He was a Second Lieutenant who entered the Army Air Force in April 1940, over a year before Pearl Harbor. He was a bomber pilot at Baatan, The Phillipines, who was taken prison there in June, 1942. He was missing in action for over a year and presumably was in the Baatan Death March. The first letter which he sent from the Zentsuji War Prisoner Camp, about 75 miles from Tokyo, Japan, was received by his parents over a year later on 6 September 1943.