VJ Day and we lost an Engine

Wishing the war would end soon becomes paramount.

then it ends while on a routine flight gone wrong

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to another episode of Letters Ray to Sherl, a World War II love story. This is season three, episode four. Today we are starting a letter from Second Lieutenant Bombardier Ray Conan to his sweetheart Shirley back in Chicago a little over a week after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Now I'm not sure how long it was between that and uh Gesaki and VJ Day and then the Peace Accords. But if you want more information on that, there's a new series on History Channel I'd like to recommend. Uh World War II um with Tom Hanks. And it's really good. I took four pages of notes on the first episode I watched. And um I'm not going to I'm not a historian. I don't have a degree in history, uh although I did study it. But my uh documentation days are far behind me. I'm not going to write a history book. This is a family memoir meant to illustrate a love story of an average American during a time of great historical importance. And show love. So here we go with letter number one, August 14, 1945. My darling, what a rat race this radio business has developed into. There was supposed to be an important announcement at six tonight, but it never came. I personally am a nervous wreck. I wish the war would either be on or off so I could save a couple of tons of wishful thinking. We're scheduled to fly again tomorrow, so I'll start this tonight and finish it up before I fly. Some so and so swiped all my flying equipment. Comes now the battle of who is going to pay for it. I'll find out tomorrow from a turnip one can't get blood. How you doing so far, kiddo? Only three or four more days to go and you can relax a little. Have you heard from Bill since his vacation? Are you at Rambleshaw agreeing on things? Try kicking him in the shins. I'll betcha he'll give in then. That's the trouble everybody wants to get into the act. When everything seems to be a bit organized, same big wheel starts changing everything around. Some big wheel. To hell with bosses. They do anything to you to just up and quit on them. We'll start a bank on our own. She worked in a bank. Let's buy a farm and become farmers after the war. Shall we? We could raise our own garlic. The OPA says there's going to be a shortage of it, so we could create our own little black market. Gee, wouldn't it be exciting? We'd be garlic bootleggers, then he'd see my my ma. Someday we might even get to be as famous as Dick Tracy. Oh the glory of it all. If you wouldn't want a farm, how about a saloon? If we could just sell drinks to our family, we'd be a success. We could pay the rent on Grandpa Penny alone. After a while after a while we might even be able to get a strip teaser to create atmosphere. That I would like. Nothing like atmosphere to make a place atmospheric. Of course, if you could grow a beard, you could become the bearded lady and become some carnival and I could be the barker at a sideshow. Oh golly, I've got lots of swell ideas like that. I'm smart that way. Is it okay if I wear a morning coat and striped trousers after the war? They look classy. A derby too. My golly, I betcha people would look twice at me when I stroll by twirling my cane. Today maybe it the radio is all news and the morning paper had headlines that they would accept soon. I sure hope it's over today. You wanted to know how it would be how it would affect me, I'm not sure. I imagine we'll complete our training here. It doesn't seem practical that the occupation army would use B-29s for patrol. They're too expensive and there could be and there could be transferred to them. I could even make a ground officer and be sent over as MP or AMG. The other possibility is that I won't need it at all. I won't be needed at all. I'm still planning on going over around October 1st when I hear different on change my plans. Timeout whilst I pour some coffee. Say I dreamed of you last night. Very interesting. Wow. Oh boy, yike. Had cornflakes and bananas for breakfast. Bananas are rare in the army, they were good. Got up at six this morning and I don't have to be in the flight line till noon. Gad I'm an eager beaver. Honey, just exactly how are you now? Is everything joke? What's the wait? I love you. Say, Sears sells new bicycles for $37.50 now. Balloon tires and everything. They aren't rationed, but I bet you have to have your order in advance. Maybe we could get anyone. Which thank it's not far from Christmas. I'm gonna trot over to mail this now. Bye for now, darling. I love you, I love you, I love you, Ray. Letter number one. Letter number two is postmarked a few days later. If you want to see where the postmark is from, you can follow the blog on Blog Spot link in bio on this podcast wherever you get it. August seventeenth, nineteen forty-five. Sweet little flower. Among my many other amazing accomplishments, I managed to in my spare time sprain my right wrist Tuesday. I could go into all the horrible breathtaking bloodthirsty details, but I won't. The whole damn thing was chilly. Yesterday I couldn't even hold a pen. I used a massage gadget on it last night and it's practically good as new now. No scars or nothing, so this fine morning I said to myself, Why not write sweep? Myself said why not? Two and that's how a counter letter was written. Have a cup of coffee. I love you. We were flying all day Tuesday. We kept one of our radio channels tuned to Tucson Station, and I stayed on for that for most of the time. At 1600 Tucson time a guy said World War Number two has ended. I gave a screech that was heard all the way up in the nose of the ship, not mine. Hardy called me on inner phone and wanted to know what the bejesus was wrong back there. I called him several affectionate names and suggested he perform a trick with his head. He threatened to throw me out of the ship without a shoot. Then I went to the tunnel and threw things at them. Finally I told him the war had ended. Then we all started to sing When the war is over we will all enlist again. Never has there been such a mission. The enlisted men were thumbing their noses at all the officers and we were thumbing ours back at them. Unanimously we decided to hell with flying. Then to top things off, number four engine hawked out. We broke all the records for sobering up. We made it okay and made it into the DMF accompanied by a fleet of fire trucks and ambulances. We checked in our equipment and came back to the barracks. I took a shower and changed. That brought it to about 7 30. The sun was almost down. I stepped outside and took a look at the world. It was the most beautiful sight I'd have ever seen. Everything was in rich technicolor and there was a rainbow. I guess you could say it was breathtaking. I could describe it to you a million times, but you couldn't really appreciate it unless you saw it yourself. There wasn't much celebrating on the field because we had all we all had school Wednesday and he said there was no word from higher headquarters on what to do with us. There's a good possibility that we'll go over. She is as an occupational air force. Nothing definite yet though. So far we are to continue on as before. If I don't go over, there's a chance I could be discharged within a year. There's even a possibility it could be six months. Just have to wait and see. Today and tomorrow are holidays, but there isn't anything in town, so I'm being pretty peaceful. Yourself? There are a million things floating around through my mind that I can't figure out the answers to. Gonna cut this short and do some fancy thinking. So long for now, honey. Love and kisses Ray. So that is the podcast letter. Apparently BJ Day happened somewhere between August 14th and August 17th. Um you could look it up to confirm. I'm sure there's plenty of sources out there with that. And I'm not able to do a podcast with notes and letters. If you're interested in Ray and Shirley's love story and how they survived the war, we're looking at a brief snapshot of a couple going through a time in history that was extraordinary. There's plenty of material on them available on Amazon.com. Search for Letters Ray to Cheryl, a World War II love story, or look for my author page, Cindy Con and Boyd. It may just be Cindy Boyd, I'm not sure I have to do that again. But the link to the book is in the bio for the podcast on BusRal or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much to the listener that bought a book a couple weeks ago. Enjoy your life. Today is not promised. Tomorrow is not promised. Tomorrow is not promised. You have today. There you go. As you can see, this is not prescriptive. This is not AI. This is Ray Conan and Julie Conan's granddaughter. Just trying to tell you what an old man on his last days wanted the world to remember him by. Thank you.