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pg.45
island- whatever rainwater we could get was precious. It rained like hell one day. It was warm rain and if you can picture four men running around the tent in their birthday suits frantically emptying small open cans placed strategically at the corners of the canvass shelter into a larger barrel you can understand why we were so proud of catching almost 100 gallons of rainwater. We were to have enough water for washing and boiling our clothes for a long time to come.
The weather has been bad and the B-29 raids have increased in number andintensity. We were under constant strain that one of these days we'll be caught with thirty or forty B-29's all trying to land under zero-zero conditions. (At this time I had an attack of the G.I.'s and for a couple of days I was practically living in the latrine.)
ITEM: It has become a set rule for the B-29's to land only at Iwo because of an emergency which would prevent the big planes from returning to their home base in the Mariannas seven hundred miles south. One afternoon the writer was listening in on the radio to the control tower at Walnut field directing and landing B-29's coming back from a strike at the Japanese homeland. These 29's and any others landing at Iwo were doing so because they hadn't enough gas to get back to their home base, or perhaps an engine or two was out of operation or there were wounded aboard.