter support.

1st Lt. Charley Wilcox was a bombardier in the 494th, and describes some of the differences between the Pacific and Atlantic bomber wars. “There are many differences between the European Theatre and the Pacific Theatre. For instance; in the European Theatre the planes were subjected to ‘Flak and Fighters' from the time they crossed the channel until they returned (if they were lucky); whereas in the Pacific; we generally had a peaceful flight over vast stretches of water; generally encountering ‘Flak & Zeros’ only when near the target area. A good indication of how the Brass compared the two theatres is by the number of missions required to rotate home. In the European Theatre, you needed 20 [actually 25] and in the Pacific Theatre, you needed 40. I have pulled some missions with more than 12 hrs of flight time; all over water. I can recall a General who was traveling from a Pacific base to another base - he never made it and to this day no one knows just where he was lost or what happened to him - "Lost in The Pacific" would be a good title for that story.”

Morris agrees. “We didn’t try to think about going down in the ocean,” he says. “The plane had two lifeboats under the wings, and there was an escape sub in the inland sea of Japan if we went down”, but the odds of rescue were very slim in such vast expanses of water. The bomber crews flying over Europe could bail out, for the most part, knowing that they would end up on land and have a decent chance of survival. The Pacific bomber crews knew that death was the most likely result of an ocean ditching, followed by imprisonment by the Japanese, who treated captured prisoners much more harshly than the Germans.

"Blood Chit, requesting protection and safe conduct to downed airmen in multiple languages. Courtesy Kay Morris.
In July, 1945, the 494th moved to the island of Okinawa for attacks on the Japanese heartland. His first really scary experience was over the Japanese island of Kyushu, the first time he encountered flak. The second was a particularly memorable mission on July 28, 1945 to bomb the Japanese battleship ‘Haruna’.

Battleship Haruna (class Kongo) under air attack. Kure, July 28, 1945. (Source: www.ww2incolor.com/japan/haruna.html)

“We used two-thousand-pound bombs on that mission,” he says. “That was the biggest bomb we ever used in the war. We were over the harbor at Kure, and one of our bombs got hung up in the bomb bay. The nose dropped far enough to arm it, and the navigator and flight engineer went back into the bomb bay—without parachutes—and physically kicked the bomb out. It was said that only one-sixty-fourth of an inch of movement could detonate one of those bombs, and it was one of the two times overseas that I was really, really scared.” After jettisoning the bomb, the manual release stuck the bomb bay doors open, and Morris’s plane began to lag behind. Finally, the crew was able to close the bomb bay doors and catch up. In addition to the hung-up bomb, the group history notes that two B-24s were lost and that “Jap gunners threw up the most terrific curtain of flak ever experienced by our crews. Participating personnel declared that was one mission they would not soon forget.” (Unit History)
Fighter escort was ‘iffy’ at best, according to Morris. P-51 Mustang fighters occasionally failed to show up, even when the ‘Kates’—Japanese fighters—did.

“We had to worry about flak from time to time,” Morris remembers. “And the Jap Air Force would come up and visit to see us once in a while.” On one mission, the pilot behind Morris’s plane was killed by a Japanese ‘Tony’ fighter. The co-pilot managed to bring the plane home. “Missions from Okinawa could be eight hundred miles,” says Morris. “The navigator was a very important guy when flying that far over open water. We normally flew at about 11,000 feet all the way to and from the targets—quite a bit lower than the bombers in Europe—and bombed from that altitude as well. We didn’t go on oxygen unless we were at fifteen thousand feet.” He remembers that the temperature in the planes was quite nice, compared to the heat on the ground back at the base.

With all the missions over water, I was curious as to whether Morris was a good swimmer. He shook his head, and told me he preferred to rely on the Mae West life jacket. In fact, he recalled an incident in training where the crew was pushed from a dinghy to simulate a ditching. Another crewman also couldn’t swim, and grabbed at Morris, who promptly pushed him away. Both men passed.

“We were getting ready to invade Japan. And it would have been bloody, for the United States and Japan. We were very grateful when President Truman dropped the bomb in August,” says Morris. Unfortunately, several 494th crews who had been previously shot down, were prisoners of war at the Military Police Barracks at Hiroshima, Japan on August 6th, 1945, when the A-bomb was dropped on the city. Charley Wilcox writes that “the families [of the twelve POW crewmen] from the aircrafts ‘Taloa’ and ‘Lonesome Lady’ were told their loved ones were ‘missing in action’ and some 3 years later were told they were ‘killed in action’ and never told they died from friendly fire—the A-Bomb.”

The war was over, much to the relief of the men of the 494th. But they were not going home just yet. On September 26, 1945, Okinawa was hit by a serious typhoon that destroyed much of the base and cut off the island from civilization for several days. “The storm was so strong that it bent the flagpole at Headquarters a perfect ninety degrees about six to eight feet up, with no wrinkle in the tube,” says Morris. Miraculously, Morris’s tent did not blow down during the typhoon, though many tents did and the base was wrecked.

Morris’s photos of the typhoon damage at his base(Courtesy Kay Morris)
Finally, in December 1945, Morris was sent home. He went back to BYU, and got married in January of 1946. He’d brought a parachute back with him, and the family used the silk fabric to make a wedding dress for his bride.
A news article from the Rigby, Idaho paper about the parachute-silk wedding dress. (Courtesy Kay Morris)
After finishing school, he worked for a few years before joining the 116th Army National Guard in Idaho as a liaison pilot. He was serving with the Idaho Falls unit when it was called up to go to Korea. However, as a surplus pilot, he ended up in Germany instead. He was there for three years, his main duty was to fly the commander of the 11th Engineer Group around Germany to inspect bridge sites in the early days of the Cold War.
(Source: http://www.aviation.army.mil/aircraft/h-13_oh-13.jpg)

He then went to San Francisco, California, and flew the Bell H-13 helicopter—one of the U.S. military’s first-- in support of the 30th Topo Battalion, which spent the summer making a thorough mapping survey of the territory of Alaska. While there, he was promoted to Captain.
Morris followed that with a stint at the Army Aviation School at Fort Rucker, Alabama as an instrument flying teacher. While he was stationed there, his daughter Marcia remembers going to the parades on base as a favorite activity. Someone came up with the idea of putting square dance costumes on the H-13s—shirt and tie for the ‘boys’, skirts for the ‘girls’—and the chopper pilots would then ‘square-dance’ over the parade ground, to the delight of all in attendance. This activity was cancelled after a few years due to safety concerns.

Morris and family were then off to Iran, where he supported construction efforts for the Shah of Iran’s airfields and other projects.

Morris lives in the same house he bought back in the Sixties, and his memories are safely stowed in the parachute-silk scrapbook and several others. A shadow box on the wall displays his many military decorations. The movie-star-handsome young bomber pilot is older and has less spring in his step, but Kay Morris still lights up when remembering the days, so many years ago, when he flew the unfriendly skies over the Pacific in World War Two.

Posters of Legendary Airmen--Halloran and Boyington

Recently I made the acquaintance of former WWII B-29 airman Hap Halloran. I contacted him about buying a copy of his book 'Hap's War'. We exchanged a few emails, and I told him I wanted to send him my book as a gift in appreciation of his service in World War Two. Hap was shot down and spent many months as a POW in Japan. He was tortured physically and mentally. He stayed in the same prison as Black Sheep Squadron leader Gregory 'Pappy' Boyington, who had received a posthumous Medal of Honor for his exploits, despite being alive. When Pappy found out about this in prison, he said he'd happily trade the medal for some food.

In talking about Pappy, I mentioned that I had written an article on this blog advocating that Boyington, an Idaho native, get a statue at his alma mater, University of Washington. There was a big flap a year or two ago because the students and some faculty at UW did not want to put up a statue of someone who killed others in the war. You can read this article here: http://untoldvalor.blogspot.com/2007/07/give-pappy-boyington-his-statue.html

"Pappy", MOH winner.

Hap then suggested that I might like a poster he had in his home. Pappy Boyington had given it to him back in 1978. The poster shows Pappy getting ready to bail out of his flaming aircraft. He signed the poster "Aug 11, 1978, With Red Hot Regards--Pappy Boyington". Hap added at the bottom, under Pappy's photo, "We were POWs together in Omori POW camp SW of Tokyo in 1945. Pappy and I traveled together at air events and golfed together. I wrote and delivered his eulogy at Arlington National Cemetery 1-15-88."

The poster of Pappy Boyington.

Hap also adds under the photo of the Japanese credited with shooting Pappy down, Masajiro Kawato, that Kawato did not shoot Boyington down, and adds, "authority--Boyington" to end the argument.

The second poster shows Hap's B-29 on its final mission. The painting, 'Rover Boys Express' is by Roberto Cernuda. The plane went down and many of the men in the rear of the plane, despite the heroic efforts to reach them through the crawlspace, perished in the crash.

Hap's Plane on its Final Mission.

What a wonderful gift to a guy who loves aviation history. Nothing I will get for Christmas will come close.

Hap was plagued for forty years by nightmares of his POW experiences. Finally he decided to go back to Japan and face his fears head-on. He went back and has since gone back ten times, most recently just a few months ago. Here he is with some Japanese at the Nagasaki Peace Park in Nagasaki, near the site of the 1945 atomic bomb.

Once Hap went back, the nightmares got better. He now wages peace and teaches forgiveness. Every day that he has lived since his POW days he considers a 'bonus day'. He finishes many emails with 'Enjoy life'.

Those of you who have not read Hap's book "Hap's War" that Hap wrote in 1998, you can order one through this web site. For more information, click here: http://www.haphalloran.com/hapswar.asp

Two Writing Projects, Two Incredible Stories

I'm currently working on two shorter writing projects and one long one. 'Short' is a relative term with me, because I tend towards perfectionism and hate letting go of a story until I'm sure it's perfect. The first of these is a future magazine article, to be submitted to aviation and WWII magazines. This story is about a day when the Swiss shot down two American B-17s, killing most of both crews. It is an amazing and troubling story on many levels. I originally wrote about it in my book, but this summer, I had a chance to visit Norris King, one of the survivors of that day, while in Denver, Colorado. We had a long talk and I took lots of photos. I posted a short copyrighted updated on this weblog after the visit, which you can read here: http://untoldvalor.blogspot.com/2007/08/norris-king-shot-down-by-swiss.html

Marilyn King, Norris King, and myself during our visit this summer in Arvada, Colorado.

Norris and his wife Marilyn were kind enough to make copies of some of the photos from his collection. I am including one of them here, of Norris as a young waist gunner upon graduation from gunnery school.

Norris King, graduation from gunnery school


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The second shorter story I am working on just came about yesterday. My parish priest at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church here in Idaho Falls, Fr. Joe McDonald, had mentioned in a homily several years back that his dad had been in World War Two. As a result, about six weeks ago I gave Father Joe a copy of my book as a gift. A few weeks later he caught me on the way out of Mass and said he had some stuff to show me about his father's experiences. We finally got together yesterday afternoon for a long talk about his dad's experiences.

It turns out Fr. Joe's dad, also named Joe McDonald, went to Wake Island to work as a construction worker. Because his father worked at the Reno, Nevada State Journal, the paper hired young Joe on as a correspondant, charged with filing stories of interest from Wake Island.

Joe's early days on Wake were enjoyable. He drew a map of the island, noting where the sharks, octopii and other sea creatures were located offshore. He worked hard and filed the occasional story.

Joe's map of Wake Island

After Pearl Harbor, Wake Island was under attack from the Japanese Navy. All of a sudden, Joe was on the front lines of a brutal invasion attempt. He volunteered to help man an anti-aircraft gun and hunkered down.

On December 20, Joe filed this report from Wake: "Wake Island has suffered 11 bombings and one shelling since the beginning of the war...The Marine Corps and contractors personnel stationed on the island have successfully repelled all attacks bringing down around nine planes, four surface craft, one submarine and one patrol bomber...All is under control and the island is holding out fine. Total casualties to date: (approximately 65 dead, 60 injured)."

Joe ended the dispatch with: "This is a rush job, Frank--make what you can of it."

The last dispatch from Wake Island, written by Joe McDonald.

He handed the dispatch to the crew of a PBY Catalina patrol bomber, which had landed that day. At 0700 the next morning, December 21, the PBY took off.

Less than two hours later, the Japanese assault on Wake began. On December 24, Christmas Eve, Wake Island fell to the Japanese.

Joe was now a Prisoner of War.

The POWs were loaded onto a ship called the Nita Maru in January for shipment to hostile territory. Upon boarding the ship, Joe was given a typed paper telling him the regulations for prisoners on board ship. Almost every failure to obey orders would result in death, including talking without permission, walking or moving without orders, carrying unecessary baggage, taking extra food, or using more than two blankets.

Joe ended up in Section No. 8, Barrack No. 4 at Shanghai War-Prisoner's Camp in Shanghai, China. He would be imprisoned until the end of the war in August, 1945.

Joe's POW address book from the camp.




The POW Bulletin was sent to family members of POWs to keep them posted on news from the camps.

On December 24, 1941, Rear Admiral B. Moreell wrote to Joe's parents with bad news. "It is with sincere regret that it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of your son, Mr. Joseph McDonald, as the result of enemy action on Wake."

The letter informing Joe's family of his death on Wake Island.

A body was returned to the grieving family, a funeral was held, and the remains of Joe McDonald were interred in a cemetery in Reno. However, several months later, the military realized that the Joe McDonald killed on Wake was a different Joe McDonald. A second, apologetic letter was sent. The remains were exhumed and moved to Cody, Wyoming for re-burial with the correct family.

How devastating this ordeal must have been for both families.

In the camp, the men worked together to survive. Joe always scraped out the burned rice in the bottom of the cooking pots and together with his friends, they ate it. He credited this with helping him stay alive, and today, Fr. Joe remembers how the family ate rice nearly every meal growing up. His dad insisted the rice be burned brown a little on the bottom.

The POWs were occasionally helped by a kindly Japanese guard. After the war, some of the surviving POWs sat for a portrait with this man, and many years later, this Japanese guard sent Joe a Christmas card.

Joe McDonald, front row, second from left, shortly after the war ended, with other POWs and the friendly Japanese guard.

After the war, Joe returned, married, raised a family, and lived his life. He passed away in the eighties. His wife and son, Fr. Joe, put together a scrapbook, from which these artifacts were copied. Joe's complete POW papers are in a university library in Nevada.

Interestingly, Joe had the headstone from his grave put in his back yard, where he enjoyed it as a conversation piece for many years. He also said he enjoyed reading his obituary and hearing all the nice things people had to say about him at his funeral in 1942.

A postcard sent by Joe to the States.


A sad postcard, the back written in Japanese, tells of a young soldier's missing his family. We are uncertain when or how Joe got this card.

We are also unsure what these cards are. However, they seem to be American propaganda leaflets dropped or given to the Japanese civilians to encourage them to surrender. Perhaps they were left over, as these were mailed back to the States by Joe after his release and after the war was over.

Book Review: HAP HALLORAN 'Hap's War'

I received Hap Halloran's 'Hap's War' today, along with the pictured card and two photos Hap annotated on the back. The top photo shows Hap getting inducted into the American Combat Airmen Hall of Fame in 2001. The bottom photo shows Hap with Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbetts in Great Bend, Kansas, a few years back. Tibbetts passed away a little over a week ago.

Today in the mail I received my copy of Hap Halloran's 'Hap's War: The Incredible Survival Story of a POW Slated for Execution" by Ray 'Hap' Halloran with Chester Marshall. This book is a real piece of World War Two history. First of all, I cannot believe the incredible value of this large hardback book, which Hap sells himself out of his home in Menlo Park, California. The price, includiing shipping, must make this book the best buy in America, even if it were to come unsigned. However, Hap took the time to personally inscribe the book and also included two photographs of himself, one with Paul Tibbets, the Enola Gay pilot, and the other of himself after being inducted into the American Combat Hall of Fame in October of 2001. On top of that, he took the time to include a personalized card.

For those of you who have never heard of Hap Halloran, he is one of the most celebrated heroes of the Pacific War. He overcame incredible odds to survive as a Japanese prisoner of war after his B-29 Superfortress was shot down over Japan on January 27, 1945. His tale is one of torture, starvation, and ultimately, survival. It was Hap who was taken to the Tokyo Zoo and put on display in a cage as an example of what the terrible American invaders looked like. This was the low point of his life, according to him. What is more amazing is that this former POW has just returned from Japan, where he is an honored speaker about the effects of war and is an advocate for peaceful solutions to problems where possible.

Hap and Japanese survivors at the Peace Park in Japan.

I highly recommend that anyone with an interest in WWII buy this book from Hap. There is a hyperlink below in his biography from which to order.

The book is filled with Hap's story, his ordeals, and his ultimate triumph. It is also filled with rare photographs. The book is a large hardback and even came Priority Mail in a matter of days.

Hap's Prisoner of War Armband from his Japanese imprisonment. POWs in Japan were treated brutally.

Hap Halloran, you are one of a kind. Thanks again for the book, and even more, for your service to our country and the cause of freedom.

Below is Hap's biography, taken from his website at: http://www.haphalloran.com/

The Autobiography of Raymond "Hap" Halloran

Ray "HAP" Halloran, was born February 4, 1922 in Cincinnati, Ohio of parents, Paul and Gertrude Halloran; the second of 5 boys.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) Hap volunteered for the Army Air Force at Wright-Patterson air base in Dayton, Ohio.

He completed training as Navigator (Hondo, Texas) and Bombardier (Roswell, New Mexico) Volunteered for training in new bomber (B-29). Trained at Smoky Hill Air Base in Salina, Kansas. Our crew of 11 was referred to as "Rover Boys Express". We were assigned to 878th Squadron, 499th Bomb Group VH, 73rd Wing, 20th Air Force.

After completion of operational training in Kansas we spent a short period of time in Lincoln, Nebraska; then Herington, Kansas where we received our brand new B-29 (flown to Herington from the production line at Boeing Wichita Plant). We then received orders to fly to Mather Field, California; then to John Rogers Field, Honolulu. We then flew to Kwajalein Atoll and our final leg was to Saipan in the Northern Marianas Islands. We traveled alone the entire trip.
Saipan was the base of operations for the 73rd Wing in that battle against targets on the Japanese mainland.

On our forth mission against Japanese targets we were shot down on a high altitude mission against target 357; Nakajima Aircraft plant in Musashino on the west edge of Tokyo.
A twin engine Japanese fighter plane (Nick) came in head on and critically damaged our plane (V Square 27). The comfortable temperature in our pressurized B-29 immediately assumed outside air temperature of -58 degrees. We lost two engines and our major controls within the plane. We were doomed; we fell behind the formation. We realized we must abandon our plane over enemy territory east of Tokyo.

Painting of our B-29 V Square 27 passing Mt. Fuji on bomb run against Target 357 1/27/45.
All crew members were alerted to necessity to parachute. (Tail Gunner Dead). I left the bomber thru the front bomb bay (nose wheel blocked normal front escape route).

I fell free for an estimated 24,000 feet before opening my chute at about 3,000 feet over Chiba Prefecture East of Tokyo. Japanese fighters closed in as I hung in my chute. One saluted me from in close. A rarity. Six of The Rover Boys crew did not survive that day.

As could be expected I was treated brutally by civilians before being taken on a truck to Kempei Tai torture prison in downtown Tokyo across from the moat at the north end of the Imperial Palace grounds. I was confined in solitary in a cold dark cage in a wooden stable near the Kempei Tai headquarters building. Food was a small ball of rice several times a day; no medical treatment. Silence was a firm rule except during interrogations. One desperately tried to survive.

Survived the massive low level March 10th, 1945 fire raid on Tokyo by fellow B-29 crews. The fire, heat, smoke and resultant firestorm was terrifying. Never expected to survive that night.
Shortly thereafter I was removed from my cage and taken to Ueno Zoo where I was put on a display naked in a tiger cage and civilians could walk in front of cage and view this hated B-29 prisoner. I had lost perhaps 80 or 90 pounds by then and my body was dirty and covered with running sores from bed bug, flea and lice infestation. Conditions were extreme. I cried (a form of relief) and prayed constantly.

Was moved early in April 1945 to Omori Prisoner of War facility on SW edge of Tokyo. Was with fellow B-29 prisoners and other Americans including Gregory "Pappy" Boyington and 8 survivors of the submarine Tang. What a wonderful thing to be out of solitary and being able to talk with fellow B-29ers. We each had a space 24 x 70 inches. We learned to live together under a demanding situation. Food was the dominant subject of all conversations. We were subject to bombings and strafings by our planes. Our facilities were not identified as a POW compound. Those were extremely difficult days as we tried to survive.

The war ended on August 15, 1945. We were liberated from Omori on August 29th by Marines in landing craft and taken aboard the Hospital ship Benevolence in Tokyo Bay. Spent two weeks in Benevolence (not physically fit to travel). Was on the Benevolence when the Peace Treaty was signed on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Admiral Halsey visited me in my room on the Benevolence.

Eventually flown home. Spent months in Ashford government hospital in West Virginia. Adjustment to normal life came slowly. Experienced almost 40 years of nightmares; very disruptive to my family life. In the early years after the return from POW days I absolutely tried to wipe out all those bad memories of my time in Japan. I failed.
Finally in 1984 - after much preparation and help from the US ambassador, Mike Mansfield, I returned to Japan. I hoped I could void all my memories of "those long ago days" and view people and places as they are presently.

Positive results slowly became evident in my outlook, feelings and judgments.
Understanding and reconciliation became a reality.

I have subsequently returned to Japan seven more times and visited all the major cities and with much help able to meet Isamu Kashiide, the pilot of the Nick plane that shot us down in 1945; he died on June 3, 2003. Also visited with Kaneyuki Kobayashi a former good guard.
Eventually made many new friends including Saburo Sakai, WWII Zero ace. We golfed and did air shows together. He died of a heart attack in August of 2000 while guest at a luncheon with U.S. military officers. At his request I continued to mentor his daughter, Michiko. She graduated from Trinity College in San Antonio, Texas.

By invitation I speak to groups in museums, temples, Peace Parks and other assembly points throughout Japan. Among other places on my 2002 visit I spoke to groups in Peace Parks in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many of those folks were there (or their families impacted) on August 6th and 9th in 1945. They also were seeking closure almost 58 years later. I was guest and keynote speaker at dedication of a new museum on Tokyo on March 9, 2002. 31 folks from Tokyo, Kyoto, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Osaki, Nagasaki and other cities visited my home in August of 2002.

I also exchanged emails on frequent basis with historian friends in Japan and tour with them on my return visits. My return visits to Japan generally include visits to Saipan, Tinian and Guam.
I left the military service in the latter part of 1946. The road to normalcy proceeded slowly. In 1958 I joined former Consolidated Freightways, an eventual 3 billion dollar motor carrier and was associated with them for 44 years. Attained position of Executive Vice President and member of the Board of Directors.

I have three children. Dan lives in Boca Raton, Florida. Tim is presently relocating to Brentwood, California. Peggy lives in Redwood City, California.

I live in Menlo Park, California and travel extensively (over 5 million commercial air miles). Have done things with ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, History and Discovery Channels and participated in a Dan Rather NBC "Victory in the Pacific" two hour special in 1995; filmed in US, Pacific and Japan.

There isn't a day that goes by that my memories do not flash back and recall events of those long ago days. I remember Rover Boys who did not come home. I have visited their graves in Punch Bowl National Cemetery in Honolulu and in Portland, Oregon.

I appreciate and love Freedom. I appreciate even the simple things in life. I know how fortunate I was to survive and come home.

I refer to all the days as "Bonus Days." Now that I am in my golden years I refer to them as "Double Bonus Days!"

He has also written a book called "Hap's War" in 1998. You can order one through this web site. For more information, click here.