Harold Daniel Snyder was born in October 1925 in Wyckoff, New Jersey. He was an only child. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Snyder what he remembers about the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States.] His father was in automobile sales and made a better living than most people did. They were not rich, but they were not poor either. His mother was a housewife. Snyder mostly rode to school in a car. Things were just the way they were. Wyckoff was a small town. Everybody had average clothing. Wyckoff and his parents were at his grandparents' home listening to the radio when he heard the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He realized it was big but did not know how big. At his age, he was not even driving a car. He figured he was not even close to being in the service. They began to have Air Raid Wardens and black outs. Wyckoff worked on Fridays at a store and some things became rationed, like coffee, meat, and sugar. Now you put your things on the counter. Back then, they did not have cash registers and the store clerk got what you wanted. He and a friend worked there together. They had a coffee grinder. Butter and cheese would be cut to order. His store did not sell meat. It was fun work. He liked the couple who owned the store. At 17, he got his driver's license. His grandfather had a hay, grain, and feed business. His cousin who worked there went in the Army and Wyckoff went there and delivered feed as his job. He was a big deal then.

Before he graduated, Harold Daniel Snyder went to enlist in the Army Air Corps with three others. His parents did not think they would take him because he had surgery on his hip and one leg was shorter than the other. He was the only one out of the four who passed the physical. He was sworn in and put on the enlisted reserve until he was 18. At 18, he went on active duty. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. He went to basic training in Greensboro, North Carolina in November [Annotator's Note: November 1942]. It was damp, cold, and smelled of coal burning. He got pneumonia [Annotator's Note: an infection of one or both lungs] and spent a month in the hospital. They thought he was going to die. He was treated with sulfa [Annotator's Note: group of synthetic drugs used to treat bacterial infections]. He had so much in him, the sulfa affected his blood. He then had to stay a few more days to get it cleaned out. He was classified in basic training after taking tests. He did not qualify for any officer positions which were pilot, navigator, or bombardier. The next day he tested for the gunner positions. He said he wanted to be a radio man. He then went to Columbia Army Air Base [Annotator's Note: near Columbia, South Carolina]. Nobody knew what to do with him and they took him to the flight line. They sent him to the 426th Squadron [Annotator's Note: unable to identify] and that First Sergeant told him to take any empty bunk. Within the next few days, a few more guys came in from basic training. The four of them were put to work building a fence. They had to cut down pine trees and strip the bark off. They were getting no place and talked to the First Sergeant about being able to fly. The First Sergeant got them into learning armament on B-25s [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. They were put to cleaning .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun]. He knew how to take one apart and put it back together in his sleep. The four were then assigned to guy who had been overseas and come home. Some of them had been wounded. One guy had a hole in his thigh that you could put your fist in. Another guy who had been in the South Pacific was always nervous. This was also a transition base for pilots learning to fly twin-engine planes. Joe Dickerson [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] got a ride to get his flight time in. It was a rough landing. When they went down to try again, Dickerson jumped out. Snyder then got assigned to one of the veteran gunners for training. After that gunner shipped back out, Snyder got his plane.

Harold Daniel Snyder was assigned to one of the veteran gunners for training. After that gunner shipped back out, Snyder got his plane. When a plane would go in for a service inspection, he had to take all the guns and bomb racks off. He and his three friends would help each other out with that. Cleaning the machine guns was good because they knew what to do with them. The sergeant told them they were setting up a replacement training unit. He said he could get Snyder into that, and he would be an aircraft armorer gunner and assigned to a crew. Snyder and his friends went to Myrtle Beach [Annotator's Note: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina] for training as a gunner. They were using handheld .50 caliber guns [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] to try and hit a towed target. Each guy had a different color projectile. Snyder does not think he hit the target at all. The good guys maybe got two shots in. He was then assigned to a crew and flew with them as a gunner. That training was mostly for the pilots and navigators. They would fly all morning, eat at noon, have the afternoon off, and fly again at night. They would alternate that the next day. They did not have a bombardier on the B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. There was a pilot, copilot, and navigator. The three enlisted men were the radio operator and gunners. Snyder was the tail gunner and was a corporal. He was then sent to Savannah, Georgia for his area assignment. You knew the area by the clothes you got. They got a new B-25 there that they ferried to the West Coast. It had mechanical trouble and landed in Arizona to get a part. They spent a week there in the middle of nowhere. Red Cross [Annotator's Note: Red Cross, an international non-profit humanitarian organization] ladies would come and serve coffee, sandwiches, and cookies. They had to pay for their own meals, so they ate off the Red Cross ladies and not the mess hall. His plane did not have a name at first. Their engineer named it the Ruptured Duck, but Snyder never saw it again after taking it and turning it over in California. There the planes were readied to be flown to Hawaii. The gunnery crew was sent to Hamilton Field [Annotator's Note: now Hamilton Air Force Base, in Novato, California] to fly to Hawaii. They spent time there waiting for the rest of the crew. They then went down to New Guinea. In Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii], his fifth-grade teacher from Wyckoff [Annotator's Note: Wyckoff, New Jersey] was there. She had married a guy there who owned a motel near Waikiki Beach. Snyder was invited there for Christmas dinner [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1944]. On Christmas Eve [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1944], he shipped out and did not get the dinner. He had Christmas dinner on Biak [Annotator's Note: Biak, West New Guinea].

On Biak [Annotator's Note: Biak, West New Guinea], it would rain every day at about one o'clock for about ten minutes. On Christmas Day [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1944] every GI [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier], including Harold Daniel Snyder, was supposed to get turkey. He was given a turkey neck. He threw it in the garbage. The meat was tainted so everyone but him got sick. He stayed at Biak for four or five days and then went to Nadzab [Annotator's Note: Nadzab Airfield in Lae, Papua New Guinea]. He waited for the rest of his crew there. After four or five days with just him and the top turret gunner, they heard their names being called to report to the CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer]. They were told they were being assigned to the Red Cross [Annotator's Note: Red Cross, an international non-profit humanitarian organization] unit in the enlisted men's area. That was a godsend. They did not have to eat in the mess hall after that. There were four girls there working. If they had to go to the outdoor bathroom, the men had to carbine [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine] and go with them. Snyder had a GI driver's license, so he got to drive them back and forth to their barracks that were guarded. He got there the day after Christmas [Annotator's Note: 26 December 1944]. He got to his squadron close to February [Annotator's Note: February 1945]. Nadzab was the replacement crew center for the 5th Air Force and 13th Air Force. He was assigned to the 5th in the 345th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 345th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force] in Leyte [Annotator's Note: Leyte, Philippines]. They were moving to Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Philippines]. They helped them move there. In Manila, they lined up and found out that Robertson's [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] and Salisbury's [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] crews were going to the 38th [Annotator's Note: 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. Snyder was on Robertson's crew [Annotator's Note: in the 71st Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. They flew north to Lingayen [Annotator's Note: Lingayen, Philippines]. A lot of the ground crew had been overseas for two to three years and had built huts. The six new enlisted men had a hut built for themselves. They dug a freshwater well in the back. A ground crew member got a fuel pump and 55 gallon drum to fill with water. It was in the sun and that gave them a warm water shower. They left there in June for Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan].

Harold Daniel Snyder [Annotator's Note: with the 71st Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force] had a good time at Lingayen [Annotator's Note: Lingayen, Philippines]. They flew ground support missions for the infantry on Luzon [Annotator's Note: Luzon, Philippines]. They flew missions to Formosa [Annotator's Note: Republic of Formosa; present day Taiwan] and the slot [Annotator's Note: the Taiwan Strait] between Formosa and China, where the Japanese would bring supplies through. They were going to invade Borneo [Annotator's Note: at Balikpapan, Borneo] and two squadrons were sent down to Puerto Princesa, Philippines [Annotator's Note: Puerto Princesa Air Field, now Puerto Princesa International Airport in Palawan, Philippines]. They took cots, blankets, and clothes for a couple of days. It was in a coconut grove. It was like a scene from a movie. They slept in tents. They flew a long mission to Borneo that lasted ten hours and ten minutes. They had to use half the bomb bay for an extra gas tank. The Navy was offshore, and Snyder never saw so many ships. It looked like all the ships in the world. The Navy called the shots as to when they came in on a target. The fighter planes strafed first. Then the bombers came in and strafed and dropped anti-personnel bombs that had parachutes on them. They flew low above the ground. The B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] were at 10,000 feet and dropped their bombs through the other formation. They hit one of the planes. They flew that for two days. They were long days. The first day they had headwinds that slowed them down. The Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] on the ground were going crazy. Snyder was a tail gunner. The B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] had eight machine guns in the nose [Annotator's Note: the B-25J had eight fixed Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun in the nose] that the pilot fired. They would dive down and being in the back of the plane was like being in a bucking bronco [Annotator's Note: Snyder was the tail gunner]. When the pilot started firing the nose guns, Snyder would count to five and start blasting away with the tail guns. He would try not to dump all the ammo in case someone came after them. They returned to the Philippines. One day they were supposed to hit a harbor in China. That is not fun as there were a lot of guns surrounding it. It was socked in, and they had to hit their secondary target. That was okay with Snyder. [Annotator's Note: The video goes black from 1:00:27.000 to 1:00:48.000.] There was not sophisticated weather gathering then. They would send out weather recco [Annotator's Note: reconnaissance] flights. You got points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] for those and for every three hours in combat as well as when your plane hit. You had to get 100 points total. They did a lot of weather reconnaissance and looked for targets of opportunity. Three planes who did those never came back. Snyder's pilot was one of them. He was going up to Formosa where he said there was an ammo dump disguised as a hospital. He never returned. Each time a weather recco went down, they lost two radio men.

A Jewish boy joined Harold Daniel Snyder's group [Annotator's Note: 71st Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. He brought a bag full of booze. Snyder and a friend bought a bottle and took it to a local place. They drank the whole thing. They were getting ready to go up to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. They had worked the night before getting drums of gas and take them to the beach. The truck broke down on their way back. They had to wait until morning for the next guys coming out. They then went out and had their drink. When they returned, they were being read the duty list, and the guy with Snyder passed out. It is hard to explain how different life was. [Annotator's Note: Snyder becomes emotional.] You did not know if you were going to get through the next day or not. Guys that were there for breakfast were not necessarily going to be there for supper. It became so that life was cheap. But that is the way you had to accept things. He had a friend from another squadron that he went through training with. He was in the 17th Recco [Annotator's Note: 17th Reconnaissance Squadron, 13th Air Force] about ten miles away from Snyder's base. Snyder made arrangements to see him, and they spent the day together. Snyder's friend was supposed to come see him later on. Snyder was alone in his hut when a pilot came over and told him that his friend had gone down. This pilot's twin brother was the pilot of his friend's airplane, and he was lost too. Snyder never shed a tear. The crews could get a double shot after each mission if they wanted it. Snyder would save his. Snyder offered the pilot a drink to the men who never got to go home. There were thousands like them. His friend's plane had taken flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] in the bomb bay and flames were shooting out of the tail of the plane. His friend was a tail gunner, and he was burned alive. [Annotator's Note: Snyder becomes emotional.] That is a lousy way to go. Snyder wrote to his mother after he returned home. She was so glad to hear from someone who knew him. Snyder sent her a Christmas card every year until one year he got a card from the sister of the friend. She said her husband would never let her talk about her brother. She asked Snyder to tell him how he had met his death and he did so. She was thankful to know what really happened other than just "killed in action." They wrote back and forth until her mail stopped too.

Harold Daniel Snyder keeps in touch with Hegland [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify]. He, O'Hara [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify], and Snyder did things together. They all came home on the same boat. Hegland was from the West. O'Hara went to Pennsylvania and Snyder went to Fort Dix [Annotator's Note: now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Trenton, New Jersey]. The group had a reunion in Pennsylvania and Snyder went to see who was there. He was registering at the hotel, and he saw O'Hara there. O'Hara told him that Hegland had reenlisted after getting out of college and became a Second Lieutenant fighter pilot and flew in Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He put 20 years in, retired, and lives in Colorado Springs [Annotator's Note: Colorado Springs, Colorado]. Snyder and his wife visit him and O'Hara. O'Hara had a case of premium Scotch [Annotator's Note: alcoholic beverage]. The three sipped that and called some guys. One guy was not happy to hear from them that late at night. They called Murphy [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] and he was glad to hear from them. O'Hara died later. Snyder found out after calling his daughter when O'Hara was in the hospital. Snyder called and talked to O'Hara. Two days later, O'Hara died. [Annotator's Note: Snyder becomes emotional.] O'Hara became a lawyer when he got out of the service and was in politics in Pennsylvania. Snyder and Hegland called him "Mick" [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for someone of Irish descent]. Mick said that if anyone else called him that, they would be spitting teeth. They had a camaraderie you do not get anyplace else. Nobody lives forever.

Harold Daniel Snyder got out just before Christmas in 1945 [Annotator's Note: December 1945] and went to Paterson State Teachers College [Annotator's Note: now William Paterson University of New Jersey in Wayne, New Jersey] in January [Annotator's Note: January 1946]. He applied to Syracuse [Annotator's Note: Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York] in the Fall. He got into a satellite school in Utica [Annotator's Note: Utica, New York] for one year and then returned to Paterson State for summer school. He then transferred and finished at Syracuse on the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment]. He got a degree in sales management, but he never did that for work. Snyder went to work for GM [Annotator's Note: General Motors] for nearly 31 years and retired. By the time he got out of school, jobs were not plentiful. Snyder never regretted retiring on 1 August 1980. He has had a good retirement life. He bought a farm in upstate New York [Annotator's Note: before he retired]. His daughter and her husband lived with them. They spent weekends at the farm for five years. It was like a different world. He became friends with a man who mowed his lawn. It took almost a full day to cut the lawn on a riding mower. He had a pond that took some time to get put in. Snyder did not want to stay in the Air Force as an enlisted man. If he could have gone back like Hegland [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] did and come out a colonel that would have been okay. He would later play golf with Hegland and one day another guy joined them. Hegland owns 12 houses that he rents [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview].

Harold Daniel Snyder's most memorable experience was the closest he came to being knocked off [Annotator's Note: as a tail gunner in the 71st Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. On a weather recco [Annotator's Note: reconnaissance mission], they were chasing a train down. He fired and he heard a "whump." There was a hole in the airplane about a foot from his head. That scared him. At one time on a regular mission, he got really scared without knowing why. He was so cold he was shivering. It was not a bad mission. He did not know if he could crawl in the back end again or not. He figured it was not going to beat him. The next time he got in there. What got him through was that he would recite the 23rd Psalm [Annotator's Note: a passage in the Christian Bible] when the pilot said they were on the bomb run. It got him through. One time, it was like there was a presence in the back of the B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] with him. [Annotator's Note: Snyder becomes emotional.] He had never had the kind of fear again. Near the end of the war, they were going after an aircraft carrier by Japan that was crippled. In the briefing, they were told to come in off a hill and it would be right off the shore. The whole night before that, Snyder did not sleep 20 minutes. He got up at four o'clock. He had his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol], his canteen, a first-aid kit with morphine [Annotator's Note: narcotic used to treat pain], and a trench knife on his belt. He ate and went to the briefing. It was like doing it in his sleep. It was out of habit. He got in and it never bothered him. He never took a parachute because you were normally hit over the target, and they were usually 20 feet above the ground. If you did make out to the ocean, the chances of somebody seeing you were next to nothing. His CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] went down once. They went to look for him and nobody saw his raft. They went out again the next morning and found him and five others in the raft. Air Rescue planes were called "Dumbo", a B-17 [Annotator's Note: SB-17G, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber air sea rescue] with a big lifeboat [Annotator's Note: A-1 lifeboat] under the bomb bay. The released that with parachutes. Two PT boats [Annotator's Note: patrol torpedo boat] came from Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Philippines] and picked them up. One plane stayed and sunk the lifeboat so the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] could not get it.

The war made Harold Daniel Snyder a man. His time in the Army Air Corps was as good as two years in college. He learned a lot including how to accept things. He learned that you are not guaranteed life or anything. [Annotator's Note: Snyder becomes emotional.] He learned how to get along with people. He never cried [Annotator's Note: before now]. Now he does but he does not know why. What the war means to Americans today depends on what age you are talking about. His daughter and granddaughter do not fully understand what they were saved from. Most of the old people where he is [Annotator's Note: in a retirement facility], had someone in the service. Guys coming in now were not alive and involved in the war. A couple of years ago, they had the veterans come down and talk about what they did. Afterwards, his friend Henry [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] told him that Snyder was the only combat guy there. [Annotator's Note: Snyder becomes emotional.] They used to say it took ten men to keep one man in combat. In New Guinea, one job was cleaning the crappers [Annotator's Note: slang for toilets]. The poured kerosene in the holes. If you can get the young people's attention, it is worth teaching them about the war. Snyder offered to pay his daughter's and granddaughter's way to visit the Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and they never went. He gave a friend a ticket to go, and she told him she was really impressed with the place. Live life to the fullest. Do not put off something that you want to do. Do not hesitate if you can afford it. Use a little sense. Snyder had a farm for about ten years, and he enjoyed every minute of it. He did a lot of work, but it was a different kind of work. His job for almost 20 years handling claims was a lousy job. A claims adjuster is never right and cannot win. The last ten years in the office he did different things. He was a project in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where he ran the claims end of a disaster area from flooding. He ran it the way he saw it and not the way the books said to. He learned that along the way. If you believe something is the right way to do something, do it. The way things worked in his outfit; his immediate supervisor could control what he got. He had a couple of bums that were not good for him. He ended up being their boss later, but he could not retaliate. It is not in his make-up to hang somebody. Those guys were alcoholics.