What was the experience like when Gen. Douglas MacArthur went back to the Philippines?
It was an experience that I’ll never forget because the Filipino people were so good to us, so happy to see us and of course a lot of the Filipino volunteers that fought in the hills, they joined us and they welcomed us into their homes. But the fighting was still going on in the islands of Leyte and Samar.We built a station there with radar and sonar. The first six months that I was there, it was very, very unsafe because they were still fighting around us. It was Oct. 20 when he landed in the Philippines and he got there and made his approach and left, but we stayed. I was a year in the Philippines, 13 months actually, before I came home. How do you feel about Veterans Day and about the activities and ceremonies that are held to honor veterans? I feel proud and I feel lucky that I’m here. In my family there were four of us [in the military], four brothers in World War II. And I have a daughter who went to Panama [in 1989] and a son who went to Vietnam. He did two tours in Vietnam. So
