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Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Japanese had their ships and all that stuff. Then the intelligence would take that
and decide which way they would go. Like one time, they knew the Japanese
were sending fighter planes over to Guadalcanal, but there weren't any carriers
out there, and they didn't know how they had enough fuel for the distance to go
to hit Guadalcanal. We were flying, I think it was over Russell Islands, and we
went over there four or five different times taking pictures, and one time when
they got back and were looking at the pictures-there wasn't nothing over there
but coconut trees, you know-they discovered they had these coconut trees on
trailers and they would move them out of the way so the fighter planes could land
on the strip, take off, and then whenever they got back, they'd put 'em back on
there. And when you fly over it, it just looked like nothing but a coconut
plantation. One of the guys just spotted these trees weren't lined up exactly like
they were those other times they flew over, and what they did when they put 'em
back in, they didn't have 'em in exactly the same place. So our fighter planes
went over there and started strafing it and got rid of all of them.
When you flew over them, did you ever get shot at by the enemy?
Not by airplanes but with antiaircraft fire, but they weren't very accurate with it.
What's antiaircraft fire?
That's guns on the ground where they shoot up to about 35 to 40,000 feet in the
air, and when they get up there, they explode and throw shrapnel out. They'd get
close enough where they'd sink the airplanes sometimes, but they never did hit
us.
How did you feel about America's role in the war?
We didn't have much choice. After we got attacked, we just couldn't let them
run over us. They messed up when they ruined the Navy over in Pearl Harbor
and they sunk all their ships, and they should have just kept on coming and hit the
United States, which they didn't do. They turned back and started hitting them
little islands, and taking all those islands over that they occupied. It took them
several years to do all that stuff.
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