Oral History Interview with James O. Stiles

Diakov:This is Thursday, October 18, 2007. This is Leeann Diakov. I am interviewing James Odgen Stiles, who was First Lieutenant in the Fifth Air Force, Twenty-second Bomb Group, 408 Squadron, served in World War II, the Pacific Campaign. This is our second interview continuing from our interview of last week, regarding Mr. Stiles in World War II. Now, Mr. Stiles, last week, we kind of rushed at the end, through your service in the Pacific arena, and your return home, but I’d like to back up and talk a little bit more about your specific service there.

Stiles:Okay. I’ll give a correction—or a straightening out—it’s not a correction, but a First Lieutenant, I was not commissioned a First Lieutenant, until after I got home and got home and got in the Reserves, in 1946.

Diakov:Okay. 1:00Stiles:I was a second Lieutenant all the way until ’46, and then I was commissioned a First Lieutenant when I got in to the Reserves, and for the five-year period I think I was in. So, it wasn’t…I didn’t have the [ ] in time as the First Lieutenant. I didn’t get that until I came back.

Diakov:So you were a Second Lieutenant during your service?

Stiles:During the service overseas, yes.

Diakov:Okay, that will be noted in our interview here. Let’s back up to when you were going to the Pacific. You had met your crew in California; I think you said there were about five of you that were assigned to a plane.

Stiles:There were ten of us.

Diakov:Ten of you assigned to a plane. Tell me about the plane that you flew overseas, and that you used on your missions, and just kind of describe to me, you know, where you would sit, and what kind of movement you had in the plane.

Stiles:We were receiving crew training at March Field, California, Riverside, California, and there were ten to a crew. And the full officers were all second lieutenants; Picker Dean’s the pilot; Chuck Armbrewster, the Second Lieutenant, 2:00and Steve Morough was the bombardier, and he was from California, and I was a second lieutenant navigator. And then the rest of the crew were enlisted men. We had an engineer, Nortesmier, and radiomen, Red Benton—he was from Benton, Arkansas, which is where Wal-Mart started—I think I mentioned that the other day. He grew up in Benton. And we started there in the fall of ’44, and 3:00trained there until about the first—it was about the…January or the first part of February of ’45 and we were…our training was in a B-24, where we practiced bomb dropping and [ ] desert and salted sea, which were locations in the, they were east of the mountains from San Francisco and Los Angeles, and had that in some, mostly bomb dropping. We’d all had gunnery at other locations, and during that time, the navigator—you wanted to know where the positions were there?

Diakov:Yes, where were you situated?

Stiles:In the plane?

Diakov:Yes.

Stiles:In the…it changed from model to model, but in these earlier models the navigator was up behind the nose gunner—had 4:00a little, like a little office; he had the astrodome overhead for shooting celestial shots, and a table, folding-down table and it had all the compasses and wind…wind speed estimates, and directions, and such as that. I don’t know all the terms, as closely as I did then, but that’s been sixty years…so that’s a long time to remember all the details. But I remember all those people. I’ve got a…it’s just hanging in the other room, I’ve got that whole crew, 5:00with their names.

Diakov:I’d like to at the close of the interview.

Stiles:I can just get it in a minute.

Diakov:Let me just pause it [tape interruption]. Okay, we’re back and you’ve shared with me a photo of your crew on your B-24. So you had this little office behind, the…did you say gunner?

Stiles:The nose gunner.

Diakov:The nose gunner. And like, how big a space is that? Were you confined in that space?

Stiles:Oh, it was probably about this way…you could stretch your arms across, probably up in the nose. It tapers to the front, and the nose gunner is in the front of that, and it opens up into this little navigator’s place. It’s—I guess the little table was about like this, and these maps, that I had spread out on the table, and made all my guides on that….

Diakov:And were you confined 6:00to that little space throughout the mission, or throughout the flight, or could you get up and….

Stiles:They could get up, yeah, if it was over water, over water, but on a mission, it would be a [ ] to be up there. I remember one of them, when we had raided to Shanghai, it was a pretty big raid; I noticed on a note I had the other day, it was a 500-plane raid on Shanghai, and then we had one on Hong Kong, and one to Canton. They were all at Japanese aircraft locations.

Diakov:So these would be air raids, 7:00where you said, a 500-plane raid—500 similar planes would go out with you, and you all would… Stiles:Oh, we’d be out as a group. There’d probably, the 22nd Bomb Group would go out. We had squadrons—I was in the 408 Squadron—and there would be about 4 squadrons to a group, and you’d have a group, and they’d be flying in…4’s of 4…and B-12 to 16’s [ ] on the group and then several groups would go out on a mission together. And we’d all have it all timed—where to be in the formation, and how long to be on toward the target. And the thing, in the South Pacific, when I was there—we had flak on those eighteen missions, we 8:00had flak about, probably about eight times, is all, because the…in the Pacific area, the toughest thing I had was the weather. There were always storms coming up, and going from, I think it was going from Hong Kong, ran into a storm coming back from the mission, and going back to the Philippines, we just tossed and turned. I was in that front compartment, and it was just—the door of that front gun would keep hitting—the winds were so strong, that wind would just blow the door open, and the wind would come into that room [laughing] and blew maps around and everything. The sad part was that we 9:00ended up not knowing where five planes went. They just didn’t get back—they got lost, or something, but anyway, they…I never heard what happened to them. They just never…know where they landed—somewhere else, or missed the island, and didn’t…and ended up out at sea somewhere.

Diakov:So no one ever….

Stiles:No, never did. I don’t think anybody ever knows what happened to them. But that happened in weather a lot. We always had storms every afternoon in the Philippines.

Diakov:How were you able to navigate back through a storm? I think you had mentioned before that you did a lot of constellation….

Stiles:Well, you didn’t have that. You’d just use the drifting—the wind, and the weather reports we had. 10:00You could see the ground in these storms, even coming in. You wouldn’t come into the storms until you got in Luzon, the island, and you could see all right. We’d be at the lower altitude then, we got that. But before that, it’s interesting to see how you could, you wouldn’t think you could fly by pilotage or by land contact, with land, but you couldn’t, and one of the things that’s interesting, say that when you’re flying from the Philippines up to Formosa, for instance, the…their little islands that are submerged. You can’t see them from on the ground—like if you’re on a ship, you couldn’t see 11:00these little islands. But if you know—just like a string of islands that you could see from the air, and really had placed on the map. This is the lower end of Formosa [pointing to a map] and then you fly up, you had these islands like this that you can fly on this, and with your land contacts here, and knowing what your air speed is, and the wind…this is the velocity of the wind and all those things, you can control your [ ] right there—aiming for this island over here—that’s Taiwan now, it’s Formosa here—on either side, bombing lanes there and all the way up to the north. The one we hit the most, was one up at the north of Formosa, Cuzon. That’s where the most—that was the largest town then, and it the largest one now in Taiwan. And, Tainang, is I think, …is the name of the town, 12:00but you can see...all of these little island were submerged. They, you could see just by the shadow under the ground, or under the water, and you could…we were short on maps, and this was used [ ]. I had several flights—you can see I’ve got penciled on that I moved, or I’ve erased, because I was going up here—had a mission here, and then, and then no new maps for us, so we used this and had to erase out this, and then I [ ] and track my routes up in these various areas.

Diakov:So after each mission, you would erase your pencil marks from that one, so you could use the map again? 13:00Stiles:Yes, erase them…and get new information for weather and [ ]. But I had this, this is an old map here—it’s Taiwan, they call it that now. This is October 24, and it’s all the figures were put in here in 1943. And we had it in ’44; it was issued to us.

Diakov:And you were using this on missions, then, in 1945 [laughs]?

Stiles:Right. Yeah, that was… we couldn’t, probably couldn’t get anymore date [ ], but as long as you had one that would still erase, you know…[laughter].

Diakov:Now how long did some of these missions last?

Stiles:Oh, as I remember, they were about eight or ten hours…let’s see here…I’ve got it here somewhere.

Diakov:Is this your flight log? 14:00Is that what you’re looking at?

Stiles:Yes, some of them I made myself after I was a navigator. Right here’s a [ ] March Field…this is navigation…bombing. Here we are—the hours. Like here’s one—in flying overseas, when we flew a plane from…a brand-new plane to go overseas, we ferried it over to New Guinea, to a…. And we flew from Mather Field, which is Sacramento, California, to John Rogers Field in Oahu and that was fourteen hours, we flew that one. And, 15:00from there, we went to Canton, to Taiwan to Los Negros, and Los Negros to Biak, which is where we landed that new plane, and then we flew to Nadzab, which is the field there. And the field, like you go, from Curon, Formosa, which is a long mission, to the northern Formosa, was nine hours of flight time. And here’s Clark Field to Curon again, it’s nine hours. That’s the farthest from Clark Field to northern Formosa. Clark Field to Hong Kong was, well, was about ten hours—it was nine fifty. And they were all about nine hours; most every one of them was nine hours. Here’s one from Clark Field to Heiko, Formosa that was eleven hours and one to Toyhota, Canton China was ten hours and thirty minutes. So there were all eight to ten, 16:00eleven hours.

Diakov:And what was your communication…could you communicate with navigators in the other planes…in your squadron?

Stiles:No, no we couldn’t do that. No, we could communicate on the plane—we all had—we had to keep our headset on; we could keep communication with our crew members, and…but if you’d take them off, you couldn’t. To talk you had to have them on. And you had…so primarily, the radio operator, the engineer, the two pilots and the navigator were 17:00the most competent communication. And others would maybe just ask a question, or something like that. But those I just mentioned were the ones that were mostly on the radio.

Diakov:Was it loud on the plane?

Stiles:Oh, yes. The side of a plane is about that thick. There’s more insulation on you on a passenger plane today—it’s all thick-walled, you know, it’s air [ ] insulation, and there was no heat, no heat at all, whatsoever. It’s just open up for the wind.

Diakov:So these were pretty cold missions?

Stiles:No, they weren’t because we were in the South Pacific, and most of our missions were about 15,000 to 16,000 feet. Now if you were 18:00in Europe, some friends of mine that few over there, they would be at higher altitudes—they’d be up at 25,000 feet, and would have to wear heavier clothes. When we were training, we used those heavy clothes, and at March Field, we had some conditions that were practice missions, where we flew at 20,000 or 25,000 feet and had these heavy clothes on—all sheep-lined, but when we were routed to go the South Pacific, we left all of that here. And the friends of mine that were going Europe would have the heavy clothing. So, it was pretty good to get to go south, anyway [laughs]. See, I had Miami Beach in the winter, when I first started, and ended up in the Philippines, coming home.

Diakov:You only had that one little stint in Kansas….

Stiles:Yes, in Kansas, 19:00at Independence, Kansas, and it was snow there—that’s the only snow we had.

Diakov:They got you out of there pretty fast, it sounds like [laughter]! Well, do have any memories about these missions to Shanghai, and Hong Kong. I mean, those were pretty large missions.

Stiles:Yeah, in fact the navigator, is…they called him on the plane, he is the…crew member that spots all the hits that we bombed, and such, and so we sat in the bomb bay, on the bombing run [ ]. Some of the planes, by this time, we had a navigator’s compartment up right behind the pilot, and that was a newer model, which we had some of those. But the ones, like I talked about coming back from Hong Kong, they were…but you still had to go back to the bomb bay, and sit there. 20:00The navigator was the one that was supposed to be the intelligence officer, for briefing after the mission, to have spotted all the hits. So they would sit up there, the navigator would, sit there in that bomb bay and open bomb bay over and then we would fly over the [ ] we’d have already been briefed in photographs and things of what the target is, and as we flew over the target, we’d blast those hits, where those bombs hit. And name, when we came back and had the intelligence test on the hitting, why we would have an interview with the home officers, telling them 21:00where we thought they were hitting, so it kept it open there and really rather quite nicely [laughs] view of the… Diakov:Yeah, so you would actually sit there as the doors opened?

Stiles:Yes, they opened up the side—they’d slide up the side— Diakov:And you would be looking down?

Stiles:Yes, just looking down, and there’s a trapdoor, right through the middle of the two of them—there’s one on either side, and you could, or load four thousand pounds on either side. You could put in—you could put in four two-thousand pound bombs—one in each bomb bay, but most of the missions, we used more quantity than the small large tactical target, so we would…well, there would be fragment tests, or bombs, but most of them were about 500-pounders, and they would be scattered out over a wide area and do more targets. 22:00And by this time of the war, we had a bombardier, all the planes had bombardiers, but we had gotten to the point where we were dropping our bombs on the lead bomber, rather than have every plane’s bombardier take it [ ] could take control of the plane with their bomb…the bombardier used it, the instrument that he would take control of the plane and help guide it in. But we got to the point, I think in Europe, and in the Pacific, where it was better to just to use the 23:00lead plane to lead the target, and all the rest of the planes would drop their bombs when the first bomb dropped theirs. There would be a big scatter—it was scatter bombing, real accuracy as far as that. It actually did better, because you spread out over, instead of several planes dropping at the same place, with all the bombs going to tight locations, everybody was dropping their bombs at that scattered range.

Diakov:So, instead of having a target at like one factory, or something, they’re spread over three miles stretch or beach?

Stiles:Yes, so it was much more effective, than the other. And in the Pacific, one of the things that, I may have mentioned to you, one of the things that we were in advantage of, was that when we were open, most all of our targets were on the sea shore—they were 24:00coastal cities, and we could make our bombing run approach from the sea, and come in and not have to worry about anti-aircraft underneath us, because we would be out over the sea, and then as soon as we got to the shoreline, then there would be anti-aircraft fire, but then, we could get in on a bombing run, and make that approach, and after we dropped our bomb, we could break out to the sea, and leave that anti-aircraft flak after a fairly short run, compared with—I know my cousin, Bob Stiles, was in B-17’s in Europe, 25:00and we’d enlisted at the same time, and we both graduated from Male High School at the same time, and joined about the same time, but he was over a…in the bomb run for miles. They had fighter planes after them, and early in the war—he got there about…he got to Europe about five or six months before I got to the Pacific, and they had bomb runs where they were really pounded, and he was shot up twice, and had his co-pilot killed once with a flak. I saw him after we came home, and I had seen him a lot—I went to his wedding, and after he came back, and he had really been…really wounded mentally about it—his 26:00plane crew’s getting shot up. But it’s one of those really tough spots. You don’t know who got the choice to go where, but some got into tough spots, and some got…and where the mission is different, it can still be fatal to a lot of people, but not without that type of attack. I believe I was mentioning to you the numbers of planes—like we’d lose planes by weather. They’d be—there’s nothing that you would, really…you’d know they disappeared, but you don’t know where. And I believe I told you about, after the war, 27:00when General Swing was the cause for killing twenty of his troop carriers and five of our crewmen—a different type of thing. There were still…it was all…a different type of duty, but still, to me, because I always thought my cousin always had the toughest of anybody I knew in the Air Force, and of course, infantry, they had no easy way to go. It’s different. In the Air Force, you always flew home, if you got back—you’d gotten home, and got to a good meal and a good bed, and good food, and everything, 28:00and then you’d have a mission about every other day. So it was a different home—a different type of thing.

Diakov:Speaking about getting home, to a bed, and a meal between missions, what kind of accommodations do you have?

Stiles:Well, we had just nice sturdy tents, and the one down in Nadzab, was in jungle country—cut out of jungle area, really—and just good sturdy tents, and a mess center, and the food was…to me it’s a miracle, how the United States could send millions of men overseas, and we had food, we had clothing, we had ammunition, we had gasoline for the planes and the trucks, 29:00and how we could do that in the whole United Air Forces, and Navy—the same way, and had to do that, I don’t think it could ever be done again, to field that kind of an Army, and have them that well-equipped, as they were. The civilians themselves, here, today’s parents if you’d go ask anyone out here in this neighborhood that are under 60, they would think this was just a terrible thing, to have gasoline at $3 a gallon but when my parents and my friends’ parents were at home at that time, they had five gallons of gas a week for their things—a week, five gallons. 30:00That was all that the civilians could get—it was rationed. Food was rationed, meat was rationed, ketchup, all those things, and they would trade for these ration cards, around with people, with neighbors, if they needed the food more than they did. They would trade with neighbors, and it was a tough thing. But the United States would never endure that again. They won’t even endure $3 gas. So, it is one thing that I’ll have to say, that I really have lost a lot of faith that the United States, and its patriotism, I don’t believe that we’re a very patriotic country anymore. They 31:00all want to do—I have to…I used to be a Democrat, but after I came back from the war, and saw how the Democrat Party was, I could not believe that they could deteriorate themselves like they have. And today in Kentucky, the Democrats have been governors of this state for every year but four—just the current, but those forty years straight of Democrats, and this state is just…bad. But, the thing of it is, that all the population is so spoiled they think everything should be given to them. If there’s a heavy rainstorm, they have to have somebody come in and clean it up. I believe I was telling you about 32:00the flood here—everybody here cleaned up their own mess. They didn’t have the government send out people to clean up floods, and I think a lot of us, who came back from service, and after we came home, went to college and got into working, we were still pretty loyal people. But today not—you just can’t find them. They’re always crying and I mention all these Democrat congressmen. I can’t see how anybody can stand them, frankly. I know you don’t like hearing these things, like this, but there are a lot of friends that are near my age, or a little younger 33:00than I, that can’t see this country’s future very good, because they’re not willing to do anything but get each other everything, and take it from each other. That’s it.

Diakov:Do you think there’s not as much of a sense of community sacrifice?

Stiles:None, there’s no community. You know, like when we had the flood in ’37, everybody pitched in and helped each other, but if you go down to anyplace we have now, anything there’s a heavy rain, why we have to create a local emergency to help them drain the water off the streets, or the mud off the streets. That’s what they have to do—they won’t do it themselves. So, somebody has to do it, and that’s what they want. But that’s the way it is.

Diakov:Well, you said they were rationing food here in the U.S. for civilians, what were you eating in your area?

Stiles:Well, we had these [ ] rations 34:00that were made as good food, and at the airports and on the Navy ships, they had food that was ample, and okay. And of course, our foreign allies were in worse shape than we were. You take the British; really they suffered tremendously around with death and food loss, and people getting bombed by the Germans. The Russians just—Sue and I have done a lot of traveling. After being in the service, I learned to educate myself by going to every foreign country I could. Sue and 35:00I have, we’ve been to Russia and Greece, and France and England, and everywhere around that area…and to the Pacific, and to Japan and Formosa, and the people there really suffered. The Russians—we went to Russia in about 1975, when it was in the Cold War, and they just took 25 of us at a time, but they treated us well—they fed us well. The told us, and took us to the places that had really through suffering. Leningrad, which is now St. Petersburg, but it was under enemy, and undercover, and under surround by the Germans for 900 days…900 days there. Their diet was of dead rats, and mice, and birds, and all of that…but they really had no food there—I don’t know how they survived it, but they did. They had a big 36:00park in the middle of Leningrad, or St. Petersburg now, where they had a mass burial to use there, and it’s just a mound out there, just filled full of bodies. They had a million people killed in Leningrad, and you just…they suffered too. And it made people, then, not care for their enemies either, like we went into German, and Dresden and bombed them to smithereens, you know, and you get to a point where you don’t like anybody that bombs you—you don’t like them, so you’re going to bomb them. But I guess 37:00right now, you can in [ ], in Iraq, you can sympathize for Iraqis, where Iraqis are killing Iraqis, you know. They just wonder what kind of brainpower they have, and we were killing everything…. but you do it to survive, it’s a matter of survival.

Diakov:Was that pretty much the mentality, by the time you got to the South Pacific?

Stiles:Yes, it was. We captured no Japanese. You may have read some of the stories about some of that in the local Courier; they’ve had some reviews that were very forthcoming and full-print tales of how 38:00the Japanese fought each other. The Japanese were brutal and cruel, and the manner in which they mutilated the American bodies, it was almost like a command order to “don’t take any Japanese alive.” You see what they’re doing to your friends, so after that, when we…we took very few prisoners. The Japanese were still being brutal in the Philippines, right up almost to the end of the war. So, they never got any kinder or any, in fact, I think I told you about one day—about the 14th or 15th of September, right after 39:00the…days after the atom bomb, when we landed up there to get weather reconnaissance, and stopped and got a refueling in a B-24 [ ] at Toyko….

Diakov:This was after the war had ended?

Stiles:Yes, after the war had ended, but the Japanese suddenly turned gentlemen. They came out and met us long-tailed suits, and bowing to us, and doing all these nice things that they knew how to do, but they had just started doing them again. But it was kind of a comedy to see them coming out, being the nice gentlemen they were, 40:00after being cruel, only a month before.

Diakov:Was that your first encounter with the Japanese?

Stiles:Yes, it was. They were very nice to us, but at the airport…we never. One of the things I think in the Air Corp, and the Navy, you didn’t have that personal contact. The people that really took that type of suffering were Marines, and the infantry, where they were face-to-face with them. I’ve got a book here, or a review of a fellow—his brother, I knew him—this man I’m talking about has written a book, or a review of this [ ] and it’s really something. I don’t know, I’ve got it hidden away somewhere, 41:00but it’s really something. He was a Marine, and what they went through, on Iwo Jima, and those areas, was just really, really tough. I always think about them, and wonder how I was so fortunate, to not to have to get into that, then somebody else, a friend of mine was in it. Like I mentioned telling you, ferrying back a POW, a fellow by the name of Bob Dietrich, who had been a coal mine worker, forced labor in Japan, so everybody—he was from Louisville, I believe I told you he was from Louisville, and how he got back, I have no idea…how he took all that. He came back as a skeleton, but…I don’t know. I 42:00was… I think I touched on how fortunate I thought I was, growing up in the west end of the Louisville area. When I was young, it was a beautiful area of the city, and churches everywhere. You take just the one area where, from about a four-block area, there were about five churches. There was the…I went to the Boy Scouts at West Broadway Baptist, at 40th and Broadway, and then the Methodist Church, the Lutheran Church, Christian Church, Catholic Church, were all in just walking distance. And it was…the parks were pretty, and my dad, I believe I told you…we never owned an automobile, and my dad always had a job. He worked for the Federal Reserve Bank 43:00and in World War I, he had gotten his short service in the Navy as a radio operator. They sent him to school at Harvard. I think I told you that too. But anyway, we didn’t have…we had some things, but I never found until I was little older, why dad had these type of things. He was born in Buffalo, Kentucky, and he…his father died at about seven years old, and he had some other family down there. His mother, her maiden name was Chenault, and she had a brother that lived down in that area—Buffalo, Kentucky. He had a sister…two sisters born and an older brother, but his oldest sister, 44:00she was a widow…not a widow, she was just a maiden woman, she never married. She, during the Depression, came in the 30’s, so she was to make her own living there. The saddest thing was, his younger sister was named Carrie, and she was born blind. She…her doctor who brought her birth, did drop some medicine in the eye, that was the thing that they did then, and it burned her eyes out, so she never saw a thing in this world. And she died when she was about 70 years old. Her uncle, Joe Chenault, took care of her, the daughter, or dad’s 45:00sister, but dad was having to…his older brother wouldn’t help him, but dad took the whole family’s raising on his own, which we didn’t know. We wondered why we couldn’t have a car, or something like that…well, he was giving the money to help his two sisters survive, and then he used to take me down to that farm in Buffalo, where his Uncle Joe Chenault was. He had a diary farm down there, and some tobacco, but he took care of all of them. He worked hard [ ] at the time, and the Depression—farming was paying nothing. My dad always [ ] had money during those times, to support his family, but there was no…social 46:00care, to take care of…. The government, the state, or something didn’t have…finally he did move to Louisville, when he was about eleven years old, and he brought his sister up here, and the blind—School for the Blind over on Frankfort Avenue, had her go over there and live, and she learned to…braille, and all, and read, just all the time. And she was…loved music. She got a degree from the University of Louisville in Music. She could listen to records, when we would go visit her in the country. It was always a time to remember, but not with any great joy, but the fact that she was being take care of, and you always felt sorry for her well-being, because of the fact that she was someone had never seen a tree. That was always tough. But, after that, she 47:00just stayed down there in the country. I hardly saw her any after I was fifteen, or so. Because at that time, I was in high school, and always had something else to do. And this, I’m sure, is not entertaining and the war, but you said you were interested in things that happened before the war.

Diakov:Yes, before the war…about your family. And we’re taping this for your family, too.

Stiles:My family was good—my mom was good, and my brothers were good. My dad was extremely intelligent. We got a letter from the man that used to be—Halleck, his name was Halleck, principal of Male High School, back in the 1915’s and such—and he had written a letter for dad about his scholastic 48:00abilities and to introduce to the Federal Reserve Bank, so he got a pretty good recommendation there, and he…insisted on Jack and Joe and I to do well in school, and he used to help us with our studies. He would read to us when we were three years old, so we would get a lot out of all of our schooling. We all graduated well, and I remember Male in ’42, and I had some good professors, and the school at that time, was just excellent, and all…most all of the teachers at Male High had been graduates of Harvard or Yale or Princeton, 49:00a lot of good schools. So the three friends I mentioned, Max, and Roger and Allen, and others that I know, Ed Alvey, and such, we all volunteered for service, because we were all…it was an extremely patriotic school, and [ ] and Saint X, for the whole city was—and the United State, for that matter, for the most part. We took the test that we were required to fly, or to be a naval officer. We all became officers in the Navy or the Army or the Marines or air force Navy, for the most part. There were some that didn’t, and were drafted, but a good portion of us enlisted. After we came back, we all went to college, 50:00and we all did well at U of L, or other schools around.

Diakov:How did you keep in touch with your family when you were in the service?

Stiles:I’ve got a whole stack of letters there on the stairs. I didn’t know that my mother was keeping them, but she kept every letter I ever wrote her. I’ve got them all on the stairs here, and my granddaughter takes big pride in reading those letters. I’ve loaned her boxes of those, so she could read them. She’s going to Eastern Kentucky University now, and that same desire to do well was passed along to my sons and my brothers’ children, and now my granddaughter, she just finished the first year at Eastern Kentucky, and is a 4.0 51:00grade for his first grade, and she won an eight-week award to Harvard, so we just sent her up to Harvard this year, and she went to Harvard for eight weeks. She had two four-week sessions up in Cambridge. We’re real proud of her for that. So, that [ ].

Diakov:Did your mother and father write you pretty regularly?

Stiles:Yes, they did.

Diakov:And your brothers, who were in other areas, were they able to write to you?

Stiles:Yes, they all got into service, and my…Jack, who’s two years younger than I…he always wanted to fly…I believe I told you that too, how he left with Cat, and the CIA, and… Diakov:Yeah, he had a hard time getting in the cockpit there, 52:00for a few years, didn’t he?

Stiles:Jack?

Diakov:Yes, he wasn’t able to fly until Korea…yes?

Stiles:Know where he was lost?

Diakov:No.

Stiles:When he was with the CIA, in the Navy, he was on the Carrier Oriskany, and he was aircraft carrier pilot, but he tried, he wanted to fly so much after the war, that he wanted to flew, and then flew with Cat Airline, and then Air America, they called it the second time. But, then Joe, he was four and a half years younger than I, so he volunteered too, for the Korean War, and he 53:00was in a field artillery group…the target-spotting plane. So, all three of us flew. I was in the Air Corp, Jack in the Naval Air Corp, and Joe was in the spotter planes—these little light planes where they would go out and fly over the Japanese positions, or the Koreans…that 54:00they would target. But he was spotter for that. Each of us, for a ten year period, one, or two of us at one time were away, and mom was…we did talk about that…she always seemed cheerful when we got home, and I’m sure she must have worried that we were all gone. But we all got back.

Diakov:Did she ever say anything to you, before you left, or give you any advice?

Stiles:No, she just said, “See us when you come home.” She’d just tell us she’d see us. And if we…I had two leaves—one of them a week-time and one a two-week time, and every time we got home for a break, before we got overseas, we’d come home and she’d always have great food to eat. She’d save her 55:00ration cards to have a lot of good to eat. It was good. I guess where we…all of us got an opportunity to go to college. Joe, he was—he volunteered to go. He’d already graduated from U of L in Liberal Arts, and had already been admissioned to med school, and Murry Kinsman, was the dean of the med school, and Joe asked him if he should, if he could go—or should he stay, and Kinsman said, “No, Joe,” he said, “I’m proud of you. I’ll let you go, but I promise I’ll have a place for you when you get back.” And he did, so Joe graduated as an orthopedic surgeon, and practiced, oh, 56:00I guess, for about forty years. He had his practice in Owensboro. Jack, in between, after he got out of CIA, he was living in Japan, and he met a person over there that he knew—that they’d been friends. And this fellow was not a pilot, but he was an executive with Philco, radio and such in Toyko. They got to buddies. The both [ ] from Atlanta, and he talked Jack into coming to Atlanta. He said let’s start a dry-cleaning business. So they did, and used their money to start a laundry, shirt laundry business, and ended up it was Fashion Clothing Wear, or something like that, and they ended up with twenty-six dry cleaning stores in Atlanta. 57:00Ended up with quite a few dollars of money. After they’d had it for about six or eight years, this fellow, Jack wanted to be a missionary, which he did. So he sold out his half of the drycleaners, and was going to the Atlanta First Baptist. He ended up with some help from that church, to start an orphanage in Kenya. He was there—he just now retired; he’s eighty now. He was a missionary in Nairobi for about ten, fifteen years, so he’s 58:00out of that, and he ended up very well. Then, Joe, of course was a doctor of orthopedics, and then I…started working from U of L, I started in with Sears…Sears and Roebuck and Company. I was with them for forty years, and they had a system—General Robert Wood was the president from years ago—he started profit sharing for everybody, if you were going to be with Louisville, you had to join his profit-sharing plan, or you didn’t need to work. He said if you didn’t like that, then you don’t need to work with Sears. So, everybody did that. We had to resign if you ended up as an executive, in a certain level at Sears, you had to 59:00retire at 63, because he wanted young people to come along, and not to keep the people there forever and ever. He wanted young people to come along and take jobs, and step up the line, which is what we all did, until the federal government came in, about ten years ago, and said, no, that was against the law, and make you quit.

Diakov:Make you retire young?

Stiles:[Laughter]. Make you retire young. So you had to retire at 63 whether you liked it or not, at Sears. And so, all of us did pretty well.

Diakov:You’re very fortunate.

Stiles:We are. So we had it all the way from when we were little kids, we lived well, and in everything we did, we came out in pretty good shape.

Diakov:Well, what do you think…well, let me ask you two questions, and then I’ll kind of ask a larger question, but, when you were in the Pacific, what did you do on your free time?

Stiles:Free time? 60:00 Diakov:Yes.

Stiles:Oh, we would play basketball; we had some basketballs up, or volleyball.

Diakov:You had mentioned that you liked sports….

Stiles:What’s the board game…you know where you go around the table?

Diakov:Like monopoly?

Stiles:No, it was a board game, just a little thing, and you had pegs you go in. He had me playing that game for days.

Diakov:Like backgammon?

Stiles:No, it wasn’t backgammon. It was a little peg game, but anyway, everybody played it so they liked it, but…so, it was just playing those games…basketball, volleyball, and there were people there that were being, looking ahead to being a sergeant. His duty was to keep the water well pump running, 61:00and so he was really a…quite an innovative guy. He went out and cut up pieces of stainless steel, off of jacked planes, that had been downed, and he would cut those up and he would make a wrist band for your watch, and put your wings on it. I’ve got mine upstairs somewhere. But it’s got your wings on that stainless steel, and he made the bend to fit you. I remember he made them for everybody…I think everybody in the Air Force wanted them. But he charged us ten pesos, which was five dollars.

Diakov:Oh, he charged you for them! [Laughter].

Stiles:Oh, yes, oh sure, he was thinking ahead. So, he…I don’t know whether he saved it and came home, or he used to play poker, I don’t know [laughter]. But that was his job—he never did have to fly, or anything else. He just kept that water coming in to 62:00Clark Field, to our part of the field. For there were various air squadrons placed around that whole area, and so our 22nd bomb group, we were in one area, so everybody had a mess hall, and all that there. But there was really, I guess it kept us busy.

Diakov:Do you remember where you were when you heard that the war had ended?

Stiles:Yes, we were, we were still at Clark Field, but…they had cancelled our motion, our missions for the next couple of days. We usually had them about every third day; we had a mission. But everything just closed, but they didn’t tell us why; we just stopped on our missions, for now. And we were just sitting outside our tent. 63:00We’d just finished eating at the mess hall tent, and we were just sitting around talking, and it came over the radio that for the whole field area there, our squadron area, that we had dropped an atom bomb on Japan, and, oh, man, we were all just as happy as could be, because there were...not have to worry about a mission anymore. And, so…then a couple of days later, they did another one, and then the war was over. They just—we had all….

Diakov:And they just told you over the loudspeaker—the war’s over? [Laughter].

Stiles:No, no we still had plenty to do, but we had—let’s see, I was going to say something else in there—but 64:00anyway, it was over. We had things we were going to do. We moved up to Okinawa, to a field called Yontan, and there was another field right next to it. I think I told you that’s where a couple of those planes crashed. And we went through a big storm there, and flew back after that storm. There’s another miracle of us flying—everything, practically all the food on that Okinawa Island was destroyed—just blown away. I have read in recent papers that that was the worst monsoon that was ever in that area. And, so, but they had…[ ] for the most part, and they had planes flying in from Guam, 65:00and they were flying in supplies. I guess shuttling it in from various places, and got it in within two days. They had enough food for us all to eat, and it was just a miracle what they could do. It was so fantastic. They made a lot of, they say, a lot of dumb mistakes but to plan that for ten, twelve million men at one time, to eat, to drive, to fly, to be cold, to be warm—it was just amazing that they could do that. So, it’s a…but again, I don’t think it could ever be done again.

Diakov:When did they tell you could go home?

Stiles:Well, it was a sundown…sunset mission. 66:00So we all went back down to Clark Field, and they had—it was a beautiful quarters there—the same as it was before the Japanese had taken it. The Japanese took it, and they didn’t wreck those buildings either. All those quarters were still there, and ready to use, even the distillery, I believe, at Tarlack…a town called Tarlack. It had a distillery there, and they…when the Japanese took it, they didn’t destroy the distillery, and when we took it back, we didn’t destroy it. We still could all drink Tarlack shellac [laughter]. So that’s the way that went. But this sunset mission, they come down and had all the things there—all the records, all of our records, and…for assignments, could have your choice of flying back, if you were an airman, you could fly a 67:00B-24 back, or whatever that had the range, or you could go by ship. And, so most of us wanted to fly back, so we did. And they assigned us to people we didn’t know. Our groups, or our planes, just kind of got mixed up. I didn’t fly back with anybody, and my pilot, they just kind of mixed us.

Diakov:How did that make you feel? Were you…did you get a chance to say goodbye?

Stiles:Well, I didn’t really…they had, they started to have open navigation then, who could by radio signal, you could get a route right away, so really, it didn’t put me very busy, but I did it, using the radio route, that way. We flew back to Muroc Air Force base, which is now Edwards Air Force Base, where they have the…space 68:00ships land. But it was Muroc dried lake, they called it then. And we landed there. And then flew us from there up to Mather Field, and then got us on a train to go to…Richmond, California, which is outside of San Francisco, it’s a harbor. Richmond is a town outside of San Francisco. We got a train together there, and to go…all of us who were headed east, we were going—if you were from Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, you were going to Atterbury. And south of 69:00Indianapolis, I remember they put me—they put I guess twenty-five or thirty officers on a pullman ship, or pullman car, and it happened they put me on as the captain car, of that…they put us on this car, and to make sure they got off to get food, and all that. And we all got back to Atterbury, in about three days, I guess.

Diakov:Had you been able to contact your family, since being back in the states?

Stiles:No, I didn’t. Just trying to be coming home, but I didn’t know where exactly. And after that, I didn’t have a phone, or anything. I believe I probably mentioned that when we got back, 70:00at Atterbury, one fellow was getting off, his mother and father picked him up there in their car, and they were driving him to Lexington, I believe, so they said they’d drive me to Louisville, so they did and let me off at the corner, right up the corner from our house. And I went in this little bar there, deli, and asked if I could use the phone, and I did. I called my dad, and almost before I could hang up, he was running up the street, so it was a big greeting. And it was a great ending, for me to get back.

Diakov:After you got back, was there any difference in how your parents treated you? I mean, you had been gone, now for a few years?

Stiles:No, it was…everything was fine. No, and then Jack was gone. Joe was still home, but Jack.

Diakov:So you made it back before Jack? 71:00Stiles:Yes, because he’d enlisted—he was in the Air Force, to be a cadet, but then they stopped that, and put him in as a military policeman at Enewetak, where they had the atom test. So he was out there at Enewetak as a military policeman, and that explosion out there. And he had, I remember he had some things, and I remember he sent some of us—where they said as a thing that people that are due to get souvenirs they had put a letter in a…to fly over this explosion, this atom bomb and everybody would get a postmarked letter that just flew through the atom bomb…smoke and such from it. 72:00So he got one of those, I remember, he had one sent.

Diakov:What about your friend, Max Archer?

Stiles:Max, Max stayed home. We were back together. He started to do well. I started in January of ’46.

Diakov:Were you the first one home?

Stiles:Yes, pretty close as him…I think I was the first one. Or Max maybe was, but he signed up at U of L, and Roger did. Roger had…maybe he was a little earlier than me…got back a little sooner, maybe a few weeks. But he’d started to U of L in January, same time. But he joined Kappa Alpha—Kappa Alpha Order—and he was always, we were always trying to do things together, so he talked me into coming over the Kappa Alpha House, 73:00and so I decided that would be a good group to be with, and they were all, all vets, really, because about the only thing we can home for were young high school girls.

Diakov:Worked out for you [laughter].

Stiles:Yeah, but anyway I joined the Kappa Alpha. Max didn’t; he didn’t to join in a fraternity, but he stayed at U of L, and he graduated. And while we were in the reserves, together, at Fort Knox, we flew out at Godman Field at Fort Knox to stay in the…Reserve air force. And we used to go out there about once a month and fly. And then, during that time, the Korean War started, and Max was flying troop carrier planes when he was in the service, out at Fort Knox. He was called a 74:00“jungle jumper.” He flew from Nadzab all the way up to the Philippines, just dropping off air troopers, parachuters, and so they called him back. A lot of pilots they called back. So he left, and when he left, we’d already had our three years and a month of active service, and then we were staying in the Reserves, so he had then about, eight to…oh, about eight or nine years. So when he got back in active duty, he wrote me and told me he was going to stay and make it a career, and so he did. He stayed and ended up in the strategic air command. He used to ride…fly B-52’s out over the…Alaska, 75:00and the Russian border, and be always with an armed atom bomb, and fly back to a field in Dakota. So that’s where he ended up, flying that thing all the way until he retired. So he was carrying active atom bombs while they were flying out over, around Alaska and over to the Russian air places. So he didn’t do…that’s all he did. But he, he enjoyed it. When he first came back, he had one tough time. He came back and got back in the service, and got back in Korea, they put him in a fighter plane for a while, just to learn to do it. He was in a plane down in Florida, 76:00I forget that name right now, but anyway his plane had—he was…in pilot’s fighter plane, you can adjust the seat by going [ ], and he put that down, and it broke while he was landing, and it broke, and broke his back.

Diakov:Oh my.

Stiles:So I went to see him down in Florida, and he had…he was all braced up for months, and he finally got all right. Then after that, he got well enough that he could go back, and fly B-52s. So he was…they were…we got married—he was my best man at our wedding, and I was best man at his wedding, and we used to visit one another. Last time he visited here—he ended up retiring to Oregon, 77:00to The Dalles. He came home here for the 50th anniversary of our high school—Male High. The 50th was in 1992. He came back, and we had a nice big get-together…everybody that we hadn’t seen for years, so we had that…still see a few of them. [Laughs] there are few of them. Like Roger’s dead, and Max is, they all are. But still some others…there’s one here named, we call him “Hatchey”—his name is Harrison Jones. Now he’s an attorney, he’s an attorney, Harrison Jones. Two that were navigators, friends of mine, Dr. Carroll Whitten…did you know Dr. Whitten?

Diakov:No.

Stiles:He has two sons that are doctors here in Louisville, 78:00Whitten’s—W-h-i-t-t-e-n. But Carroll was a KA, and he and Roger were KA’s. He had been…we went to the same navigator school. He was about two classes before me. I was in ’44, and I think he was in ’43, and then, Sidney Smith, he was a navigator. He went to Sullivan School too. But both of them were sent to Europe, just a few months before me, and both were shot down, and both were POWs. They spent, they came back, and Carroll was a doctor here, and Sid worked at Sears with me. He was a merchandise manager here, and I replaced him and then I went on to Cincinnati, and he stayed in Louisville, and they both came back from POWs, 79:00and had a tough time as POWs. They were shot down on their first mission—not hit, but the plane was crippled and it landed down in Yugoslavia, or Sid did. Sid was trying to escape underground…the underground system they had Yugoslavia. They were helping him—they had an underground, Tito was his name, I believe, and they had an underground escape way. They tried to get down to Greece, and they would get him to subMarines. He was out on that underground for about…well, see I worked with him, and I think he was underground for about four or five days, and somebody turned him in. So they marched him down to Germany, but I think the 80:00submarine, when they got down to the Meditteranean, there off Greece, I think they took some of them by ferry over to Africa, to some Africa bases. But he didn’t get to the sub, and he and Whitten, both ended up in about the same area for a prisoner camp.

Diakov:Well, what did your…as you look back, and as you look at the rest of your life…what did your World War II service mean to you?

Stiles:Oh, I thought it glorious. To have been in a group like that, and look back and see what happened, and see all—I didn’t know a bad John…I didn’t know a person…in all my, in my basic training, or at 81:00gunnery school, or navigation school, or pilot’s…everyone was great. You know, there were all just like that bunch there. And I’ve got some pictures of some of them at Kutztown, I told you we went to Kutztown with state teachers, and that group was good. Just everywhere you went, they were just good people. And they were all enthusiastic; they all were there. I never saw anybody sad; they were all anxious to get home, but the were anxious to do what they were there for. And every one of them did fantastic things. I am proud of every one of them. It was a good…I have no regrets. The only thing I have a regret now, is how the country has 82:00gotten downhill. It’s really sad, to see that—the type of fellows you grew up with, and went to war with, and the type of Congress we have now…which are—they don’t give a damn about what happens, as long as they get elected next two years. That’s all they’re really interested in. So, they’ve given me a bad outlook that way. And most of my friends that are my age, are feeling the same way. They feel—my two brothers—who are really right in the midst of everything too, when we get together, we still, we just look to the future for this country. We’re sorry for what our grandchildren are facing and they, even though our granddaughter is smart, and she gets to go to Harvard, we still feel sorry 83:00that it’s not going to be a good future for her. She’s just twenty-two… twenty-one, she’s just twenty-one. And, so it’s the sad type to look like that, and now I will say there are, but it’s a deteriorating number, of us. We’re all going to church regularly, my brothers, and our friends all go to church on a regular basis, but that’s a dwindling group too. It’s a country—a world—that is just, I don’t know what they’re trying to do. And Sue, she says, “Don’t worry about it—there’s nothing they can do about it—if that’s what they want to do, they ‘re going to do it.” So, you can’t do anything about it, but I can still preach about it, but it doesn’t do me any good 84:00 [laughter].

Diakov:You have a right to preach about it [laughter].

Stiles:But it…it…you see that it’s really—the news, foreign TV, I watch it for about an hour in the morning. I always watch Fox, because it to me, is the closest one to honesty that I can see, but I watch some of the stations, and wonder some of these guys, how could they get elected? I can’t believe they even graduated from college, some of them. So, they really are…but they don’t care.

Diakov:Well, let’s end this one on a happy note, because this recording is for the Library of Congress, but it’s also a recording for your family.

Stiles:Well, good. Will I get one for both of my boys?

Diakov:Yes, we can make duplicate copies. But you’ve talked about what the war meant for you, and you’ve talked a little bit about your parents, especially your father. What 85:00is the lesson or lessons that your father passed to you, that you want to leave for your children, and your grandchildren, if you had advice to give them?

Stiles:He just…we…all he talked about were good things—you know we didn’t…I got a couple of spankings [laughs] and we had a nice poplar tree with switches, that a couple of times I guess my brothers and I, we sometimes we had a few fights that we got switches on, but nobody sent them to jail or anything. They didn’t say that was bad for given us a switching, so we accepted that, because we deserved it. So, no, he just wanted us to continue to study, and he was glad we all went to college and wanted 86:00us all to work hard. My son, he told me, he said, “The only thing I’ve really taught him is don’t spend your money until you’ve got it.” He said, “Don’t go charging everything.” I told him, I told it to Jim—I said, “Jim, just don’t get yourself a lot of charge cards, and owe a lot of money. Just whatever you want, work to get it, but don’t put yourself in debt for it.” And that’s what he’s doing. He’s done very well. I don’t know—did you see that book review of his that they had in the paper?

Diakov:No, I didn’t.

Stiles:Would you want to see it…I’ve got a copy of it, just a few weeks ago.

Diakov:Yes, when we finish our interview.

Stiles:Okay, I’ll go and get it.

Diakov:Going on here, okay you’ve shared with me your son’s book, and some reviews of his book. What about your other son?

Stiles:Jeff is my son; he’s an attorney. 87:00Diakov:Oh, is he?

Stiles:He graduated from Ohio State, got his bachelors degree at Ohio State, and then law school in Louisville. He moved—he had two friends, Perkins was the big congressman from east Louisville, by the name of Perkins, and everything in eastern part of the state, has Perkins on the hospitals, and roads, and everything. But this fellow Perkins’ son, went to U of L about the same time Jeff did, and they graduated, and Bobby Russell, they both thought they could own eastern Kentucky if they’d go down to eastern Kentucky and practice, and that’s what they did. Perkins went to Jackson, Kentucky, and Jeff to Campbellsburg, and 88:00Russell to Richmond. So they’re still friends, but not Perkins—he ended up in jail. Do you remember when he was the congressman, and he did some things with the post office…that was his son. He was with the older Perkins, and he ended up…the big Chicago congressman was in that, and Perkins got in on that, so he ended up in jail. He’s now a preacher—he went to—when he got out, he went to theology school over this Presbyterian…over on….

Diakov:On Lexington Road?

Stiles:On Lexington Road. So he’s there, and Jeff talks to him every once in a while. We had a farm in Campbellsburg, and Perkins, he had a helicopter. He used to fly in to see Jeff. 89:00He’d fly in, and talk to him—he was a real nice kid, but he sure got off on the wrong way.

Diakov:Well, I appreciate your sharing with me your… Stiles:Well, you made me talk too much on there…[laughter]. I probably used more tape than most people have.

Diakov:Well, I don’t know; you’re my first interview.

Stiles:Oh, am I [laughter]?

Diakov:I think you did great. And thank you for sharing.

Stiles:I hope my voice was all right.

Diakov:It was just wonderful. Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW