Vernon Grimes was born in May 1921 in Wichita [Annotator's Note: Wichita, Kansas]. He grew up with a sister in various places in the country. His father was a mechanic, who got a job in Oklahoma City [Annotator's Note: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma], where they bought a home. He thought he would be staying there but had an accident in the shop and he was fired. The family had to move back to Wichita, where his family was. Grimes' mother briefly worked when his father was in the hospital. They said his father would not live, but he survived until Grimes graduated high school. His sister was two years younger than him. They were not really close. Grimes rode his bike to school and all over the city. His father was on a disability pension from the government. Grimes had a nice home. His mother would send him to the grocery and threatened to beat him if he did not give back the change. He would be given a quarter for that. Grimes' mother was not well educated, so she could not do much requiring education. Later in life, Grimes was able to trace his father's family to 1698, but he was not able to trace his mother's family past her. His mother was born in the Cherokee Nation [Annotator's Note: a tribe of Native Americans], but cannot prove she was a Native American. Grimes was remodeling houses with his dad when the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] happened. He does not recall his feelings after the attack, but knew he had to join the military. He went to the recruiting station to join the Navy, but he was refused because he had too much scar tissue. The Army took him, so he enlisted in the Army Air Force. Grimes was sworn into the military in Denver [Annotator's Note: Denver, Colorado], then he was sent to Sheppard Field, Texas [Annotator's Note: now Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita County, Texas], where his training consisted of KP [Annotator's note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police]. He did close order drill and on the third day, the mess sergeant marched the group to the mess, where he spent the rest of his training. They needed help and took it wherever they could find it. The mess hall could hold 900 people. The camp put 2,000 men through a day. When Grimes finished cleaning from breakfast, it was already lunch, then dinner. After leaving Sheppard Field, Grimes was sent to radio operator school. He had to pass 16 words a minute of Morse code, but he was not able to. The military was so short of people, they did not flunk him out, so he was able to graduate. When he left that school, Grimes was sent to radio locator school in Boca Raton, Florida. It was actually a radar school. Radar was classified technology. He learned on British sets because the Americans did not have any yet. When Grimes sat down in class the first time, the instructor told them people would be dropping out quickly. The instructor was a civilian. By then end of the first week, he was studying the equipment's transmitter. An MP [Annotator's Note: military police] delivered the notebooks and retrieved them in the evening. That training took time because it kept improving as he was there. He arrived in July and left in October.

Vernon Grimes was sent to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California], where he boarded a troop ship. The ship had been a Norwegian ship and only two crewmen could speak English. Grimes sailed to Hawaii, and there was a bomb group [Annotator's Note: aerial bombardment group] on the ship that was unloaded. In Hawaii, another bomb group loaded up and the ship sailed for Townsville, Australia. It was Grimes' first station. He was not immediately assigned to a unit. While on a special assignment, he missed his ship, so he had to spend a month on Angel Island in San Francisco. By the time Grimes got to Australia, he was attached to a signal corps unit. The unit had 20 men and four officers. Grimes did not mind the work. One man was in the orderly room and misread an order. Radar sets were brought in, and trucks were brought in to move all the equipment. Grimes was interviewed and was told he would be sent back to the Air Force, where he joined the 64th Bomb Squadron, 43rd Bomb Group [Annotator's Note: 64th Bombardment Squadron, 43rd Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force]. The unit had two planes equipped with radar, so there was not much for Grimes to do. One night, he was walking past a radio tent and saw a man working on high frequency command sets. Grimes offered to help the man repair the radios. After three nights, he was offered the job of communication chief, even though he was only a corporal. After two months, Grimes was promoted to staff sergeant, but not long after he was promoted again to tech sergeant [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant; now Sergeant First Class or E7]. As communication chief, he oversaw all communications in the planes and on the ground. When the unit moved, all the communications had to be set back up. The CP [Annotator's Note: command Post] had more than just tents to be wired. Grimes had to work with ironwood [Annotator's Note: common name for woods with a heavy density], which was very hard to work with.

When Vernon Grimes sent to Port Moresby, New Guinea [Annotator's Note: as part of the 64th Bombardment Squadron, 43rd Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force], one crewman held onto his life jacket like nothing else. When they arrived, he threw his life jacket overboard and it sank. Grimes moved from Townsville, Australia, to Port Moresby, New Guinea. From there, he hopped across the mountains and had to create a place to post in the jungle. Afterwards, Grimes moved to an island with a runway that spanned the island. Grimes entered the Philippines on D plus three [Annotator's Note: 23 October 1944; three days after the initial invasion of Leyte, Philippines on 20 October 1944]. After the Philippines, he was sent to Owi Atoll [Annotator's Note: Owi Airfield, Owi Island, Schouten Islands, Indonesia] that was barely big enough for an airfield. The atoll's runway sat about 30 feet above the water, but the squadron was setup near the ground level. Seeing the water was something else. He traveled to all the islands by boat. In the Philippines, he went in on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. The ship hit a storm on the way there. The LST had all the crews' equipment on the deck, and they were told to tie everything down. The ships sailed in convoy, but it was impossible to see any other ship during the storm. It was rough sailing. Grimes had just bought a new pocket watch before the Philippine invasion. Grimes had to shovel sand to make a roadway when he left his LST. He wound up in water up to his armpits, which ruined the watch. A jeweler found salt in the watch, but he was able to make it run. Grimes was on Owi Atoll when the bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped. The island was where the Japanese envoys landed to travel to Manila [Annotator's Note: Manila, Luzon, Philippines] where the truce was signed. Grimes had pictures of the plane, but they got lost. He remained on Owi another two months after the war ended.

Vernon Grimes wanted to protect his rank, so he joined the Reserves after the war and was called up for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He was sent to Japan and served in an air rescue squadron in radar maintenance. Grimes' unit had airplanes with boats that fit under the plane. The boat came with a month's worth of rations and navigation equipment. If someone was lost at sea, the boat could be dropped to them until they could be rescued. Grimes was stationed at the old Kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese suicide pilots] base where they were trained. He thought that was interesting. Their graduation from flight school was their funeral. Those pilots were not taught navigation or how to land. They were given enough fuel to get to their targets. When Grimes went into the Philippines [Annotator's Note: earlier in the war], a kamikaze plane was shot down and almost slid across the water into his LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. Grimes does not know how the communication network was set up, but they knew everything. While on an accident investigation team, Grimes heard Tokyo Rose [Annotator's Note: nickname given by Allied servicemen to any English-speaking female radio personality broadcasting Japanese propaganda in the Pacific Theater; in this case, Grimes is referring to Iva Toguri D'Aquino] on the radio list every man on the plane and told them why the plane crashed. When Grimes investigated, he found out Tokyo Rose was right about why the plane crashed. Medics were picking up the remains of the crew, which were all in pieces. People were unidentifiable. The only person who was not listed by Tokyo Rose was the one that survived because he bailed out. There was a network of people who learned all that information for her. She played outstanding music. After the war, she was prosecuted, but Grimes thinks she should have been given a ribbon. Grimes remained in Japan for a year during the Korean War. When he returned home, he did not remain in the military. His enlistment would have been up in three months if the Korean War had not started. By that time, he had a wife, a kid, and a home. It was tough on his wife while he was in Japan. When Grimes left the Air Force, he got a job instead of going to school. He worked for a telephone company as a lineman. When Grimes was recalled, the company paid his money while he was in the service. While he was in Japan, his unit was in northern Japan. His father had a heart attack, so Grimes was given 30 days leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to return home. All he had in his pocket was seven dollars, which he used to buy bus and taxi fare home. Grimes left the service in 1952 or 1953. When he returned, he still had a job at the telephone company. He was taken to Denver [Annotator's Note: Denver, Colorado] to talk to the vice president of the company because he did not want the job offered. Grimes was allowed to work where he wanted until he was transferred a few years later. He became a foreman and had to hire and train a crew to work under him. Not many people in the town he worked in wanted to work in his field. Grimes retired in the 1970s, 33 years after joining the company.

Vernon Grimes has lost two wives since the war, but never cried over them, despite loving them dearly. He believes his time in the service, when so many people died, made him like that. It helped his mental preservation. After Grimes left the Air Force, he married his second wife and started traveling the world. Before he retired, his first wife's mother had a ranch in Colorado. Some of that ranch was willed to Grimes. When Grimes went to retire, he decided he wanted to live on the ranch, but the other people owning the land refused. Grimes bought them out of their shares of the land. He subdivided the land and modernized it with roads and telephone lines. Grimes enjoyed his service to an extent because he did things he liked to do but would not do it again. He was not flying combat missions, so he was not in much danger. Grimes thought it was like working for a company maintaining their equipment. His superior ran the unit [Annotator's Note: 64th Bombardment Squadron, 43rd Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force] like a company, not an army. Everyone was made to work, including the officers. Everyone in the unit had a job and as long as the job was being done, the commanding officer was good to them. When Grimes left the service, he was a tech sergeant [Annotator's Note: Technical Sergeant; now Sergeant First Class or E7]. Grimes does not think today's generation knows what happened during the war. They say thank you for his service, but do not understand what the war was about. Service people today do tours, but during World War 2, everyone was kept overseas for the duration of the war.