Angels in my Life

After a short stay on Angel Island, in the bay across from San Francisco, I boarded the USS Tasker H. Bliss on October 4, 1941, along with a few hundred others. I learned, after we were at sea, we were probably headed for the Philippines. I had been assigned to the newly organized 680th Ordinance Company (Aviation Pursuit), US Army Air Force, and was headed for an area very close to war…more so than I had suspected. At night, it was lights out and no smoking on deck. This made me believe the war in Europe might be getting closer to home. We were being sent to the Philippines to assist the Filipino army that General Douglas MacArthur had been training to meet an expected Japanese invasion. MacArthur was sent to the Philippines by the US government in 1935 as a military advisor and in 1937 he was made the commander of all the armed forces in the Philippine islands. He realized the threat of an invasion by the Japanese, and he had desperately been trying to fortify the Philippines. He had pleaded for more money to build up the Filipino army and more troops from the US, but his request had been ignored until the Japanese began to invade Indochina.