PROVO -- The Army Air Corps soldier threw his grappling hook back into Pearl Harbor, robotically fishing body parts out of the waterway.

In the tumult of a new war, hurried military officials asked him only to gather two arms, two legs, a torso and a head -- it didn't matter if the parts didn't match -- and call it a body.That's just one of the memories of World War II's air conflicts recorded by Brigham Young University's Don E. Norton. The assistant professor of English has interviewed more than 400 aviators and ground crew members and scribbled more than 20,000 pages of notes in a race to preserve the lessons they learned.

"The war is still alive in the lives of many people," Norton said. "My main concern is getting to these people because they are dying, so they won't take their memories with them.

"All the men I've interviewed who witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor remember the noise (of the oncoming planes)," Norton says. "Most thought it was a drill, but it soon became evident to them that wasn't the case."

Norton, who was 7 years old when the Japanese bombs rained on the navy base in Hawaii, eagerly volunteered in 1991 when the Confederate Air Force, a national veterans group, sought writers for its oral history program. Because of his love of personal history and his deep interest in the war, Norton saw it as an opportunity to do an oral his- tory project that was just sitting there waiting. "It's immensely exciting," he says.

Norton has greatly exceeded the expectations of the Confederate Air Force. "Don is much more prolific than most of our historians," says Lois Harrington, oral history project manager of the America Air Power Heritage Museum of the Confederate Air Force.

"Personal history is a very serious interest of mine," says Norton, who teaches personal history writing to both BYU students and elder hostel groups. "I can sit by the hour and listen to these people talk. It's been a complete education for me."

Norton hasn't limited his search for interviewees to pilots. "I'm interviewing anybody who was connected to the air war: pilots, crews, maintenance workers, people who worked in the aircraft factories," says Norton. He has even interviewed civilians who witnessed bombing raids from the ground in Holland, France, Germany and England. "The seemingly most ordinary people in the war are sometimes the most interesting. And they're the forgotten people."

Working to ensure that these people are not forgotten, Norton gives the completed histories to the interviewees' families and sends copies to BYU's Harold B. Lee Library, the Confederate Air Force and, if the interviewee is from Utah, the Utah State Historical Society. Norton's intensive research has given him a more complete understanding of the World War II air war.

"I've probably spent 2,000 hours with the people who did the work getting into the most personal aspects of their work," he says.

"After you finish an interview, you know everything there is to know about that person," says Norton. "They were in stressful, extreme circumstances; that has the effect of bringing out the essence of an individual."

His search for subjects has taken him to national veteran's conventions in Phoenix, Seattle and Las Vegas.

The stories that emerge from the interviews range from the humorous to the horrifying. In training, some mischievous pilots would dive their planes to within a dozen feet of the ground to "buzz" farmers working in their fields. One man explains how they would fly powdered milk mixed with sugar and chocolate up to high altitudes to make ice cream in the frigid air. With nothing but time on their hands between missions, many became inventive, creating, among other things, gas stoves to keep themselves warm.

Other stories are more poignant. One man relates finding an injured orphan boy in the snow on the outskirts of a bombed Italian city and nursing him back to health. Many talk about watching friends' planes go down in flames with nobody bailing out.

One of them, Wendell Twelves, nicknamed "Doz" by his fellow pilots, left BYU after his sophomore year to join the war effort.

He began his flight training at the Provo airport while attending BYU. After advanced training, Twelves was assigned to pilot the newly developed F6F Hellcat fighter planes from aircraft carriers in the Pacific. By the end of his tour of duty, he was awarded the title of ace pilot with 13 1/2 confirmed planes shot down (the half indicates a plane that was shot down by two pilots) and decorations including the Purple Heart, eight Air Medals, the Silver Star, six Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Navy Cross, the highest distinction for a Navy pilot.

"You don't go after medals," said Twelves, who believed that it was his calling in life to help end the war. "I worked hard because this is what I was born to do."

The May 1991 interview, conducted by BYU emeritus professor John S. Harris and processed by Norton just six months before Twelves' death, is a mixture of the honor and pain he experienced in the service of his country. He recalled being assigned to fly the body of one of his closest war friends home. "When I think about it, it still brings a tear to my eye. It was tough duty, but that was just part of the darn game."

View Comments

Of the 100 Hellcat pilots in Twelves' unit, 62 died in combat. Remembering these stories is an emotionally taxing experience for the veterans and Norton alike. "Emotion comes out that they've kept pent up for 50 years," says Norton. "A lot of these men break down and cry; I sometimes cry with them."

Twelves told of not only his experiences in combat but the spiritual and emotional growth that followed. In December 1990, Twelves was contacted by a navy aviation researcher. The researcher had been commissioned to find the pilot who had shot down a certain Japanese plane in June of 1944 near Guam.

After 15 years, his search had brought him to Twelves. The man who had commissioned the research was Sadamu Kamachi, a Japanese ace who had been very successful in the war. When his plane went down in flames, he survived, but burns over much of his body left him seriously and permanently disfigured. Now an elderly man, Kamachi had a great desire to meet the man who shot him down. The two aces corresponded for months and shared their mutual admiration and gratitude that each had survived the war. Their much-anticipated meeting was prevented by Twelves' 1991 death.

Accounts like these are immensely valuable for families, says Norton, who wishes there were more people involved in recording such stories that shape the lives and values of individuals and cultures. "You ask someone what they believe, and they tell you a story," he says. "It's not the mind, it's the heart that creates our values. These people speak from the heart."

Join the Conversation
Looking for comments?
Find comments in their new home! Click the buttons at the top or within the article to view them — or use the button below for quick access.