Densho Digital Archive - John Young Interview (denshovh-yjohn-01-0021)

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KL: Did you have any time in Europe when you were not on base? Were you ever able to go see anything?

JY: Oh, yeah, we go to London or anything, just to get away from the airfield.

KL: What was London like at that time?

JY: Well, they turned off all the light during the wartime, nighttime. They were being bombed. In fact, people were sleeping in the subways. We saw a lot of cot there, that was shocking to see cots in there and family, because their homes were bombed out. That's the first time we felt, knew there was a war going on, unlike the states here, everything was intact. Yeah, those poor people suffered over there.

KL: When you were on your time off, did you just walk around London?

JY: Yeah, we just walked around going to shows and all that. Go in the pubs, of course, get drunk.

KL: So some things were still going on.

JY: Yeah, something was still going on. In fact, I went in the day when Roosevelt died, all the British people come up to me and say, "Sorry," for me, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. Finally I asked somebody, "What's going on?" They said, "Roosevelt just died. Didn't you hear about it?" I said, "No, I haven't." In fact, I voted for him. That's the first time I was able to vote. I turned twenty-one, I voted for him.

RM: What did you think about president Roosevelt? The only thing I was mad about him was putting the Japanese in camp, when he signed it, but that because of General DeWitt. He's the one that thought the Japanese would create a lot of problems. He convinced him to sign, that's all.

KL: Were you aware of General DeWitt in 1942, or did you learn that later?

JY: I was aware of him. That's only... in fact, somebody told me, "You want to stay out of camp, go see General DeWitt." So I tried to see him in Pasadena, and I couldn't see him, of course. In fact, in my lifetime, well, I flew with a general, once. He took over the pilot, co-pilot's seat, fly it as a command pilot, and the co-pilot would come back to the tail and kept me company, and we started bullshitting. [Laughs]

KL: Did you see anyone on DeWitt's staff when you tried to see him?

JY: No. I just saw the sergeant in charge of the secretary.

KL: What was your interaction with the secretary?

JY: I was so, I told him he's a pain in the ass. I didn't care, I was a civilian at that time. Yeah, he was the one that convinced Roosevelt, I read later and found out about it.

KL: What do you remember about Victory in Europe day?

JY: Pardon?

KL: What do you remember about Victory in Europe Day?

JY: Oh, that was wonderful. I was in town, too. I was supposed to fly that day and the war ended. Well, they told us to prepare. Anybody with less than twenty missions, go get your summer uniform, because you're going to the Pacific. I thought, goddamnit. You know how we felt only at sixteen. So that was a lie, it was just a rumor. I went to the warehouse, they said, "What uniform? We don't have any." They said, "That's just a damn rumor."

KL: You were in London when you heard that news?

JY: Yeah, when the war was over.

KL: What was London like? What did people do?

JY: Everybody was happy. Everybody was happy, they were celebrating.

KL: Where were you on VJ Day, and what do you remember about that?

JY: Yeah, I was still over there. They kept us, after the war, fly camera mission, and we flew all over Europe at 20,000 feet, just to take picture of the whole of Europe, all the terrain. And most of the time we were playing pinochle, nobody's flying the plane, it was on autopilot. We did a lot of stupid things, think we're immortal.

KL: What were you taking pictures for?

JY: For the next war, in case, so we know their terrain of Europe. Yeah, we flew for about a hundred miles, then flew back and forth. In fact, they moved our group after December to Europe. All the guys that volunteered, one guy asked me, he said, "Hey, how would you like to be a gunnery officer?" And I said, "What's the catch?" he said, "You got to sign up four year." I said, "Go shove it." I said, "My wife would kill me." [Laughs] I said, "I'm a civilian, I'm not a soldier." Yeah, they offered two of us gunnery instructor, if we would like to be gunnery officer. I got it down here somewhere, I was a gunnery instructor. Yeah, the instructor.

RM: Where were you stationed in Europe when you were...

JY: Thurleigh, just north of, about sixty miles north of London. So we go into London a lot. We went to Bedford, too, because our closest town was Bedford. So we'd go in there when we had a three-day pass, otherwise longer, we'd go into London.

RM: You said you were taking photos in case there was the next --

JY: Oh, here's something interesting I might tell you. The way we wash our woolen, we don't want to send it to the laundry because you could get anybody's uniform back. So we would drain three to five gallon of gasoline from the plane, and we would rinse our woolen, oh yeah, and then you hang you hang it and let it air out, then we throw it away. And this farmer, who lives 60 miles from London, he's in his sixties, never been to London. So we started throwing that gas, and he said, "Gee, can we have that?" I said, "What are you going to do with that?" He said, "Use it on my tractor." I said, "You can't. These are 130 octane." So I said, "You've got to cut it with kerosene or something." So he said, "I could do that." So he went and screened that cut it. On top of that, since we got pretty friendly, we said, "You've never been to London?" He said, "No." I said, "How would you like to go to London?" Our crew took him in. We got a three-day pass and we took him in and bought him lunch, he lived with us, slept with us. [Laughs] And we entertained him, he's a good old man. He was quite a guy. I've even forgotten his damned name.

RM: That's really neat.

JY: So I got my whole history here, what I've done.

RM: Was anyone talking about another war after World War II? You said you were preparing...

JY: I don't think so. With the atomic bomb, I'm sure they would it use it, although I think China's afraid to... keep reading the paper, and pretty soon they have fifty billion dollars invested, you figure in 2020, so they got too much invested here to get in a war with us.