In Memory of my DAD WWII VETERAN passed Dec, 25, 2015

WWI VETERAN Verle W Christensen

May 20, 1921-Dec 25, 2015
KEEP HIM MOVING TO MEMORIALS AND TAKE A PHOTO

'In March 1945, I was sent to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, for my overseas assignment, which would be Pacific duty. I soon boarded a C-54 for Guam, and we had to land at Kwajalein, which was an atoll the Marines had recently taken from the Japanese. We refueled there and went on to Guam, where the main Air Force communications center for the Central Pacific was located.

All the top-secret coded messages came through there, as well as all the weather data. We had the latest radio teletype and cryptography equipment, and we sent and received coded messages. Guam had been taken from the Japanese, but there were still a lot of Japanese prisoners and damage to all of the buildings and churches there. The United States had repaired or built three large airfields, and we were bringing in lots of B-29s to make raids over the Japanese mainland.

My job was to do the receiving and transmitting of weather data to and from other weather stations in the Army and Navy. Around that time, the United States had also taken Saipan and Tinian, so I was sent to Saipan to help set up their weather communications systems. All of these islands had war damage and casualties.

In May 1945, I was sent to Iwo Jima, which had been taken several months before. I had to set up a tent to sleep in, and I ate rations out of canteens. The island was composed of mostly sulfur-like ash from Mount Suribachi, and the smell was always bad. I was sent there to help set up better weather communications so planes would not be lost in the fog.

Weather data would come in by radio, radioteletype or other means from all over the Pacific, including remote stations in China, the Philippines and Japan. These were all coded and decoded by our cryptography group, and every 30 days the codes were changed.

In August, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Our radio group provided the air-to-ground radio communications of the airplane. Later, on the second atomic bomb drop on Nagasaki, the plane took off from Tinian. Our radio group maintained communications with the aircraft for the trip. Our weather communications group was responsible for providing the weather data.

After the Japanese offered to surrender, our group helped monitor the ground-to-air flight of the Japanese aircraft from Tokyo to Manila to Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters, where the agreement to surrender was confirmed."