Kenneth Wieland was born in Fisher, Minnesota September 1926. He grew up there. [Annotator's Note: Someone enters the room and the interview starts over.] They did not have much during the Great Depression. He remembers going to school wearing heavy wools socks and overshoes because his family could not afford shoes. His family were farmers, so they did not go hungry, but they did not have much extra. Fisher was a very small town. He had one older sister. He was the oldest of four boys. Two of his brothers served in Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. His dad served in World War 1. His mother was against Wieland serving, but he was drafted. His father did not talk much about the war. He was in France. Wieland remembers he had just gotten home from church and were eating dinner when they heard on the radio that Japan had attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. It did not mean much to him, but he thought he would like to go in the Army. He went to Fort Snelling [Annotator's Note: Fort Snelling, Minnesota] in November 1944. He went through the eighth grade for school and worked the farm with his father. He had a one-room school and there were only two of them in his class. The teacher taught all eight grades. He was inducted at Fort Snelling. He does not remember too much about it, other than getting a lot of tests. He went to Jefferson Barracks [Annotator's Note: Jefferson Barracks Military Post, Lemay, Missouri], where they got their shots and uniforms. That was the farthest he had ever been from home. They went by train. They had cots and it was about 20 below [Annotator's Note: 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit]. They would stop every three hours and run to warm up. He then went to Camp Robinson, Arkansas [Annotator's Note: North Little Rock, Arkansas] for basic training. He got along well with the men but he got homesick.

Kenneth Wieland does not remember too much about his basic training but recalls there was a lot of marching and time on the rifle range. He had done some shooting having grown up in the country. The farm guys were in better shape too. After training, he got overseas orders. He was going to go home on furlough [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] but there was a forest fire up in the mountains above Camp Robinson [Annotator's Note: Camp Robinson, North Little Rock, Arkansas]. When finished, they were given clean fatigues that had been dumped off in the woods. He had chiggers in his uniform on the march back. He got sick and pent 58 days in the hospital. He was then sent to a different part of the camp. They were training for the invasion of Japan. He trained until just before the war ended. He got orders to the Philippines, but they dropped the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945], and he got sent to Japan. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the interviewee how it felt to be training to invade Japan.] He remembers one officer told them to listen up good because only half of them would be coming back. Wieland turned to the guy next to him and said it was too bad he was not going to make it. They left for Japan in September 1945.

The war in Europe had ended. Kenneth Wieland got one day off. He was in the infantry and trained as a rifleman. When he got overseas, his MOS [Annotator's Note: military occupational specialty code] was changed to Aviation Engineers as a heavy equipment operator. He had some training previously. All other training was on the job. He had run all the machines his family had on their farm. His unit was in the Army [Annotator's Note: Company A, 866th Engineer Aviation Battalion; attached to US 8th Army]. He left from San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to go overseas on the USS U.S. Grant (AP-29). The accommodations were not good. There were about 6,000 men on the ship, stacked four or five bunks high. They ran into a typhoon for two or three days and everybody was seasick. He was outside one day and a guy above him threw up on his helmet. He looked up and it got him in the face. Then he got sick. It was scary. He had fire guard duty aboard ship. They did lifeboat drills. As the fire guard, he had to get all of the guys out of the compartments. Some older guys did not want to go and would tell him to shut up. They would stand by the lifeboats for about half an hour. He always thought he would make it if he had to invade Japan. A lot of the guys he trained with were older than him and were more worried about it than he was. He was in Camp Robinson [Annotator's Note: Camp Robinson, North Little Rock, Arkansas] when he heard about the atomic bombs being dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. The first he heard he was told the bomb was big enough to blow the water out of the ocean. He was on the way to Japan when the Japanese surrendered. They were pretty happy at the news. They had heard about how the Japanese treated soldiers and prisoners. He still does not have much respect for them and does not like them.

Kenneth Wieland went straight to Japan. He was assigned to the Aviation Engineer battalion [Annotator’s Note: Company A, 866th Engineer Aviation Battalion] about the last of September [Annotator's Note: September 1945] after he arrived there. The Japanese were pretty much what he expected. They were in rough shape. Little kids were running around, seven or eight years old, and their parents had been killed. He went to Yokohama and Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan and Tokyo, Japan]. There was nothing left of Tokyo. Kids were starving. He felt sorry for the kids but not for the older ones as they were at fault. At first, they would give kids candy or food, but they would follow you around and became a nuisance. There were too many and would grab into your mess kit. He would see them eating out of the garbage cans. When they first got there, the people were scared of them. After a couple of months, they would come around begging. Wieland was there for about nine months. He was mostly fixing up some of the bombed airstrips to get bigger planes in. They fixed up one Jap [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] hospital that had been bombed.

When Kenneth Wieland arrived in Japan, he saw a bunch of American prisoners of war who were nothing but skin and bones. He could not imagine how they could even walk. They were getting on hospital ships back to the United States. That reinforced his opinion of the Japanese. They did not treat our prisoners the way we treated them and the Germans. When Wieland had been in basic training, there were about 2,000 German prisoners there and they ate as well as the Americans. If they wanted to work, they could. If they did not, they just laid around the stockade. He could speak a little German and he talked to some of them. They were just like him. They just wanted the war to end and get back home. The Japanese thought that if they got killed in the war, they went to heaven. Wieland did some work details with the Germans while in basic. Most of them would rather work than lie around in the stockade. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer talks of the experiences of German prisoners of war in the southern United States.] He did not work with any Japanese. He would have really worked them.

Kenneth Weiland was assigned to the 866th Aviation Engineer Battalion attached to the 8th Army. He was in A Company. There was not much to do for recreation. He would go to the PX [Annotator's Note: post exchange; commisary] and drink beer. He went to a show in Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan]. There were Japanese gardens and he liked to go through them. He kept in touch writing letters. He spent Christmas 1945 there. There was a Navy ship in the harbor and the Navy guys had a lot of whiskey they were selling on Christmas Eve. He and three friends each bought a bottle. He does not remember much about Christmas Day. The holidays made him homesick, but it did not bother him too much. He returned to the United States in September [Annotator’s Note: September 1946], one day before his 20th birthday. He came back by ship. It was small and only had about 600 troops. They had good eating and no trouble. Back in the typhoon [Annotator's Note: on the ship to Japan], one mess hall caught on fire and was destroyed. They had been getting two meals a day, and that got cut to one meal per day. They could get all the fruit they wanted though. In Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan], it would get down to around freezing some nights in the winter. The summer was pretty nice. The breeze off the ocean was nice. He thinks every ship in the ocean came into the bay to see the USS Missouri (BB-63). He had never seen so many ships in one place. Tension on board the ship on the way over was relieved when they heard the Japanese had surrendered. He saw some Japanese bases and thought they were a lot cruder than the American's. When he got to Japan, he was at a repo depot [Annotator's Note: a replacement depot] that was a Japanese camp. They slept outside because it smelled so bad. He always thought the Japanese smelled like Mexicans.

There was no homecoming reception in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California], other than some high school girls giving them a flower and a kiss. They got all the steak they could eat. He got a pass there and a dozen or so of them went and had one drink in each place. They got to the seventh place and got in a fight with some Navy guys. The MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] came and one hit him across the shoulder with his club. He was not fighting though. He then went to the Oakland Army Base [Annotator's Note: also called Oakland Army Terminal, Oakland, California] and shipped out for home by train. He had a Pullman [Annotator's Note: Pullman sleeping coach] all the way home. He was really glad to get home. His brothers were picking potatoes. He went and picked for three days and then quit. He had not seen his brothers in about a year and a half. They were supposed to have picked him up from the train. Two guys who were dirty and dusty came up and Wieland thought they were coming to rob him. It was his brothers. One grew six inches while he was gone. He had sent quite a bit of his pay home. He was lucky at playing Poker and sent a little extra home. His mom did not like that extra money. He was discharged from Camp Sheridan in Chicago [Annotator's Note: Fort Sheridan, Lake Forest, Illinois] on 11 November [Annotator's Note: 11 November 1946] as a corporal. He did not stay in the Reserves. Two relatives joined the National Guard and told him he should join. He was lucky because he would have gone to Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. One of his brothers who went was wounded pretty bad by a mortar. Wieland used the G.I. Bill to go to school. He took farming. He got 20 dollars a week to go. He did not have any real trouble transitioning back to being a civilian. There was no work. The guys who had gotten out earlier had taken all the jobs. He farmed with his father and then on his own. He bought a farm under the G.I. Bill.

Kenneth Wieland's most memorable experience of the war was coming home. He had served because all the other guys his age were going. There were not many who did not go and got deferments. In World War 2, he saw a lot of stuff all over and it changed what he thought of a lot of stuff. His service means quite a bit to him. He is happy to be a veteran. When you talk to high school kids, and even older, and you mention World War 2 they look at you like you are talking about the Civil War [Annotator's Note: American Civil War, 1861 to 1865] or something. He would like future viewers of this interview to know he was glad to serve his country. He thinks there should be institutions like the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] and they should continue to teach the war to future generations.