Sycamore Vet Recounts Pearl Harbor Attack-- Part 2: "What Could Be Better?"

Thirty-three men died at Wheeler Field that day.

Both brothers survived the attack, but they didn't see each other for another three days, as the men hid, fearing the Japanese had invaded the island.  Their mother wouldn't get word of their survival until a month later.  (That had to be a really hard month for the family.

Bruce Miller, Burton's son, said his father and uncle enlisted in the Army Air Corps after seeing an ad in their local newspaper in Mount Vernon.  They had been in Hawaii for less than a year when the attack came.

"The ad said to sign up  for four years in the Army Air Corps and spend three years in Hawaii,"  Bruce said.  "This was 1940 and they had no idea what was coming, and they thought, 'What could be better?'  Two farm boys got away from milking cows and doing chores."

The Army Air Corps became the Army Air Forces on June 20, 1941.

--GreGen