Kenneth A. Lafleur was born in May 1923 in Ville Platte [Annotator's Note: Ville Platte Louisiana]. Before the war, he was a student at SLI [Annotator's Note: Southwestern Louisiana Institute of Liberal and Technical Learning, Lafayette, Louisiana; now known as University of Louisiana at Lafayette] and wanted to be a football coach. He was hitchhiking a ride to Lafayette when he heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. After completing a semester at college, Lafleur enlisted at the Aviation Cadets in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] in June 1942. He was sent to the Aviation Cadet School in Santa Ana, California for three months of basic training. He was then sent to Thunderbird Field near Phoenix, Arizona. He had an accident and hurt his knee so he was reassigned to train as an armorer-gunner in Denver, Colorado. [Annotator's Note: Someone can be heard talking in the background at 0:05:36.00 and tape cuts out.] Lafleur spent three months in Denver and then was sent to Laredo, Texas to learn how to be an aerial gunner. [Annotator's Note: A telephone rings in the background and the video cuts out at 0:6:55.000.] He was assigned to B-17s [Annotator's Notes: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] in Alexandria, Louisiana, but before he could go on the assignment, he was quarantined for a month due to a meningitis outbreak in his barracks in Salt Lake City [Annotator's Notes: Salt Lake City, Utah]. He was reassigned to B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] in Mountain Home, Idaho after the quarantine was lifted. He was sent to Tonopah, Nevada to train with the pilots for about six months before he was finally shipped to the Pacific.

In 1944, Kenneth A. Lafleur and the 22nd Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force were sent to an airfield in Finschhafen, New Guinea for a couple of weeks, and then went to the Aua [Annotator's Note: Aua Island, Papua New Guinea] airstrip. Lefleur recalled one of his biggest missions was to Balikpapan in Southern Borneo. They met a lot of resistance when they flew over to bomb the area. His friend that he met during training was a copilot of another plane and he did not survive the mission. He remembered being intercepted by 20 to 25 Japanese Zeroes [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, also known as the Zeke or Zero]. The mission took 15 hours, which was Lefleur's longest mission. [Annotator's Note: A telephone rings in background 0:16:56.] Lafleur shot at a Zero with his twin .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] and the Japanese pilot peeled off. There mission was successful and they were able to bomb their target. While he was on the small islands, he would get a chance to swim in the water and admire the sea life.

Kenneth A. Lafleur talks about his missions in the Philippines. His unit [Annotator's Note: 408th Bombardment Squadron, 22nd Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force] bombed the Philippine Island of Mindanao a few times, but their main target was Corregidor. He also bombed cities on Leyte and Luzon, near Clark Field. They would later capture that airfield. After being stationed on Anguar [Annotator's Note: Angaur, Palau], they moved to Samar [Annotator's Note: Samar, Philippines]. Their targets were usually air bases. Towards the end of the war, his mission was to bomb Taiwan and Hong Kong. Lafleur recalled his last mission to be interesting. He had 99 points and needed one more to qualify to be sent home. His pilot got lost on their way to Formosa and he only received a half of a point, so he had to go out on another mission the next day. It would be one of his roughest missions. They received heavy resistance and their plane was hit in the tail and one of the engines. When they landed, their brakes were gone, and they had to let out parachutes to slow the plane down. He received seven points for that mission. He flew a total of 41 missions. Lafleur remembered that many of the planes had fun names and women painted on the fuselage. [Annotator's Note: A telephone rings in background at 0:35:49.000.]

By the time Kenneth A. Lafleur had enough points to go home, he had flown 41 missions in the Pacific. Lafleur remarked that they did not get a lot of news during his time in the service, but he does remember listening to Tokyo Rose [Annotator's Note: all English-speaking female radio broadcasters of Japanese Propaganda] a lot. He also remembered during downtime he would be given different details. One of the duties that he thought was the worst was when he was ordered to dig a water well on the Island of Aua [Annotator's Note: Aua Island, Papua New Guinea] and they would have to drill out the coral with a jack hammer. During downtime he played cards with the other servicemen. Lafleur never did get to go on leave, which he thought was unfortunate. In June 1945, he returned to the United States. He was put on a troop transport which took 30 days to get to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. He was then put on a train to Camp Shelby in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The military personnel did not think he had enough points and sent him to San Antonio, Texas for reassignment after a 30 day furlough. While he was in San Antonio, they reviewed his records again and found that he did have enough points for discharge. Lefleur was sent back to Hattiesburg and discharged on 14 August 1945. That same day, he heard the war was declared over. Lafleur reflected on being attacked by Japanese Zeroes [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, also known as the Zeke or Zero] on four or five missions. He also remembered flying over the water he would see a school of 5,000 or 10,000 whales and porpoises jumping out of the water. It was an amazing sight to him. On his return home, they stopped in Hawaii and he stayed at Waikiki Beach until they had to finish their transport back to the United States.