FP-1946-Return

All are 20^th AF Engineering Officers frozen in place by MacArthur, newly released June 1846

Baggage Inspection center mid Saipan

From and to Inspection center Most were in reflective moods, what’s ahead?

I violated order to stay below to caught bow rise & dip, 35 mm from gun turret, water came over bow

Sunset

Killing Time, waiting for movie

It was interesting to watch flying fish would hurry to escape the bow Our below deck quarters

Albatross would catch warm air from the ship, make sweeping passes, never moving wings

They could sleep on water, appear and disappear.

Forward below the front top turret

Mid ocean transfer of sick patient Pilot ship from San Francisco Harbor

The Golden Gate Bridge

Coming under, looking up

Looking back

Alcatraz

Nobody talked, they just looked and thought

Finding a place on San Francisco side

Coming to a halt – getting off

We were bussed across to Oakland Bridge and quartered on cots in a huge Oakland warehouse. The following morning we were placed on trains. The train of some 8 passenger cars full of Officers headed East to Ft Leavenworth KS. Most of us caught a bus to KC MO for over night stay and returned the next morning. We were interviewed to fill out final papers, given our discharge papers, our final pay, and released into civilian life.

I returned home by train, and soon in civilian cloths again. I filled in time till school started in the fall of 1946, by working as a mechanic in my uncle Lee’s Ford garage. I graduated with an MS in Mechanical Engineering in Spring of 1949.

Developed and printed on Guam with photo kit

Developed negatives were washed in steel helmet with rain water

During Christmas vacation of 1948 I was asked by my sister Marjorie, on the phone to Mary her school class mate and neighbor. They planed to go to the Masonic Dance and asked me to take them. I said I was not interested, but sis scolded me, for being a dud. I said OK but she will have to come here because I have to get cleaned up first. Thus I was startled to see that little neighbor girl at our front door had grown up. We were married the summer of 1949 after she finished College in Denver.

Mary 1949 Daughter Julia & Mary at 19^th Reunion San Diego

The family expanded

. I retired from the aerospace industry in 1992 and made contact with my old outfit, meeting some for the first time at Seattle for the 50^th Anniversary of the B-29. I was made Membership Chairman, and began work on the 19^th BG history in 1993, beginning with still primitive desk top computers intent on storing the history in electronic format.