Daniel Samuelson was born in January 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He had a brother and a sister. His father was a partner with his brother who made tailor made clothes for men. They lived across from the school he attended. His mother died in childbirth when he was two years old. His grandfather was an old Jewish guy who went to Israel to die. His father remarried. He remembers Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] like it was today. He is Jewish and the people in the neighborhood were Catholics and a few Protestants and they would call him a "dirty Jew bastard" and said he "killed Christ." He felt so terrible. He saw Negroes [Annotator's Note: African-Americans] and kids were throwing rocks at them. He would get so mad and did not know what to do. He was asked to join the Boy Scouts and he found himself. It was great. He was around 15 and he was in his father's store working. The phone rang in the factory with the news of Pearl Harbor. His older brother was at Schofield Barracks [Annotator's Note: Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, Hawaii] at age 16. His brother sent a telegram that he was alright. The local government representative got his brother out of the Army because he was so young, but then he wanted to join the paratroopers. He had asthma so he was told he could not be in the service even though he had already been in.

Daniel Samuelson enlisted in the Army Air Corps and went to Texas for basic training. In high school, he did alright and did not get in any trouble. He would get away from the Jew haters. [Annotator's Note: Samuelson has some trouble piecing together the story.] He got into LSU [Annotator's Note: Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana] for one semester. He was in the Reserve and got called up at 18. He enjoyed the military. His cousin was an engineer and was teaching at Tulane [Annotator's Note: Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana]. His cousin was called to New Guinea and was there for three and a half years. Samuelson went through gunnery school after being turned down for flight because of his poor grades in school. He wanted to be a pilot. He loved gunnery school in Kingman, Arizona. That was the first time he was in an airplane. It was months of training. He was good on the guns, 100 percent all the time. He could break down a .50 caliber machine gun and put it back together. They were very tough on the students. He got along well with all of the people and did not get much of the "Jew bastard" talk. [Annotator's Note: Samuelson had experienced frequent anti-Semitism as a child.] He was told that the service did not like to use the word Jew, they just used Hebrew on the dog tags. He then went to Tampa, Florida for on-the-job training on airplanes. They learned to use oxygen there. The crew was formed with him and two more from New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] like him.

Daniel Samuelson was a gunner on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber. He loved the plane, but it had nothing for the human body. He trained in all gun positions over months. The training is competitive. [Annotator's Note: Samuelson has trouble forming his thoughts.] They trained with all kinds of bombs as well. The pilot taught flying lessons for two years. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer attempts to move the story to England.] A guy he trained with looked at him and asked him how he got the name Daniel. He asked him what he meant. The guy said it was an Irish name. Samuelson smiled. He got a dictionary that showed that Daniel was a Hebrew name. When the guy was by himself, Samuelson showed him the dictionary entry. Even if he was a "Jew hater," he was going there and fighting the same as Samuelson was. They flew down to Cuba and stayed three days there. It was really nice. The officers got put up in a hotel. The enlisted men were different creatures. They had a lot of fun. They got him drunk once in Florida and never drank again.

A mission to Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany] is the one that stands out in Daniel Samuelson's mind the most [Annotator's Note: out of 35 missions flown as a gunner on a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber in the 334th Bombardment Squadron, 95th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force]. He loves his country and a government run by the people. Some are good people and some not. There were real nice people that he was bombing and killing. [Annotator's Note: Samuelson has trouble with his thoughts.] He was stationed in England. He liked England and he would take trips to London, which was 99 miles away. He was at Horham [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force Horham, Horham, England]. London was under blackout all the time. His first bombing mission was on Easter. He would get fish and chips [Annotator's Note: while on leave in London], cod from the North Sea. When he would go to a pub, they would sing "Danny Boy" [Annotator's Note: ballad by Frederic Weatherly, 1913] because of his name. He had a lot of fun and they had a lot of free time. The officers have a real nice life. They have their own food. The enlisted men cleaned the officer's clubs. He felt expendable and he was. That was a bad feeling. His crew was good. The Catholic Churches in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] when he was young would preach from the pulpit that the Jews killed Jesus and that was not good because it was believed.

Daniel Samuelson had some close missions. They had several engine losses. They were alright. Flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] was the big thing. The bombardier was the only one that ever got hit. It was in the left arm and was bad enough for him to be let out of the service. Samuelson took some busted up compasses. He made a lounge out of scraps. They had bikes, they had a lot of fun. The weather was horrible, and they did not have enough coal. Getting to the plane in the rain, the bombs would be being loaded. They would climb in. He was in the tail for take-off. It would be foggy. They would take-off and it would be so foggy they could not see what was ahead. Then, they would circle to form up. He was scared.

Strange things would happen in the air for Daniel Samuelson. He was well-trained. He would wear a mask for oxygen. There were lights on the mask that would blink when he breathed. In gunnery school, they would have 12 people in a chamber with windows [Annotator's Note: hypobaric, or altitude chamber]. People on the outside would talk to the men inside. They would say they were going to 30,000 feet but would stop at 10,000 feet where they would put their masks on. They asked for a volunteer to take off the mask at 30,000 feet. There was a person there inside with the students. They said they would faint. Samuelson volunteered and they all smiled at him. He was told to take a pad and pencil and start to write the numerals from one to ten when the mask was removed. At three, he started laughing and then passed out. They put the mask back on him and he finished. On a flight he had been up about an hour and a half and felt funny and the little light went out. The oxygen tube had fallen out. The training saved him.

Daniel Samuelson finished his 35 missions. He had flown over from Florida to Scotland and then went to England. After his missions ended, the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was going on. He was sent to near the North Sea to get on a ship back to the United States. A storm hit and it was horrible. There were men who had been in prison [Annotator's Note: recently liberated prisoners of war] there and were very skinny. There were about 600 people. He was given stuff to do on the ship to help the men in bad shape. It was terrible. Some could not talk. War is "shit." These people did nothing. When Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] died, Samuelson had about 15 missions in. He was at Keesler Field [Annotator's Note: now Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi] when the war ended. He went from Keesler to Houston [Annotator's Note: Houston, Texas] to get discharged. Back in the United States, he was thinking that at any time they would go again [Annotator's Note: to fight in Japan]. The miracle of miracles and one of the worst things ever done on this earth happened. We knew the Japanese were going to kill everybody and we were going to lose a million men. Then we dropped that bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945]. Then everybody rejoiced. They had to do it again, because they would not surrender. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] gave them another chance. They did not take it. He dropped it [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945]. They surrendered and we were thrilled.