Reader Pays Tribute to US Fighter Pilot Uncle Who Sacrificed His Life in World War II

Biba Kayewich for American Essence

Firsthand accounts of overcoming adversity have always stirred something in me. Many years ago, I read Tom Brokaw’s then-newly published book “The Greatest Generation.” It’s a collection of very moving stories of those who faced the challenges and ravages of the Second World War. These were people who also grew up in this country during the Great Depression. To say they faced and overcame adversity—well, it kind of defines understatement.

Both of my parents, who had married in 1940 in the middle of these two events, died around the same time Brokaw’s book was released. Among the things left to me by my folks was a small box filled with fading photographs, old newspaper clippings, and a batch of yellowing letters still in their envelopes. To my everlasting surprise, they revealed a story to rival any I discovered in Brokaw’s book and helped me understand a missing chapter of my own family’s story.

At first, I was stunned by the number of letters my mom’s only brother, my uncle Jim, wrote from September 1941 to February 1943—over 100, one every few days. As I read them, I realized that letters were often the only source of communication during the war. To ease the tension of harsh, demanding circumstances and to keep in touch with those they loved and left behind, the soldiers wrote letters—lots of them. It is highly unlikely we will ever again see that volume of handwritten letters composed over such a brief time span.

From his initial letters written in mid-1941 following his final year of college through the last one he wrote, I got to know my uncle in his own very personal words. He told me how he was so scared of “washing out” during his pilot training. His humility (he wrote his parents that he simply “did my part”) made me bow my head. Never was there any mention in any of his letters of the fact that he downed five enemy aircraft during the Battle of Midway. I had to read a newspaper clipping to learn that one. He made me laugh by describing how he feared the poisonous snakes on the island where he was stationed in New Guinea more than the enemy he was flying against. His dogged determination to battle the wearing fatigue of flying mission after mission came through in his writing. His longing to once again smell the sweet autumn air of his home in Ohio or of his love for his fiancé—it all helped me feel what he, and by extension, all the men and women who lived through this era, were facing.

Jim was one of only 13 aircrew killed during the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, a three-day battle fought over the Southwest Pacific in March of 1943. Nearly 3,000 enemy combatants perished in the three-day fight.

Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, the commander of the Japanese Eighth Fleet at Rabaul, stated after the battle, “It is certain that the success obtained by the American air force in this battle dealt a fatal blow to the South Pacific.”

My folks rarely spoke of Jim or of their own experiences during the Depression or, subsequently, the war. So, I never knew much of my uncle’s short life. But through his own writings and, following his death, some 25 other letters sent to my grandparents by his friends and crew members, I learned. The first one I read was from his bombardier, a man who had eventually parachuted out of an ill-fated flight barely a month after he wrote the letter, was captured by the enemy, spent the next two years in a prison camp surviving torture and starvation, and returned home at the end of the conflict. After reading it, I wept.

We were in lots of tight places together, but he always brought us through; I would have trusted him any place in the world. The day the Zeros hit us, we were leading a bombing formation over a Jap convoy. We were on the bombing run and had not released any bombs. The Zero came in from the left front and raked our whole plane. Jim was hit hard and never knew what hit him. He lived until after we landed but never gained consciousness. I held him in my arms all the way home; he fought so hard to live, but God was calling him home and very soon after we landed, he answered the call. —Lt. Jack Wisener

Of my uncle’s nine-man B-17 bomber crew, only five outlived the war and returned. Tough odds to beat. But I believe Brokaw got it right. These people, who faced such harrowing hardships and did so with courage, humility, and even humor, set a standard for generations to come.

This article was originally published in American Essence magazine.