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William E. 'Bill' Jones, 80, Columbia City    Page 3 of 4

an appointment with the archivists.' Two buddies and I decided to go out in August to the new extension of the Air and Space Museum, and we set up an appointment on Aug. 17 at 3 p.m. ... I met with Patricia Williams, acquisitions archivist and Melissa Keiser, who is the photo archivist. ... They scanned the negatives I had with me. They were the six pictures I have over there (in the Hoosier Air Museum).

What did they think?

"They seemed pleased.... They said, 'We have this stuff on the ground and from the top of buildings and we have stuff taken from 30,000 feet. But your stuff we don't have and it fits right in.' Mine were taken from 800 to 1,200 feet, right in between."

So how many pictures did you take, and when did you take them?

"I have 80 pictures of the two cities... 39 of Nagasaki and 41 of Hiroshima. This was five months after the bombings, which were in August of '45. This was in January 1946. It was five months, and we hadn't even touched it (the area), and the first airfield was put in in March of '46, so this was early on (in the occupation). ... We rode in (to Hiroshima) on a rail line, and ... the rails were warped (from the heat of the bomb), and there was a temporary track... The trains could only go about 15 miles and hour and there was only one track. The railroad ties were all burned from the heat of the bomb... So we were riding on a train with hardly any support under it. ... We had our orders to fly within two days."

That must have been quite a scene. Is there anything you especially remember?

"When we got in (to Hiroshima) and parked the train, there was a locomotive engine ... buried in face-down in the ground with about half its length sticking up. And we couldn't figure out how this happened. How could a bomb do that? ... Well, we wouldn't know for several years that 'Little Boy,' which was the first atomic bomb used in combat, was dropped from 32,700 feet and detonated about 1,800 feet. And a force of 13 kilotons of TNT had pushed downward on that locomotive. ...We were thinking 'bomb,' and looking for a crater. Well, there was no crater."

Tell me about your missions.

"The first one I flew was to Nagasaki in an L-5 observation plane. The mission over Hiroshima was in a ...Canadian Noorduyn Norseman, which was a 10-passenger plane. We had pilot, co-pilot and three officers and me. They were all strapped in but I was kneeling on my parachute at the door. And we hit a real severe downdraft — today we would have called it a wind shear."

What happened?

"For about 200 feet we went straight down. And I floated — and real quickly — to the opposite side of the cabin with my legs pinned against the side door, and as the plane slowed down I floated like an astronaut — we didn't know about astronauts then, but I was weightless — and when we hit the bottom, I hit the door open and the slip stream hit it back shut and knocked me across the plane again."

What happened to the camera?

"I was holding onto the camera with both hands the whole time, and I never let go of the camera, and it never did bump anything. So I saved the camera and the film."

I'm sure the photo buffs out there would want to know what kind of equipment you used.

"We used what we had back then, which was a K20 aerial camera. It was comparable to a Speed Graphic, which is what we used on the ground, but it had a slightly longer focal length lens. It took a 20-foot roll of film, 5 inches wide and the image was horizontal. ... You had a trigger that tripped the shutter, and you cranked the film to advance it. ... The darkroom was back at the base."

So how did you get a set of these pictures and get them home?

"Well, the colonel said, 'Before you put a pen to those' — we used to write the date, time, place, approximate altitude and classification on them (because) everything that time was classified 'Secret,' and they didn't declassify a lot of the stuff 'til the 1990s for the 45th anniversary — he said, 'make me a set.' And the captain said, 'While you're at it, make me a set, too.' So I thought, 'Gee, these must be important. So I think I'll make myself some.' These (8-by-10s) I wrapped them in paper and rolled them around the barrels of used (Japanese) cavalry rifles in wooden boxes and mailed the photos home, and nobody opened the boxes. I just shipped them home. ...The 4-by-5s, I packed them in the bottom

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