We spent an extra day at Hickam changing an engine cylinder. The problem was not too serious, but Earl was a conniver. He persuaded the local maintenance officer to give us some hanger space in return for the labor of our crew who would perform the cylinder change. The engine ran perfectly on test runup, and we all had an extra day on the beaches of Waikiki. We were airborne again that night and heading toward San Francisco. I remember listening to Nat King Cole on the radio as he sang that lovely balld Mona Lisa, a song that still reminds me of Hawaii and that long flight from Okinawa.

We delivered our tired old B-29 to Tinker Field and then scattered in all directions. I took a commercial flight to the new Greater Pittsburgh Airport, where Joan and Carson met me. My ten days with loved ones in the Valley passed quickly. I especially enjoyed visiting with my Mom. All my life she had been a constant and loyal supporter. She always wrote loving letters, full of news about the latest activities of the family.

My mother and Nan looked around Trenton, New Jersey, after I had shipped out for Okinawa, hoping to find a piece of land with space for some horses and a decent garden. I told them I was more than happy to be the financial backer of anything they found to buy, but nothing ever came of it. This was probably just as well because before long Nancy began to get serious about Captain Tom Stansbury, the medical officer she met at Ft. Dix. When Tom went to Minneapolis to begin his year of residency training in radiology, Nan went with him, and Mom returned to the Valley where her roots were so deeply planted.

My leave was almost over on June 25, 1950, when 60,000 North Korean troops swarmed southward in a surprise attack on South Korean (ROK) troops. The invading communist forces of Kim Il Sung were backed by Russia and Red China. President Truman reacted immediately and angrily, sending back to Korea the troops we had only recently withdrawn. More imortant, the United Nations Security Council denounced the aggression of North Korea and authorized immediate further military support to U.S. forces now on the ground. I booked a commercial flight to San Francisco, knowing full well that our squadron would be called for photo reconnaissance work.

The Korean War was called a police action, so labeled by Harry Truman, and fought on a slender peninsula somewhat smaller than the State of Florida, bounded on the west by the Yellow Sea and on the east by the Sea of Japan. To the north, just across the Yalu River, lay the inscrutable mass of communist Mancuuria. Not known to most Americans at the time was our government’s very real concern that the North Korean invasion was the first thrust in a worldwide communist breakout. U.S. troops went on high alert status around the world, while Washington waited for the Russians to move against Berlin and for the Red Chinese to attack Nationalist Chinese government forces in exile on Taiwan. This whole thing was beginning to look like the start of World War III. The Korean War lasted almost three years, until July 27, 1953, and caused four million casualties, including 54,246 Americans killed, more than 100,000 Americans wounded, and 8,177 Americans missing in action. It would all end in a stalemate on the 38th parallel, just where it began on June 25, 1950.

I returned to Okinawa to find my squadron moving to Johnson Air Base in Japan, northwest of Tokyo. In my absence, Ted Stern had organized all the personnel actions necessary to get the squadron ready to go. Aircraft and crews, along with mechanics and support gear, were able to move into action without delay. Flying photo reconnaissance missions against the North Koreans was much less sophisticated and life-threatening than flying bomber missions over Germany during World War II. Our missions started with breakfast in the Officers mess, after which we would gather at the flight operations room for takeoff at 8:00 A.M. Usually our flights were unescorted single ship missions about 700 miles across the Sea of Japan.