Claud Neal Fristoe, Jr. was born in December 1923 in Hoxie, Arkansas. His mother was a telephone operator and his father was a railroad man. Fristoe's father died when his youngest son was two months old and Fristoe was two years old. Fristoe's brother died at the age of 85. Fristoe grew up being raised by his mother and grandmother. It was a hard time for the family during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. Fristoe's mother worked 55 to 60 hours per week for 60 dollars a month wages. It is a mystery to Fristoe how they survived but they always had enough of what they needed. They had none of the luxuries that people take for granted today. The rough times made him appreciate the things that they did have. After moving several places, his mother and her sons settled in Arcadia, Louisiana. That was where Fristoe graduated from high school. He went to college for a year but with war breaking out in the world, he decided to go to Orange, Texas and help build destroyers. He was 16 or 17 when he went there. He was supervisor over much older men. They built good destroyers. On 7 December 1941, he learned of the country going to war after hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was exiting a movie with five friends. They all decided to join the Marines to join the fight and get it over with quickly. His mother would not release her young son to enlist. He was angry at the time but now knows it was for the best. He may have been killed. Three of his buddies immediately trained for the Marines and went into the South Pacific for a long time. One was shot up badly. One became a prisoner of war. In July 1942, the age for enlistment of young men was lowered to 18 years of age. He no longer needed parental acceptance. He signed up for the United States Army Air Corps at that time. He planned to be a pilot.

Claud Neal Fristoe, Jr. took tests and examinations [Annotator's Note: for entry into aviation training in the United States Army Air Forces in July 1942]. He was accepted as an aviation cadet in January 1943. He passed preflight and primary training but then in basic flight training he started to have difficulties. Eventually, Fristoe was dropped from flight training. He was informed that he could not become a pilot or navigator. Gunners were needed. He could be a gunnery mechanic or an actual gunner. He went to gunnery school and then joined a crew in Greenville, South Carolina. He met the crew there and they trained together in Columbia, South Carolina. They grew close as a team. They were sent to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] before going to the Pacific and Biak, New Guinea. It was quite a transition for him. That was how he became a tail gunner. He flew a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] while in South Carolina. They took a different plane overseas. They flew in a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] in making the long flight over water. He met his crew mates in Biak and remained with them through the duration of the war. Leaving the country did not bother Fristoe as much as arriving at his destination. It was a bit scary. Back then, he was anxious to go and get into the war. In retrospect, he might have a different opinion now. [Annotator's Note: Fristoe chuckles.] He really did not know what he was getting into.

Claud Neal Fristoe, Jr. arrived in New Guinea at an airbase formed out of the jungle [Annotator's Note: he was a tail gunner in a North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. They slept in tents at the base. It was a big drop in living conditions compared to what they had previously experienced. The Army food was pretty good but it was still Army food. The tent had mosquito netting around it. The men slept on a cot. The mosquito spray smelled very bad. There was a lot of yellow fever [Annotator's Note: a mosquito-borne virus] so the airmen took pills to counter the disease. The medication turned their skin yellow. The airfield was on Biak [Annotator's Note: Biak, Indonesia] and the bombers flew missions over northern New Guinea jungles. There was no enemy opposition on the missions. The natives scavenged food from the military garbage dump. It was sickening to watch them. Some of the Army veterans from up in the jungles came into camp. They were crazy and would do anything. They had monkeys on their shoulders. Many of the returning GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] were wounded. The B-25 targets and objectives were unknown to Fristoe. The pilot and officers knew but he did not. They would skip bomb the target by flying low and dropping the ordnance as they flew radically upward in order to escape the concussion of the exploding bombs. The crew had trained and constantly flew at treetop level. He was with the 5th Air Force, 38th Bomb Group, 822nd Squadron [Annotator's Note: 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. His plane had six or eight .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun] in the nose. The two waist gunners each had a .50 caliber gun. As the tail gunner, Fristoe had two .50 caliber guns in his position. Conveyor belts fed the ammunition to the guns. Fristoe had his knees on a pad and sat on a small seat. Their was no automatic sighting equipment. It was all manually done by the gunner. There was also a radio operator and infrequently a navigator. Most of the time, the flight of three or four B-25s followed a lead aircraft that had its navigator for directing the others.

Claud Neal Fristoe, Jr. left New Guinea and was assigned to Leyte Gulf in the Philippines [Annotator's Note: Fristoe was a tail gunner in a North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber in the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. Most of the time there was spent in training. He found out after the war that the United States was preparing to invade Japan in October 1945. He was there about three or four months and did not have any combat missions. The huts and beds at Leyte Gulf were nice. The Filipinos cleaned up for them. It was good living. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] waded ashore at Leyte Gulf. Those present said there were no Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] anywhere near him. The troops there did not like the General. Fristoe thought MacArthur was a good general. Next stop for Fristoe was Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. He did not know that it was being set up to invade Japan. Fristoe flew on missions from Okinawa against Japanese fishing boats. The Air Corps was attempting to cut off the food supply to Japan. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] and the war ended, the guys went crazy. The joyous celebration included firing their weapons in the air. Five or six weeks later, Fristoe and his crewmates left Okinawa and went into Japan. Fristoe directly witnesses the devastation of Hiroshima and flew over Nagasaki. There was nothing left of the cities. The heat warped steel and only brick structure remained. Things were burned to oblivion. It was rough to think of the numbers of people killed. He then returned to the United States and was discharged. Fristoe visited the Air Force Museum in Albuquerque [Annotator's Note: Albuquerque, New Mexico] and saw the Gay Nola [Annotator's Note: Enola Gay] that dropped the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945]. When he also saw there an image of the devastation wrought by the bomb, he unwittingly had tears coming from his eyes. He has thanked the Lord that the bombs were dropped because he probably would not have survived the outcome of an invasion of Japan. There would have been astronomical losses. Until he actually got into Japan, he hated the Japanese. Then he got to know a nice lady who washed his clothes. When he left Japan, she gave him a beautiful silk scarf to give to his mother. The common Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] did not want the war but could not get out from under it. It was similar to Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also know as il Duce]. While on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], Fristoe saw kamikaze pilots dive directly into ships to destroy them. The Americans were just trying to survive the war. Fristoe was glad to contribute to the war effort and would probably do it again. He hates war. Everyone loses. He has learned to forgive the Japanese but he still will not buy a car from them. The Okinawa missions against Japanese fishing boats were between the island and Japan. The two were not very far apart. The Army and Marines took a beating on Okinawa. The capture of Ie Shima island [Annotator's Note: Ie Shima, Japan] was particularly hard fighting. The enemy had women and children in caves with them. The Army drove tanks up and fired liquid jelly into them. The smell of burnt flesh was terrible. Fristoe witnessed some of that. One comical incident that occurred was when several Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] strafed the area around Fristoe and his crewmates. They all ran for cover. Fristoe jumped into a foxhole. The flight engineer kept running and dove into a trench for safety. The trench was a latrine and when the man returned to the tent, he smelled horrible. Everyone laughed at him. The engineer got mad and was ready to whip somebody. [Annotator's Note: Fristoe laughs.] Fristoe saw only three kamikaze attacks on the ships in the harbor. They never dove into anything on the land. The pilots must have known that the Americans were going to invade their homeland. They were crazy. Fristoe never had to shoot at enemy opposition. Fighters flew cover for the bombers if Zeros came at them. He saw enough of the kamikazes when they dove into the ships in the bay.

Claud Neal Fristoe, Jr. and his crew mates used skip bombing [Annotator's Note: a low level bombing technique that involves skipping the bomb off of the ground or water into the target] during jungle missions and in bombing ships [Annotator's Note: Fristoe was a tail gunner on a North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber in the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. He never saw enemy troops when bombing the jungle, but they were supposedly there. The bombers flew a little higher than treetop level or the height of the boat on the attack runs. As they closed on the target, the pilot would pull up while the copilot had a trigger that released the bomb. As the bomb skipped toward the objective, the pilot pulled up as quickly as the plane could fly to escape the explosive force. That method is not done today. B-25s are not flown today but they were a good aircraft. The B-25 bomber was used by Doolittle [Annotator's Note: then US Army Air Forces Colonel, later US Air Force General, James H. Doolittle] over Tokyo [Annotator's Note: bombing attack on the Japanese mainland on 18 April 1942 carried out by 16 North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) and named for the raid's commander, then US Army Air Forces Colonel, later US Air Force General, James H. Doolittle]. The engines made a lot of noise. If the intensity tapered off, the crew knew they better bail out. Fristoe's plane had a panther painted on it. Other crews painted Betty Grable [Annotator's Note: Elizabeth Ruth Grable; popular period American movie star and pinup girl] and others on the nose of their plane. While on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], a typhoon came in and caused more damage than the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. It had 175 mile an hour winds that took the paint off the side of the chained down aircraft. It removed the brown paint and left the silver side on the planes. The crewmen sought shelter in caves. They discovered that the Japanese buried the bones of their dead in those caves. Some of the crazy troops went down in from the caves to access the beer issued to them the previous day. The GIs [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] were a little crazy. Everyone had to be a little crazy in order to do what they had to do. Fristoe did not fly many missions because he was in the war zone only a limited time. It was long enough and he saw all he wanted to see. He was scared lots of times. He was not concerned in the airplane because he had no fighter opposition and only limited antiaircraft fire. On Okinawa, the CBs [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] were using dynamite to build a runway. Some debris from the explosions hit the tents near Fristoe killing some air force personnel. Some of the survivors took their pistols and wanted to shoot the CBs. Fristoe had to fight them to stop. At the end of the war, people celebrated by firing their weapons randomly. That was frightening. Flying low level bomb runs can be intimidating because of the lack of reaction time if something bad happens. Fristoe has a photograph of his crew mates by their airplane. It shows a bunch of ratty looking air force guys. Life on the base during downtime consisted on fighting large mosquitos plus the infrequent USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] shows and some periodic movies. The men went nuts for the USO girls that came over to entertain the troops. They had not seen a White [Annotator's Note: Caucasian] woman in a long time. Some troops shot dice for entertainment. Tokyo Rose [Annotator's Note: nickname given by Allied servicemen to any English speaking female radio personality broadcasting Japanese propaganda in the Pacific Theater] was never someone for Fristoe to listen to. She had nothing good to say to the American servicemen.

Claud Neal Fristoe, Jr. remained in the reserves after the war so that he could depart active service earlier. He stayed for three years but did not go back. Some friends got called back up for Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War or Second Indochina War; 1965 to 1975]. Fristoe and some of his crewmates had some reunions after the war but that faded over time. He got close to those men during the war because his life depended on them. He entered the war as an 18 year old kid and came out far more mature. He gained respect for what life really is. Seeing his friends getting killed knocked the cockiness off of him. While in New Guinea, he fought yellow fever [Annotator's Note: mosquito-borne virus] and mosquitoes plus large rats that climbed the overhead of their tents. Some of his tentmates would shoot at them with their .45s [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol]. The rats would bite the men. Living conditions in New Guinea were the worst. The Philippines were better but the locals lived in close quarters with their farm animals. The Black [Annotator's Note: Melanesian] native girls came to look pretty good to the troops after awhile without White [Annotator's Note: Caucasian] women. When the White USO [Annotator's Note: United Service Organizations] girls came, the troops went crazy. When Fristoe flew into New Guinea, the awful smell of cooking lamb and mutton would rise to meet him. They ate it despite the taste. The canned food at the depots were subject to theft at night. Theft was a problem. Fristoe and his friends stole a jeep and ran it into the ship to take with them. They felt they had nothing to lose. While deployed, he saw one of his friends he had worked with in Orange, Texas who had joined the Marines. The fellow, named Reginald Ray [Annotator's Note: surname spelling uncertain], looked him up after their mother's shared information on their son's overseas location. Reginald went AWOL [Annotator's Note: absent without leave] with a major to enjoy some of the officer's high life on leave. Reginald took a beating while deployed but made it home. The Marine had some scary stories. He passed away prior to the interview. World War 2 veterans are thinning out more and more. Fristoe thinks the history of World War 2 should be taught to youngsters in order to avoid conflicts that kill more and more young people today. Lessons do not seem to be learned from what happened. Visiting The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] has been very enjoyable for Fristoe. He has met many veterans like himself. They share a common comradery. The Museum should continue its work and get a B-25 [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum now displays a North American B-25J Mitchell medium bomber in the overhead of the US Freedom Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center on its New Orleans, Louisiana campus.]