Glen Burroughs, U.S. Air Force

I joined the Air Force May 3, 1945, at the age of 17, then went through basic training in Denver, Colorado and college training at the University of Montana in Missoula. Finally, I graduated from navigation school at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas in June, 1945 with a 2nd Lt. Commission.

I was assigned to a B-29 crew as a navigator and trained with them at McDill Field in Tampa, Florida. After our training was completed, we flew a brand new B-29 from Kearny, Nebraska to Saipan in the South Pacific where I spent 8 months before moving to Guam.

We were part of the 20th Air Force. One of our assignments was to drop leaflets written in Japanese warning the people to evacuate 10 cities in Japan prior to the dropping of the atomic bomb. As I thought about it later, I realized only a nation founded on Christian principles would have bothered to try to warn the civilians.

We also flew missions over certain areas of the South Pacific gathering samples of air 30 days prior to and 30 days after the bomb was dropped. I lived 3 Quonset huts down from one crew who were kept in quarantine, and we knew nothing about the plans for their plane to take the atomic bomb to Japan. We learned later that the decision to use that lethal weapon instead of invading Japan saved an estimated 500,000 U.S. troops and 1,000,000 Japanese. The two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to an end.

One experience I will never forget happened after the war was over. We had an R and R trip to Hawaii, and on the trip back to Guam had an engine failure and were forced to land on Kwajelein for a replacement engine. Most of that trip was flown about 1000 ft. above the ocean in the event we had to ditch the plane. As the navigator, I was giving our position by radio every 10 minutes and desperately praying in between. God answered my prayers, and we returned safely to Guam after replacing the engine.

After marking time on Guam for another 4 or 5 months after the war was over, I was released with an honorable discharge as 1st Lt. in September, 1946, grateful for the prayer support of my family, my church and my friends.

GLEN BURROUGHS, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE