James Read Kirk was born in September 1924 in Watseka, Illinois. His parents moved to the Detroit area [Annotator's Note: Detroit, Michigan], where he grew up during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. His dad served in the Marines in World War I and was wounded in Belleau Wood [Annotator's Note: Battle of Belleau Wood, 1 to 26 June 1918, Belleau Wood, near the Marne River, France]. He got piece shrapnel in his eye and as a result, the government gave him a pension. Kirk would hoe the fields for Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford [Annotator's Note: American industrialist] was growing soybeans. They were using them to make steering wheels. Kirk worked eight hours a day, seven days a week. He graduated from Dearborn high school in 1942. In 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] and he was anxious to serve. He went to the University of Michigan for one full semester. When he started his second semester, he got his draft notice. He went to Tampa, Florida and was put in the middle of the swamp to learn to be a soldier. There was an outbreak of meningitis [Annotator's Note: inflammation of fluid and membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord] and the men were moved to the Vinoy Hotel [Annotator's Note: now the Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort and Golf Club in Saint Petersburg, Florida] in downtown Tampa. It was a deluxe compared to where they were. Kirk did not want to be a Marine and chose the Air Force. He was sent to a gunnery school in Naples, Florida. It was about six weeks in flight gunnery and gunnery targets. He graduated and they sent him to northern Florida where they were putting the crews together to fly overseas in 1943. He went to radio school and flunked out. He went back to join his crew. He ended up being a waist gunner. He was a little big, but he made it work. They got a brand-new airplane and flew to Africa. He did not know if they were going to make it to Africa. By that time they were supposed to be in Italy where they joined the 96th Bomb Group, the 96th Squadron [Annotator's Note: 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. They were flying a B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. They were going to be called on the next day for their first mission. They thought they would be in the new airplane. They ended up in the oldest airplane in the 15th Air Force. It had bullet holes all through it. He hoped they did not have to fly that plane. The pilot told the other guys they had to start somewhere.

James Read Kirk bombed France [Annotator's Note: with the 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] during the invasion of Southern France [Annotator's Note: Operation Dragoon, Provence, Southern France, 15 August 1944]. They were hit by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] many times. On one occasion they lost a couple of engines coming back. They had to make it over a mountain range to make it back to Italy. They could not make it over the mountains. They had to throw things out of the plane. It started to work and then the airplane jumped up about 10 or 15 feet. Then they were able to make it back. The crew chief asked what they did to his airplane. He would not be able to fix it. Their last mission was the worst. They got hit by flak flying into Poland. They lost the formation and were hit by fighters. They flew into Hungary. They were going to have to get out of the airplane. They were in Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary on 20 August 1944] over farm country. He got behind a stone fence after getting rid of his parachute. There were men armed with pitchforks. Kirk had a sidearm and pointed it at them. He thought he could scare them away, but that did not work. He put his gun down and raised his hands. They were friendly towards him, and they took him to a courthouse. Pretty soon his entire crew was there with him. A truck arrived with two or three Germans. The Germans told them to get on the truck and that the war was over. They took them to Budapest.

James Read Kirk was taken to Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary] where he was put into prison [Annotator's Note: after being shot down while on a mission with the 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force in 1944]. He was interrogated for about a month and then sent to a prisoner of war camp in northern Germany. He rode on a train for days. The train yards were being bombed and it was risky. He went to Stalag IV [Annotator's Note: Stalag Luft IV, Tychowo, Poland]. It was a big camp. They had to walk for about two miles. They had dogs there to keep the men in line. Life in the prison camp was boring. There were thugs that did not like the Americans. There was a big guy they called Stoop. Stoop was about six foot eight inches, and he was a terror on the prisoners. His favorite trick was to walk up behind people and box their ears. It would hurt bad. They only did that to annoy them. Food was at a minimum. They had two meals a day. One of them was hot water and for lunch, they would get mashed potatoes. Once in a while, they would get some meat. There were good days and bad days. The Red Cross was sending parcels that were filled with all the goodies the men could want. When Kirk went into the service, he weighed 159 pounds. When he was liberated, he weighed 96 pounds. The colonel in charge of the camp got them all out one day and said they were moving. The Russians were getting close, and the Americans were getting closer. This was on 6 February 1945. They went out the front gate and moved to another place. There were 10,000 men in the camp. There were some British and Russians, but 90 percent of them were American. They got to a stopping point that night in an open field and then continued the next day. They slept in the fields for 90 days on their way to southern Germany. It was the worst winter in German history. They made it to an airplane factory. Kirk had diarrhea and did not know why. He did not eat anything. They had a captain who was a flight surgeon on a plane that was shot down. He was running service to everybody that needed help. He gave charcoal to people who had dysentery [Annotator's Note: infection of the intestines]. The next day they heard a sound at the doors and the Russians had shown up. No one could understand the Russians. They were at Reisen [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] a small town where there was a garrison. The Americans were not far away. The Americans sent a truck that had a couple of guys in it to pick them up. There were 20 or 30 of them. The Russians did not want to let them go and wanted money. They did not have money to pay them. They thought they were going to end up in Russia. Two weeks later they had enough of that, and they all went over the fence. They were in the middle of Germany. They had nowhere to go. There was an Albanian there that could understand the Russians. They put them up in German houses. The Germans had evacuated. They were there for about 25 or 30 days. They hoped they were heading in the right direction. They were trying to get to the American lines. They walked across the Elbe River [Annotator's Note: Elbe River, Germany]. They made it to Lucky Strike Camp [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France] where soldiers were getting ready to go home. They got food. They were there for about three weeks. Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] arrived and they were all complaining about going home. The war was over by that time. He told them they would be moving out the next day. There were five or six thousand ex-POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] there. They started on their way to England. After that, they were put on the Queen Elizabeth [Annotator's Note: the RMS Queen Elizabeth], and then they made it all the way home.

James Read Kirk was 17 years old and in high school when Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was sitting in the living room with his sister and one of her friends when the announcement came on the radio. It was a disaster, and they knew it would not be long before they were in the war. The draft was going to start. He was interested well before he got his draft notice. He wanted to finish college. He did not want to be in the Army or Marines because he knew what his dad had been through in the trenches [Annotator's Note: during World War 1]. He knew the Air Force could not be worse than that. He could have hot meals and clean clothes. He asked what would happen if his college program got discontinued was told he would be put into the Army. He did not want to be in the Army, so he went ahead and joined the Air Force. He became a gunner. They went up in two-seat airplanes and they fired at targets. The targets were being towed. The only way to tell you were hitting the targets was by the color the bullets left behind. They learned that they could not fire directly at the fighters. They had to fire slightly in front of them and then they would run into it. They had a steel ring that they put on the back of a truck. It was moving and they were moving trying to hit the target. It was like skeet shooting. That was how they learned to lead an airplane and to shoot. The ball turret was a stationary. It was not like this with a waist gunner. Their gun went up and down and it was harder to get the sight on target. He once had a German come up underneath him and he could see his tracers go through the cockpit [Annotator's Note: while with the 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. No one saw it. No one could prove he shot down a German. The best thing about B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] was the number of guns they could bear on an attack. The missions would be 10 to 12 hours. He would be in the turret until the end of the mission. He learned he could take a nap until someone said fighter. It was dangerous because they were hanging out. The fighters knew they wanted to come up on the bottom because that is the most vulnerable spot.

James Read Kirk had never been out of the country before. He went to Bangor, Maine and practiced flying in formations. When they were getting ready to leave, a pilot climbed a fence and broke his ankle. The pilot was going to be in the hospital for 10 days. They had to go back and were restricted to the field. They were carrying GI [Annotator's Note: government issue; also, a slang term for an American soldier] food [Annotator's Note: rations] in a lot of boxes. They landed in Tunisia and left the airplane. They did not think someone should stay there. People came and took a bunch of stuff they were carrying when they landed. Early on in the war, they knew there was a Major Kane [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Major John Riley "Killer” Kane]. He was flying from Africa and went in low to drop their bombs. The group was all wiped out. From then on, he was known as Killer Kane. Once Kirk was flying low [Annotator's Note: with the 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] and got hit. They bailed out. For their first mission, they woke up around three or four in the morning and went to a briefing. Kirk did not know what to expect. He was brand new on the job. There were no concrete runways. They were all metal. If it rained it was hard to take off. It was difficult to get up and to fly in those conditions. There were a lot of accidents. It was not raining on his first mission. They were lucky because they were flying tail end Charlie [Annotator's Note: the last aircraft in a formation] which is where the new guys fly. They had all the fighters. The first mission was to Poland to an oil field. It was a minor flight. There were no fighters.

There must have been 1,500 guns around Ploesti [Annotator's Note: Ploesti, Romania]. That was where they [Annotator's Note: the Germans] had all their oil and they also had their fighters in there. James Read Kirk was a ball turret gunner [Annotator's Note: with the 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force]. He could see the flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] come up and airplanes getting blown up in mid-air. He thought he would be next. He had no protection. He had some pictures that showed what happened to those people when they got hit. It looked like you could walk on the smoke because it was that heavy. They had a lot of guns and shells and accuracy. It was murder. They were accompanied about halfway to the target by their fighters. The Germans learned they would be unprotected after they got there. The fighters were using all kinds of maneuvers. They would fly in ahead and four of them would come up underneath them. They would go up over the top and then come down and sweep away. They would reverse themselves and then come up and back. Very seldom did they come up from the side. He learned in gunnery school to shoot in front of them to maybe get one. They were good pilots. When they got the P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] the Germans left them alone. Before that, they would send up 20 or 30 fighters. There would be 200 planes in the sky and the Germans would pick them off. They lost a lot of people. That was why there were 10,000 prisoners in the camps. They finally learned how to fight. The British flew at night and it was less risky. Initially, their escort was P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft]. They had the Tuskegee Airmen [Annotator's Note: African American pilots; 332nd Fighter Group and 477th Bombardment Group, US Army Air Forces; name applies to all associated personnel] fly with them. P-38s primarily flew and sometimes some P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft]. The Tuskegee Airmen escorted him a few times. They did a great job. They were proud men.

James Read Kirk's last mission [Annotator's Note: with the 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force] was 70 years ago [Annotator's Note: 20 August 1944]. He and another guy get breakfast together occasionally. The guy gets a lot of information, and he calls Kirk to ask if he remembers dates. When Kirk went to war, he went on a train from Detroit [Annotator's Note: Detroit, Michigan] to Florida. It took about five days. Next, he went to Virginia. On his last mission in Europe, he was told the squadron would fly straight, bomb, and then turn left. On their final bomb run they were hit by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] in one engine. They were supposed to turn left with the squadron but went right because they lost control. They were losing altitude and they could not stay with the squadron. They were by themselves and lost. They did not have the firepower to be alone. They tried to rally but they could not catch up. Fighters came up and six or seven of them hit the plane. They were trailing smoke. They were swarming on them like bees. He knew they were going down. Kirk was a pretty big guy and was leaning against the trap door. He needed the others to let him know if they got into trouble so he could get out. If he did not have help from above, he would not get out. If he wore his parachute, he would not have been able to fire the gun. They had their parachutes piled up. A couple of guys waited on him. They were the waist gunners. After the war, they had a reunion, but only four of them showed up. They went to Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. His pilot told him he had a confession to make. When they were getting ready for the last mission General Twining [Annotator's Note: US Air Force General Nathan Farragut Twining] came to him and wanted him to be his pilot. General Twining was head of the Air Force. He told him he would love to do it, but he wanted to fly one more mission with his crew. They bombed in southern France. They would fly over the Alps. They got asked if they would fly to Switzerland. Switzerland was out of the war because it was a neutral country. They did not go there. They were going to stay where they were. The bomb run on southern France was a fiasco. They were flying at 15,000 feet. Underneath he could see B-25s [Annotator's Note: North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber]. Fighters were all over the place. They could see the bombs dropping between the airplanes. No one got hit. They could not work with the parachutes. They threw them in the corner. When it came time for them to go, they would pick a parachute and go. To get out, they would go to the back of the plane by the door and fall out. The guys in the front dropped out through the bomb bay or the pilot's door. When Kirk got there [Annotator's Note: after his plane was hit by flak over Hungary], he looked around. He snapped on a bad looking one. He looked at the rear stabilizer and thought he would hit it on his way out. He got the courage to fall forward. He pulled the cord, and it went in between his legs. That was the first and only time he had used a parachute. He admired George Bush [Annotator's Note: George H. W. Bush, 41st President of the United States, 1989-1993; 43rd Vice President of the United States, 1981-1989; 11th Director of Central Intelligence Agency, 1976-1977] for going out of the airplanes [Annotator's Note: Bush went parachuting frequently]. The fighters left them alone because they could see they were done for. When they landed, they were about two or three miles apart from each other in farm country. They spent a lot of time hitting the area around Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary]. They would go out to the little towns and blow something up. The people there were not pleasant.

James Read Kirk had to give his serial number and rank to the men interrogating him [Annotator's Note: after his plane was shot down and he was captured]. They told him where he was from, where he lived, what bomb group he was flying with [Annotator's Note: 96th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group, 15th Air Force], and what his hometown was. They knew everything about him. They were hoping by saying all of those things he would open up and tell them more. They were tricky. They had information that he did not normally get. When they arrived in Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary] they were stripped and lined up. The Germans pointed at them and were saying Jude [Annotator's Note: Juden, German for Jew] about the men who were circumcised. They only had one Jew in the group. They showed their dog tags in order to show they were not Jewish. The Jewish guy had a J on his tags. He was a target from then on. They made him carry their door from the airplane wherever they went. They would come up behind him and beat him. He had a big mouth and said he could take care of it. The more he said the more they did not like it. They were one of the newer Stalags [Annotator's Note: German prison camp]. It was late in the war. It was all fenced in by compounds. The barracks in the back were for the British. The Russian's had to clean the latrines. That was the worst job. The British had been there maybe two or three years. They were all interested in escaping. They knew it was coming to an end. They had a radio. They walked through the barracks with it. It had been sent in pieces through the parcels and they put together the radio. They heard both good news and bad news. They were veterans in the camp. They knew what was going on. They were allowed to shower occasionally. Kirk went down in his flying clothes. He never changed clothes the entire time he was there. He had a lot of dirt on him. He could scrape it off in chunks. After the war, he found out they had piles of clothes and food from the Red Cross. When they did give them the parcels there were holes in every can. He knew what was going on. They each got a Christmas parcel. Normally they would split one between six of them. No one could eat it all because it was so rich. They had turkey and cake. They did not get all the food that came in the parcels. It was nothing like what the Japanese did. They were fortunate. Being liberated was the greatest day of his life. When he was liberated, he wanted to get some food. He swore he would never go hungry again. There is nothing worse than that. He got home to the Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: in Michigan] and he got a holiday for 30 days. Then he was sent to Atlantic City [Annotator's Note: Atlantic City, New Jersey]. There were pageant girls, and they all came over to him. They said they needed escorts for the girls and asked for volunteers. No one volunteered they all wanted to go home. They planned out meals and talked about recipes. They had a lot of powdered milk. They put together food for cooking. Some of the guys were good. They could see what they were doing. After the war, he showed his wife some of the recipes and it was the worst thing he ever tasted.

James Read Kirk got out of the war as a staff sergeant in September 1945. He immediately went to college. He used the GI 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 met his wife there. He worked for a pharmaceutical company in Texas. He was covering four states. The weather was not great. He was on the road driving around. He was offered a job in San Antonio [Annotator's Note: San Antonio, Texas]. He loved to play golf. He played from April to October. The government was looking for people from the prison camps [Annotator's Note: the former guards at the German prisoner of war camps]. They wanted to arrest the ones that had mistreated prisoners. There were some guys that came to ask him questions about being a prisoner. They were asking about war crimes that some of the agitators in the prison camps committed. The government interviewed him in college. They asked him who did what. He knew some things about some of the men, but not all of the men they asked about. They asked about Stalag IV [Annotator's Note: Stalag Luft IV, Tychowo, Poland] and the commandant. They were bad men. He was astounded that they were going after them. Being in the camp made him believe he could do anything he wanted to. When he was in Budapest [Annotator's Note: Budapest, Hungary] he sat there for 30 days and saw nobody but the Germans who entered. He told himself he would beat it. He was not a religious person until then. He asked the Lord to help him get through it. He survived. He thanked the Lord he survived. He has his own religion. That helped him build a foundation for his life. He knew he was a survivor. They put ten people in that environment and only five came out of it. He saw some men dying on the road because they could not go any further. They would just throw them in a ditch. They would put a bayonet in them and throw them in the ditch. He did not run into anyone that had emotional problems like shell shock [Annotator's Note: psychological disturbance caused by prolonged exposure to active warfare, especially bombardment]. Working is where the emotional problems come in. They did not have problems to worry about. It was a whole different ball game. He thinks having a museum for World War 2 history [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] is absolutely necessary. He knows it will bring a lot of memories back for him. He thinks he has gotten rid of all the bad memories.