Milton L. McMullen, Sr. was born in January 1921 in Clark County, Mississippi, just south of Meridian. He finished high school in 1940. The Air Force did a presentation, which made McMullen want to join. He knew if he did not join, he would probably be drafted into the infantry. He enlisted in March 1941 when it was still the United States Army Air Corps. He completed basic training at Barksdale Air Base [Annotator's Note: Barksdale Field; now Barksdale Air Force Base], near Bossier City, Louisiana. He was at Barksdale for six or seven weeks, followed by Oklahoma City [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma], where there was an A-20 [Annotator's Note: Douglas A-20 Havoc medium bomber] unit. He volunteered to go to flight school at Boeing [Annotator's Note: then the Boeing Airplane Company; now The Boeing Company] aircraft school elsewhere in Oklahoma. He was excused from duty for a day while he was at school. Lockheed [Annotator's Note: Lockheed Corporation] taught him the hydraulics and aeronautics of B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. He then went to Wright Patterson [Annotator's Note: now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio] engine school. He was in school until October 1941. One day after school, he was told he was being transferred to Albuquerque, New Mexico. All the men had to tell their girlfriends they were leaving. The following morning, many of the guys were still in town. They were late getting to New Mexico and missed their unit which had shipped out to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. A few days later, McMullen tried to join the 19th Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 19th Bombardment Group] but the unit had already left for Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii]. Eventually, he caught up with them. Boeing had a factory and school in Oklahoma. The class was equal to one semester of aircraft mechanics at a university. As a kid, he got around, but once he got into the Air Corps, he was able to meet many people and go to different places. He enjoyed being in San Francisco. There was not much to do until he received his orders. He did not get to see much of Hawaii because of all the training he did there. In one of his training missions, McMullen saw the Japanese fleet in the Pacific Ocean.

Milton L. McMullen, Sr. was in Hawaii until 1 December [Annotator's Note: 1 December 1941]. He was then transferred to Clark Field in Manila [Annotator's Note: now Clark Air Base, Luzon, Philippines] and made it there a few days before the Japanese attacked [Annotator's Note: Attack on Clark Field, Luzon, Philippines on 8 December 1941]. There were 15 planes sitting out when the attack came. The bombing at Clark Field happened eight hours after the attack at Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] and lasted for six hours. That morning, everything was clear, so the pilots were called in for lunch. They saw planes coming in. The airmen thought they were Navy planes, until they dropped their bombs. They used trucks to get across the field and away from the bombing. Over 250 men were killed that day. It was tough to see everything burning. The next day, they got the runway cleared and flew to Mindanao [Annotator's Note: Mindanao Island, Philippines], where they camouflaged the planes. There were Navy ships that had been diverted there, so there was extra equipment and bombs. The crews used pineapple plants and paint to camouflage the planes. There were no extra plane parts, so some had to go to New Guinea and Australia. They worked on getting all of the planes out of the area. The planes that went to Australia carried officers in them. One of the last planes that left carried MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] on it. McMullen was supposed to be on that flight, but his plane had no brakes. That was two months before the surrender [Annotator's Note: the Philippines were surrendered to Japan on 6 May 1942]. There was a machine shop in the area. They helped maintain the three or four P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] that were there.

On 3 May 1941, the Japanese landed on Mindanao [Annotator's Note: Mindanao, Philippines]. Milton L. McMullen, Sr. and some other men took a car and mounted some .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] on it for defense. They would assault the Japanese then drive away. The Japanese bombed the machine shop. That was the day before the surrender [Annotator's Note: the Philippines were surrendered to Japan on 6 May 1942]. One bomb landed a few feet from McMullen's hole [Annotator's Note: foxhole]. McMullen could not hear anything after that. He did not know about the surrender until a medic told him what happened. He was then taken to a village and left with a Catholic nun. McMullen stayed there for roughly three months. The nun picked all the shrapnel out of his back. The Japanese found out he was there and captured him. He was brought to Malaybalay [Annotator's Note: Malaybalay, Mindanao, Philippines], where there were some other POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war]. He was there roughly a month before he was sent to Japan. He was put into a ship and brought to a prison in Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Philippines]. The Filipinos were made to throw rocks at the prisoners. The food was some rice and water. McMullen was then taken to Japan with 1,200 other men. He managed to keep a camera, but a guard wanted it. McMullen gave the camera to the guard in exchange for letting him stay on deck. The next day, the ship was hit by a torpedo, but it did not explode. The ship was disabled, and Japanese troops started jumping overboard. Some of the prisoners did as well. A Japanese destroyer picked up the Japanese and Americans out of the water and put them back on the ship. The ship then went on to Formosa [Annotator's Note: now Taiwan], where the ship was repaired for 15 days. By then 52 people died. Back out at sea, the ship was stalked by an American submarine. The ship stopped again, this time at Pusan, Korea, where the men from Corregidor [Annotator's Note: Battle of Corregidor, 5 to 6 May 1942, Corregidor Island, Philippines] were taken off the ship. The men from Mindanao were kept aboard to go to Japan because they worked on airplanes, which lead the Japanese to believe that made the men smarter.

It took 41 days for Milton L. McMullen, Sr. to reach Kobe, Japan [Annotator's Note: as a prisoner of war or POW]. During the trip, the men only ate rice and water, and only had buckets to use as toilets. People that died were wrapped up and thrown overboard. The night McMullen arrived in Japan he was hosed down. It was October [Annotator's Note: October 1942], and he was very cold. He was put on a warm train where he slept all night. The next day, the train brought him to Kawasaki [Annotator's Note: Kawasaki, Japan]. After arriving, he was marched to the prison camp, which was a converted office building. He was given a blanket and platform to sleep on. On his way to the camp, locals threw rocks at the POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] and were yelling "Doolittle" [Annotator's Note: then US Army Air Forces Colonel, later US Air Force General, James H. Doolittle] because the Doolittle Raid [Annotator's Note: bombing attack on the Japanese mainland on 18 April 1942 carried out by 16 North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) and named for the raid's commander, then US Army Air Forces Colonel, later US Air Force General, James H. Doolittle] had already happened. He was put to work immediately unloading coal from a ship. He was only given a bowl of rice to eat. That winter, many men died. The following summer, McMullen worked in a steel mill. He started working at an oil refinery threading pipe. McMullen was working at night and accidently broke a tool. A Japanese guard picked up a pipe and hit him in the back, ribs, and elbow. His elbow was shattered from the hit and McMullen had to be sent to a different camp. He was not given much to eat there and wound up losing a lot of weight. One week, a truck with supplies came in but broke down. The POWs were too weak to move the vehicle. McMullen volunteered to work on the truck and got it running. The next time the truck came in, McMullen was sent to a work camp in Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan]. He was sent with the truck every time it left the camp, in case it broke down. The truck eventually died. While walking to camp one day, McMullen saw a motorcycle and managed to steal it, with the permission of the camp guard. The POWs were allowed to take parts to rebuild the vehicle. The camp commander liked the finished product. It ran off of alcohol, so the men stole alcohol from another vehicle and mixed it with tea. At night, McMullen could ride the bike around town. He was almost killed in a bombing raid while on the motorcycle. He saw B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] come over the city at sun set. The bombers attacked all night. He could hear people screaming from his camp outside of the city. The bombing stopped the POWs from working at the factory, so they were brought to a harbor to work. Not long after, the steel mill was bombed. When Kawasaki was bombed, all the Japanese guards fled. The prison camp was hit and some of the men were killed. The guards would take large pieces wood to cover their hiding holes, but a bomb landed in one of the holes, killing the guards. The men that survived helped civilians escape their bombed homes. A few weeks later, McMullen was shipped to Shinagawa [Annotator's Note: Shinagawa, Japan]. McMullen and some of the POWs convinced the camp commander to allow them to steal a truck and used the parts to get their truck working again. The truck ran on charcoal. As time went on, the motorcycle and truck went away. The commander enjoyed riding around on the motorcycle.

Before the atomic bomb was dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945], Milton L. McMullen, Sr. was working on the railroad near Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan]. The day the bomb was dropped, he was 60 or 70 miles from Hiroshima, but he could still see the cloud from the detonation. He was brought back to Tokyo via train. The camp commander woke him up early in the morning to get the camp truck working. A group of guards and McMullen took the truck out of the camp. The Japanese had him drive to a brick building. The Japanese went inside and left McMullen in the truck. When they returned, they told McMullen that he would be free the following day. He drove them back to the camp. The condition at the camp was better than at Kawasaki [Annotator's Note: Kawasaki, Japan] but the food stores were almost empty. The civilians were starving as well. The blacktop was burned off the streets from the bombing. McMullen had been pulling dead Japanese out of the bay. A group of B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] pilots were in the same camp but were kept separate from the other prisoners. They were working in a cave where the Japanese were supposed to murder them. There was a letter with orders for all POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] to be eliminated by the end of September 1945. When the Japanese surrendered, the Navy came in and dropped notes to the POWs. The men used rice flour to write POW on the roof of the building. The building was filthy and infested with bugs. They could not sleep at night. One bomb hit the seawall near the camp. The Navy put the POWs on a hospital ship. When the Japanese surrendered, B-29s started dropping clothes to the prisoners. They almost killed some men during the drops. McMullen received a brand-new uniform. When the Navy commander came in to get the prisoners, McMullen was ready to go. When he got onto the hospital ship, he was stripped of his new clothes, sprayed with insecticide, and then got his first shower in four years. He was also given ice cream and then put on a submarine tender [Annotator's Note: type of ship]. The kitchen was open 24 hours a day. He tried to eat a steak but started getting sick from it. He remained on that ship until after the peace treaty was signed [Annotator's Note: Surrender ceremony; 2 September 1945 aboard USS Missouri (BB-63), Tokyo Bay, Japan]. He was close enough to see the ceremony from his ship.

Milton L. McMullen, Sr. was able to start his journey back to the United States [Annotator's Note: after being a prisoner of war in Japan]. He landed in Okinawa [Annotator's note: Okinawa, Japan], where he was fed. He stayed there for a week, then flew to Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Philippines]. During the flight, one of the engines on his C-47 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft] went out. He had to land on Okinawa again, but the plane went up on its nose. Nobody was hurt in the accident. McMullen was taken to see the commander of the island. He told him he did not want to go back on a plane. He was sent to Manila on a new C-54 [Annotator's Note: Douglas C-54 Skymaster cargo aircraft]. He stayed on Manila for a month. He made it back to the United States and was sent to the general hospital in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. He stayed there until he gained enough weight to return home. He was put on the hospital ship 11 August [Annotator's Note: 11 August 1945], two days after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapon dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, 9 August 1945]. Japanese snipers would be in trees trying to shoot people in the Philippines. McMullen trained monkeys to go into the trees to attack the snipers. He was not trained to be an infantryman. His gun was from World War 1. His .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] could outshoot anything the Japanese had. His ammunition came in when ships came in with supplies. They were afraid the ship would be seen by the Japanese before they could unload it. There were enough bombs and gas, but there were no airplanes. There were three P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] at the time of the surrender [Annotator's Note: the Philippines were surrendered to Japan on 6 May 1942]. One of them had a wheel knocked off during a takeoff. A Japanese Zero [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] came over McMullen's position. The P-40 took off after the Zero. His landing bent one of the propellers. McMullen was able to fix the propeller and built a ski for the plane to land with. General King Annotator's Note: US Army Major General Edward Postell King Jr., Commanding General, Philippine-American forces, Bataan Peninsula] was supposed to fly out of the Philippines with one McMullen's planes, but the general would not leave. While he was still on Mindanao [Annotator's Note: Mindanao, Philippines], McMullen heard a P-40 take off. Someone stole the plane and flew to China. General Chennault [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces Major General Claire Lee Chennault] had the plane shot down, but no one was with the plane when his men found it. There were letters from the men on Mindanao in the plane. McMullen believes America won the war because the Americans had ingenuity.

Milton L. McMullen, Sr. heard about the attack at Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] the morning it happened. He was scared, but he also went blank, and had no answers for anything. He knew the airplanes were not equipped for wartime service. He was told he was supposed to go to India with the planes to show they could fly over the Himalayas [Annotator's Note: mountain range in Asia]. He had just landed at Clark Field [Annotator's Note: now Clark Air Base, Luzon, Philippines] from Port Moresby [Annotator's Note: Port Moresby, New Guinea]. They knew the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and the P-40s [Annotator's Note: Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter aircraft] had just patrolled over Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Philippines]. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] told everyone to come in to eat. Men were being trucked in when they saw planes coming in. Some of them thought the planes were from the Navy, until the bombs started dropping. McMullen jumped out of his truck and ran into the woods. Within ten days of getting to Mindanao [Annotator's Note: Mindanao, Philippines], the Japanese were attacking the new airstrip. One man was killed when a bomb landed in his foxhole. McMullen had two B-18s [Annotator's Note: Douglas B-18 Bolo heavy bomber aircraft] at the airstrip, but it was too slow to be useful. The Japanese bombed the airfield every few days, but never hit the planes. The Americans worked at night and hid during the day. There was not much food. There was a small lake where some natives lived. There were some dense trees where trucks were hidden, but the Japanese spotted them anyway. McMullen was wounded and stayed with a local nun for several months as she tried to heal him. Some men were hit with shrapnel but were afraid to admit it. There were not many doctors in the area, so not many men received medical attention. They were told that wounded men were being bayoneted. Some of the men who had shrapnel in them died in camps because of poison from the wounds. McMullen was wounded by flying rocks and debris from a bomb explosion. One day at sundown, McMullen was driving a truck when two Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] strafed his truck. Another time, he was in a jeep and his friend was drinking gin. McMullen kept telling him to look out for planes, but his friend was not paying attention. A Zero shot the jeep and the bullet hit between the two men, causing his friend to sober up.

The Japanese had snipers and other soldiers in the Philippines before the invasion [Annotator's Note: Fall of the Philippines, invasion by the Empire of Japan, 8 December 1941 to 8 May 1942]. Milton L. McMullen, Sr. was building barricades for the planes with civilian help, but he thinks there might have been Japanese mixed in the crowd. On the morning he was supposed to pick up his crews for work and only a couple would go with him. He thinks the ones that did not want to work knew there would be an attack. At another airfield, they were drinking some gin when they were called to work. Every night there would be some sort of attack. One night a building with airplane parts was burned down. McMullen would make homemade explosives to put around the camp in case Japanese troops got too close. He made fake artillery pieces to warded off invasions. Men would shoot enemy troops with .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] and cars with machine guns on them. They had many bombs, but only really used them for the airplanes. McMullen had to destroy the fuses on the other bombs. He would make other booby-traps using hand grenades and bamboo. The Filipino troops were not well trained but could use the bamboo hand grenade effectively. Making and transporting the home-made landmines was dangerous. McMullen thinks MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] betrayed all the men in the Philippines. McMullen thinks he was sacrificed. MacArthur was only worried about getting the officers out of the Philippines. One of McMullen's officers was taken out of the islands via airplane. When MacArthur got to Australia, he was forced to land in the desert because of a bomb threat. McMullen still resents MacArthur. The men on Corregidor [Annotator's Note: Corregidor Island, Philippines] were made to sleep on land while MacArthur stayed underground.

Milton L. McMullen, Sr. and other men were crammed into a ship heading to Japan [Annotator's Note: as a Japanese prisoner of war]. McMullen was allowed to stay on the deck because he gave a Japanese guard a camera. The men that died were thrown overboard. He thinks 250 died out of the 1,200 men on the ship. The food was not good, and most men had diarrhea. The 41 day journey was tough. He stayed on the deck and ate very little. The hole where the other prisoners were kept was very hot. The group that left Mindanao [Annotator's Note: Mindanao, Philippines] later was bombed and torpedoed. Only 25 men survived the sinking of that ship. Most of McMullen's outfit [Annotator's Note: 27th Bombardment Group] was on that ship. At the end of the war, McMullen tried to find out how many people from his outfit were still alive. McMullen could only find 25 men left alive at the end of the war. McMullen was determined to survive. He did what he could to make sure he would make it. He tried to get clothes when he could, but still got frostbite. He wrapped rags around his feet to keep them warm. He did not eat much, but sometimes he was given sweet potatoes, corn, and barley to eat. Men traded everything they could. Cigarettes were worth the most. The Japanese would give them cigarettes sometimes. McMullen became friends with some of the civilians he worked with, but not with the guards. Many of the civilians were against the war. The Americans were always sabotaging things and even overturned a train. They saw some railroad tools while unloading a train. Some of the prisoners distracted guards while others uprooted a rail. Later that night, the train derailed. While working on a lathe, a Japanese man came over and McMullen convinced him that he was making the right size threading on a pipe, but he actually was not. The Japanese never realized the Americans were sabotaging their war effort. They would beat the prisoners for stealing rice and would search their belongings. McMullen was tied to a tree one night, and by the next day he was covered in frost. The Japanese told him he looked arrogant, which is why he received that punishment. The Japanese enjoyed hitting the prisoners. The Japanese women would not talk to the Americans. Some prisoners would escape, but there was nowhere to go. On the islands, when people escaped, they were killed. McMullen saw men shot and dumped in a grave. The men on the Bataan Death March [Annotator's Note: Bataan Death March, the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war in April 1942] were bayoneted. McMullen believes the men captured on Mindanao were better off than men captured on other islands. McMullen was almost killed as an escapee, but a civilian nun convinced the Japanese guards that he was not. The nun took care of him after he was wounded.

Milton L. McMullen, Sr. thinks the aftereffects of the bombings around Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] was the worst part about being a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war]. It affected his nerves. He tried to eat his food the proper way and to do what he needed to do to survive. The bigger men died more often than the smaller men. The smell from the bombing raid was initially just smoke. Afterwards, he could smell the stench of decay. In Kawasaki [Annotator's Note: Kawasaki, Japan], he could smell the chemicals in the nearby bags. The prisoners were not given medical attention. McMullen had a loose tooth after being hit from a guard. The tooth became infected. On his way back to his bunk, a guard hit him and knocked the tooth out, which relieved McMullen's pain. McMullen has issues with his feet and legs, as well as lung problems related to his time as a POW. [Annotator's Note: McMullen shows scars from his POW experience.] One time, McMullen tried to pick up a heavy metal bar from a moving conveyor belt, but the bar hit him in the leg, leaving permanent damage. The POWs only worked that job a couple days at a time. He also worked transporting heavy steel from one place to another. He had to move coal off of train cars. His shoes were not well made, and he had to wrap his feet in rags to keep them dry and warm. McMullen thinks half the POWs died in the first year. He had to cremate his comrades. They were given small jars to put some ashes in. McMullen believes the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945] saved his life. He does not like the Japanese people. He tries to speak Japanese to them, but they do not talk to him. When he worked in Japan, some of the civilians had been to school in the United States. They would speak English to the Americans because it made them look more important. When Japanese were captured on Mindanao [Annotator's Note: Mindanao, Philippines], they would be let go after being search for intelligence. Some of those Japanese troops were given drugs before battle making them harder to kill. Tojo [Annotator's Note: Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan] told the Japanese people to go to war because it would make them a great nation. McMullen wonders if that could happen in the United States and how long it would take. The Japanese were afraid of each other. They believed they should commit suicide if they did not achieve what they wanted to achieve. Dead people were piled in the streets ten feet high. When the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] first came in, they were high up, but the second day they were low enough that McMullen could almost see the pilot. When the searchlights turned on, the bombers would drop bombs on that area. The Japanese stopped using searchlights after that. The B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] McMullen worked on had no tail gunner and could move faster than later models.

When Milton L. McMullen, Sr. returned from the war, he did not want to talk about his experience as a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war]. People would think he was trying to get out of his work. People did not start talking about it until they were retired. McMullen was the commander of his local POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war] group for about eight years. He was a little younger than most of the guys that were POWs. McMullen believes it is important for people to be educated in the war. He thinks institutes like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] are a good thing. He had many things from the war, and someone wrote a book that talked about his experience with the motorcycle. One of his guards was named Watanabe [Annotator's Note: Mutsuhito Watanabe, nicknamed The Bird] and he enjoyed beating the prisoners. He actually killed some from beating them too much. He would take a piece of bamboo, break it, and then beat people with it. The bamboo would tear the shirt and skin from a person's back. Watanabe did not bother McMullen much because he could get the motorcycle working. When working on the railroad, POWs would steal rice, but they would be beaten if caught. One time, they were given Red Cross packages with canned food in it. They were able to cook the food with homemade cookers. He thinks little things like that saved his life. Readjusting to civilian life was hard. When he got to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California], he was allowed to go into the city. He realized everything was different from when he left. The biggest problem McMullen was that he would vomit after eating. That lasted about a year. He later found out he was vomiting because he deficient in vitamins. He experiences flashbacks to his time as a POW. The local VA [Annotator's Note: United States Department of Veterans Affairs] would send people away until Sonny Montgomery [Annotator's Note: Gillespie V. "Sonny" Montgomery] became the manager. Eventually all of the VAs around the country were changed. All of the former POWs in Mississippi arrived at the VA and they were eventually given 100 percent disability.