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Our guest this week on Veterans Chronicles
is Wayne Whitey Johnson. He's a World

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War Two veteran and a veteran of
the famed Flying Tigers. Sir, thank

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you very much for your time.
Thank you. Let's start at the very

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beginning. Where were you born and
raised? I was born on a farm

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in western Minnesota, just about twenty
miles east of the city of Ortonville,

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which is right on the border of
Minnesota and North and South Dakota. When

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did you join the service? I
joined the Army Air Corps December eighth,

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nineteen forty one, the day after
programmer, and you had to get in

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a long line, as I recall
correct. Yes, probably started at about

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four o'clock in the morning, and
there were probably three to four hundred guys

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lined up to get into the recruiting
station. Why did you join the Air

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Corps. I'd had a little bit
of pilot time and I didn't like walking

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that well, so I wanted to
fly. Of course, the Army Air

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Corps told me not to tell anybody
that I knew how to fly, because

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they wanted to train me their way. What kind of flying had you done

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already? It was in a small
airplane. I did some crop dusting in

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a Steermen, and I had a
I think it was an around car with

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about a eighty horse power engine and
with crews at about a hundred and ten

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or something like that. And were
you eighteen years old when you joined or

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were you a bit younger? I
was? Uh, I was sixteen when

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I learned to fly that airplane.
How about when you joined the service,

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Let's see I was twenty twenty.
Okay, where did they send you for

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training? I went to Jefferson Barry, Missouri for basic army training. And

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then because I didn't have any college
education, just high school, and they

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wanted college trained pilots for some reason. Uh, So they sent me and

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several others up to Holding Mining and
Technology Co uh College and spent about I

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think about six months there and then
went back to the traditional army training.

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Now, you write a lot in
your book about the different planes that you

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got to operate in training, and
you certainly preferred some more than others.

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Yeah. I like the Steerman.
It was hard to land and hard to

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take off because it had very narrow
landing year, but it was a very

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good aromatic airplane. And once you
got the air very nice to fly.

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What about the P Fortyes, P
forty was really my favorite fighter. Nothing

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could catch it in a dive.
It wasn't quite as maneuverable as some of

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the Japanese planes, so we were
taught not to try to get into a

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dogfight with him, to make a
path and dive away and then climb above

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them again. So that was the
tactic we were tauted, and it was

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a very successful one. Another plane
that emerged was the P fifty one.

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What did you think of that one? That, of course was the Cadillac

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of airplanes, easy to fly,
very comfortable cockpit, wid wide cockpit,

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and had very high speed, probably
oh thirty to forty miles faster than the

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P forty, and highly maneuverable.
So the only chartcoming it had was the

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coolant lines were in the belly and
we did a lot of low altitude strafing

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of enemy air bases and troop concentration
ships, and so it was vulnerable from

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that standpoint because you got hit in
a coolant line, the engine would quit

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in about three minutes. And when
I went down, that's what happened to

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me. I got hit in a
coolant line. I think we were strafing

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in an anime air base at I
believe at Canton at the time. How

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much did your crop dusting experience help
you in training? Most of the crop

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dusting I did was after my service. Oh okay, I just flew a

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couple of times before I went in, So you really were learning from scratch.

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Yeah, okay. One of the
things that was very interesting in your

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book is that even before you were
assigned to China, you were very interested

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in the Flying Tigers and what they
were doing. Right, Yes, And

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of course most everybody admired John Chanelt, and so that was a wish of

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many to go to China, to
be able to fly in ch Chanault's command.

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And of course the Air Corps sent
you, not where you wanted to

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go, where they decided. But
fortunately I got sent to China. What

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did you know about the Flying Tigers
or General Chanelt that made them so attractive?

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Well, they were popularized, of
course in the press and in movies

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and in books. So that was
where I wanted to go. And how

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how long were you in the service
before you finally were sent to China?

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Probably about a year and a half
or two at the most. We were

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pretty well trained by that time and
learned fighter technics. So to go to

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China be under Chenos command was what
I hoped would happened. Fortunately it did.

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So what happened when you got there? I was there. She went

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through India and there was a training
field near Karachi in India, and probably

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spent several weeks at that training field
were combat experienced pilots from China. She

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came down and taught us combat tactics, and then I went to after that

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training, then went to Kunming,
which was the headquarters of the fourteenth Air

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Force flying Tigers, and then the
next day I was sent out into a

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rather remote base in southeastern China which
was located about halfway between Hong Kong and

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Shanghai, and that was where we
staged. The Japanese didn't think we had

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enough range that we could from our
base get to either Hong Kong or Shanghai.

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But we had another little base about
halfway between that base and Shanghai where

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there were supplies of gas, and
so we could stage out of there,

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refuel and get to Shanghai quite easily. And that was your first major mission.

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Yes, the Shanghai Raids. What
was the objective. Our intelligence learned

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that the Japanese had brought in a
lot of airplanes from Formosa and Taiwan,

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and they apparently were concerned about American
invasion of the China coasts, so had

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brought in over one hundred fighters and
they were all staged at that field and

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they were lined up in beautiful roads
because they didn't think we could have enough

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range to get there and back.
And we came in at about UH fifty

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or sixty miles out, which would
be be beyond their radar, and then

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we dove down to UH treetop level, and so UH they did had no

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idea we were coming because we were
solo below their radar. And UH when

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we got to the field to UH
the UH airport that we were gonna be

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strafing, UH, there were soldiers
standing out in the fields waving at us,

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apparently thinking that we were Japanese coming
in from Formosa until we start shooting,

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of course, and UH that first
UH raid we destroyed UH. I

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th I think it was ninety four
UH Japanese planes on the ground and I

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believe UH three in the air that
was just taking off. So I it

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was probably the most UH successful raid
of the war, although we had a

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lot more straightening their air bases and
their troop concentrations and uh, they're shipping.

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Basically, my job was a almost
all low level. I wann't know

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was conducive to good health because they
had the bad habit of shooting back.

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I but I survived. Sir.
Let's pause right there. We'll have much

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more with Wayne Whitey Johnson when we
come back on Veterans Chronicles. We are

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back on Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg
Corumbus, honor to be joined in studio

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today by World War Two veteran Wayne
Whitey Johnson. He is a veteran of

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the famed fourteenth US Air Force,
also known as the Flying Tigers. And

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Sir, we were just talking about
the Shanghai raids and how successful those were.

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What was that like as part of
your first major mission, Because we

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were well trained during the combat,
you tried to stay calm and focus on

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what you were trying to do.
Once combat didn't last long and gives a

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matter of minutes really, and when
you left the target and started back home,

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that's really when the emotions I guess, Sati, you realized that you

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were fortunate to get through it.
A lot of the guys would throw up

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and so forth. Once you had
to let down, and the rule was

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that if you nerded up your plane
in any way, you had to clean

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it up yourself. Now, you
mentioned the great success of taking out ninety

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four planes on the ground and three
that were taking off. So were the

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Japanese able to launch much of an
air resistance? They did? They brought

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in more airplanes and they did for
a while. We really found out that

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the pilots that they brought in them
were not very well trained, and they

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if you've got their leader, they
didn't seem to know what to do.

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They just sort of mill around,
and we're quite easy to knock down.

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Did you have a lot of experience
in the in the dog fighting? Was

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that a big part of the training? In the training it was? Yeah.

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Actually, as I said, almost
all of my missions were low level

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and I only got in to a
real aerial combat just a couple of times.

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When that happens, are you trained
to respond and attack and defend in

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specific ways or do pilots develop their
own styles? No, we were We

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were trained by high experienced combat pilots, and in my case, because I

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went to India and then onto China. All of the training that I got

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from experienced combat pilots were guys that
had flown combat in China and knew very

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well the gap techniques. You mentioned
how often you were flying low level missions.

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You also write about how because you
were at such a low level,

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there could be smoke coming up and
other things that could be confusing or obscuring.

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Did you run into that a lot? Yes, obviously when you started

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fires in there on their planes and
in their hangars and other installations, there'd

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be a lot of fire, a
lot of smoke. So normally we were

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taught to just make one pass and
then get out of there. But if

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we didn't get very much opposition,
sometimes our flight leaders would make maybe one

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or two more passes once they recover
enough to start shooting at us, then

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we'd leave. You also write about
the fact that you often had a lot

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of time between missions. It seemed
like you were itching to get back in

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the air. There were stretches where
you didn't have missions. How frequent was

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that Quite often, It'd be seldom
that you'd fly more than two or three

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missions in one right after the other, and then we might sit for weeks

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and do nothing sometimes because we ran
out of gas and an ammal and waited

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for the cargo planes to bring in
gas and ammal and bombs. On the

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fifty one p F we could carry
two five hundred pound bombs, so if

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we had a short mission then we
could carry bombs. Otherwise, we had

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two one hundred and sixty five gallon
tanks under each wing that we could fly

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longer patients up to about four or
four and a half hours. Your seat

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got pretty tired after that time.
Pause again for a short break. We'll

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be right back with Whitey Johnson on
Veterans Chronicles. We're back on Veterans Chronicles.

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I'm Greg Corumbus honor to be joined
today by Wayne Whitey Johnson. He's

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a World War Two veteran and a
veteran of the fourteenth US Air Force known

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as the Flying Tigers. And Sir, one of the things that's unique about

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your story is that you decided to
write it all down as it was happening.

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You kept a diary of your time
in China. How did you decide

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to do that? A lot of
the guys kept diary. We were instructed

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not to do so, but our
commander said, hey, go ahead and

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just don't carry it with you,
and so a lot of guys would keep

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a diary and record the events on
a day to day basis. Unfortunately,

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a lot of pages from my diary
got lost. I had sent it home

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and my one of my brothers had
put them in a trunk, and unfortunately

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the trunk was stored in the basement, so some of the pages got wet

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and foggy were not readable. But
we were able to some people from the

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University of Minnsola who were good at
restoring books. I took it and were

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able to restore probably about half of
it, which I was able to then

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use to record my memoirs. And
the book is Whitey, which is your

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nickname, of course, from Whitey
because of my white hair I had from

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the time I was a little kid, and it was Whitey from farm kid

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I was born and raised on a
farm to flying Tiger to attorney. It's

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a nurse. Four sections in the
book. It's an incredible story, and

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it reminds me that you were a
little taken aback when you first got to

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China because Tokyo Rose called you out
by name. Yes, tell that story.

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I think It was probably the first
or second day that I was there,

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and we used to listen to music
from Japan because they played a lot

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of American music, and Tokyo Rose
would come on and talk about the events.

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Kind of set me back a little
when she said, Whitey Johnson of

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Lieutenant something like that came to China, and he'll last very long because our

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fighters, our superior fighter pilots will
knock them down. Not too really encouraging

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news, but we learned that she
had a tendency to fabricate things, and

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you figured out that somehow they had
spies getting personnel information. Correct Chinese,

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of course, most of the workers, or call them peasants, were very

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poor and they were easily to bribe. So rather than maybe one ball of

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rice aday, the gaps would give
him a couple of balls, and you

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use them as spies. And they
would actually steal our mission orders of the

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bulletin boards, and some of them
finally got caught because they we had guards

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that watched the bulletin boards and if
they came and ripped off a page they'd

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reported to a Chinese general, the
general would shoot him on the spot.

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I asked one of the generals I
thought you were a democratic society and give

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people a fair trial, And he
said, we do. We give him

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a fair trial, then we shoot
him. Well, that spying. Also,

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you write about a friend of yours
who was captured by the Japanese and

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when he denied what his orders had
been and they had the paperwork, he

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was beaten very badly. Yes,
he was one of the few that was

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taken prisoner. It happened to me
on Christmas Eve of old days. And

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uh so he spent the rest of
the war as a pow prisoner war.

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And uh at first they had him
in Hong Kong, uh in an old

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uh British jail. They stripped'em
naked, and UH beat the hell out

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of'em with silk ropes. And
then uh he was uh put on a

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ship and sent to Japan and remained
there for the rest of the war as

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a prisoner. And UH interestingly enough, uh Greg uh Bayington uh was also

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in that same jail, and he
apparently had a number of packag cigarettes in

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his baggage, and so he give
the jump gyuards a cigarette, and so

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he got the job, was working
in the kitchen and spent the rest of

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the war working in the kitchen.
Let's go back to the combat there.

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You also tell the story, and
I'm probably not going to say this word

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right about your actions at Loan Ping. Yes, tell us about what happened

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there. Low On Ping was a
small base located about halfway between our headquarters

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at kun Ming and and shange High
and probably about equal distance between uh Hong

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Kong and Shanghai, and so uh
we were able to uh strike both uh

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Hong Kong and Shanghai. Uh Japanese
bases from that base. They had a

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huge uh Japanese uh army uh uh
about uh uh fifty miles uh from our

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base, but uh because we would
uh go out and straight from quite often,

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uh, they just sort of stayed
put and so they never uh bothered

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to raid our base. Uh.
So we were uh uh quite secure there.

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Uh. The Japanese uh uh did
uh come over, not during it

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because they'd get shot down, but
they would come over at night, and

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our fighters were not equipped very well
to fly at night, but they came

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over with their bombers and dropped the
bombs on our installations in our barracks,

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and we would get warnings from uh
uh Chinese spies that were at those Japanese

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bases, and they let us know
when the bombers had taken off so that

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we could get to the UH trenches
slit trenches, which were a narrowed,

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narrow trenches, probably about two feet
wide, so a man just could fit

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in him and they were about four
or five feet deep. So when there

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was a a raid, we'd run
and jump on those and sit there till

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the raid was over. Fortunately,
they weren't acker enough to hit our trenches.

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You mentioned earlier on about being in
a P fifty one that went down.

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What do you want to share about
that? Uh? As I said,

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the UH coolant lines for the UH
coolant used in the radiator, UH,

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we're in the belly and so at
low level of fifty one was very

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vulnerable to ground fire. And since
UH we did a lot of low level

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strafing, I got hipped in the
coolant line, and of course I could

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tell that. First I could hear
the shots hitting my wings, and then

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immediately the temperature started up, and
so I knew I had been hit in

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the coolant. So I had enough
speed, probably going about four hundred or

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four fifty, so I could have
climbed up to eight or ten thousand feet

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quite safely and then bail out.
But the Japs were shooting guys in parachutes,

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so if we got hit, we
felt it was safer to billy the

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plane and skidding in on wheels up. Then it was to try to climb

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in and bail out. And Chinese
natives peasants we call them, were very

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good about rescuing us. If they
could get a five minute head start on

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the Japanese troops, they would save
us. So you had good interaction with

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the Chinese people overall. Yes,
it was quite a change in diet because

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we didn't have any American food.
Sometime later we got the Sea rations,

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but at first we were fit in
by Chinese messals, and so we just

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learned to eat the Chinese food.
You mentioned earlier that your plane was in

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combat a few times, and you
talk about that in the book, and

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you were fortunate enough on some of
those occasions to be with one of the

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00:30:03.720 --> 00:30:07.960
great aces of the Pacific theater,
correct a. Charles Older. He became

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a judge after the war on the
Benson trial. Yes, and game a

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lot of fame there, and he
was one of the commanders. Really a

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nice guy and great to fly with, and he had many kills. Correct,

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Yes, I think he was not
the Poppy's Texas Hill was the poppy.

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But I think he had I believe
sixteen aerial kills. That's amazing.

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So one of the things you also
write about in the book is when General

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Channel resigned about a month before the
atomic weapons were dropped. That was very

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00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:07.079
frustrating to those of you serving in
the theater. Correct. Yes, Arnold,

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who was the Air Force commander and
Marshall was the Armed Forces commander.

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Both disliked Chennult because he would kind
of avoid going through channels and if he

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wanted something, uh, he would
go directly to Roosevelt, And of course

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Roosevelt loved him, so whatever he
asked Roosevelt for uh, he would generally

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Yet, so if we ran short
of gas splies apple, he'd get on

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a plane and go to Washington and
few days later supply ships would come in.

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We'll take a short break. We'll
be right back with more conversation with

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Whitey Johnson on Veterans Chronicles. I'm
Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles.

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Honored to be joined today in studio
by Wayne Whitey Johnson, veteran of World

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War Two and the famed Flying Tigers. Sir, we had talked a little

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bit in the previous segment about your
belly landing of the P fifty one and

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being rescued by the Chinese. Talk
about that a little bit more and what

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it was like to know you were
going down after being shot. I had

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enough speed, as I said,
I was going about four fifty miles an

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hour when we're strafened coming from a
dive, So I had plenty of speed

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00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:57.160
to climb up to a safe altitude
and bailout. But I didn't want to

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do that because the Japanese UH had
the rather bad habit of shooting guys in

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00:33:02.519 --> 00:33:10.160
parachutes, so I didn't want to
give them that UH risk. And so

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I saw what I thought was a
nice straight uh road that I could uh

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safely uh belly land on at least, and looked like from the air that

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was lined with bushes on each side. Well, just as I started to

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00:33:30.920 --> 00:33:37.759
round out UH to land, I
realized that UH those were not bushes at

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00:33:37.799 --> 00:33:45.319
all. They were huge boulders,
and the road was so narrow that UH

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00:33:46.359 --> 00:33:54.440
when I leveled off the land uh, the wings UH caught on those boulders,

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and it ripped off a bul wings
as I skidded along, and then

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00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:10.719
uh the plane uh turned a little
and it hit the tail and ripped the

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00:34:10.760 --> 00:34:16.599
tail off, and uh then I'll
spun in the other direction, and the

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00:34:16.760 --> 00:34:22.159
engine hit the boulders, and I
ripped the engine off. Uh, and

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00:34:22.199 --> 00:34:27.480
then it kind of straightened out and
skidded it along just in the cockpit,

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uh for some distance, maybe a
couple hundred feet or so, and then

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00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:45.559
uh came to a stop. And
uh there were some Chinese fellows uh in

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00:34:45.639 --> 00:34:52.000
the field, uh working in the
rice field, and uh they saw me

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00:34:52.199 --> 00:35:00.400
uh crash, and uh they uh
ran over and uh pulled me on the

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00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:07.239
wreckage. And this one uh guy
probably was uh five feet tall and maybe

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00:35:07.239 --> 00:35:13.760
weighed a hundred pounds, but tougher
th nails, and uh he put me

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00:35:13.840 --> 00:35:22.000
on his back and ran for miles
to get away from the uh Jap troops

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00:35:22.079 --> 00:35:28.360
up her coming down the hill.
When they got uh looked like they were

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00:35:28.360 --> 00:35:37.079
getting too close. They put me
in this uh pond nearby and had had

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uh bamboo uh shoots and uh those
were a hollow uh probably a inch and

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00:35:45.679 --> 00:35:52.320
a half or two inch uh in
diameter in hollow and uh so they uh

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00:35:52.960 --> 00:36:00.440
uh tossed me in this little lake
and uh uh they would signal when the

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00:36:00.559 --> 00:36:07.039
Jamp troops got close and uh letting
out the kind of funny little whistles.

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And then they told me to dive
under the water, and uh put this

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read in in my mouth and let
it stick up so that I could survive

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00:36:22.840 --> 00:36:29.840
under the water. And uh I
laid there for and one time I saw

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this uh jamp boot. He stepped
into the water, and the water was

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00:36:34.519 --> 00:36:37.000
deep enough so it went over the
top of his boot. So he he

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00:36:37.119 --> 00:36:45.280
backed up, but uh his uh
boot was probably within uh two feet on

303
00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:51.039
me. If he'd uh step one
more step, uh, he'd uh stepped

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on me. But fortunately he didn't
you want to get his boot to it,

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00:36:54.280 --> 00:37:01.400
I guess, so he backed out
and I stayed there until dark,

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00:37:02.360 --> 00:37:13.000
and then they came and fetched me
out, and we traveled all night,

307
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mostly during the night. At the
day they'd hide me away somewhere. It

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00:37:21.320 --> 00:37:32.199
took I think about three days to
get back to safe territory. So it

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00:37:32.239 --> 00:37:37.159
was a kind of an exciting experience, but I survived. What were you

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00:37:37.199 --> 00:37:43.360
thinking through all this? To get
back safely. Were you worried at any

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00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:46.199
point? Oh? Yeah, scared
as hell. Talk about the end of

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00:37:46.239 --> 00:37:52.280
the war. Did you know that
the end was in sight before we actually

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00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:59.440
dropped the bombs. Yes, we
were staging in the eastern, very far

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00:37:59.599 --> 00:38:10.159
eastern in China to join the attack
on Japan. We had enough range in

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00:38:10.239 --> 00:38:20.559
a fifty one that we could fly
from the coast above Shanghai to Okanao,

316
00:38:21.760 --> 00:38:28.800
and which I think is about four
or five hour flight, and that was

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00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:35.159
just as long as we could stay
in the air. We heard that our

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00:38:35.199 --> 00:38:44.159
country had some very high powered explosives
of some type. We didn't know what

319
00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:51.800
they were, of course, but
some of the guys had learned that they

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00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:57.440
were very high, testing, very
high explosives. So it was a surprise

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00:38:57.679 --> 00:39:02.960
to us, of course when they
dropped the mom that wiped out so much

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00:39:04.039 --> 00:39:14.119
of Tokyo and some of the other
cities. And we knew from what the

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00:39:14.199 --> 00:39:24.000
Japanese radio was saying English speaking that
they were prepared to surrender because they didn't

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00:39:24.000 --> 00:39:30.400
want their country destroyed. So when
they surrendered, what was the reaction like

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00:39:31.639 --> 00:39:36.360
a great relief, I guess.
When we knew the war was over.

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We knew that the risks we had
been taking, we wouldn't have taken anymore.

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00:39:44.239 --> 00:39:47.760
We then knew we were going to
get safely home, or we're pretty

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00:39:47.800 --> 00:39:52.880
sure we would in our last few
minutes. Here your next phase in life,

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00:39:52.280 --> 00:39:59.000
becoming an attorney and a record setting
city attorney. What did you do

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00:39:59.079 --> 00:40:04.760
after the war? Our viewers and
listeners. UH, I got out of

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00:40:04.840 --> 00:40:15.639
the UH service in UH November of
nineteen forty six, and UH I signed

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00:40:15.719 --> 00:40:23.280
up for college at Fargo and North
Dakota to start on the first of January

333
00:40:23.480 --> 00:40:30.840
or second of January, cause Fargo
was a pretty cold spot. I think

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00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:37.119
the day that I got there was
about forty below and of course I'd been

335
00:40:37.159 --> 00:40:42.480
down in Texas where it was nice
and warm, so that was a bit

336
00:40:42.559 --> 00:40:51.079
of a shock. But I liked
UH. I liked college and because of

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00:40:51.119 --> 00:40:58.920
my experience flying P fifty ones UH, the North Dakota Air Guard Air National

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00:40:58.960 --> 00:41:04.559
Guard had droppen fifty once, so
UH they got a hold of me and

339
00:41:04.639 --> 00:41:14.039
asked if I would come back into
the Guard and UH help UH train new

340
00:41:14.079 --> 00:41:20.880
pilots UH, which I did for
two years while I was going to college,

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00:41:21.159 --> 00:41:29.199
and UH because of my low level
experience, they found out about that,

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00:41:29.599 --> 00:41:36.679
and so I was offered a job
doing UH crop dusting. UH So

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00:41:36.840 --> 00:41:44.000
I I did UH crop dusting UH
for a while while I was in college

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00:41:45.440 --> 00:41:50.719
and I was UH. I liked
it. It was fun. You could

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00:41:51.320 --> 00:41:57.559
fly a lot, come over the
field, have to go under the telephone

346
00:41:57.599 --> 00:42:06.360
and power lines, and and climbed
back up and take another pass. Very

347
00:42:06.400 --> 00:42:13.559
interesting, definitely. How did you
get into the law. There was a

348
00:42:13.079 --> 00:42:21.880
a fellow from UH Oxford, Mississippi
in my tent UH who had started law

349
00:42:21.880 --> 00:42:28.880
school, and of course he kept
talking about UH his interest in the field

350
00:42:28.920 --> 00:42:36.840
of law and what he had started
to learn about it, and UH so

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00:42:37.159 --> 00:42:43.280
I became interested in that. Soon
as he got out of the service.

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00:42:44.239 --> 00:42:52.360
UH. I signed up UH at
college, took UH pre law at UH

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00:42:53.360 --> 00:43:00.440
at Fargo, UH was then called
the Agricultural College, or we call it

354
00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:07.639
the Cow College. Then I went
down to UH transferred to Saint Paul to

355
00:43:07.960 --> 00:43:15.840
a law school there. That's where
I was admitted to the UH Minnesota a

356
00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:27.960
bar in UH nineteen fifty two and
practice law from then on for fifty some

357
00:43:28.199 --> 00:43:37.800
years. And UH i'd helped legally
organize UH two communities and became their city

358
00:43:37.840 --> 00:43:45.760
attorney, and I held uh that
job in each of those UH small towns

359
00:43:45.920 --> 00:43:54.840
really uh for over fifty years.
That uh set a record of uh the

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00:43:55.000 --> 00:44:02.039
longest serving city attorney, and not
only in Minnesota but in the United States.

361
00:44:04.559 --> 00:44:08.639
The only thing wrong when it was
they didn't pay me any longevity pay

362
00:44:08.800 --> 00:44:15.800
for it. What were the names
of the towns, Silver Bay, Minnesota

363
00:44:16.519 --> 00:44:22.880
and Beaver Bay, Minnesota. Beaver
Bay was just a small town of a

364
00:44:23.079 --> 00:44:30.599
one hundred or a couple hundred population
and Silver Bay, which was a new

365
00:44:31.639 --> 00:44:39.119
town built by the mining company who
had sent up a mining process plant there.

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00:44:39.800 --> 00:44:50.920
And they contacted me to organize Silver
Bay into a legal city, and

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00:44:51.239 --> 00:45:00.599
so of course they appointed me as
their city attorney and I served that fittied

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00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:07.320
also for over fifty years. Last
question, mister Johnson, back to your

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00:45:07.599 --> 00:45:10.719
time in the service, what are
you most proud of? I guess that

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00:45:10.800 --> 00:45:21.199
I survived and the fact is that
I did fly a lot of interesting missions

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00:45:21.480 --> 00:45:30.639
and I met people that became lifelong
friends. It's quite a legacy. Thank

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00:45:30.679 --> 00:45:34.800
you so much for sharing it with
us, and thank you very much for

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00:45:34.840 --> 00:45:37.880
your service. Thank you, Wayne
Whitey Johnson, World War Two veteran and

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00:45:37.920 --> 00:45:43.519
a veteran of the fourteenth US Air
Force, the famed Flying Tigers. I'm

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00:45:43.519 --> 00:45:57.000
Greg Corumbus reporting for Veterans Chronicles.
Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks

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00:45:57.039 --> 00:46:00.599
for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a
presentation of the American Center. For more

377
00:46:00.639 --> 00:46:06.880
information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot
org. You can also follow the American

378
00:46:06.960 --> 00:46:12.559
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379
00:46:12.559 --> 00:46:15.960
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380
00:46:16.079 --> 00:46:21.960
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381
00:46:22.239 --> 00:46:25.079
Thanks again for listening and please join
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