Year 1943

__________ 

“I smell the stench of those bodies rotting in the sun. It still comes back to me.”

Leon Cooper

__________

American forces wade ashore at Tarawa.

 

Having returned from a 31,000 mile trip around the world, Wendell Willkie rushes a book, One World, into print, explaining what the war is really all about. 

Willkie’s simple message was that the United States’ view of the rest of the world had for too long been childishly parochial. There are “no distant points in the world any longer,” said Wilkie; “our thinking in the future must be world-wide.” He forecast the postwar drive for freedom in underdeveloped parts of the world: “Men and women all over the world are on the march, physically, intellectually and spiritually. … They are resolved, as we must be, that there is no more place for imperialism. … The big house on the hill surrounded by mud huts has lost its awesome charm.” (1127-154)

*

January 28: President Roosevelt issues the following statement, marking a dramatic shift in policy, regarding Japanese Americans: 

The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and the heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy. Every loyal citizen should be given the opportunity to serve this country wherever his skills will make the greatest contribution – whether it be in the ranks of the armed forces, war production, agriculture, government service, or other work essential to the war effort. 104/113

* 

February 5: Howard Hughes’ film, “The Outlaw,” debuts, after a long battle with censors, who insist that too much of Jane Russell’s breasts are showing. The sultry Ms. Russell, only 19, when the film is first made, goes on to stardom. But after a brief run, “The Outlaw” is banned again, briefly released again in 1946, banned once more, and finally shown extensively in 1946. It finally gained national release only in 1950, despite complaints by various church groups, the Legion of Decency, and others. 

    Even posters for the film were sometimes banned. 

    By 1943, Russell has married her high school sweetheart, Bob Waterfield, a U.C.L.A. football star; but a botched abortion, before her marriage leaves her unable to have children. She and her husband later adopt a daughter, Tracy, and Russell goes on to be a foe of abortion and an advocate for adoption, instead.

Jane Russell.

Too much skin showing in 1943.

 

*

What is Fate?

March 13: Disgruntled German officers manage to place a bomb successfully on Hitler’s plane, disguised as a present of two bottles of brandy. Inside, a small bottle of acid was broken by the press of a button. The acid would eat through a wire that held a spring – and the eventual release would trigger the blast. 

The plotters waited anxiously for word that Hitler’s plane had been blown out of the sky. Twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour passed. No word of an explosion came. The bomb had malfunctioned. The plotters managed to retrieve the “present” later and substitute two better bottles of brandy. 

On disassembling the device, all was found to have worked, but the striker had not caused the detonator to explode. 

 

* 

April 7: Lt. James Swett, a Marine fighter pilot, and three other Wildcat pilots are notified that 150 Japanese bombers and escorts are approaching Guadalcanal. This will be Swett’s first taste of combat – and he will shoot down three bombers – then be separated from the other Wildcats – and shoot down four more. 

By then his left wing had been hit, evidently by friendly antiaircraft fire. He attacked an eighth Japanese bomber, but its tail gunner fired on Lieutenant Swett’s plane, shattering his windshield and damaging his engine.

 

“It was all over in about 15 minutes,” he would recall.

 

Lieutenant Swett ditched in the sea, and then came another harrowing experience.

 

“I was cut up around the face by flying glass,” he told The Oregonian, the newspaper in Portland, in 1991. “I made a good water landing, but my shoulder straps were too loose and I hit my head on the instrument panel and broke my nose. I struggled to get out of the cockpit as the plane sank, but my parachute straps got caught and dragged me under. I don’t know how deep I was before my life raft inflated and popped me to the surface.”

 

A Coast Guard boat approached.

 

As Edward H. Sims told it in “Greatest Fighter Missions,” one of the crewmen shouted, “Are you an American?”

 

Lieutenant Swett replied, “Damn right I am.”

 

He was taken to a nearby harbor, and given Scotch and morphine to ease his pain.

 

   He would get shot down a second time, in July 1943, near the island of New Georgia, but be rescued by two natives in a canoe. In October he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his mission near Guadalcanal. Swett ended the war with 16 known kills, and part of another, and a possible nine more. 

   Swett would also insist that he shot down that eighth bomber, the one that got him, but the Marine Corps could not verify that win.

 

* 

Ohio University enrollment drops to 1,306, as 17% of faculty and many male students enlist. Women outnumber men 5-1. 

Enrollment in 1940 had been 3,501.

 

* 

On a beach in Sicily General Patton spies a man gibbering in fear (Atkinson, p. 139; Army at Dawn). In his personal diary, Patton describes what happened next: “I kicked him in the arse with all my might…Some way to boost morale. As a whole the men were poor, the officers worse. It is very sad.”

 

* 

What is Fate? 

Bill Bryson’s English father-in-law grew up poor, in “a decrepit cottage with his poor widowed mother and elder sister at the end of a wooded lane a quarter of a mile or so from the village center.” The place had no electricity or running water, and his father-in-law would walk miles to Staines and back on a Sunday “to get a bag of stale buns for their supper.” 

In 1943 a German bomber blew the place to bits, probably dropping its bomb by mistake, or dumping it after a failed raid. 

Chance. No one was home at the time. His father-in-law had to live under “changed circumstances” and 

met a girl whom he would not otherwise have met, and in the fullness of time they married and produced two children, one of whom grew up and married me. So the direction of my life, not to mention the very existence of my children and grandchildren and whomever else follows, is directly consequent upon a German bomb that fell randomly on Wraysbury on a summer’s evening long ago.

 

* 

Baseball season: With so many men away at war, major league baseball owners are worried fans will lose interest in the sport. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is created to help fill the void. The league will survive for eleven years, and 600 young women will suit up and play. (The story of the league is told in the 1992 movie, “A League of Their Own.”)

 

* 

June 14: The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett (rendered appropriately on Flag Day) upholds the right of children of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be excused from saluting the flag or saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school, on religious grounds. 

Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the six-vote majority, explains: “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. … One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly.” 

Children who had refused to participate had been suspended; but members of the Witnesses refuse to swear oaths of allegiance, except to God.

 

* 

“Lessons from the ku klux klan.” 

June 15-June 17: A race riot erupts in Beaumont, Texas. With the U.S. locked in war with Germany and Japan, African Americans were serving in increasing numbers under the flag. 

The great African American poet, Langston Hughes, captures the anger of his people during an era when racism still thrived.  Hughes noted riots that had occurred that year in places like Detroit and Beaumont.

 

“Beaumont to Detroit” by Langston Hughes 

Looky here, America
What you done done –
Let things drift
Until the riots come 

Now your policemen
Let the mobs run free.
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me. 

You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
From the ku klux klan. 

You tell me mussolini’s
Got an evil heart.
Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont
That he had his start – 

Cause everything that hitler
And mussolini do
Negroes get the same
Treatment from you 

You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power –
And you’re still jim crowing me
Right now, this very hour. 

Yet you say we’re fightin
For democracy.
Then why don’t democracy
Include me? 

I ask you this question
Cause I want to know
How long I got to fight
BOTH HITLER – AND JIM CROW. 

*

August 2: The future writer, James Baldwin turns 19, during a riot in Harlem, fueled by anger at how the U.S. military was treating black soldiers. “The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War,” Baldwin would later explain, marked a turning point in black attitudes. “To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded.” * 

August 2: The future writer, James Baldwin turns 19, during a riot in Harlem, fueled by anger at how the U.S. military was treating black soldiers. “The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War,” Baldwin would later explain, marked a turning point in black attitudes. “To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded.” 

*

September 27: 36 B-24 bombers from the Eighth Air Force planes head for the German city of Kassel, on a bombing mission. For reasons unknown today, they went off course, bombed the wrong city, and then turned for home, where they were based at Tibenham, England. German fighters soon caught up with them, and the slaughter began. Twenty-five American aircraft were shot down. Several others, badly damaged, crash landed later, including three that limped back to England.

 

Only four planes returned safely to base.

 

Staff Sgt. John A. Tabert was a waist gunner on the crew of a B-24 nicknamed the Mairzy Doats. The co-pilot, Lt. Carroll G. Snidow later described what happened when the enemy started shooting up their plane. The order to bail out soon came and Snidow and five others survived – to spend the remainder of the war in a German prison camp. Tabert and two other crewmen went missing.

 

(Snidow’s story follows, below.)

 

At least 117 U.S. airmen were killed during the raid, 121 more were taken prisoner, and only 98 returned to duty; but for 79 years, Tabert’s fate remained unknown. In October, his wife, Jenevieve (Judd), received a telegram, informing her that her husband was unaccounted for after his plane was shot down. That same day, she gave birth to her son, John.

 

Having never met his father, many years later young John would begin a search for information. Online he found a website for the Kassel Mission Historical Society, and then contacted government agencies that might help. Eventually, he learned that remains from a wreck at the crash site in German had been sent to the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial. A request for disinterment was filed, and DNA evidence later confirmed. The remains of one his father had finally been found. His son also poured over documents he had long ignored in his attic.

 

As The New York Times explains,

 

Sargeant Tarbert had attended Jacob Tome Institute in Maryland, a prep school for boys that is now the co-educational Tome School, and enjoyed football, journalism and art. He enlisted in June 1939 and met Ms. Judd while in the Air Corps at Fort Lowry. They were married on Nov. 4, 1943.

 

*

 

A little more reading lead the blogger to the story of Lt. Porter M. Pile, who ended his studies at Texas A&I University and joined the U.S. Navy. For reasons now unknown, he was transferred to the Army Air Corps – possibly because of his training in higher mathematics. We know the young man married (his wife’s first name was Barbara), finished his stateside training, and was sent to England.

 

By September 27, he had completed 23 missions – just two short of the number required of aircrews before they could stand down. But on that day, his B-24 Liberator bomber was destroyed, and he was killed.

 

For years, his family wondered what had happened; but his remains were eventually found at the crash site in Germany, identified in 2022, and in October 2023, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C.

 

*

 

The account from Lt. Snidow now follows. He wrote it down in a notebook provided by the Red Cross, and told the story of the Hautman crew. The blogger has divided it into paragraphs for easier reading.

 

Lt. Edward F. Hautman was the pilot. (I also learn that on a mission in April 1944, the Mairzy Doats had been heavily damaged, and the two waist gunners bailed out, thinking it was going down. One was listed as KIA, the other as MIA.

 

The crew for the Kassel mission, besides Hautman, Snidow, and Tabert,  included:

 

Lt. Maynard L. Jones, navigator

 

Lt. John A. Friese, bombardier

(not on the mission that day)

 

Harold Giesler, radio operator

Dale C. Maupin, nose turret gunner

Thomas V. Land, top turret gunner

Orvel G. Howe, waist gunner

Gordon F. Waldron, tail gunner

 

*

 

Now for Lt. Snidow’s story:

 

They woke us up very early on the morning of September 27, 1944. The briefing was to be held at three thirty, which was about an hour earlier than usual. “Jonesy” and myself, walking to the mess hall in the darkness of night, figured it must be “Big B”. It was a cool morning and you could tell fall was fast approaching. We had a very good breakfast – although we had powdered eggs. They tasted very good. All the crews in my barracks were scheduled for the mission. Johnny Friese, my bombardier, was not on the mission that day. The “Runt”, navigator on “The Commander’s” crew, was not sure whether he was scheduled or not, so he went with us to briefing. We ate our breakfast slowly as we had plenty of time.  

 

We arrived at briefing on time (4:30 am). The “Runt” found he was not scheduled so back to bed he went. Before going back, he came to me and told me “to give them hell, Snidow”, an expression both of us gave to the other if he wasn’t flying that day … it was a joke between the two of us.

 

Briefing was as interesting as usual. “Jonesy” and myself were greatly relieved to find our target was to be Kassell (sic), Germany instead of “Big B” (Berlin). We were in good spirits because we were to be back at the base by 12:30 which is very early to return from a mission.  

 

We had a normal take-off and climb to assembly altitude. We were flying number two ship in the “slot” of the lead squadron, assembling at a low altitude crossing the Channel and part of France. Flying was hard because we were flying directly into the sun.  There were about four aborts with a 10/10 cloud cover at 8,000 feet. We dropped our bombs OK that day but our whole group missed the target. (N.B. see further below for an explanation.) We did not get any flak when we should be getting plenty of it.  

 

After dropping our bombs, we though[t] we had made a “milk run”. Everything was coming off according to plan.  Then, all of a sudden, all Hell broke loose. I was listening to the VHF radio channel so I didn’t get the warning. I looked out of my co-pilot window and saw what I first thought was small flak. It was heavy and close…than (sic) I found the truth. Looking at the ship ahead of us, I saw their waist guns firing. FIGHTERS!!! I don’t know how many there were, but it was “beaucoup”. I saw the ship in front of us go down with its rudder on fire. I imagine it blew up. Just then a FW 190 [Folke-Wulf 190] came along side of us and seemed to be flying in formation with our lead ship … I believe if I’d had a gun I could have blown him to bits. The shells were busting around us everywhere. I saw a FW 190 about twenty feet above the ship on our right wing … it dropped about twenty or thirty small fire bombs right on top of the poor B-24. I saw a waist gunner bail out of the ship before it went down in flames.  

 

About that time something hit my window and put a hole in it…a piece scratched my knuckle in two places. The enemy fighters knocked out our tail gun and turret on their first pass. Waldron, our tail gunner, was injured in the leg. My oxygen system was also damaged. Just before the fighters left, our number four engine propeller “ran away”. We started to “feather” it but it (was) too late as our oil pressure was gone.  Land, our top turret man, was really firing that gun … a FW 190 was coming in on top of us, evidently to drop fire bombs on us but Land blew him out of the sky … he did a good job that day.  

 

Then I looked at our number four engine. he whole prop. and engine was coming out of the wing. What a sight. The propeller, whirling in its full velocity, made a 90 degree turn and come (sic) toward me. I thought that I had “bought the farm” then.  The prop. (No. 4) came over into the number three prop. and engine and knocked it out of the wing. Prop. and pieces of props were going everywhere.  Luckly (sic), none hit the ship. There we were, in the middle of Germany in a B-24 with two holes in the right wing where the engines had been, no tail turret, radio almost out and one of our tail rudders mostly shot off. The bandits (enemy fighters) had left us.  

 

We saw four fighters way out in the distance at twelve o’clock. We didn’t know whether they were friendly or enemy…they turned into us so I thought again that we had “bought the farm”. It was an anxious few minutes until they came close enough to find they were P-51s. A few minutes later two P-38s came and flew on our wing.  We were out of formation now. Only three out of thirty-six made up the formation and we saw them gradually leave us, homeward bound.

 

We started losing altitude so we threw everything out that we could including our flak suits, guns, auxilary (sic) power units, etc. At that time we were flying at 27,000 feet altitude. We got in contact with the P-38s on our wing to give as a radio fix to our nearest friendly airport. They gave us a heading to a field in France and told us it was about 30 miles away or about fifteen minutes away. We kep (sic) losing altitude at a rate of 300 feet per minute. It was going to be close … but we thought we had a chance.  Evidently the P-38s gave us the wrong information. We kept losing altitude for about forty minutes … until we were down to approximately 7,000 feet, coming out from over the cloud overcast. We were flying at 120 mph which is almost stalling speed for a B-24. Our P-38s were still with us. We still figured we had a good chance of getting home.  

 

Then more big trouble. They opened up on us with flak. We were so low and going so slow that we were a perfect target. None of us had flak suits for protection as we had thrown them overboard to lighten the load. The flak was so close that it was rocking the ship and the concussion had blown out our waist gun windows … there wasn’t anything to do but leave the ship. We gave the order to bail out.  Land went first from the flight deck followed by Giesler, Jones, myself, and then Hautman.  

 

Before jumping, I went back to my seat to get my handerchief (sic) and hat. I don’t know why I did but all I can say is I did. I couldn’t reach then so I went without them. I did get my shoes which were tied together under my seat. I remember my jump.  I can honestly say I wasn’t afraid because I trusted my chute. I just took a step out of the bomb bay and then I started floating. You have complete presence of mind when you are sailing through space. Just as soon as I left the ship, I started falling head over heels. I tried to fall straight but I couldn’t until I remembered something S-2 had told us once … STIFFEN UP … that I did and sure enough, it worked.  My next thought was to pull the rip cord. I started to pull it but I again remembered the S-2 (Intelligence Officer) … delay your jump. I did this for a couple seconds and then I pulled her. She really opened up nicely without scarcely a jerk. When I opened my chute, I dropped my shoes but caught them with my feet. While floating down, I was trying to get my shoes but when I reached down for them they slipped away. I then looked around me.

 

I saw our ship, now without anyone on board in a steep bank to the right and very low. It hit the ground and I am glad I wasn’t in it. It looked as if the B-24 was spread out on all of Germany. Black smoke came up from the few remains of the airplane. I then looked below me … I saw that I was going to land in an open field near some woods and right beside a railroad. There were approximately twenty people working in the field so I knew that I wouldn’t have a chance of excaping (sic). I then looked above me and I could see Hautman’s chute. About that time, I hit the ground. I was finally on the ground without a scratch. Ed Hautman hollered at me before he hit the woods over a hill. I haven’t seen him since.

 

I got out of my chute and awaited my captors. They soon came upon me and thus the war was over for me. I was surprised to have one of the women in the group to speak to me in good English. She wanted to know if I was hurt, if I was American or British and then she told me she had a husband in West Virginia and that he liked it over there. I assume he was a prisoner in America. She told me everything would be OK with me and I would be treated fine. They took me to a nearby road and there we waited for about an hour. In the meantime they bought (sic) Land and Giesler up. They had also been captured. They took us in an automobile to a nearby town. We waited about three hours where they searched us. They than (sic) brought in another crew that had been captured.

 

We then had a short ride in a charcoal burning truck to a railroad station. It took us the entire night, after changing trains many times, to get to Oberselle (Oberursel) near Frankfort (sic). That was the morning of September 28th. At Oberselle (Oberursel) they interrogated me and left me in solitary confinement until October 3rd at which time I was sent to my permanent camp, Stalag Luft I, Barth, Germany on the Baltic Sea.

 

*

 

Another excellent account comes from Lt. Frank J. Bertram, a navigator, whose plane (piloted by Lt. Reginald R. Miner) was also shot down. We pick up here, where Bertram realizes, as the flight approaches what is supposed to be the target, that the flight is already off course.

 

PICTURE OF CREW – KASSEL MISSION

 

 

“Sheer terror for a while, panic for a while, and then anger.”

 

We did our usual deal till we came to what they called the initial point. The initial point in a bomb run is where control of the bomber is turned over to the bombardier. And from the initial point to the point of impact, which could be anywhere from 10 to 30 miles, the pilot has no control whatsoever. You’re on a straight heading, no matter what comes through the formation, what kind of flak you get, you’ve just got to rough it out, straight ahead. As all the planes in back of you do.

 

This day we had to make a little left turn to hit the initial point. As we made the left turn, we went further left than we were supposed to. I immediately called the pilot, Reg Miner, and said, “Hey! We’re going the wrong way! We’re going too far left. Call the lead plane and find out what’s going on.”

 

And he came back and said, “They said, ‘Hold it in. Hold it in.’” We kept turning farther left, and I thought, “We’re going to miss the target completely.”

 

The target was not visible from the air, but with the radar scope we had the target picked up, and with the little that we did see from the air to the ground, and the paperwork I was doing, we knew where we were exactly.

 

We were not the only one that caught the mistake. I think almost every plane in the formation that had a halfway good navigator called immediately and saw what was going on. You could actually look out the pilot’s window and see the flak off to the right, which we were supposed to be going through. Why we kept going to the left we’ll never know. We never did find out.

 

We released the bombs near the town of Goettingen. As it happened it was in an open field; probably killed a couple of cows. Then we followed our regular method to come out of the bomb run and head for home. That was a left turn off the target; a right turn, which took us on a southeast heading; another right turn, which took us on a southwest heading; then another turn to the right, which took us on a northwest heading.

 

While we were just getting back together after the fourth turn, someone in our plane called out, “There’s a dogfight!” And all the time I’m thinking, “Oh boy, are we gonna catch it from headquarters when we get home,” because we dropped the bombs uselessly.

 

Then our radio operator, Joe Gilfoil – who was mortally wounded that day – said, “There’s a fire in the bomb bay!”

 

Right after he said that, all hell broke loose. I’m looking out my little window – I sat in back of the pilot and had a window about one foot square – and here’s this flak, maybe three feet around when it explodes, a sort of a grayish black. And I’m thinking, “What the hell is this? We’re at 22,000 feet, and these guys are shooting through the clouds and hitting us like this?” I couldn’t believe the accuracy. And then someone called out, “Here comes our fighter escort!” I looked out my little window, and there’s a hell of a lot of commotion, and I saw these radial engine planes. I thought, “Those are our P-47s.” All of a sudden they peeled off and there was the Swastika. And about that instant, they start flying through the ships. There were shells, explosions and guns chattering, you puckered up immediately and the lead hit the stomach, words just cannot describe your feeling. It’s absolute sheer terror for a while, panic for a while, and then anger.

 

At that point, all I saw was four planes. Apparently they were ten abreast, but I just saw the right side of our plane, and these planes shooting at us. And all of a sudden a big explosion hit the ship and the top turret gunner, who was right opposite me, came crashing to the ground. The turret got a direct hit from one of these planes, and it blew the Plexiglas out and smashed it right in this guy’s face and he fell down right at my feet. His name was Mac Thornton. I looked down and I knew he was dead. His face was just frozen; the blood was solid. At that point in September it was very cold, I think it was 20 or 30 below zero at that altitude, so everything freezes instantly. And I panicked at that point. I could see explosions going through the ship into the bomb bay. The interphone was out. We knew we were going to have to bail out. So I went to the bomb bay door and I almost fell over poor Thornton; got my foot caught in his arm and almost panicked to get out of his way. Then I couldn’t open the bomb bay; it was stuck. There were holes, and there was gasoline pouring in the bomb bay. To this day I swear the fact that the Germans blew that turret off saved us from exploding, because I think that sucked all the gasoline fumes from the bomb bay right out through the top. Otherwise I’m sure we’d have blown up, as many of our ships did that day.

 

I was wearing a chest pack chute. I crawled up to the nose wheel to check that and see how the guys up there were doing. The nose turret gunner was firing at the planes as they went by, because the attacks were from the rear. As they’d go by, the gunners up front would shoot at them.

 

I tried to open the nose wheel door and it was frozen shut. I thought, “Now we’re doomed. We’re trapped.” So I thought, “I’ll see if can kick it open.”

 

All this time I’m nervous, I’m scared. I expect the ship to explode at any moment.

 

I kicked and kicked, and I got the nose wheel doors open. I damn near fell out because I kicked so hard. I pull myself back up and one leg is dangling. Now I’m sitting on the edge of the nose wheel looking down at nothing but clouds and once in a while they would clear a little bit but the clouds were pretty dense. I’m looking down, dangling in space, and the plane is starting to yaw – that is, going from side to side, and up and down a little bit. As I learned later the engine was on fire, and there were all kinds of things I didn’t see because I’m inside the plane. I back up to get back in the plane, and I look behind me – all the guys are lined up with their parachutes ready and they’re pointing to me to go out.

 

I went out feet first. I didn’t free fall, like you’re supposed to do – I probably counted to 10 or 15 and pulled the chute. The chest pack has a little pilot parachute which comes out first and grabs the air, and then that pulls the main chute out. There’s always the possibility that wouldn’t work and you’d have to claw your way through getting the main chute open, so the more time you’ve got the better it is. As it happened, mine took off and popped, and boy, it was a jolt. I thought my legs would fly off. We were lucky – we had brand new parachutes, brand new harnesses, brand new electric flying suits that day – it was the first time we wore them. A beautiful gabardine flying suit. And I went out with just my electric boots. I didn’t have my shoes with me. Other fellows jumped out with shoes, they were luckier. I had grabbed my good luck charm, which was a little baseball mitt that my wife had given me, and I put that in my pocket. I had my prayer book, which I kept in my shirt pocket all the time. And we had an escape kit which I grabbed, and shoved that in one of my pockets before I went out. And I had a gun, too. We had .45s and we weren’t supposed to take them, but some guys took them. I had taken the clip out, but I had the gun with me for some reason, which I got rid of on the ground.

 

After my chute popped open I looked around. Our plane was gone. I didn’t see anybody else. I couldn’t spot any other chutes in the area, but they all went out right after me; as a matter of fact, those in the waist undoubtedly went out first.

 

The pilot came through okay. He took the plane as far as he could, then bailed out. The co-pilot, we didn’t know what happened to him but we presume he got killed. And it turned out that he was not found until the middle of November, which was almost two months later. Up on a hill in a big beech forest they found his body, what was left of him. So we never knew truly what happened.

 

The bombardier went out and broke his leg when he landed. Our radar operator, Branch Henard, went out and landed okay. I thought Mac Thornton was dead. As it turns out he was right in back of me going out, which I couldn’t see; you had goggles on, you had an oxygen mask. I couldn’t tell who was in back of me.

 

Our plane had three navigators because it was leading the squadron. One them was a fellow named Jackson, he was the pilot’s navigator. He went out okay. He landed okay and walked around for a couple of days before he got captured. Our engineer got out okay, and he didn’t get injured. He was actually free for ten days, and he was probably the most nervous man on the ship. He was a very nervous individual; his name is Bob Ault, from Texas.

 

The radio operator, Joe Gilfoil, lost his leg – a shell just about ripped it off when it hit the ship. The two waist gunners threw him out, hoping that the blood would coagulate, but I understand that his leg just about snapped off, and when they found him on the ground he was dead.

 

Of the men in the waist, Alvis Kitchens – Cotton was his nickname – had a good section of his rear end taken off with some flak; not flak but the 35-millimeter. He got hit in the butt, and so did Larry Bowers, although not as bad as Kitchens.

 

The tail gunner, J.G. Weddle, broke his ankle when he bailed out.

 

We really received no training for parachuting that I can recall. I tried to manipulate the chute when I was coming down; on the way down I saw a fighter plane in the distance coming closer. It turns out it was an FW-190 [Folke-Wulf 190] and he went by me – I couldn’t judge the distance, but maybe a couple of hundred yards – and he waved to me. I could see his hand waving. I presume it was a wave. Maybe he was out of ammunition. But he didn’t circle me; he just kept right on going east.

 

I was going east too, because the wind was very strong, west to east. I probably drifted four or five miles farther than if I’d held my pull string another five or six minutes, as some of the guys did.

 

As I came down I could see there was a lot of beautiful green and I saw some little villages, and I could see these woods. I thought, “I’m going to hit those trees just sure as hell.” And I did. I tried to manipulate into a little meadow nearby, but I couldn’t budge that chute. And I hit the trees. I would say they were 60 to 80 feet high. I tumbled straight down, right through the trees. And right now I can hear those branches snapping as I hit them. I hit the ground with such force that it knocked me out. I broke my wristwatch. And when I came to I couldn’t move my legs or my back. Now I’m panicked again; here I am and there’s branches all around me, the chutes around me, my feet are killing me, and then all of a sudden the feeling is starting to come back. I start moving and pretty soon I could feel everything and I thought, “I’ll see if I can roll over and get up,” which I did, and oh, my feet are sore. My knees are sore. My back hurts. But particularly the ankles and feet.

 

Fortunately, all the branches and stuff on the ground had probably saved me from bad damage.

 

I gathered up the chute as best I could; it was a struggle. I could hardly move my feet. I threw branches over the chute and I took off for the west. I hadn’t gone 150 yards when I heard the damnedest noise. It sounded like a V-1 rocket, putt-putt-putt-putt, or a motorcycle. I could hear German voices real loud. I was walking down a forest road, and I ducked off the road and all of a sudden this old truck came by and it was blowing smoke; I think they had a coal burner running it. [Short on supplies of oil, the Germans converted some vehicles to burn coal – which created methane gas] I dove behind something where they couldn’t see me. There were a bunch of German soldiers and civilians in the truck. After they passed, I resumed marching, and I was just dragging. One time I heard a very guttural sound, like a sergeant directing troops, and I picked my way over through some trees and down in a little valley I saw an airplane. I couldn’t tell if it was a Messerschmitt or a Focke-Wulf, and then further away there was a guy with horses plowing the ground, and he was yelling at the horses. I ignored that and went my merry way through the woods.

 

I came to a point where there was a big, broad autobahn. It was getting dark so it was probably around 4 or 4:30 in the evening. I had walked about three and a half hours at that point. Our combat was about 11 o’clock.

 

Now I’m really hurting. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m scared. I’m tired. In Germany they have these towers where hunters go up and they sit up there and they shoot the deer. I slept under one of those towers that night. I put a lot of branches over me and damn near froze to death.

 

I got up the next morning and started hiking. I found some pieces of our airplanes that I recognized. I found a motor embedded in the ground, the propeller all bent up. I wondered what happened to all the guys who were in that plane. And I’m going from forest to forest – some were birch, some were beech and some were aspen; they’re beautiful forests over there – and I’m thirsty. All of a sudden I come across a pool of water and it’s dirty, but I had this escape kit that had this little deal with the pills you mix with the water to make it drinkable. So I’m down there on my knees, and all of a sudden I hear a noise. At this point that I still have my gun, and I think, “Oh, Jesus Christ, I’m caught with this,” so I threw it away. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, since I had no bullets. I’m frozen. And I hear this noise getting closer and closer, and I’d just gotten the water in this little tube where you put the pills in – all of a sudden out of the woods comes the biggest stag I’ve ever seen. He had a big rack on him. He took one look at me and he split and I split. We both got out of each other’s way!

 

I kept on walking. Some of the trees were so big and close together I had to go sideways to get through them. They weren’t big in circumference, but they were close together. I’m going along, and as it turns out, I’m headed toward the Werra River.

 

As I go there, first I hear an airplane, then I hear an explosion. The whole ground shook, and I thought, “My God, what happened?” I figured that a B-17 got its bombs hung up after a mission and came by and just dropped them on the other side of the river. I thought, “My God, this is the most terrifying thing,” although it was a mile away from me. I could have been over there. How can these people even survive a thing like this?

 

I’m near the river so I’m staying in the woods, still being able to look out and see the river. I continue to follow this river to see where it goes. I’m going through the woods and here’s a field; a farmer had just plowed and it’s full of potatoes, so I go out when nobody’s looking and I grab a whole bunch of potatoes. I must have had between 15 and 20 potatoes in my pants pockets. Then I’m going along a little further, and I see what looks like men with pickaxes hitting something and my first thought is, “My God, they’ve got one of our men up there and they’re beating him to death.” It was actually our lead ship that went down right in that area, that blew up; this is the plane that led us to this debacle. I walked right by them. I presume that motor I found was off their ship. And I guess they were just chopping up the pieces that were left there. I went by the area and I went a little further and then I came to a beautiful valley. I’m looking down this valley and the river’s over to my right, but a little creek comes off the river and goes to the left and there’s a railroad track up there, and up the hill there’s more woods. So I thought I’ll lay low and go up through those woods, because I knew there was a town nearby.

 

While I’m looking out at this valley, I hear another airplane and I hear explosions, and I look up in the air and see all these pieces flying down. I thought, “My God, a bomber blew up!” And as these pieces floated down, I noticed they’re a funny shape. It turned out they were propaganda letters sent in German. And counterfeit money. Great Britain and the United States decided if they couldn’t ruin Germany with bombs they’d ruin their economy with phony money. So I laid low for a while before I went across this little meadow, and then I decided, well, I’d better do it. I went across. And I couldn’t move very fast. Then out of the corner of my eye – I’m about two-thirds of the way across – I see a movement. All of a sudden here’s a bunch of kids. There was a little bridge across the creek I was headed for and I knew I couldn’t make that because I’d be out in the open, so I turned and went straight to the creek. And I got down behind a tree. Because of the injury to my leg, I had to have one leg straightened out, and it was hanging in the water.

 

I’m laying there the best I can behind this tree, and all of a sudden I look up and I see this one little kid. As it turns out it’s Walter Hassenpflug [Bertram and Hassenpflug make contact again, many years after the war].  He looks down at me, and he doesn’t know that I see him because I’ve got my eyes half-closed. He jumps up and runs back and he comes back with another kid, who turns out to be Willie Schmidt, who worked with Walter years later. Then they both split and they came back and there was a bunch of them; there were a couple of real cute girls. As a matter of fact, years later I met one of them; her name was Rose Marie Neuman. The girls were 15 and 16 at the time and most of the boys were younger. And there was a tall, thin fellow who came over and looked at me and said, “Sir, are you hurt?”

 

I didn’t answer. I thought, “This is it. I’m dead.”

 

He kept repeating, “Sir, are you hurt? May I help you?” In broken English. And I finally said “Yes. I’m hurt.”

 

He said, “Let me help you up.” He came down, stuck out his hand and I grabbed it and he helped me up.

 

Now all this time, all these kids are running around there, and they’re oohing and aahing because they’ve probably never seen a guy with a four-day beard and hair standing straight up, beat up like I was. I hadn’t shaved in a couple of days at that time. And all this time, I learned years later that up on the hill a little further on, I looked at and saw an SS man who was in charge of all these Hitler Youths, who were out picking up the pamphlets and the phony money. Apparently this SS man could have caused a lot of trouble, but he just let them go on and do what they did and kept his nose out of it. Fortunately for me.

 

This young gentleman that had helped me said, “I’ll have to take you to the authorities.”

 

I said, “I understand that.”

 

We walked across this little bridge and onto the railroad track, and maybe after 15 minutes walking, two fellows came toward us, and they had uniforms on that looked like major domos. I thought, “Holy mackerel! Is that Heinrich Himmler or Hitler himself coming to see me?” So I asked this guy, “What is this, Gestapo?” And he laughed.

 

He said, “No, no. Police.” And these two, as they got there I could see they were older gentlemen, not quite my age today, but they were in their late sixties or early seventies. And very nice. They didn’t speak any English. But they took me to a two-story house, and the lady of the house had a little baby and she fled, because the propaganda had it that Americans beat little children, or something to that effect. I met that guy 40 years later, the little baby. He’s not little any more, believe me. Bigger than I was. But they took me in and they interrogated me, and right across the street there was a house, and I heard them say a Dr. Blom is over there.

 

Pretty soon this fellow comes over, well-dressed, wearing a vest. He had been eating; he had a napkin tucked under his chin, and he was still chewing a sandwich he had finished. He introduced himself. He spoke English perfectly, and he explained the situation, that he’d have to question me.

 

I gave him my name, rank and serial number, and that was it. Then we talked for a while. It was very pleasant. Up to that point, it was more of a party, really, with these kids and everything. But they left, and these two policemen then said, “We have to take you into town.” And I don’t remember how I even got into the town of Bad Hersfeld. This was two or three miles down the road, near Friedlos. So they took me into this little town. I remember going into this jail, and there was a woman there, probably in her late twenties.

 

They shoved me in a solitary cell with just a board with some straw on it. My back was killing me. They stripped me and took all my stuff away, emptied all my pockets, my shoes, everything. Down to my underwear. Then they let me put my things back on and dress up. I had a prayer book. And as we had intended that night to go out, I still had my navigator wings on, and my first lieutenant bars. I had my nice green shirt on. I was hot to trot once we got back. So if they had any brains at all they knew I was a navigator.

 

After 10 or 15 minutes in this cell I hear, “Pssst. Hey, Yank.”

 

Up above my bed is a little window, and I hear a voice coming through: “Hey, Yank. Come up to the window.”

 

I thought, “They’re not gonna get anything out of me; they’re just trying to give me this phony stuff.”

 

Earlier, two civilians came and interviewed me, and they were downright nasty. Those are the guys that made me strip – of course the girl was out of the room – and they kept telling me that I was a sergeant, not a lieutenant. I would say, “Nein. Nein, Oberleutnant, Oberleutnant.” They were very solemn-faced, not at all like the two police officers, who were very nice. These guys were strictly business. I called one Mr. Moto. He looked like Peter Lorre [the actor]. And the other one I called Sidney Greenstreet [another actor’. One was big and fat and the other was short and thin. Finally they left after getting all the information they could from me, which was nothing. That’s when I heard these voices, and it was these two Englishmen. One said, “Hey, Yank, wait till those two civilians go. We’ll cook you up some hot cocoa and cookies.”

 

I thought, “What the hell is this?”

 

By God, about a half-hour later the door flies open and here’s one of these police officers and these two other guys. It turns out they were two British officers who had escaped from their prison camp. One of them had been captured at Dunkirk. That means he was in his fourth year as a POW already, and the other one, as I recall, was captured in Norway, which is about the same time. And they were jolly fellows even though they were a little as we say around the bend.

 

They said that they had been free for three or four days and got captured and were just waiting for their guards to come get them and bring them back to their camp. Everything was done on the up and up in those days. The Germans had a certain system and that was it.

 

Sure enough, they hold out cocoa and start to make hot cocoa, and we ate some cookies that they had. They had all kinds of food which they had saved up for their escape, which was confiscated but given back to them, and they in turn gave it to me. They said, “Our guards will be here tomorrow, they’ll take this stuff away anyhow, so you take it.” In the meantime, everybody laughed because when they had examined me, I had all those potatoes in my pockets, and they took my potatoes away from me.

 

The two British guys gave me their names and addresses, but when they wrote them down they said, “Don’t let anybody see it. If anyone comes in, they’ll confiscate it.” And I ended up chewing on it and swallowing the paper when that young lady came into my cell. I woke up in the middle of the night, and the door flew open and she threw something on my chest, and here was my little baseball mitt. This young girl must have known it was a good luck charm and wanted to see that I got it back, probably with the approval of the police officers. But they had it turned inside out. All the stuffing was hanging loose and I had to shove it back together. I still have it, hanging on the wall.

 

A few hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, the door opened and a sergeant from the Luftwaffe came in. Tall, thin guy. He talked to the British officers because they could speak German. And they explained to me that I would be taken to another place, and from there I’d go to a camp.

 

I remember walking down this cobblestone street with this sergeant, across an old stone bridge over the Werra River. There was a full moon and I can still see it reflecting off the water. On the other side, we hopped into a car or a truck and drove off, and he took me to a Luftwaffe camp. Guys were Heil Hitlering all over the place; everybody’s saluting everybody. He took me down to a barracks and I came into like a dungeon, and as I walked in and went down this hallway, lo and behold, coming toward me and being led by a guard was the navigator who was in Jim Schaen’s ship, Corman Bean. We just looked at each other, never said a word. Didn’t even blink an eye, like we had never seen each other before. And here we had breakfasted that morning [of the mission to bomb Kassel] together. He got shoved in a cell and I got shoved in a cell. I have no recollection of how long it was before they came and they got me out, but pretty soon they took me outside and Corman Bean’s there along with ten or fifteen others from the group.

 

We all were taken from there to a railroad station, and when we were standing at the railroad station we heard these guys talking-marching, in German, eins, zvei, drei, vier, and here comes a whole bunch, maybe 35 guys, American, assorted sizes and shapes and guys beat up. I recognized some right away. George Collar was right in front. His face was swollen. His nose was broken. He had black eyes. They had beaten him up.

 

Now we sat down and we were taken from this railroad station and put in railroad cars. I remember one fellow, [Jerry Cathol] – he had been a football player; we thought he had a broken back, but I guess he just had some broken bones, and he was in such misery. We’re in this railroad car and it was moving, and boy, were these guys surprised – they were all pretty hungry – when I opened up my pockets and pulled out this food. It didn’t last very long, but the little bit that there was was most welcome. There was some cheese, butter, powdered cocoa, crackers, probably Spam too; I never could remember the names of those British boys.

 

The train took us to an interrogation center for all airmen in Oberrussel. It was called Dulag Luft. You would go in one at a time to these inquisitors and they would ask you, “What group are you with?” I just gave them my name, rank and serial number, and then they said to me – and probably to every other one – “Until you give us some more information you’re just going to stay here in solitary.” And you just shrug your shoulders and think, “They’re not going to keep us in solitary too long; there’s too many of us because a lot of planes went down.” Twenty-five planes over the target. Also, at the same time the Kassel mission was taking place, the battle for the bridge at Arnhem was going on. A complete Polish parachute regiment had been captured by the Germans and they were in Dulag Luft with us, but they were on the other side of the fence, and the Germans were meaner than hell with them. They didn’t bother us too much, but they were using bayonets on these guys’ fannies if they didn’t double time. I’d hate to have been a German when those Poles got loose because they were the toughest looking guys I’ve ever seen.

 

After about a day there, we were sent to Stalag Luft 1. We were shoved into a train that had compartments, six seats on each side and a luggage rack, so they put ten of us in each compartment and they gave us a Red Cross parcel each, which contained a week’s rations.

 

It took six days to go 350 miles to our camp. We went through air raids. We’d pull off at sidings. They were strafing and bombing ahead and [we] had the heck scared out of us in Frankfurt. When we went through Frankfurt an air raid was coming on and they abandoned us and let us sit there at the siding.

 

We had a German guard on each end on the railroad car. I don’t know how many cars we had but we did have a commanding officer. He was Lieutenant Colonel McArdle, a British paratrooper, who was in charge of the operation at Arnhem. He had finally surrendered, because they were running out of ammunition and out of men. So consequently, there were a lot of paratroopers, and these were all officers – we were all officers headed for Stalag Luft 1 – so there’s quite a few British officers from the paratroop regiments. And then us, plus others who had been shot down. One of the fellows in my compartment was from the 15th Air Force; he was shot down in Italy on a B-25. His name was Richardson. He had been burned; the top half of one ear was burned and his hair was burned off, but he was jolly. He had a big bandage wrapped around his head. He had a few cuts and scabs from when he bailed out. Talk about walking wounded, we looked like a fife and drum corps. Everybody in different clothes, some with shoes, some without shoes.

 

On the train, three guys would sleep sitting, two guys on the floor, and then the next night we would switch off. It was very uncomfortable. You didn’t get much sleep. It’s very demeaning. You’re a prisoner of war. You’ve got two guys with guns at each end of the car glaring at you. You can’t describe it unless you’re there. And you never think about this when you’re home until suddenly, Bingo! You think of what happened. And the hard part is worrying about what happened to the other fellows. We didn’t know what happened to Virgil Chima, the co-pilot, or Omick, or the enlisted men at that point other than Joe Gilfoil. We knew he was hit; they announced that when they threw him out of the plane, hoping his parachute would open and he would be treated on the ground. And we were misinformed by someone that he was okay. One of the enlisted men came up to us right after we were captured and said they managed to get a doctor which they didn’t. George Collar ended up picking up his body.

 

On our way from Oberrussel up to Stalag Luft 1, we were scared to death because of the bombings and things that were taking place, and then some guy came along and said, “Hey, we’re safe, you don’t have to worry, they’re not gonna strafe us. It’s all marked on top of each car, POW.”

 

And some wise guy said, “Yeah, but suppose they come in from the other side?” And everybody just howled.

 

One night, we pulled over from the main railroad to a little siding, and it’s probably 10 or 11 at night. Jackson and myself couldn’t sleep. We were up shooting the breeze and all of a sudden we heard THUD! You could just feel the stuff hit the ground. I think we had been dozing, and that woke us up. And we wanted to know what was going on. We went and looked out the window, and we could see in the distance searchlights, explosions, you could feel them. The RAF was raiding this town. And the town was Berlin. We were on our way to Barth, which was 100 miles north of Berlin, and we’re probably right now 25 or 50 miles south of Berlin. And we’re sitting there watching them bomb Berlin. And we see explosions, we know an RAF plane’s been hit, and these big blockbusters kept hitting, and all of a sudden the German guard comes up to Jackson and me and says something, and Jackson says, “He said something about an apple for some cigarettes.”

 

I said, “An apple? Wow! Let’s do it!”

 

We had cigarettes; they gave us five packs of cigarettes on that Red Cross parcel. We gave this German guard three or four American cigarettes, and the guard gave us each an apple. Holy mackerel! Next thing we know he comes back again and Jackson says, “He said he can get us some beer.”

 

About 100 yards from the train were a couple of very dim lights, and I presume it was a gasthaus, because the German guard pointed to it. We gave him the cigarettes, and he came back with a German canteen full of beer. A German canteen was about twice the size of an American canteen. It must have been a liter. And we’re sitting there chewing apples, drinking German beer, and watching them bomb Berlin.

 

I had to remind Jackson about that the last time I saw him. He completely forgot about it.

 

A day and a half later we ended up in our camp. When we got to Barth they dropped us off at the station and we started marching. It was in the evening. We had these guards with these monstrous German shepherds and Doberman pinschers. They were big and they were mean. Three or four hundred of us marched about three and a half miles, and some of us were in bad shape.

 

I had received a little medical attention at Oberrussel; I got to see a German doctor there in this hospital. There were a lot of German men there who were going into the service, and I felt sorry for those guys because they were in their fifties and they were being taken in the service. Some of them were in worse shape than I am now. When I got into this room, this German doctor took one look at my back, and he said, “Not much we can do,” and then he just bandaged my feet. He said, “Your back is pretty bad. Do you want to see what it looks like?”

 

I said, “What do you mean?”

 

He said, “Take a look.” And he had two mirrors there. That’s the closest I came to fainting up to that point. My back was just the color of tar, all the way across the lower back, where I had been injured. The doctor had his aides give me a heat treatment which made me feel a lot better. I thanked him very much. At that same time, I remember them saying an American nurse was in the hospital there. She wasn’t actually injured but she was taken there with some of the injured; she was flying in a plane that was shot down outside of Aachen. It was a hospital plane carrying troops out, and she was captured as a POW. About three years ago there was an article in the paper about this nurse up in Sacramento who had just passed away, and it was her. The only Army nurse that was ever captured over there. And I thought, “My God, here I am 40 miles away!” I never saw her over there but just the thought of all that was going on, what very brave young ladies they were.

 

(When I look it up, her name is Lt. Reba Whittle, who had enlisted in 1941, even before the war began. She flew more than 40 missions on Douglas C-47 Skytrains, ferrying some of the most badly injured troops back to England for care. She was on a plane that strayed off course, near Aachen, Germany, also on September 27, and was shot down. Whittle herself was wounded. She was a prisoner until January 1945, went home, and married after the war, and died in 1981.)

 

Back to Lt. Bertram:

 

Now I get to Stalag Luft 1. We were there for eight or nine months and it was hell. You’re feeling just rotten, and when you’re injured you feel worse. And your mental condition isn’t the greatest. The winter was miserable. The food was poor. We lost a lot of weight. I lost 30 or 35 pounds. All of us were pretty skinny. And one thing about it: When you’re hungry you don’t think about anything else. It’s always food, food, food. You dream day and night of food. And escape was not advisable. They said, “You know, it’s not a game anymore, you’re going to get shot if you get caught.” And at one point, Hitler issued orders to take the American Jewish boys and separate them, and there actually was an order out to shoot them. Common sense at least prevailed and they realized that if anything like that took place there would be an interaction in the United States and we were holding a lot more of their prisoners than they were of ours. That’s the general thought, anyway.

 

We had this one Jewish guy, his name was Gerber, and he was very swarthy, almost Arabic looking. He said, “They’re not gonna get me, because I just changed my religion.”

 

And we said, “What did you change to?”

 

He said, “I’m gonna say Hindu.”

 

Everybody just howled. But they got him; they put him in the other barracks.

 

Our commanding officer in Barth was a Colonel Von Mueller. He had come from the States, from Long Beach, Long Island. He was what was called a Long Beach Nazi.

 

Colonel Von Mueller interviewed me when I first went into the camp. When I walked in there he said, “Ahh, Frank Bertram. You’re married. Your wife’s name is Mary. And you went to Commerce High School in San Francisco, graduated in 1938.”

 

He’s telling me this and I’m sitting there thinking, “What is this?” They knew all about me, as they did most everybody else. And he said, “You have no children.”

 

I said, “We didn’t have time.”

 

He said, “Aahh, that’s the trouble. In America, not enough children. In Russia, too many children. But in Germany just right.”

 

Then he said, “You know, I could have you shot as a spy."

 

I said, “What?”

 

He said, “You write down your name as Bertram. But the dogtags you gave me said Burtram.”

 

I said, “What?”

 

He said, “Take a look.”

 

And sure enough, they had misspelled my name on my dogtags and I never knew it.

 

Then he said, “Of course, we wouldn’t do that. We know who you are.”

 

Bertram became interested in veteran’s groups, like the Second Air Division Association until about twenty years after the war. He started thinking about going to Germany – to try to see the area where he was shot down.

 

My wife, Mary, and I took several trips to Germany, but I could never find the location – and me, a good navigator, I didn’t know where the hell I was. I knew the approximate area but I couldn’t pin it down. We came within maybe 10 or 15 miles of the town; we probably passed through the edge of Bad Hersfeld, and we were in the town of Schlitz, where the original Schlitz Brewery was.

 

As I went through life, I kept in contact with a few of the fellows who were on my plane, but never anything personal. Until one time, in February of 1986, I come home from work and my wife doesn’t say hello, she doesn’t give me a kiss, and she says, “What was the number of your plane?”

 

I looked at her - now this is 40 years later - and I said, “What plane? I drove home.”

 

She said, “No, the plane you flew in the war.”

 

I said, “You want to know the number? All I remember is it was a B-24. I don’t know what the number was.”

 

She said, “Wait till you see this package.”

 

Well, this packet was from Walter Hassenpflug. It had letters from the 8th Air Force Historical Society and from the 19th Armored Division, which was in the town of Bad Hersfeld. And it said that Walter was researching what happened on this particular day over the town of Bad Hersfeld.

 

Walter’s letter stated that as a boy of 12, he witnessed an airplane explosion in the air, and then he witnessed some parachutes coming down, and he said two days later they were walking through the forest and they came across this man lying by a creek. And I thought, “My God, that’s me!”

 

His letter stated, “All I remember is that he was a first lieutenant from San Francisco.”

 

Well, when you give your name, rank and serial number, how they ever found out about San Francisco, all I can think of is I had a little prayer book in my pocket that my mother gave me, and it had my address, 118 Delores Street, S.F., California.

 

I immediately wrote to Walter. Then we got to writing back and forth, and I told him I’d be there in April or May, but due to an injury - I fell through a trap door and pulled some ligaments or tendons in my leg, and had to put a cast on, so that postponed it till August. We met Walter, and much to my surprise he did not speak a word of English, other than “Hello.” But he had a fellow named Carl Lepper who interpreted for him.

 

The Kassel mission has been sort of a mystery. When we came out of prison camp we got interviewed by Colonel Stewart, Jimmy Stewart. Colonel – I guess he was a general by that time, Brigadier General Terrill, who was the commanding officer when I was there, and Colonel Jones. And whatever you told them, they just let it go in one ear, wrote it down, and out the other, and they just passed on through the line. There were something like 22 of us in the line. The doctor would say, “How do you feel?” And you’d say “Fine.” He’d say “Okay, pass.” And that was it. They were just as anxious to get home as we were.

 

Something on this mission was screwy. If you talk to 20 guys you’re going to get 20 different stories. The group in back of us, the 453rd, was supposed to follow us. They very wisely went to the target after their commanding officer called our commanding officer to tell him he was going the wrong way. And our man told their man to follow us, that we were on the right course, and I understand really cussed him out when he wouldn’t do it. The 453rd did the right thing by going to the target. You couldn’t see the target on the ground but you could see the group ahead of you going in, and you could see all the flak and the explosions.

 

I have maintained all through the years, mouthed off about it a few times – other people have said no, but I have people other than me that agree with me – that there was a deliberate turnoff to avoid going through that heavy flak. This is my personal opinion and that of several others that I know of. Too many things just don’t add up on that mission. The one lead plane, of course, blew up, and the pilot was killed. The command pilot, Major McKoy, was killed. The lead navigator on that plane did get out before the explosion. He ended up in Stalag Luft 1 months after we did; whether he was injured or held prisoner somewhere I don’t know. But I went up to talk to him about it and he insisted that they went in to the target. And I just don’t understand it, because it was so obvious. But he insisted we hit the target. So I just gave up. The navigator was killed in an automobile crash shortly after he arrived home. So the one guy that really knew is dead.

 

The Luftwaffe were not aiming for us as a target. They were headed for the main body, the other three hundred and some planes that were going into Kassel, and they were a little late, as far as hitting them before the bombs dropped. These particular FW-190s were not made to do battle with the American fighters. They were heavily armored, and the pilots were heavily protected but did not have the maneuverability or speed of the regular FW-190. They were there for one purpose and that was to shoot down bombers. And they were ordered that when they came under attack by American fighters to get the hell out of there, no combat, just go. Which discouraged Ernst Schroeder, who I befriended and I still consider a good friend, if he’s still alive. He said when he shot his second plane down, “In all honesty, Frank, I’ll get the credit, but the damage had already been done” on the wave of planes that went in ahead of him and set these planes on fire. He said, “I put the finishing touches on them.”

 

And he said, “I followed these planes down, and watched to see where they crashed, for confirmation.” He said he was flying over some railroad tracks when he heard thump-thump-thump and he looked behind and there’s a P-51 Mustang right on his tail. He said, “I turned around and came around at him, but I had no ammunition left and I just got the hell out of there.”

 

Some of these German boys that were in those planes that day that were killed were on their first or second mission. Others were oldtimers. And I personally met them: Schroeder, Ossi Rahm, Werner Vorburg, who actually flew in World War I. Werner Vorburg is gone. Ossie Rahm is gone. And the last I heard of Ernst two years ago he was quite ill.

 

At its best, flying combat was nerve-racking. Even in training it was nerve-racking. We’d sweat out every takeoff and every landing and in between we’d pray. Without the fighter escort, we didn’t have a chance. When I think of those poor boys on that Ploesti mission, because 160-some planes went in there and they lost 60 or 62. One of the boys in my room in the first place I stayed at Stalag Luft 1 was on the Ploesti mission. He was a bombardier in Killer Kane’s crew. Which group was that? I think the 93rd. He crash-landed in Turkey and they escaped from Turkey, and then he got shot down a second time and captured.

 

Now that must have been scary, flying 50 feet above the ground going into a monumental flak area. Ploesti probably was one of the most heavily defended targets in all of Europe, because of the value of the oil fields there and the refineries. If you got hit there, you’re dead, there’s nothing you could do. At least when we’re up there at 25,000 feet you could jump out or get blown out, but I’ve seen pictures of these guys at Ploesti, they didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell once they got hit.

 

You know, that generation - of course I was involved - really did save the world, because Hitler, that German army was something else. They came so close, so very close. If we hadn’t gone in there with all this bombing, we’d all be speaking German. They actually had rockets that could hit the United States, but they never used them because of lack of petrol. They almost took the British to their knees with those V-2s, after what those poor people in Britain went through in the blitz and then the V-1, which was going on when I was there. They were terrifying enough but these V-2s, there was no answer to them. You didn’t know you were dead until 30 seconds after you died.

 

We wouldn’t have that memorial if Walter Hassenpflug hadn’t found me. I tried to tell him in English - and he didn’t understand me - that he owes me a lot of money because since he found me, it’s cost me all this money going back and forth to Germany. And Walter being real German doesn’t have a great sense of humor; it takes him a little while to catch on. The second year we went there, I had brought my pilot, Reg Miner, and his wife, and with Walter we were going to go around to all the sites where these planes crashed and Walter couldn’t show us because he had his hand all wrapped up in a cast.

 

I said, “What happened?”

 

He said he was out hunting and shot himself in the hand and severed some nerves.

I said, “You know, Walter” – he had an interpreter – “that’s why you guys lost the war. You couldn’t shoot straight.” And for about 30 seconds he just looked at me and then he burst out laughing.

 

I talked myself into attending a Luftwaffe reunion with Ernst Schroeder. I got invited to this reunion of the Wild Boar Squadron, which was one of the ones that attacked us that day. I was the only one there that wasn’t a fighter pilot. My wife and I went there. We had a great time. The only thing bad there was every one of them smoked up a storm up and almost choked us to death. But they were nice people. The wives were so nice and so pleasant, and very few of them could speak English, so the communication problem was there, too. There was no chance of getting too friendly because of the lack of communication.

 

When they started their meeting, they had as a gavel at the podium the joystick of an FW-190. They had it all fancied up there with the trigger guard like they used in combat. Of course I didn’t know what they were talking about, and Ernst would tell me once in a while what they said. He was in charge. And I asked, “Could I see that FW-190 joystick?”

 

“Sure.” He gave it to me, and all these guys were looking at me. And I turned it over, and I said, “Oh, made in Japan!”

 

You could have heard a pin drop. It took another thirty seconds before they realized it was a joke. “Nein! Nein! Deutschland! Deutschland!” We had a big laugh on that.

 

I’ve always been a joker. It’s kept me alive, even through prison camp. I won’t tell you what they called me in camp but it was like megaphone mouth or something. But you had to do that or you’d go crazy.

 

Throughout the years I’ve kept in close contact with my pilot, Reg Miner. He’s probably one of the best pilots the Air Force ever had. Man, he could handle that bomber like it was a kite. And he was over there for one reason: that was to win the damn war and get home.

 

I don’t want you to think that I’m pissed off at these dead guys who were in that lead ship. I had a fellow who thought we should court-martial those people. I said, “Hey, they died that day. How are you gonna court-martial them?”

 

“Well, posthumously.”

 

I said, “Aw, come on. That will do no good.” It’s just the idea; you’d like to find out if someone really knew why this happened. It’s too late to do anything about it; once it’s done it’s done. We could have gone in to the target and gotten killed there just as easily, although there wouldn’t have been that heavy a loss.

 

On a previous mission to the Kassel mission – six missions before – we had flown one that was scarier than the Kassel mission, but with not quite the same results. We were shot up very badly over the city of Saarbrucken in Germany; that’s just on the border with France. Our plane took a thumping that you wouldn’t believe from flak; we must have taken five or six damn near direct hits. You could see the red interior of the shell. Our radio operator, J.G. Weddle, had a piece of his foot blown off.

 

We lost one engine over the target, and another one was windmilling. We couldn’t feather it, and we dropped like a wounded bird. The group had us going down in France. They had us down in the English Channel. They had us down in England. They gave up on us. We were badly wounded and we were all by ourself, and we fired off some flares, and within thirty seconds we had an escort of P-51s. They would circle us and talk to us, and no German plane would go near us. We went all the way across the Channel. We ended up throwing stuff out of the plane into the Channel; we even threw our parachutes out to lighten the plane because we were down too low to jump. We threw everything out except the bombardier, he was next. And for one reason or another, we didn’t make it, and we crashed. The pilot again did an inspirational job; how he did it I’ll never know. But we crashed and it was quite an experience; we bounced around, very traumatic. The next day I was so stiff and sore I could hardly move.

 

On that particular mission, George Collar had been taken off our plane, and we had this guy Omick as our bombardier. And in the nose turret we had a first lieutenant, Richard Aylers, and he’d only flown on two missions. Now let me explain what happens; sometimes men get sick and they can’t fly a mission, or the train was late coming from London or they slept in with some babe overnight and forgot to get up or some excuse, and most of them were tolerated, but they may miss a mission or two; whereas the rest of their comrades finished or got shot down or something, and there they sit. That’s what happened to this guy. He had two missions to go, and actually he outranked all of us. He was a first lieutenant. We were still second lieutenants, although our promotion was in but we didn’t know it.

 

He was in the nose turret. And the pilot said to me, “Give me a heading for the closest airport, quick!” I looked out right in front of us and there was a runway, and I said, “Straight ahead!”

 

He said, “Clear the nose and get out of there!”

 

I opened the nose turret door and tapped that guy on the shoulder and tried to pull him out. He got mad at me; he didn’t hear the conversation. He was gonna take a swing at me because I jolted him. I got him out and got him in back, and I didn’t quite make the bomb bay when we hit the ground. I was still in the bomb bay and got thrown out of the bomb bay into the waist. I kept bouncing around like a rubber ball; all the other guys were braced for a crash-landing. And Miner brought us to a safe, healthy conclusion.

 

Years later, the third navigator we picked up - the pilot’s navigator, Jackson - claimed that he was on that mission with us. And I sure couldn’t place him, because he was a pilot’s navigator, and that’s what this Lieutenant Aylers was. But Jackson insisted he was on the mission. He sure knew enough about it, because it was quite a thrill that day. So I found out where you could write to get some records. I wrote to the U.S. Air Force archives and asked if it was possible that on Lieutenant Miner’s crew, flying a certain date which was Aug. 15th, I think, that you could get the crew members. Lo and behold, about three weeks later here it comes with the date, all the crew members - and this is the funny part: They did not have Jackson in there. So I knew I wasn’t losing my mind. Aylers was flying that day, and Jackson wasn’t there at all. But they did not have our tail gunner listed, and now they had me wondering if our tail gunner flew that day or maybe Jackson flew in the tail.

 

I thought, God, these guys are sharp after all these years, that they would have these records, so I wrote them back and asked for the disposition on the Kassel Mission of Sept. 27, 1944, and I never heard a word. Not a word. And someone else, I believe it was Lieutenant Ira Weinstein, had once before tried to find out, and I did too, and they stated that the files have been missing since 1950. Someone took them out. They don’t know who, but there’s not a thing regarding that mission back in their archives. So there’s another reason that this thing should be down in some history book somewhere. Plus it was really a bad day, the worst day our group ever had. Every day was a bad day for some groups, but not like this one. It’s funny how the mind works. I know in my case a lot of these things I don’t even think about but once I get into it, it just keeps coming back and you’re living it over and over.

 

I’m paying for it now. The knees in particular gave me a bad time for years, and the back, the last three years, it’s just been getting worse every day, and all they can find is fused vertebrae at the base. But for many other guys it happened a lot worse. It was a good 40 years before I learned what happened to our co-pilot, Virgil Chima, and he was my best friend at the time. His body was not found until November 15th. Walter Hassenpflug dug this up, and what he found was that some women were looking for beech nuts up in the forest and ran across him, so he must have been laying there for six weeks, and yet, the mystery is, his parachute was missing. The shroud lines were cut. He was laying in the fetal position. But his body had decomposed so much by the time they got to him, I don’t imagine that they ever figured out just what happened to him. But obviously, someone got the parachute, which was silk and was very valuable over there at the time. All you can do is surmise. I know what it was like coming through those trees. He could have made a worse landing than me and maybe broke his back and couldn’t move and just died there. It’s very doubtful that someone had beaten him because it was so far up in the hills where nobody would go for any reason, and no one had gone up there prior to these ladies going hunting for beech nuts for food. So I’m inclined to think he badly injured himself, although why would he be in the fetal position? Of course he could have just drawn into that, knowing he was dying, trying to keep warm. Poor little guy. Nineteen years old. And the most meticulous guy on the crew; man, he checked everything to make sure his parachute and harness and instruments were perfect. He had two brothers. One of them was a major in the 91st, which was the one with the Triangle A, the group that was in “12 O’Clock High.” And then he had another brother who was a bombardier with the Third Group over there. There were four boys and three of them were in the Air Force and Virgil was the only one who didn’t make it. And his mother never did get over it. He was the baby of the family. The same thing happened with our radio operator, Joe Gilfoil, who lost his leg and bled to death. He was the only child of an Irish family right outside of Boston. I guess his mother and father were at that time in their late forties or early fifties when he got shot down. Joe was 19. Joe and I had gone to communion that morning, as we did before each mission.

 

He was a good Catholic boy. I was a Catholic boy. And we had one other man in our crew, Alvis Kitchens - Cotton was his nickname - a very quiet kid, never said boo. Did his job. He’d go with the guys but he never smoked, he never drank, he was very religious. Very soft-spoken, just a good Christian lad, and do you know, 54 years later, he’s still the same. All these other guys, including me, would go out and just raise all kinds of ruckus, drink and chase women, do all kinds of crazy things. Not him. Never.

 

When I went over and met Walter Hassenpflug in 1986, he introduced me to Ernst Schroeder. The guy shot down two of our planes that day, and I don’t know how many he shot down during the war. He was the father of seven boys. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he’s very well-known in German circles as an expert on military fighters at that time. He was an expert on the FW-190 and the Messerschmitts. He had nothing but the greatest admiration for the Mustang. He said if it wasn’t for the Mustang we’d still be fighting over there. He said that airplane changed the war; after they developed the drop tanks and they could protect the bombers going in. That changed the complete air battle situation. Actually the German production of aircraft was greater in September 1944 than at any point up to that time. The big problem was the lack of manpower and the shortage of petrol. But as far as planes, they had them. And they were good. The Germans were very, very brave people. And what I noticed, they just could not believe how friendly I was, and others were towards them. They acted like we should hate them because of what happened 40 years ago, which I didn’t even think about. I mean, you were just people; they just did their job and we did our job.

 

Walter Hassenpflug is one in a million; the hard work he’s put in and what he’s done. Not just this particular mission but primarily this one and other air battles that took place near his hometown, because he was orphaned by some bombs that dropped on his parents’ home, and raised by his aunts.

 

The first time we were over there, I thought, Jeez, Walter has been investigating this for maybe five or six years now, which would take you back to about 1980, and I thought, why, after all these years, is he all of a sudden looking into this particular mission? This is a personal opinion - and I saw it over there when the newspaper came out on the anniversary of this particular air raid - this had nothing to do with our mission, but I think it’s the one that took place in November 1944 in which his folks were killed, I think that is what set him off on this quest. And when you think of what it took to go back 35 or 40 years and to go to where all these planes had crashed, get all the information on those that survived, those that didn’t. Walter did all this on every plane that went down. He could tell you exactly where it landed, who got out, who didn’t get out, and generally what happened to them. Carl Lepper, his interpreter, told me he’d go back dozens of times, the least bit of a lead he had of anything, he would go there and photograph and talk to people, look it up, and go through records, and he did this for eight or ten years.

 

I can’t think of anything else. I probably got a few things mixed up. You’ll have to dig deep on this one. I don’t know how long you were over there when you met Walter, but didn’t you find that a nice little area? I thought it was great. I really enjoyed Bad Hersfeld, the little park they had there, and that old church, that old ruin there. I just found that area fascinating. The only thing bad about Germany was the driving. Probably if I was younger I wouldn’t mind a bit, but boy, now it’s scary.

 

* 

October 19: Dr. John Caruthers, a Princeton grad and a Presbyterian minister, testifies before the California Senate. “It is our Christian duty to keep the Japanese out of this western world of Christian civilization,” he insists. He added that he would urge “the deportation, if possible, by every means possible, of all the Japanese from the American continent.” 

* 

What is fate? 

In November a young German officer, Axel von dem Bussche, was selected to kill Hitler, by hiding bombs in a new overcoat design the dictator wanted to inspect and wrapping up Hitler in a sudden embrace. The night before, the new coat was destroyed in an Allied air attack and the meeting postponed. 

 

* 

“It still comes back to me.” 

November 20 (Battle of Tarawa begins): Leon Cooper died, in 2017, at age 98. Yet he never forgot other young men who had died around him at 17, 18 and 19. 

After graduating from the University of Illinois he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. In 1943 he was a landing boat captain and carried Marines into the beach at Betio, part of the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Low tides stranded many of the craft, and survivors remembered 76 hours of hell. The Marines suffered 1,113 killed and 2,290 wounded. “Riddled corpses form a ghastly fringe along the narrow white beaches,” The New York Times wrote that November, “where men of the Second Marine Division died for every foot of sand.” 

Cooper took part in six battles, including the invasion of Iwo Jima. Tarawa always stuck in his mind. He had nightmares after the war. In one he was drifting or falling into deep water, and finds a young boy sitting on a sunken Sherman tank. “You never really lose the memory of the sounds, the smells and everything, including the blood running down your nose, so you’re smelling blood instead of breathing.” 

“I smell the stench of those bodies rotting in the sun,” he added. “It still comes back to me.” 

A visit to the island in 2008, sparked memories, and he began lobbying Congress to clean up the garbage-strewn beach and look for the remains of lost men. In 2015, the remains of 39 Americans were recovered.

 

* 

In Private Pages, Kate Tomibe (not her real name) tells the story of her family’s time in a “Relocation Center” for Japanese Americans. Editor Penelope Franklin describes some of the conditions. 

Housing was in standard army barracks, hastily erected. Each family was given a 20 x 25 foot room with army cots as the only furniture. Bathroom facilities were communal and primitive; meals were served in army-type mess halls.

 

Tule lake, California, where Kate Tomibe and her family lived, had been built on the sandy bed of a dried-up lake. Summer dust storms were menacing, and winters were extremely cold. Lack of drainage caused seas of mud during wet seasons.

 

The Tomibe family was from the Seattle, Washington area. Kate was 19; with her were her parents, brother Sam, 16, sister Beth, 14, and brother Ray, seven.

 

Franklin picks up the diary edit when Kate gets the idea to write in greater detail, after a friend tells her that her entries, to that point, are “too impersonal and not detailed enough. 

January 24. Mother made me take my kid sister with me, so I went with her and two other girls in our block [a block of barracks] to the morning service. There was the regular singing of hymns…

 

It was decided that Sunday breakfasts would be eaten at home in our block. This is a good idea because you don’t have to get up as early and can cook the meal more deliciously, although handicapped by the lack of facilities formerly available back home. Sad case, on New Year’s Day when we had to cook all our meals at home [that is, in their camp home], our soup was cooked in an empty tomato can. However, the breakfast menu isn’t very large so it doesn’t matter.

 … 

N., a boy from Tacoma, was also [there] looking as suave as ever. It seems so silly now when I think of the crush I had on him long ago. It only lasted several days so it wasn’t too serious. He can go jump in the lake for all I care after the dirty deal he gave C. – going steady with her and monopolizing her time for a week then suddenly walking out on her without any explanation. The only reason I can see for his desertion is that he didn’t want to go to the dance with her every time. Then he goes necking with any girl that is dumb enough to give him the slightest encouragement.

 

January 25. Getting up in the morning is the worst of my trials and tribulations. Last night it was so hot I couldn’t sleep very well. The stove is about six feet from my bed and when Dad puts too much coal in at night it gets too warm. … I like to lie in bed in the morning and meditate because that is about the only time I have to do that. The mess gong and my parents don’t give me much time to do that though. I would like to hear a bugle blowing reveille instead of a noisy gong. I have a good notion to get a bugle and blow it myself if some Boy Scout doesn’t beat me to it. When I finally dragged myself out of bed, hastily dressed, washed and ran into the mess hall what did we have for breakfast but pancakes! “Sells like pancakes,” sounds like a farce here. I never did like pancakes too well, but I just can’t stand them anymore; they choke and nauseate me. I wish [I] could have a nice fluffy waffle though.

 

January 26. There have been times when I have yearned for dates with certain people, and there have also been other times when I have had to run around in circles trying to avoid dates with certain other people.

 

January 27. After I came back to the office [she is working for the Recreation Department in the camp] we went over the budget for 1943. The music department said that it was necessary to get about $200 worth of music books, in addition to various other musical supplies. They got about $160 worth of piano instruction and music textbooks in 1942, and P. thought they were demanding too much. There seemed to be some friction so I kept quiet, but I think that some people really demand too much. They are of the opinion that the government put them in here against their will, so now they’ll try to get as much as they can out of the government. As far as the basic needs, such as food, shelter, clothing, medical care are concerned the people should make certain demands, but they shouldn’t expect too much in the way of luxuries. …

 

As U. says, if the people have too many things done for them, they’ll lose the power to do it themselves and really become wards of the government as the Indians are.

 

This morning I suddenly got the idea that I must have my typewriter which I left home along with many other things I should have brought. I told Mother that I was going to write to the man who was taking care of our place and have him send it. She said that if I were going to get my typewriter, she wants her trunk too because it contains many of her precious keepsakes.

 

January 28. What I need is another love affair. Not any more adolescent infatuations or physical attractions but a beautiful romance which is lasting and based on understanding and companionship. I want somebody to love and understand me, somebody that I can respect and love. Nobody understands me completely, not even my own family.

 

January 30. The other day I stopped in at the canteen and got some nail polish, shade young red. I have never used such bright nail polish before, but when I’m working outside I have to be a moderate so I might as well use it while I’m here. However, after I got it on it looked a little too flashy, and my parents didn’t like it. I don’t know why I got it, and I hate to think of having to use up the whole bottle. But perhaps there is something to that “red badge of courage.” Some man said that the reason a woman wears lipstick is that when she is down and out, when she has just lost a job, or is disgraced, the flashy lipstick serves as a symbol of courage. If that is true of lipstick, the same should also hold for nail polish.

 

Yesterday I did my two week’s washing after lunch, and today after lunch I was doing my ironing which had been accumulating for over a month. When I had it about half done N. came, so I went to the Little Theater with her. When and if I ever get married I faithfully promise to devote my time to domestic work, but while I’m single I might as well enjoy my life as much as possible, and there simply isn’t enough time to keep up with the housework.

 

February 1. V. and G. got word that they had received their leave clearance, and they were thrilled and excited. V. Is going to Columbia University in New York, and G. says he is going to either Michigan or Maine.

 

My parents still won’t let me go out [of the camp], but I’m not in too much of a hurry. I am very particular and opportunities seem quite scarce.

 

February 3. I got up before seven this morning, the first time that has occurred in months. Regardless of whether I wanted to or not, I had to because Dad practically yanked me out of bed. Miraculously, we had fried eggs for breakfast. I had almost forgotten what an egg tastes like, and bacon is a thing of the past along with some other commodities.

 

Kate is reading “Psychology of Women,” a lecture by Freud. “Freud,” she grumbles, “thinks that all women feel inferior to men, but I don’t…”

 

February 4. This water is really getting me down. In fact I’m developing hypochondria. It’s nothing like the beautiful waters of Lake Washington or Puget Sound where we used to go swimming. I’m getting so homesick for a lovely sunset on the sound; These dirty puddles are nothing but a menace to society.

 

For many years I have wanted two things, time and money, along with some other things. I still want time, but as long as we have to stay here money hasn’t much value to me. About all you can buy besides the bare necessities or extra clothes and perhaps equipment.

 

Food in the mess hall has curbed Kate’s interest in food. “Now, when the mess gong rings it’s just a nuisance. It’s just too much of the wrong kind of food, such as two big pancakes in the morning or a big plateful of beans at noon.”

 

February 5. More people left today four points east. The moment when the leave permit arrives is a happy one, a climax to months of waiting, but the moment of departure must be one of joy, sadness, and anxiety combined, the dawn of a new day. I don’t think I’ll be going out for a long time yet. …

 

It sounds funny, but until a little over a year ago I didn’t even know how babies were born or what intercourse meant. When I asked mother about these things, she always said, “You’ll find out when you grow older.” I finally had to get it out of my teacher. I had heard about unmarried mothers and wondered what they did to get that way. For some reason or other sex has always been considered taboo…Miss S. and I were talking about it one night, and I naively asked her if a woman would get a baby if she married a man and ate with him and slept with him. She said that they’d have to go through intercourse. She couldn’t very well explain what that meant in ABC language, but I got a general idea of what it meant. When I was 16, I tried to read Havelock Ellis’ Psychology of Sex but couldn’t get ahead nor tails out of it. Recently I have read a textbook on marriage and understand most of the things concerned, although I still don’t understand the principles of birth control or the strong sexual urge.

 

When I was in high school I was still naive enough to believe that there was no such thing as racial prejudice although I had been hearing about it. … After I graduated I went through eight weeks of summer school to take a post-graduate course in geometry and bookkeeping. Then came time to look for a job. I could have gone to college like everybody else did, but I didn’t want to struggle my way through financially nor ask my parents for a subsidy, so I pounded the pavement day after day. This was the reality from which I had been sheltered all these years. Some bank presidents and executives were frank enough to tell me the truth about racial prejudice. To others who were hesitant I asked bluntly, “Are you racially prejudiced?” They didn’t want to admit it and hemmed and hawed without being able to give a satisfactory explanation. I didn’t want to be a quitter so I continued and finally got an office job in the Seattle public schools. I was only 17 at the time and just out of high school, so it wasn’t too bad as a beginning. About six months later the war had broken out and people were beginning to get hysterical. There were several other Nisei girls working in schools, and some busy body women who said they were PTA members were passing around a petition to have us dismissed because our loyalty was in doubt.

 

Former classmates of mine, some of whom were on the borderline of graduating, are now working at shipyards and defense plants while here I am stuck in this place. Many brilliant college graduates are also here while their dollar classmates are earning hundreds of dollars outside.

 

Last year a Mrs. B. wrote an article in the Sacramento Bee complaining that teachers shouldn’t be paid $200 a month to teach evacuees in relocation centers music and other fine arts, so I wrote to the Bee saying that evacuee teachers who have professional standing are only getting $16 a month and that in a community of 15,000 people education and recreation were a necessity; although handicapped by lack of facilities and equipment, we were doing the best we could. Then two anonymous housewives viciously attacked me, telling me to write Hirohito and ask him what kind of treatment the Japanese were giving American prisoners, and stating that with “limited facilities and equipment” the Americans had fought courageously at Corregidor and Bataan. As it happens almost every other day, another woman wrote an article in the Bee protesting the fact that Japanese were permitted to go to colleges while American boys had to join the army.

 

February 7. The snow was about a foot deep this morning…In my younger days snow would have made me very happy, but now I don’t care for it so much because the after effects of mud and slush are too much.

 

In spite of the weather there was a surprising number at church. I wonder why some of these people go to church. I don’t think it’s to show off their clothes because that’s silly. They don’t look serious enough to go for the purpose of remission of sins. The purpose of meeting people seems the most logical. Why do I go to church? Of course, mother makes me go, but it’s not just because she says so that I do it. The matter of clothes is out because I certainly don’t dress up to go to church, and if I had to, I wouldn’t want to. I love to dress up in pumps, fur coat, gloves, hat, etc. on the right occasion, but the right occasion never occurs in here.

 

February 8. I. and some other boys asked me what I thought about cheek-to-cheek dancing. I told him that if necessary, it might be all right with their one and only but promiscuous if made a habit with every girl. They said that with certain girls it was unavoidable.

 

February 10. After I got home [from work] I was reading the rules for selective service. One part says, “We want to give you the opportunity to serve your country along with other Americans. We are sure you wouldn’t want to be treated differently.” Is this a farce? What irony! Less than a year ago they were saying, “Everyone of Japanese ancestry clear out within a week.”

 

The next day, when Kate went to the office, she discovered that “some boys were celebrating kigensetsu [Empire Day]. I used to know that this was a Japanese holiday but it’s hard to keep up with those things now.” 

Whether they were celebrating in ironic fashion, or whether their treatment in being sent to camps had darkened their feelings for this country, is not clear. We do know from what Kate says, that feelings ran the gamut. 

In the evening some of the young men got together and suddenly decided to call a block meeting to discuss the selective service questionnaire. L. was sitting next to me so I asked him what he thought. L. is 23 years old and in Japan 19 years and even attended college there. He said that as an American citizen he would do everything for the United States but expected to be treated like a citizen. He said that it was our duty to fight against all enemies. I asked him if he would join the army and fight against Japan, and he immediately replied “Of course.”

 

…

 

G.Y., block manager, and D.G., councilman, thought that there should be no question about answering “yes” to the 28th question which goes something like, “Do you swear allegiance to the United States government and forswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor and any other foreign organization or power?” To the 27th question which asks “Are you willing to do active combat duty and fight at any assigned place?” They thought it could be answered “no” or with a conditional yes. The conditions would be that Nisei soldiers be allowed to enter any restricted area without any red tape; other Nisei would be treated like ordinary American citizens; and our parents be accorded the same privileges as German and Italian aliens. Of course this would not apply to those who are planning to go back to Japan. Such persons should answer no to both questions.

 

February 16. In the evening there was a block meeting. I went in there late and as Mr. O. was making an announcement I didn’t want to walk across to the other end of the room. M. and N. and some other boys were sitting on the service counter so I sat there with them. Dad made me get off and later told me that it’s alright for boys to sit on the table but girls shouldn’t do it. Gee, I get tired of hearing that boys can do a certain thing but girls can’t.

 

On February 21, instead of a sermon in church, five speakers discussed the question of loyalty to the U.S. One man, who had come to the U.S. at age four, said if he were a citizen he would be loyal, but would not register for the draft. Mrs. O. urged everyone to register. She suggested that any “zoot-suited, jitterbugging Nisei” who returned to Japan would have trouble adjusting. One high school teacher suggested that each individual follow his “own conscience and not follow the herd like sheep.” A young man said he would answer yes to Question 28, and “gave as his reason…the kindness of American friends and reminiscences of the typical American life he had led.” 

There was hot feeling against, as well. Tomibe explains, 

Beth came home around five and said there was a big riot in block 42. After a block meeting some of the boys put on anti-registration demonstrations and shouted “tenno heika Panzai” [“Long live the emperor”]. The soldiers had to come and after using teargas had carried off some thirty boys to jail.

 

February 24. Today was a gloomy and desolate day and so I stayed home in the afternoon and read Freud’s theory on dreams. He thinks that most dreams are wish fulfillment and are of sexual nature. The only dream that I can remember clearly is the one I had about the devil when I was about three years old. When I was small, Mother used to discipline me with the devil will get you if you don’t watch out stuff so I dreamt that we were on a picnic and a red oni [devil] came along and dragged me off to Hades where there were devils of other colors.

 

…

 

There was another block meeting. A request was made for a representative to attend the kibei meeting, but nobody wanted to go. We thought that it would be fun to see what it was like so I tagged along with the kibeis.

 

The place was packed, mostly with kibei. The air was full of smoke and reminded me of a bar room minus the drinks. Everybody was more or less excited, and one man got up and said in a half crying voice, “Some people can’t make future plans because they don’t know which side will win the war but I’m sure that Japan will win.” Somebody else shouted “Japan will never lose!”

 

February 27. Dad says that his heart is definitely in Japan, and if it came to the point of choosing between Japan and me he would choose Japan. Well, I’m not going to worry about anything like that until I get to it. I might even be willing to go to Japan for awhile and see how it is.

 

There simply isn’t any privacy here. I was getting undressed to take a shower when Mr. P. knocks on the door and comes in. They finally installed the Japanese bath and our shower room but now that the weather is getting warmer it won’t do much good. Seems so unsanitary for everyone to use the same water. The rules are that the people are supposed to take a shower and clean themselves before going in the bath, and they can’t take their towels or washcloths in there. I didn’t think anything of going in the swimming pool even with Negroes but bath is a different matter.

 

March 3. The recruiter for the WAAC is here today and tomorrow. If I could meet the minimum requirement I might enlist if it weren’t for my parents. Driving a Jeep over foreign terrain sounds very thrilling.

 

March 18. In the evening I went to hear misses. F. G.’s Speech on preparation for marriage period she listed 10 points to look for in the prospective partner: closest to ideal, sterling character, confidence, ability to live together, no clashing of tastes, health, skills, worthy to be a parent, brings out the best in yourself, mutual interests. [Later that day, Kate’s mother went to hear the same woman lecture on “Sex and Youth Problems.”]

 

I listened to “Town Meeting of the Air” as I do every Thursday evening, and the topic of discussion today was on the subjects to be taught in the schools in war time. The question was whether to discontinue liberal arts and replace it with military training. Most of them thought that liberal arts had its place but war came first.

 

Franklin notes that the War Relocation Agency’s “official policy was to encourage people to leave the camps, and qualified U.S. citizens had been granted leave clearance as early as July 1942.” By the end of 1944, 35,000 people had left the camps. Meanwhile, Tule Lake was turned into a maximum security facility, where so-called “disloyals” from many other camps were kept locked up together. 

Nothing further, the editor says, is known about what happened to the diarist after the war ended. 

More than 110,000 Japanese Americans were sent to "Relocation Camps."
Three-fourths were U.S. citizens.

The camps were guarded.

Dust storm at Manzanar. 

Entire cities were pulverized by bombs, changing the lives of millions.
Pictured: Cologne, Germany.