 Thank you very much. I never dreamed that as a staff sergeant who fought the Korean War in Europe and Africa with a typewriter, I'd be asked to address such a prestigious group. You know, we got a lot of questions about our title, Relentless Pursuit, and a few veterans thought that we were referring at one time they called the fighter planes Pursuit aircraft, Pursuit fighters, but that was not the origin of the title. It refers much more to the fact of the Thorpe family for more than 60 years fought to get information about their son and brother with very little success I might add. And then for the past eight years it's been a real quest for me interviewing former members of the 39th researching the history, especially what happened in New Guinea and Australia. But the story really begins in 1944. I was 13 years old, the same age as my neighbor Gil Thorpe. He lived one street away from me in Edgewood. I had two brothers, one fighting with the First Marine Division in the Pacific and another brother with the 82nd Airborne in Europe. Gil had a brother Bob who was a P-47 pilot in New Guinea. We exchanged war stories probably embellished but we never had too much. We weren't really worried about our brothers because John Wayne was winning the war in the Pacific and Errol Flynn was taking care of the Nazis and only bad guys got killed in war. And then something happened in early June of 1944 that changed our thinking dramatically. An army car pulled up in front of the Thorpe home. Gil was there aged 13 with his sister Nancy who was 15. The parents were not there and two officers came to the door and when they were told that the parents weren't there they handed Gil a telegram and said tell your parents your brother is missing in action. We felt a little different about the war after that. Nothing much happened in 1945 the designation missing in action was changed to killed in action and I remembered going to a memorial service for Bob Thorpe with my friends in 1945. And then nothing more was said. We just thought Bob had probably been lost at sea and that was it. Then in 1948 the Providence Journal ran a shocking story. The war crime trials had just started at Yokohama for the what they call the class B and C war criminals. The A war criminals had already been tried at Tokyo. They included the policy makers like Tojo. Well in the journal article they talked about how Robert Thorpe had been captured by the Japanese tortured and beheaded and five Japanese officers went on trial for his murder and later they reported that three of them have received life sentences. One received another 20 years to a previous sentence and the Lieutenant Commander Okumo who headed up the execution detail was sentenced to hang. And the next year in fact five years to the date May 28th 1949 Okumo was hanged at Tsukumo prison. The other four were all out under the general amnesty that occurred a few years later. When I left Rhode Island after college I hadn't spoken to Gil Thorpe in probably 40 years. My brother sent me an article written by Bob Kerr who wrote a veterans column at the Providence Journal and in it he referred to Gil's efforts to still find his brother's remains and return them to Rhode Island. I thought that had been settled years before. I called Gil and we still remembered each other and reconnected and I explained you know under the Freedom of Information Act you now have access. MacArthur had labeled all of the court martial records top secret and no one could go near them. But I said under the Freedom of Information Act you can gain access. Well Gil didn't really know how to do it and I did. So I agreed that I would get the records. I can't say I filled out a form and they smiled and gave them to me. Took seven trips to Washington DC, Tudor McDill and some veiled political threats and they finally gave me the records. I was in Washington DC. I can still remember returning to the hotel room. There were almost 1300 pages of courtroom testimony. I stayed up all night reading them. I read them till three o'clock in the morning and it was a horrible story. Bob Thorpe had left Guseppe Air Force Base on a strafing mission against Wewak which was the remaining Japanese stronghold in New Guinea. He was the last in a formation of 16 P-47s. The last one in always got the most flak and that day Bob's plane was hit by ground fire. He ditched off of Carroll Island. He probably would have drowned. He had lost his raft and everything else but a tree trunk floated by and he made it to shore. He was captured almost immediately by a Formosan Chinese guard unit that the Japanese used to man the beaches. He was turned over to a lieutenant by the name of Fujihara and marched over the mountains about seven miles to the headquarters of the 27th Naval Unit which was headed by Admiral Seito and his chief operation officer Captain Noto informed Seito of the capture and he told Noto to have the prisoner interrogated for military information and they chose Lieutenant Commander Okumo to do it because he spoke English and according to the records the interrogation started out in a civilized manner until Okumo began to ask questions about what plane were you flying? What base did you come from? How many men in your division? And Thorpe would give him nothing except name, rank and serial number. Okumo beat him and then he asked a final question. He said do you think the United States will win the war? And Thorpe replied I think we have too many resources to lose. Well that really enraged Okumo and he turned to enlisted men who were standing by and he told them the prisoner has insulted the emperor feel free to beat him and he reported back to headquarters while these enlisted people beat Thorpe head back shoulders. When he returned Noto told him that Seito said that the prisoner was to be executed in any fashion that Okumo desired. So Okumo walked out now at this point a man by the name of Lieutenant Commander Odosawa showed up with a ceremonial sword and they marched Thorpe to the beach. They dug a shallow grave but before he was executed Okumo turned to Odosawa and explained that they were going to use him for target practice first. So Lieutenant Fujihara fired first and he missed badly. He said at the courtroom testimony that he had done it deliberately because he felt he had gotten to no Thorpe on their journey across the mountain. Yamamoto wasn't quite as generous. He shouted out in English at Bob Thorpe I will now execute you with my pistol and he shot him in the leg. Okumo shot him in the other leg. Thorpe never felt to his knees. He stood throughout. They dragged him to the grave and Odosawa went through a quote mock Bushido ceremony. He washed Bob Thorpe's neck and the sword but he had the enlisted men laughing with his exaggerated movements. The final just before he was beheaded Bob Thorpe looked at Odosawa in a very calm voice asked what time is it and Odosawa struck and that wasn't even the end. A man by the name of Ogawa jumped into the grave and opened Bob Thorpe's chest and removed an organ probably the kidneys. Well I debated whether I should share this information with Gil Thorpe but I had to. I mean he insisted and we sat and read and cried together. Well after I read the Korbun testimony I started reflecting on other records and I had some surprises. First of all the kamikaze kids the spirit warriors all disappeared when the war crime trial started. They were replaced by a group of whining cowards. I did it because he ordered me to or I didn't do it. One of them even said he was never in the service. The man that desecrated Bob Thorpe's body. As early as 1945 one month after the war ended Admosado called a meeting at Carroll Island and they devised a cover up. Two Australian prisoners had also been captured and beheaded along with Bob Thorpe and fortunately well first let me tell you what they came up with this that the prisoners had all been captured they were in good health. They developed malaria and despite their most heroic efforts they all died and they were given full military funerals. Fortunately for us a Captain John Steed a lawyer by trade and a member Australian intelligence was sent over to get to the truth and first of all they turned over five bodies saying they three bodies saying they represented the two Australians and Thorpe and the investigation they found remnants of Japanese uniforms they were the remains of Japanese soldiers and Steed quickly broke them all down starting with the flight surgeon who admitted he lied and then Nodo and Nodo was tried and he received the 20 by the Australians and he received a 20-year sentence and Steed turned over all the other records to the Americans. I can't explain why we did nothing at that point. Steed went on he prosecuted a General Yamamoto who led the was responsible for the Bataan death march Shemishito who was responsible for the they were both hanged because of of Steed's efforts. After the war crime trials the class he finished in 47 an American intelligence officer by the name of Ched Ester found Steed's files so they went out to arrest all seven of the defendants. As soon as Seito learned that he was going to be tried as a war criminal he committed suicide in the typical Japanese way. They did arrest Ogawa who was dragged out of a hospital screaming that he had never been in the service he was the one that desecrated Thorpe's body. The only worthwhile thing that that Ogawa did he did hang himself in his underwear at Sugumo prison the first first war criminal to do so. There were other surprises I had when I started reading the court march. First of all I had no idea the Japanese war criminals were defended by American attorneys. MacArthur brought over 20 leading defense attorneys to defend these Japanese also they also were in defense of the of the seven class A war criminals. Actually the five Japanese were defended by a very astute defense attorney by the name of Edmund Peters and he did a very credible job. He started out Japan had never ratified the Geneva convention of 1929 which dictated how prisons of war were to be treated and he also quoted you know the tojo maintained since Japanese soldiers were not allowed to surrender if they were still able to fight. In fact if they did so they were subject to immediate execution so because of that they didn't feel that prisoners of war should be treated in any special way. Well prosecuted by the name of Leonard Rand he did a he did a very good job although I will say the original sentences Okuma was sentenced to hang three of them got life and Nodo was another 20 years was tacked on to his the sentence he was already receiving but a review commission largely based on Peters reversed the decisions they commuted Okuma from execution to 20 years and they reduced all these sentences accordingly. Another review commission went back went through the everything and reinstituted all of the original sentences. Of course they were they were all out of the exception of Okuma for Okuma they were all out within three years when MacArthur declared the general amnesty you know when I first started writing the book that was going to be it I was going to talk about pop thaw up the execution the court martial and then I started interviewing the remaining members of the 39th fighter squadron and Tom Brokaw said this was the greatest generation no question some of the things they endured I started with there was a man by the name of Lieutenant John Dunbar he didn't know Bob Thorpe that he don't he was only there a short time he preceded Bob but he kept a daily journal was which was so helpful when I was able to compare the actual records with John's and it was through John I met a man by the name of Fred Toby Fred Toby was Bob Thorpe's best friend they went through flight training together they even Fred even remembered meeting Bob Thorpe's mother Nora in Florida when they got their wings and they roomed together at GUSAP Fred was on that same mission that day in fact Fred and another great guy that I met Lou Lockhart they weren't looking for Bob Thorpe even though the squadron had been grounded because of weather they still weren't looking for Bob then I met a man by the name of Chuck Sullivan great pilot and ace Chuck Sullivan had to bail out over New Guinea and he ended up with a tribe of headhunters and he had to shoot his way out he killed the chief and uh I guess the one of the chief priests and he fought his way out and fortunately he ran into uh some Australian coastwatches and he got back to the 39th and was flying missions about a week later and one of the other surprises when I was interviewing uh Fred Toby he was talking about the p-47 and he said you know uh we didn't have any range we couldn't we couldn't do much of anything because it was such a gas guzzler until Lindbergh taught us how to fly it so I looked and I said Fred you mean Charles Lindbergh and he said yes I said the all I ever knew about Lindbergh was his historic flight and the fact that he was very unpopular he was pro-nazi before the war and uh he even received a medal from human gering uh so he was not too pro Roosevelt hated him Roosevelt said that Lindbergh wanted to he was in the reserve he wanted to go in the Air Force and Roosevelt said he would never ever wear an American uniform well Henry Ford realized the aeronautical genius that he was who he hired him as a consultant and then he worked also with Pratt Whitney and he went through the Pacific and he he doubled the range of almost every plane especially the p-47 but the b-40 24 the 29th in fact MacArthur said that Charles Lindbergh was the unsung hero of the war in the Pacific now one of the other surprises I had when I got into the research um I didn't realize the strategic importance of New Guinea if New Guinea had fallen there was no question we would have lost Australia Australia was in jeopardy anyway there was sub Darwin was bombed out by the Japanese they even found uh Japanese submarines in uh Australian harbors it was so bad that there were politicians in Australia that wanted to give part of Australia to the Japanese hoping they'd stay out of the metropolitan areas and there was a lot of even with the military uh the crack Australian troops were all fighting in Africa for the mother country uh they had a reserve made up of mainly elderly men and they thought the best strategy was to defend in Australia itself and MacArthur wisely said no we must defend from the islands especially New Guinea we had already lost New Britain and many of the other islands all we had really in New Guinea was Port Mosby he appointed General George Kennedy Kenny probably one of the greatest decisions that MacArthur ever made uh General Kenny was a was a genius he went to Europe in the 30s and examined the especially the German Air Force and he talked about the focal wolf wolf and the measurement and he said you know we don't have any planes we should be developing planes like this but the higher ups didn't like him he was too much of a rebel and they gave him a desk job until the war got started and he was under one of MacArthur's army generals and he walked in one day and the general was trying to tell him about strategy he walked in one day and he took a pen he punched the a hole and he said general this little hole represents what you know about air strategy the rest is me when they first went to New Guinea in the 39th Air Force was right there they were flying p39s and p40s slow not very maneuverable reached a point where they did have Australian coast watchers in New Zealand that tipped them more up on enemy bombers and fighters were that have like a 20 minute window what they'd have to do they'd have to fly out to sea because it took them 20 minutes to reach the 20 000 foot altitude that the Japanese would come in at when they got back to try to they were already dropped their bombs or whatever and had had left so the early days of the war the air war well ground war two were horrific but even with the p39s and the p40s the 39th held its own against the Japanese zero and some of their most advanced fighters because of the skills of the pilots and then in 1943 the p38 arrived and everything turned around because of the skill of the 39th they the 39th was the first fighter squadron equipped with the p38s and from the first day they went out general Kenny wrote a report and 16 p38s went out shot down more than 40 Japanese planes and didn't lose one plane one plane suffered some minor injuries but the whole war began to turn around when Bob Thorpe was flying in New Guinea he got there in January of 1944 we had air supremacy we didn't have ground they still had a lot going but we we had control of the skies they didn't have to worry about fighter planes anymore at that point the I think one of the things that that bothers me as I think back on on the ordeal with the Thorpe family and what these what these guys went through wasn't just Bob Thorpe you know they knew if they were taken prisoner what was going to happen to them the Japanese hated the flyboys as they called them and they were said most of them were executed immediately there were two members of the 39th that one was Bob Thorpe's roommate another by the name of James Steele was his roommate he was captured by the Japanese and I found the records I got more than I got the records of all the war crime trials and what they did with James Steele they took five Japanese noncombatants and they told them you have to prove your courage in another way and I have in the records I have the signed confessions of what they did they bayonaded bayonaded James Steele Lieutenant Gene Duncan another member of the 39th was captured and he was beheaded well I think the thing that I have to get a book here if you'll give me one minute I think I remember the page you know I'm pretty good at that stuff but I forget where I parked my car there's a there's a lot of talk about what the Japanese knew and didn't know during World War II we had the same thing in Germany in Nuremberg trials etc I just like to read you a passage that I extracted from a Japanese okay on December 13th 1937 a photograph of two smiling young Japanese officers Toshiki Mukai and Tosana Noda appeared on the front page of the Tokyo newspaper the Tokyo Daily News in English the headline read incredible record to cut down a hundred people Mukia 106 Noda 105 both second lieutenants go into extra innings that's a direct quote from the newspaper the people were defenseless Chinese POWs what is so monstrous about this story beyond all the murders was the acceptance indeed the celebration of this horror by the Japanese people so it was to be expected that the Japanese military savage treatment of civilians and POWs was not to be limited to the butchery of 30 million Chinese whom they regarded as an inferior race but would be inflicted on all of the populations and militaries they battled and conquered in Asia in the South Pacific well those two officers may have enjoyed reading the story in the paper but so did the Chinese in 1948 they were both executed the recently Prime Minister Abe has made the statement there were no war criminals in Japan during World War II they were actually there were war heroes you know carrying out I bet you didn't know that Pearl Harbor was a defense mechanism necessitated by American imperialism a Japanese textbook that is being used in ninth and tenth grade they devote two chapters to World War II one to Nagasaki one to Hiroshima nothing is said about the Bataean death march rape of Nankin the atrocities in the Philippines the just nothing is said about that well you know I knew I was writing the book and I wanted to make especially this state aware of of Bob Thorpe and what he had done and I thought about it and you know in about five years ago I wrote a play called the murder trial of John Gordon and one night out during a performance a gentleman approached me and said you think John Gordon is innocent don't you and I said yes I do and he said well what are you going to do about it and I said well it's a little late for reprieve he was hanged in 1845 so this gentleman was a representative Peter Martin and what he did he represent he introduced a bill and it resulted in Governor Chase be signing a pardon for a man who was executed 167 years ago so I thought about it and I called my friend Peter Martin and I let him tell the rest of the story so Ken and I got together at the coffee shop and we talked about what we had done with John Gordon and pardon and then we decided you know he said what can what can you do for this guy and I said I really don't know I'll find out for you and I did not know anything about military border call or anything about how we could go about this but I was at the time a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee so I knew who to call I called my friend Ed Cain who had worked with me on everything that we had done relative to veterans and I said I've got this request and I would like to like to get some help so he had been appointed to the House Veterans Advisory Committee and that committee was set up to help the politicians up there to understand the military protocol things we need to do so that committee got together and they set up a couple of events and we had we had an event at the State House where we had a you know like a 50 minute ceremony honoring Robert Thorpe and Ken said to me we'll have a special guest and the special guest was coming up from Tennessee and this really really was a great throw for me because I get to meet Lieutenant but actually Captain Lewis Lockhart who came up to the State House and he spoke and he spoke about his friend Robert Thorpe when he got up and over the years he seems to have shrunk a little bit so over the years he he remembered his friend Robert Thorpe but he never knew what happened to him so he got up and he spoke at this event and I was able to capture exactly his words and put them into the book in in the section of the book we talk about the ceremonies and I can remember like it was yesterday Lou get up I remember Bob it's like like wait a minute 69 years later and he talks about him like he's like it was last week so we had a we had a great ceremony and then there's Lou and I was able to give him the the the citations from the House of Representatives and we were able to put all of those citations and proclamations in the in the book and he came up with his nephew in law Doug Hale who's a lawyer down in Memphis in Memphis Tennessee so it was a great event I didn't have enough pictures of the veterans at that event I need to get them for this presentation but I assure you the the House Chamber was full of military people give them proper recognition and so then eight days later we went to the ceremony the Memorial Day ceremony should have said Memorial Day not Veterans Day went to the Veterans Cemetery and here's Gil Thorpe and Gil is going to be with us today but he's not feeling well and here he is receiving the Rhode Island Star the highest medal that you can get from the state of Rhode Island we still haven't given up on trying to get him a national medal we're working on that but here's the Rhode Island Star posthumously awarded the Secretary of State Robert Thorpe on Memorial Day 2013 and we were very happy to have the the ceremony there was a the Old Glory ceremony put on by this group of of Navy people who come from right here from the Navy Hospital and it was really an impressive impressive event and later on I'll give you my my card with the website we built for this back up this book and you can actually see the ceremony on the website then as a result of what we had done up to that point I was pleased to be invited to the 39th Fighter Squadrons Association Reunion in San Antonio, Texas and I did not know anything about that organization but I will assure you that as soon as I get invited I went out and I bought a ticket and I just thought that that was the important thing to do so I went down and I got to meet Frank Royal and this is this is a picture two years after I met Frank he was 98 when I met him and this is Frank and his 100th birthday this year June 15th and this means a lot to me because you know we we see young military people and then we forget but look at that's Frank Royal when when he was actually the commander of this organization and I love the fact that you can really recognize him so he was he was great help and then I was down there speaking I just noticed I had the same suit on this is my speaking suit and so we had a great time and then Representative Marvin Abney who flew down and he was he spent the week in Washington D.C. at a seminar he got up on Saturday morning and flew to San Antonio to be there to help me make this speech and he ended our all of the citations and then we got together and it was a great great memory and then finally on June 12th 2015 we placed a marker that was made by the VA at the cemetery and here's Gil and Ken where Gil is signing off the paperwork necessary to say we recognize the fact that we will never get the body back so this this paperwork authorized the people in charge of the cemetery to put a plaque in the missing missing in action section and then we are celebrating it and this is the plaque that's in the ground right right at our feet and then John Kennedy referred to the romance that was documented in the book we're putting this presentation together Ken's original book was going to be broken trust and it was going to be about how the United States government had totally ignored the thought family and it was kind of if I may say narrow and more negative than the book that we ended up with and so we were very fortunate to receive love letters from Mary Morgan Martin no relationship to me I'm not related to you but Mary Morgan Martin is the is the child of of two people that were in the war so this is this is Mary Louise Scott her mother and she was a nurse in Australia and she listed had to put this picture in because this is a romance and for anybody that ever pursued a young lady back in those days this was the house mother that he had to get past I gotta give the guy a lot of credit it worked you know we make a movie we're looking for somebody to play this pot this is wonderful so anyhow in spite of Mrs. Fields they had a nice romance started in 1942 and Mary second lieutenant Mary Scott and at the time George was the second lieutenant and then they carried on in there he would fly over to Australia to see her and Ken tells the story about one of the guys flying over to Australia and bring him back a plane full of beer with the empty bomb bomb bays and going over to get get beer and bring it back then he says I met Mary in Tacoma and flew her back to in Atlanta she sat in the co-pilot seat as the first person in the family to fly would be we're married in the base chapel with chaplain Charles B Smith officiating no tell me something don't those two look like movie actors I mean it's like really if somebody made a movie and he put people like that in it I'd be saying ah that's not real but that's the real people and we had a great time with with Mary Morgan Martin getting all these pictures and there are well over a hundred photos on the website we couldn't put everything in the book and there are maps of the area and we put a lot of love letters in there that George was writing to us to to Mary and then led us home to his parents so George had completed 147 missions he was called back after he and Mary were married to to fight in the battle of the Philippines this p-51 was hit by a ground fire the radio that he was returning to the base but the engine failed that he was forced to bail out his his body was struck by a plane and he died instantly Mary was three months pregnant at the time so our friend Mary Morgan never got to know her father and our thanks go to her and she made the ultimate sacrifice when you think about it giving up your father without ever knowing him and it's a good fortune that she provided us with all the love letters that a mother had saved over the years and a lot of those love letters are subplot in the in the book and made a significant contribution to the book so Ken and I would like to acknowledge the book came about because of the cooperation the 39th fighter squadron association Patrick Conley wrote the forward former secretary and Navy William J. William Middendorf wrote the epilogue Governor Chaffey was involved in helping us to get all of the honors again like he was with the John the John Gordon case the Rhode Island House Represents Committee and Veterans Affairs was very involved in helping us with their staff and the Veterans Advisory Council we have to thank the VA for providing the the monument and the Veterans Cemetery for all he did to make it happen so there's Robert Donk 20 years old sacrificed his life and there are some pictures of the 39th fighter squadron I have a lot of other pictures that I will just show you that are all in in the book or in the website and the plane a lot of the guys and Ken can help me because Ken Ken is old enough he remembered all these guys names this was the 39th on its way to Australia and this is when they had the p 38th that's Roy sir who was a chief engineer on the website when you look at these pictures the legend underneath the pictures that tell you who all the people are let me hold it there yeah this was Tommy Lynch Tommy Lynch and Dick Bond with the two greatest aces in the war on the Pacific as a matter of fact Dick Bond was the leader they used to they were allowed to fly their own missions the two of them would just take off and sort of freelance and unfortunately one day they they spotted a a small Japanese ship what they didn't know trailing behind the ship was a bunch of it was sort of a trap Lynch went in on a strafing mission well Bong did too and but his plane was hit and before he could get out the plane exploded and he was killed Dick Bong who was the leading aces in the Second World War he returned and they didn't want him to fly anymore combat missions so he was designated as a test pilot and on the same day that the atomic the second atomic bomb dropped he was testing the plane they're called the x99 and it malfunctioned and he was killed so the two of them did not survive the war that yeah that's Dick Bong that's Helen that's Jack Frost believe it or not that's his name Jack Frost he's still alive he's 94 years old and he gave us a lot of great information oh yeah that's their encampment I think that's it that's it I wasn't standing by Peter because I like him so much it was the microphone if you're interested in knowing more about this topic please come up and take one of these cards in the back of the card is the website Ken didn't tell you that when I left office a year ago we got actively involved in producing this book and I became the chief nerd behind the the production of the book and it was been a great pleasure and it's been fun thanks they're questions and no there were no co-pilots just one pilot yeah they had the p39 p40 p38 p47 p51 they're all single yeah Ken why were the atrocities coming up that part well I can understand a little bit of MacArthur's position because in in 1948 things were heating up in MacArthur Newark Korea the North Koreans were making a lot of noise the Russians were making he wanted to get them over and done with quickly Nuremberg was a lot quicker okay they went through because the Japanese war crimes I went blind reading all the but the fact is the translation problems some of them some of the things ended up very humorous because what you would have the American prosecutor like the trial of these five he asked in his opening remarks he requested the death penalty for all five well the Japanese audience is sitting there they don't know what's going on two minutes later when the translation finally gets to them they're ooh and anowing when they're on to another subject completely and that happened frequently and the even the the the Japanese I don't know I have to be be careful how I say it but the Japanese even in a lot of conversations tend to shout you know what is your name I am lieutenant Fuji how are the 27 you know we would just normally say I'm such and so so a lot of that went on and the Japanese they're not used to defensive they're not that's why we had to bring over American attorneys and there were restrictions like and the first day Peters as I said he was a very astute lawyer and in his opening remarks he said why isn't the greatest war criminal in the far east emperor hero Hito here today and he was admonished by the by the court martial panel he was warned never to bring hero Hito's name up again that was on McArthur's orders McArthur did not want hero he they had made a decision that hero Hito would not it was hero Hito who said you know Jimmy do little uh greatest and I had the I interviewed Jimmy do little once in 1955 and it was one of the highlights of my writing career a very he had a reputation Jimmy do little did not swear and the reason I was sent to interview him in 1955 it was the 10th anniversary of the ending of the war and they were having a special ceremony in Washington DC in which Japanese representatives were coming and it was I guess kind of a loving I was sent and I interviewed Jimmy do little and we talked about the raid and what he went through and a very modest man well the interview was over so I got up and I started to leave and then almost as an afterthought I said oh general will you be going to Washington DC for the festivities his face got very red and he stood up and he said those Japanese bastards killed my boys I wouldn't sit at the same you know table with them well when I started walking out his adjutant who was a lieutenant colonel was still in so we walked out and he looked at me he said sergeant that's off the record right I said it's off the record so it never it never appeared but you know the uh when Peter was talking about George Morgan uh there's a story in there I I think I've been around a lot of things that almost made me cry because you know this made it flown 147 missions and they was called back and Mary sent me in fact it's in the book Mary sent me she found it in a newspaper there was published in 1946 it was yellow with age her mother had cut it out and it was called missing him and it was beautiful it was anonymous I tried I searched the way I had people searching that I could not find the author but it was just a beautiful poem and you know we we mentioned God bless the 8th Air Force and everything they went through you know if they got shot down they bailed out over Germany or France or Belgium or Holland the guys in the 39th or the whole 50th Air Force they bailed out over the worst terrain in the world New Guinea you know filled with you know 22 years after the war was over Nelson Rockefeller's son was on an expedition in New Guinea with a crew and some other anthropologists and the crew tipped over and he was the strongest swimmer so he swam to shore and disappeared and they sent over investigators they finally got to the truth he had flown into a camp he was murdered and eaten so the this is this is a tough area to fight a war and then they lost there was they called it Black Sunday it was in April of 1944 300 planes of the 50th Air Force went on a mission against Wabal and when they were returning they had this oh and Stanley mountain range in New Guinea it was totally fogged in and they lost 37 planes that day not to enemy aircraft or ground fire they lost them to weather and they blew Fred Toby the man we talked about Bob thought Fred spent three years in a VA hospital after the war in 1945 about a month before the war ended he was taken off on a mission and these p-47s were always overloaded with gas and they had more fatalities taken off from New Guinea than they did in actual combat and Fred's plane was taken off and he had crashed completely engulfed in in flames and I had the whole story in the background and his flight engineer jumped into a jeep and drove into this Holocaust and pulled Fred out he was horribly burned I mean you still saw when I interviewed him seven years ago you still saw evidence in his neck he had had a lot of plastic surgery but ironically his flight surgeon a flight his flight engineer the one who saved him uh Fred lived in Tampa Florida this guy was from Michigan he retired in Tampa so he and Fred reconnected and I said he must have been like old times talking over those stories and Fred looked at me and said he would never mention that he would consider it you know not not in good taste and it was Fred told me straighten me out and another thing that I really had trouble understanding when I first tracked him down in 07 I called him I told him who I was and what I was doing and he welcomed me to his home and we went out we had dinner that night we talked all day he showed me photo when I told him what happened to Bob Thorpe he started to cry and he said I didn't know that and I looked you know unfortunately I'm an old investigator reporter and if I got a question I got to ask it and I've gotten into a lot of trouble over the years but I said you know I don't understand this Fred you told me you know you met Noah Thorpe Bob's mother they went on leave together to Australia they did everything together I said I don't understand why didn't you contact the Thorpe family after the war and he looked at me he said can you you don't understand he said when somebody went missing we pretended like they were transferred we didn't want to know anything else we didn't want to know the truth and he said I always suspected Bob probably died that way but he said you know what I couldn't face it so it gave me a little more understanding thank you