Richard Lamey Nesossis was born in Beaumont, Texas in 1922. His father died two years after Nesossis' birth. Nesossis' mother made the decision to move herself and her eight children to Biloxi [Annotator's Note: Biloxi, Mississippi]. His mother supported the family by working as a seamstress. Every child got a job as soon as they were old enough because of the family's poverty. His junior and senior years of high school, Nesossis' dream was to be a baker like his late father, who had grown up in Italy. He worked in the morning as a baker, went to school, and went back to work in the afternoon. He graduated from high school in 1940 but began suffering heat prostration [Annotator's Note: heat exhaustion] from working in a hot bakery during the even hotter Mississippi summers. That marked the end of his career as a baker. Nesossis was in a car with a friend at a drive through restaurant when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. His brother entered the military in 1939 when the Japanese were only fighting the Chinese [Annotator's Note: Second Sino-Japanese War, 7 July 1937 to 2 September 1945]. Keesler Air Force Base was being built in Mississippi at that time. Nesossis knew that he and his friends would eventually have to join the military from the draft or otherwise. He was surprised, and also disappointed, that the enemy could so successfully attack the United States. In 1942 the Army Air Corps ruled that they would take high school graduates for pilot training, prior to that some college education was required. Nesossis and four others from Biloxi were accepted for aviation cadet training. The Army Air Corps ordered them to report on 1 January 1943. His basic training was at Miami Beach, Florida. Because they were not college educated the Army set up a program for them to learn advanced, college-level subjects over the course of two to three months at Middle Tennessee State Teachers College in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. After completing that education they were sent to aviation cadet training at Maxwell Air Force Base [Annotator's Note: now Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama]. Nesossis was then sent to Lafayette, Louisiana to fly primary trainers, or PT-19's [Annotator's Note: Fairchild PT-19 primary trainer aircraft]. He preferred the idea of being a pilot to being in the infantry on the ground. After Lafayette, he was sent to Walnut Ridge, Arkansas for basic training in a BT-12 [Annotator's Note: Fleetwings BT-12 Sophomore trainer aircraft]. There they received radio and instrument training, after 50 hours Nesossis was selected to go to multi engine training in an AT-21 Fairchild [Annotator's Note: Fairchild AT-21 Gunner specialized bomber crew trainer aircraft]. He got his pilot wings and was commissioned as second lieutenant on 12 March 1944. He then went to B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] flight training at Maxwell Field in Montgomery, Alabama. Upon completion he was sent to a replacement training center in Topeka, Kansas where he got his own flight crew. The Air Corps sent him and his crew to Boise, Idaho for combat training. This involved live bombing runs and more instrument training. He and his crew were then sent to Norfolk, Virginia where they expected to be sent to Europe. While in Norfolk, Nesossis' bombardier was removed, and the replacement was trained in high altitude radar bombing. After three weeks in Norfolk they were sent to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California]. They were given a new B-24 and transferred to Fairfield-Suisun [Annotator's Note: now Travis Air Force Base, Fairfield, California]. They now knew that they were going to fight in the Pacific Theater. While testing their new plane, they discovered it consumed too much fuel, and it could not be used in its state. They had to wait three weeks for good weather to fly to Hawaii. They finally departed on 11 January 1945.

Richard Lamey Nesossis and his flight crew [Annotator's Note: 5th Bombardment Group, 13th Air Force] fly from Hawaii to Palmyra Island. After refueling they continued further to Tarawa Island [Annotator's Note: Tarawa Atoll, Marshall Islands]. From Tarawa they continued further to Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] and then to New Guinea. They then flew to Nadzab [Annotator's Note: Nadzab Airfield in Lae, Papua New Guinea]. Nesossis was a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] pilot, and after he and his crew ran about five missions, they were assigned to the Mahara Islands [Annotator's Note: unable to identify], which were under Dutch control at the time. They had a few missions to bomb strategic locations such as Balikpapan, Borneo. After a number of completed missions Nesossis was ordered to go back to New Guinea to work as an instructor. While in New Guinea, he learned from the Red Cross that his old crew's plane caught on fire while in flight, with three of them not surviving. By this time Nesossis was promoted to first lieutenant, with his insignia being crafted by someone in the Australian Army making one out of a silver coin for him. After completing his time as an instructor, he was sent back to his unit. On the way was Biak [Annotator's Note: Biak, Indonesia], where he met his friend who he was with the morning that Pearl Harbor had been attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Nesossis returned to Morotai [Annotator's Note: Morotai, Indonesia] from Biak. The Allies had been able to retake Samar [Annotator's Note: Samar, Philippines], which had a big airport. The 13th Air Force relocated to Samar and began flying missions in the Philippines. The Japanese had yet to lose Corregidor [Annotator's Note: Corregidor, Philippines], so Nesossis had many bombing missions there. The Japanese did not need to be cleared out of every island, as the United States did not have the manpower or necessity to remove them from every single island. In July 1945 Nesossis received notice he had completed 52 combat missions and 452 hours in the air. The Air Force allowed pilots to come home after 50 missions. He was sent to Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Philippines] to be taken home. Nesossis and hundreds of others were loaded on a cargo ship. After a few days at sea, the ship's refrigeration system broke, and it stopped at the island country of Palau. The 600 soldiers were transported to three naval ships classified as APAs [Annotator's Note: Auxiliary Personnel, Attack]. It took 30 days to sail to Long Beach, California.

Richard Lamey Nesossis flew 52 missions during World War 2 in the Pacific Theater. Every mission had a primary, secondary, and tertiary target, in case an objective was unable to be attacked. In his squad [Annotator's Note: 5th Bombardment Group, 13th Air Force] there was always some aircraft that was ready to be retired. On the way to their target his engineer informed him that their plane was using excess fuel. Nesossis made the decision to bomb the secondary target and save themselves a couple hundred miles. On the way back from the mission they always flew at a very low altitude over the water surrounding Borneo to lookout for any aircraft that had been lost. The Japanese had no aircraft to threaten them, but they did have anti-aircraft guns. Nesossis found it relatively uneventful. They mostly targeted oil refineries, shipping, and Japanese ground reinforcements in Balikpapan [Annotator's Note: Balikpapan, Indonesia]. The 13th Air Force did not offer air support for the beach landings that happened in the Pacific. The Navy used mostly P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] and P-51s [Annotator's Note: North American P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft] to support landings. The only islands left to take were the Philippines by the time that Nesossis made it to the Pacific. He thought the B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] was a great airplane. It carried the biggest bomb load of any plane until the B-29 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. While he was instructing in New Guinea, the pilot he was training almost ran off the runway into the grass beyond because he wanted to wait for more speed. The amount of speed needed for flight varied from plane to plan and situation to situation. He considers himself lucky to have not been assigned a B-29 as they suffered from a great deal of mechanical failures.

Richard Lamey Nesossis was at home on leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in Biloxi [Annotator's Note: Biloxi, Mississippi] when the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped. They had no idea that anything like that was being worked on. After his leave he was supposed to go back to San Antonio [Annotator's Note: San Antonio, Texas] to be reassigned. With the war over, the military gave him the choice between being discharged or reassignment. He received his discharge at Camp Shelby [Annotator's Note: in Hattiesburg, Mississippi]. He felt that it was great that the war was finally over. They knew every time before a mission there was a chance that they would not come back. They even had some crews that crashed on take-off. Nesossis stayed in the Air Force reserve for 23 years, but never flew again after World War 2. He was not called up for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953], although he did volunteer. He was married and had three children, he received orders to go to Eglin Air Force Base [Annotator's Note: in Okaloosa County, Florida] to train in the B-36 [Annotator's Note: Convair B-36 Peacemaker strategic bomber]. His baby had just been born and he decided to not go to active duty. He is thankful that he made that decision, because he considers the B-36 to be poorly designed. All the men of Nesossis' age knew they were going to be drafted. His older brother was drafted and ended up in Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] 3rd Army in Europe. They thought of it as a duty to serve in the military at this time. Another thing that pushed Nesossis to serve was that his father came from Italy and served in the Army for four years. When World War 1 started his father volunteered to fight but was turned away because he had five children at the time. Nesossis' brother who fought in Europe was a photographer. He had another brother who was a glider pilot who missed going to Europe because he had appendicitis. Nesossis thinks it is important to teach World War 2 today. Without the military, there could be serious repercussions for the United States. He has visited The National World War II Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He is happy that there is a section about the South Pacific but wishes he could have entered the B-24 on display. He credits Stephen Ambrose [Annotator's Note: Stephen E. Ambrose, American historian and co-founder of the National D-Day Museum, later the National World War II Museum].