World War II interview

My wife's grandfather, who is Welsh and moved to America when he was in his 40s, fought for the Royal Air Force in World War II. He lied about his age and joined the RAF when he was 17 years old.

He was on vacation somewhere here in America and met someone in a pub that had a Welsh accent just like him. Same age. After sharing stories, they found out they were in the RAF together, same time, same place.

As he told me later, "we closed the place down sharing stories."

 

I had this talk with my grandpa twice. Once when I was about 12, and really stupid. He came up to the school for Grandparents day and I was talking to him about his war experiences for a class project. He got about halfway through the story when class was over, so I said "Well, my dad told me the rest. Later."

I sat down with him for a much longer project when I was a senior in high school. He worked in MacArthur's headquarters in the Pacific, then was stationed in Tokyo after the war. I wrote a big paper for an English class about it.

He died about a year later. Obviously I was really, really glad I had taken the time.

 

What did you grandfather think of MacArthur?

 

Over the past year I've been working with my grandfather to write his bio for the family. He wrote much of it himself and it's been my job to type it up, edit it and then go back to him to get more details for it.

He was a POW in a Japanese internment camp from early May 1942 through to the end of the war. Hearing about the harrowing conditions he faced has been incredibly moving, and has made him even more of a hero to me than he already was. While in the camp his weight dropped from 200 lbs. (he was 6'3) down to 84. To make it worse they had to walk miles each day to work in factories in brutally cold weather, and they were not given much clothing at all.

I'm grateful that I've had the opportunity to talk with him since he hasn't really talked about his experiences in WWII in detail with anyone else in the family.

 

To tell you the truth, I don't remember exactly what he thought of him. I remember he told me all about the corn cob pipe, and about how weird all the coded messages coming in were before the A-bomb -- how they knew something was up.

I remember he seemed to think the most amazing part of his story was he went to the Pacific with a guy from his small town on the same boat. They went their entirely separate ways for two years, then came home on the same boat.

 

Once you know what unit he was in and when he served, check out the Internet to find other oral histories of the unit, where they fought, what they faced, you'd be surprised how much stuff is out there.
I'm reading a book called "The Longest Winter" right now that is very good about a unit involved in The Battle of The Bulge.