8/11/45: I wonder if there is as much excitement there as there has been here the last 12 hours.  It started, me in bed, about 10:20 last night, with one of the fellows running up through the tents & screaming that the war was over.  In a matter of seconds, everyone was up, & I dressed, went down to the Special Services tent to listen to the radio.  They were broadcasting the news flash about the Japs offering to give up if they could keep Hirohito.  That was all this place needed to set off a celebration like 4th of July at O.O. Beach.  The crew members brought out their pistols & tracer bullets, flares, & other pyrotechnics & within 20 minutes it wasn’t safe to stand up straight with bullets going into the sky, & flares going up then circling down.  Everyone dragged out his bottle of whiskey, & what a brawl!  Singing & shouting & guns going off until 2 or 3 o’clock.  I went to bed & was too excited to sleep for I don’t know how long.  What news – to think that we might yet be going home for Christmas!  Looks as if you were going to be right after all!  You’d said how I was going to be home by then.

 

Now we are wondering just how it is coming out – whether there are enough fools left to reject the Jap offer.  Operations ceased here, but now we are back on the job, so we don’t know.

 

We have been expecting it ever since they announced the first atomic bombs, & everyone began to adopt a holiday attitude.  It would be awful if a mission were to be scheduled & we were to lose someone after all these missions.

 

Went to the movies last night & saw William Powell & Myrna Loy in “Thin Man Goes Home”.  Was OK.  They’re a good pair.  Now to close & get back to work – it’s about 1 PM.

 

8/12/45: Just witnessed a beautiful sight: the boys over at the sheet metal shop are making seats to fit into our B-29’s to take us (we hope) home in.  They are expecting to convert our group into a transport outfit, and the planes will hold 35 or 40 men, so they say.  Isn’t that a wonderful thought?  Sure does look as if you were right when you said that we would be together for Christmas.

 

Just cannot get over the speed with which the war has apparently come to an end, and now everyone is wondering how long we shall have to sweat it out before we get back to the states.  Don’t be in too much of a hurry for the return as there is a terrific amount of work to be done here, crating all this stuff up, and getting it in shape for shipping home.  All flights have been cancelled, and I mean all combat flights.  About ten minutes ago, I heard a radio broadcast from China, saying that a Japanese broadcast had been picked up saying that they had ceased all resistance, which indicates that they will accept the Allies’ condition that their emperor must take his orders from one of our leaders, if he is to stay.  It’s too marvelous for words that the Japs fell without an invading foot being set on their home islands.  That is a full score for air-power.  The day I took my ride, all flights had been cancelled in the AM, while I was standing beside the plane waiting to climb aboard for a take-off.  One of the engineering officers drove up in a jeep, and said that all missions were cancelled, including training missions.  We wanted to make our flight, so we decided to tell them that we thought it meant only combat flights, so we took off anyway.  As far as I know, no one got blamed for it.  That night we had an empire mission scheduled, but of course, with the news, we didn’t install the cameras for the mission.  About three in the afternoon, I was up in the tent, taking it easy, when a messenger came to inform me that the missions had been rescheduled for a 6:30 take-off.  Crews hadn’t yet been briefed, planes weren’t lined up, our cameras weren’t in; some didn’t even have bombs.  But they took off at 6:30, briefed, and planes completely serviced.  That was our last mission, and our record was unbroken.  It was a mission no-one in maintenance will ever forget.

 

Sure do hope that I get a plane ride home.  I’d hate to sweat it out on a boat.  If they do turn our outfit over to ATC, we don’t know who will get a ride home, nor when, but the logical thing would be to take the non-essential personnel home from here on the first trip. If that occurred, here’s hoping that I am non-essential.  I can’t imagine what good I will be to anyone in a transport group.  Getting out of the Army will be something else.  I should imagine that they will let the fellows out first who have been here the longest.  My enlistment can hold me for the duration of the emergency plus six months.  The President decides when the emergency ends, so there is no knowing when they would have to let me go.  I hope that they can let me go before the last day of that six months.