[Annotator’s Notes: There is a lot of background noise throughout this segment.] Jack H. Bleuler was born in 1923 and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma as the youngest of three boys. His father was an assistant manager of Crane Company, which was a large plumbing outfit. During the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], Bleuler and his family were well off. His father had a company car and his own car. Bleuler attended public school, and he was in a lot of social clubs. When he was 16 years old, his mother suffered a stroke. His father had passed away a few years earlier, so in August of 1941, Bleuler and his mother moved to Dallas [Annotator’s Note: Dallas, Texas] to live with his older brother. He learned about the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] from listening to the radio. He did not think much about the attack. In June 1942 Bleuler volunteered for service in the Army Air Corps and took the test for aviation cadets. He was called to active duty on 1 February 1943. After being inducted into the Army in Dallas, he was put on a bus to Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls [Annotator’s Note: Wichita Falls, Texas]. On the bus ride there, he met two other guys his age, Lee Everett and Stanton Gauge [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spellings], who were also on their way to basic training at Sheppard Field. The three became very fast friends. Everett would survive the war, but Gauge, by then a bombardier, was killed in action on his 27th mission in September 1944. Bleuler expressed that every young person should go to basic training because it teaches individuals how to be responsible and respectful.

After completing basic training, Jack H. Bleuler was sent to Texas A&M [Annotator’s Note: Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas] where he took college courses for about three months. His program was set up like West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York]. He performed a lot of physical training and class work. In September 1943, he started primary flight training at Spartan Field [Annotator’s Note: Spartan School of Aeronautics] in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [Annotator’s Note: Interviewer adjusts microphone on interviewee at 0:25:15.000.] Unfortunately, Bleuler washed out of the aviation cadet program during this stage of his training. Even though he washed out of flight school, Bleuler still wanted to fly, so after being notified that he would not be able to get into bombardier school, he volunteered for armament school and was sent to Denver [Annotator’s Note: Denver, Colorado] in October 1943. He trained on a .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun], bombs, and fuses. He was then sent to gunnery school in Fort Myers, Florida. He went from freezing conditions to hot conditions. He excelled at shooting the various weapons. After completing his training, he was assigned to a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] crew in Columbia, South Carolina. [Annotator’s Note: A clock dings at 0:30:14.000.] He and his crew mates trained together. His crew stayed together throughout their time overseas, flying a total of 39 missions.

In October 1944, Jack H. Bleuler was assigned to a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] crew in Columbia, South Carolina and they trained together for about four months. They trained on a B-25 that had a 75 mm cannon in the nose of the plane. His crew was then sent to Savannah, Georgia where they were given a brand-new B-25. They were given orders to fly the plane from Savannah to Tennessee, and then on to Amarillo, Texas. Next, they flew the plane to Arizona and had to give up the plane. The crew then boarded a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] to Hawaii and continued to Guadalcanal [Annotator’s Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. Bleuler then flew to Nadzab, New Guinea. There were a lot of bases. He camped out at the edge of the air base. A few days after being on New Guinea, he was assigned to fly his first mission to Wewak [Annotator’s Note: Wewak, Papua New Guinea]. New Guinea was a terrible place because of its jungle and mountainous terrain, along with bad weather conditions. He observed the natives as very small people that looked like aborigines. Bleuler saw a P-38 [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] fly over his tent and do a slow roll. He flew at least three missions that did not count towards his quota because the weather was so bad and his crew could not get over the mountains.

In November 1944, Jack H. Bleuler was serving with the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force during the War in the Pacific. His squadron was given orders to head to Morotai in the Dutch East Indies. Morotai was a dirty, jungle place on the equator. The airstrip was made of white coral. The Japanese were pushed into the jungle and cut off from their supplies. Bleuler’s squadron was warned that the Japanese might try to come in at night to steal supplies. Bleuler had his first combat experience when he was bombed by the Japanese planes. He recalled when the sirens went off, he headed for a ditch as fast as he could. While stationed on Morotai, he completed missions over the Philippines and Borneo. There was one great attack by the Japanese that damaged several of Allied planes. One night, Bleuler was standing outside guarding his plane and heard a Japanese plane coming through dropping bombs. All Bleuler could do was just stand there. He had a mission on Christmas Day and when he returned, his squadron had a feast. [Annotator’s Note: Clock dings in background at 1:00:13.000.] During his time off, he would walk the beach and swim in the water. [Annotator’s Note: Video break at 1:01:08.000.]

Jack H. Bleuler served with the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force during the war in the Pacific. He flew most of his missions out of Morotai [Annotator’s Note: Morotai, Pulau, Indonesia]. On one mission, his crew got shot up pretty good. Their wingman had an oil leak, so Bleuler’s plane landed with the wingman on a guerrilla airstrip on Mindanao [Annotator’s Note: Mindanao, the Philippines]. The locals met them on the strip and asked them to lunch. He talked to a young boy who bartered with him. He told the boy to find him a parrot and a monkey and he would give him a shirt. The boy never showed up with the animals before Bleuler and his crew had to leave. After MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] landed on Luzon in January 1945, he became part of the commander’s Air Force in the Philippines. There was devastation from combat in the area. The airstrip was made of steel matting over a sandy beach. Bleuler stayed there from January to July 1945 when he was sent back to the United States. He lived in tents at first, until the Filipinos built the service men bamboo huts. They were given a house boy, about 12 years old, who helped the servicemen with various tasks. Bleuler spoke very highly of the Filipinos. Some of his missions while stationed in the Philippines were on Formosa, today Taiwan. When he completed his missions, he did not have to deal with Japanese fighter pilots like the previous crews six months prior to him arriving in the Philippines. He flew a model J plane during his missions, but he trained in the United States with a model H [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. Bleuler spoke very highly of his crew. He thought his pilot, Frank Lee, “was the best in the world.” He kept in touch with most of the men in his crew and attended reunions.

Jack H. Bleuler served as a tail gunner on a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] with the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force during the war in the Pacific. He described the plane as thick as an aluminum can with cables running from the front of the plane to the tail. To move around the plane, men had to crawl around the area. When he was in combat, he sat on a bike seat in a cubby hole with his two hands on the machine gun. His head was in a bubble to see outside. His missions were different in the Pacific compared to the 8th Air Force in Europe. His missions were very long, and he knew that when they came close to the target, he was either going to live or die. Every time he came close to the target he began to pray. If he had to bail out, he would most likely hit water. Also, he knew that if he became a prisoner of war of the Japanese, he would not make it out alive. Bleuler was aware of the Japanese cruelty toward POWs [Annotator’s Note: prisoners of war]. On one unforgettable mission in March 1945, Bleuler saw China for the first time. Intelligence had spotted a transport near Shanghai [Annotator’s Note: Shanghai, China]. When it was spotted, Bleuler’s squadron was deployed to bomb the transport. On the way, he saw the coast of China and began to admire it. All of a sudden, Bleuler realized that the Japanese were shooting at him. As the pilot brought the plane down closer to the water, Bleuler spotted three Japanese destroyers and two merchant ships. The destroyers began shooting at his squadron. Bleuler’s pilot fixed on one merchant ship and dropped two bombs while Bleuler strafed the ship. The bombs landed on either side of the ship. The pilot began to zig-zag in the air to avoid shelling and shrapnel for several minutes. Bleuler noticed that one of his squadron planes was on fire. His plane came up alongside it, and Bleuler could see the crew trying to throw things out of the plane and moving around frantically. All of a sudden the wing of the plane was ablaze, and the plane nosedived into the sea. His plane flew on and got back to base safely. Most of the missions he completed were low-level skip bombing.

Jack H. Bleuler served as a tail gunner on a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] with the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force during the war in the Pacific. The B-25 had a lot of fire power. He was on a mission in March 1945 where his squadron attacked a convoy. He never saw people on the ship. [Annotator’s Note: Someone interrupts the interview at 1:40:52.000.] Bleuler never saw a fighter plane while he was in the air. Bleuler explains the many mishaps that happened when trying to release bombs out of the bomb bay. There were many casualties because of it. Dropping bombs was impersonal. He flew his last mission in late June, heading to Borneo to support the Australian amphibious invasion [Annotator’s Note: Borneo campaign, or Second Battle of Borneo, codenamed Operation Oboe; 1 May to 30 August 1945]. He recalled hearing about the passing of FDR [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States, died 12 April 1945] and the good news of the war in Europe ending. His squadron was in the process of transferring to Okinawa [Annotator’s Note: Okinawa, Japan] when he left to return to the United States. Bleuler is glad that the United States dropped the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] because there would be so many more casualties otherwise. When he returned home, he stopped in Manila [Annotator’s Note: Manila, the Philippines] for a month before catching a transport to San Francisco [Annotator’s Note: San Francisco, California]. The trip home lasted about a month. He was in Dallas [Annotator’s Note: Dallas, Texas] when the war in the Pacific ended [Annotator’s Note: Japan surrendered 15 August 1945]. He was then sent to San Antonio [Annotator’s Note: San Antonio, Texas] to await being discharged. He was discharged in Barksdale Field, Louisiana in October 1945.

Jack H. Bleuler was discharged from the Army Air Corps in October 1945 as a staff sergeant at Barksdale Airfield [Annotator’s Note: Barksdale Airfield, Louisiana]. A week later, he enrolled at SMU [Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas] using 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] and graduated in two years and ten months. [Annotator’s Note: Video break at 1:56:47.000.] Bleuler transitioned smoothly from military life to civilian life, and did not suffer from post-traumatic stress. One of his worst missions was in the mountains of Luzon [Annotator’s Note: Luzon, the Philippines] strafing a road and then bombing the area. On the second run, his wingman’s plane hit its belly along the mountainous terrain and burst into flames. [Annotator’s Note: Someone interrupts the interview at 2:02:25.000.] The plane looked like a fiery cross. When the plane hit the ground, it disintegrated. Bleuler’s crew did not finish the mission and flew back to base. Bleuler was able to contact the pilot’s family a year after the war and told them in a letter what had happened. The weather conditions, heat, and flying long hours over water was the most dangerous part of flying missions. Bleuler comments on the dangers of bailing out in the water and the casualties that came from it. [Annotator’s Note: Clock dinging in the background at 2:12:10.000.]

Jack H. Bleuler served as a tail gunner on a B-25 [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber] with the 822nd Bombardment Squadron, 38th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force during the war in the Pacific. The Pacific island landscapes were beautiful as he flew over them. He fought in World War 2 because there was no other choice, and it was the right thing to do. He learned discipline and honored his country. 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] was a great benefit for veterans. He was honored to have served and glad he is alive today. He is not sure what World War 2 means to younger Americans. He wants to tell future Americans to love their country and make it better. Bleuler believes there should be institutions like the National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and that we should continue to teach World War 2 to future generations.