A perusal of the documents led to another interesting find: veterans narrating their experiences of the war.
One of these veterans is Tony Praxel whom this reporter had the privilege of knowing on Veterans Day in 2008 through Bruce Petty who escorted a group of visiting veterans on a Mariana Islands Tour.
Their group stayed on Saipan to attend the Veterans Day ceremonies at American Memorial Park, then flew to Tinian on Nov. 12-13 and then went to Guam on Nov. 14
Their stories are compiled in a brochure and shared not only with veterans of the tour but with a number of interested individuals eager to know their stories, including this reporter.
Some photographs and recordings of the conversations vanished when this reporter’s PC crashed in late 2008.
Sifting through the Valor Tour brochures brought back memories of meeting that group of veterans including Praxel whom this reporter had an interesting conversation with at Fiesta Resort and Spa one late afternoon in November 2008.
Praxel shared his recollection of what happened more than 60 years ago during what they called “The Big War”.
Praxel, who was from Sacramento, California, said he was with the 98th Bomb Wing, 313th Bomb Wing, of the 99th Squadron stationed on Tinian.
He said during his stay on Tinian, “it was considered the largest airport in the world.”
He said it had four runways and prior to each bombing mission a B-29 would leave each runway one minute apart.
He recalled how they would see the B-29’s vanish at the edge of the runway and come back in sight as they slowly rise up the horizon.
Praxel said he was a radar operator on a B-29 back then, “bombing Japan from our base on the island of Tinian.”
He said, “It was at this time that what is now known as the Jet Stream was discovered when some of the B-29’s at high altitude were making very little ground speed. The crew discovered that if they changed their altitude things improved because they then were out of the very high winds,” he stated in a two-page document summarizing his experience in 1945.
After bombing Maebashi, Japan on August 5, 1945, Praxel said they didn’t have fuel enough to take them back to Tinian and they had to land on Iwo Jima.
He thought that U.S. Marines’ securing the island was a “life saver.”
For him, it saved their lives twice.
He narrated as they were landing on Iwo Jima, and with him sitting at the back, he heard stones were hitting the plane’s belly.
Immediately, he said, he informed the pilot who told him to check the bomb bay.
And check the bomb bay he did and discovered that the rear bomb bay doors were open and one 500 lb. bomb was still in the racks.
“One of the fire bomb clusters had hung up and dropped through the doors after the bumb of landing. We immediately called the tower to get the little fire bombs off the runway before any other planes landed,” he said.
Luckily, the 500 lb. bomb didn’t slip off the plane and land on the runway where it could cause a lot of damage.
As he looked back and contemplated on the dropping of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9 in 1945, Praxel felt that the bombs saved his life.
He reasoned, “That tragic action ended the war with Japan before we had to fly many more bombing missions.”
For Praxel, the bombing of those two cities obviated the need to invade Japan and averted flying low altitude support for ground troops. “We would have lost many B-29’s (possibly mine) to ground fire if we had flown as low as was planned for the invasion,” he said.
There was another incident in 1945 when they were dropping provisions to the prisoners of war in Japan. Just as they were heading home after the drop, bomb bay doors would budge: the rack holding supplies had been wedged “half in and half out.”
Praxel remembered how this slowed down the B-29’s aispeed.
He said, he and two gunners had no choice but to let loose of the rack with crash axes. He admitted how uncomfortable it was to do that as they saw the ocean “thousands of feet below us.”
In POW supply drop, they landed on Okinawa to refuel, rest, and eat.
With K-rations, they were also given old Army cots and a GI blanket.
They decided, he said, to stay at the back of their B-29 as they headed back to Tinian. He slept and so did the entire crew. When he woke up, he said, everyone had been asleep and the plane was in autopilot mode. Luckily they made it all safely back to Tinian.
There are thousands like Praxel who offer interesting war stories. Majority of them have already passed away. But it’s not yet too late. Those who can still engage in a lengthy conversation with them should embrace the opportunity and learn from them.
As this reporter dusted off documents and old photographs, a realization struck: to keep a backup copy in digital form and share the veterans’ stories so more people will know and appreciate the sacrifice they made to bring peace.
Another day passes and another day beckons for an opportunity to free old documents and photographs out of the closets.
