When I arrived at Hickam Field the B18 bombers were the largest in service. When the B17's flew in from the states we trained on them for about 6 weeks and then the bad news came. The 14th Bomb personnel were called together and told our unit was being disbanded. Fifty of us were picked to take 35 B17's to Clark Field on the Island of Luzon in the Philippines.
Our group left Honolulu 9-2-41 on the the President Pierce. On arriving at Clark Field on 9-17-41, I became part of the 19th Bomb group. On morning of 12-7-41 the Japs hit Clark Field. All of the B-17's were field and were demolished. One unit had been in the air when the raid began so they flew to Australia.
On Christmas Eve 600 of us boarded a boat built for 250 and we were ordered to be taken to the Island of Mindanao to maintain an airfield strip at Del Monte. The planes that were supposed to come back from Australia with supplies did not arrive so we were ordered to proceed to Lake Lanao to service two PBY's that were flying from Corregidor with the last personnel to be flown to Australia. The planes landed, we camouflaged them and then serviced them. The following day one took off and the next plane followed and hit an obstruction in the lake with one of their pontoons. The plane came back in and we emptied the pontoon and repaired it. Then we were ordered to retreat to a place called Hidden Camp located on Butuan Mountain Hdq of Brigadier General Fort 81st Div at Butuan.
in May of 1942 we surrendered to the Japanese. From there we ended up in a former prison camp for hard core Philippinos. They were moved out and we were moved in. The name of the camp was Dapecol where I was interned for two and a half years.
We were shipped to Japan on the Canadian Inventor. We arrived in Moji, Japan 9-2-44. We were loaded on their bullet train and ended up in Nagoya #5 where we spent one year before being liberated.
I would appreciate hearing from anyone that was in the 14th bomb-19th bomb
group.
Jerry
Email Address:
GrampsC1917@aol.com