Marvin H. Saunders I was born in Ogden, Utah, April 13, 1921. I graduated from Ogden High School June 1939 and from Weber Jr. College with an associate degree of science in June 1941. I immediately entered the mechanic learner program at Hill Field for six months of training in aircraft radio repair. I was just finishing that training when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. From there I went to work at Hill Field. About late May 1942 I saw an Army Air Corps advertisement offering training as Air Force Cadets and being commissioned second lieutenants in the Army Air Corps upon completion of the training. This was available to people having completed two or more years of college in engineering courses. I realized that I fit into that category and decided to apply for it. I did apply and was accepted so I was enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet May 6, 1942. But I was told to go back to my job and wait for further orders which I did and was immediately transferred with two other aircraft radio repairmen to McChord Field, Washington, about June 15, 1942 to open an aircraft radio repair facility at that air field. We immediately traveled by train to Washington where we established the radio repair facility. September 1942 I received orders from the Army Air Corps to report for duty December 1,1942, to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. I was there for two weeks and all of the cadets were transferred to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where I entered the aircraft armament school, TS AAFTTC. We had a strict regime of arising at 4:00 a.m. and retiring at 10:00 p.m. Each day was filled with calisthenics, classes on all types of aircraft armament systems, that is, machine guns, cannons, gun turrets, bomb racks, etc. There were about 3,000 cadets at the school that were divided into four different series of courses, armament being one of them. The others were airplane fuselage and engines, communications, and ordnance. We ate in the university's giant dining room which had an orchestra balcony in it, and we had the great fortune to have the Glen Miller Orchestra there at many of our meals to serenade us. They were also our marching band who introduced a swing type marching music. I graduated from there, with a second lieutenant commission, May 5, 1943. My first assignment was squadron armament officer, 537th Squadron, 382nd Bombardment Group, Army Air Base, Pocatello, Idaho. I was put in command of sixty highly trained men called 'armorers'. We were flying B-24 bomber airplanes. In December, 1943, our group was transferred to the Muroc Army Air Base, California, where it was disbanded as a group on May 3, 1944 and became the 421st Army Air Force Base Unit. I became the flight line armament officer and supervised one hundred and sixty armorers working around the clock in four shifts of forty men each, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Our mission was to keep the airplane's armament equipment in shape for all of the hundreds of new crews training flights. This included 50 caliber machine guns, gun turrets, bomb racks, etc. As at Pocatello, the training included practice bombing missions, shooting the 50 caliber machine guns from the turrets and waist gun positions at tow targets pulled by an airplane, and on ground gunnery practice. We were training and graduating about one hundred ten man crews a month. We had many crashes, each one nearly always killing the entire ten-man crew. The crews were very young men who were learning to fly a very large four-engine airplane. The average age of the pilots was nineteen years old, and they had just come from a few months of single engine training in a very small airplane. A plane's crew consisted of four commissioned officers, a pilot, a copilot, a navigator, a bombardier, and six enlisted men who operated the guns and gun turrets. May 5, 1944,1 married Marie Bingham (May 5, 2004, will be our 60th wedding anniversary.) I received a promotion to first lieutenant July 21, 1944. September 5, 1944, I received orders to report September 9, 1944, to Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, for the purpose of attending an aviation ordnance course for six weeks. At this school I was taught about all types of ordnance equipment and materials including types of bombs and fuses, explosives including incendiary, and how to use them. Oct. 13, 1944, I received orders releasing me from duty with the 58 421st Army Air Force Base Unit, Muroc Army Air Field, California, and assigning me to headquarters, Second Air Force, Colorado Springs, Colorado, by command of General Arnold. We received permission to drive a car and so my wife and I bought an old car and drove across the country to Colorado Springs. Nov. 12, 1944, I received orders relieving me from duty in Colorado Springs and assigning me to the 221st Army Air Force Base, Alexandria, Louisiana. So Marie and I got in our little car and drove to Louisiana. Here, I was assigned as ordnance ammunition officer (awaiting further assignment). December 11, 1944, I received orders assigning me to the 502nd Bombardment Group, Army Air Field Grand Island, Nebraska, to report by December 16, 1944. This was the group I was to go overseas with. So we drove to Grand Island and reported to my group headquarters. I was assigned to the 430th Bombardment Squadron, 502nd Bombardment Group as squadron ordnance officer. I was busy getting acquainted with my men, having instructions on all of the ordnance equipment we would be using, getting to know the B-29 bomber airplane, etc. I had a two-week course at Colorado Springs on ordnance devices. While at this course my parents and one of my sisters came over from Ogden to see me and my wife, knowing that I would be going overseas soon. March 21, 1945, I received orders sending me, along with a few others, to Seattle about a month ahead of the main troop movement to help in making sure all of our group supplies and equipment were properly loaded aboard the ship. I took my wife with me, and we enjoyed the evenings together after the days work was done. Finally the departure date arrived, and I kissed Marie good-bye at the hotel and boarded my ship. We stopped at Pearl Harbor for about two days awaiting the formation of a convoy, and I was able to get off the ship long enough to send a "Bird of Paradise" bloom home to Marie and then we were on our way. Our destination was secret to us for security reasons, but we finally arrived at Guam the 12th of May 1945. Our group was part of the 315th Bombardment Wing, which was part of the 20th Air Force. The Navy SeaBeas had our airfield about completed, and we were flying our B-29 bombers off from it in June 1945. It was called Northwest Field and had two runways, each of which was 10,000 feet long with taxi and parking strips on both sides. It took us 36 hours to get the planes ready for a mission, including loading bombs, etc. The B-29 could carry eighty five hundred pound bombs, but we had to cut back some because of the extra gas load required to fly the fourteen-hour-round trip missions to the Japanese mainland. Our group's mission assignments were to wipe out oil refineries and storage. We were very successful and received three Distinguished Unit Citations. I can now wear the ribbon with two bronze stars on my uniform. After the refineries were wiped out we went to 'blanket bombing' of cities on the Japanese mainland. This, I think, was to soften up Japan for the impending invasion of Japan. Guam was one of the staging bases for the invasion of Japan and was covered with stored invasion supplies and equipment. Bombs being transported to flight line We would fly reconnaissance flights over the cities to be bombed and drop millions of leaflets, about four by six inches in size, several days in advance of the bombing telling the people the day and exact time they were to be bombed. On the side, a group of the officers in my barracks asked me to coach them so they could enter the island basketball league which I did, and we won the whole island championship. Then the two nuclear bombs were dropped, and we started thinking about coming home. The terms for the unconditional surrender of Japan were signed on the battleship, the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945. Exactly one week later the Missouri was anchored in Guam's Apra Harbor. A friend of mine who was a sailor on the battleship came ashore in a ship's launch, looked me up and took me out to the ship. He then showed me the exact spot on the ship's deck where the signing of the surrender documents took place. As he was taking me back to shore in the launch, I took a picture of the ship's stern which has its name printed there. I still have that picture. In 1995 my wife and I with one of our daughters took a vacation trip to Oregon and Washington State. One of the things we did was to take a tour of the decommissioned Battleship Missouri which was at that time anchored in the U.S. Navy Bremerton Harbor near Seattle, Washington. I happened to take a photograph of a brass plaque that has been placed over the exact spot where the signing of the surrender documents took 59