"Lt. Stanley H. Levine Believed To Have Escaped Death."

By Paul--

Last week, after subscribing to a search engine called newspaper archive, I entered my father's name in the window and clicked the mouse. The monitor flickered with the front page of The Williamsport (PA) Gazette-Bulletin, September 14, 1945. There was a photo of my father in his Air Force uniform, and the headline: "Navigator on Doomed Plane Reported Safe." The drop-headline read: "Lt. Stanley H. Levine Believed to Have Escaped Death."

I tried to imagine my mother's reaction to the news. Sally Levine had been waiting five weeks after having been told by the War Department that my father and his B-29 crew were M.I.A. The crew had d borrowed an aircraft, the "Nip Clipper,"
because their own, the "Sad Tomato," was grounded with mechanical problems. The crew was part of a wave of 30 B-29s that had taken off from Tinian and dropped 1128 incendiary bombs over the industrial area of Yawata on the Japanese mainland. The craft was struck by anti-aircraft fire; an engine burst into flame and spread to the wing. Captain George Keller gave the order to bail out.

It was August 8, just after Hiroshomia and before Nagasaki. Ten of the eleven crew members survived the plunge into the Sea of Japan and floated in rafts for several days before being captured by a Japanese fishing vessel. The surviving crew members were taken to "Hiroshima Prison Camp Number One," which was actually 35 miles from the destroyed city on the island of Mukaishima. The official Japanese surrender -- you remember those amazing photos on the U.S.S. Missouri -- was still two weeks away, and P.O.W.'s were routinely being slaughtered by angry Japanese soldiers.

One morning, Japanese militia members lined up the 10 Americans in front of straw baskets. The men were to be beheaded by swords. A courageous Japanese Army military policeman named Nobuichi Fukui intervened and saved the crew. For the next 40 years, my father and Fukui remained pen pals, sending each other holiday cards and family photos.

Soon, the Japanese guards abandoned their posts and the American, British, and Australian prisoners took over the prison camp. The crew members found some paint and wrote "OX-23 Crew Is Here" on the roof of the barracks. The sign was seen by American aircraft, resulting in the newspaper story below:

HUGHESVILLE--An unofficial report that Lt. Stanley H. Levine, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Levine, of North Main Street, Hughesville, is a prisoner of the Japanese and presumably well and safe, was received here Thursday.

The wife of the pilot of the B-29, on which the local officer was serving as a navigator when the craft was shot down off the Japanese mainland Aug. 8, has informed his parents that she learned the crew is safe. No official message has been received from the War Department.

According to the letter, a U.S. plane stationed on Tinian Island was flying over an unknown area of Japan Aug. 31 and its crew was attracted by a message printed on top of the building. It read: OX-23 Crew Is Here."

Returning immediately to their home base the fliers reported the incident to headquarters and learned the number was the identification of the missing plane. Information as to the message seen in Japan was sent to the pilot's wife, who resides in Fort Wayne, Ind. by a member of the crew which sighted the building. The airmen also indicated the prisoners soon would be freed by American occupational forces.

Lieutenant Levine and his 10 comrades were returning from their 17th bombing missing when...
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And that's the end of it. I couldn't recover the jump page. One tragic end note. Captain George Keller's wife had been informed that all the crew members were safe, but that was a mistake. Captain Keller was the last to bail out of the flaming aircraft, and his chute never opened. He did not live to see the Japanese mainland. The other 10 crew members returned home safely. My father died at age 76, in 1996.

By Paul