Kay, Felix
Dr. Felix Kay: World War II
Interviewed by Lee A. Leslie
Interview date 12 May 2004
Q: Felix, when and where were you born?
A: I was born on a farm near Pensacola, Oklahoma, northeastern part of the state of Oklahoma near Grand River Dam and Grand Lake area – or Lake of the Cherokees – in the year of 1927.
Q: And when did you first begin thinking that the US may get involved in World War II? After Pearl Harbor? Or did you think involvement in the war was inevitable?
A: Well, I was only about 14 years old when, ah, we got the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Japanese, and ironically enough, we were riding in a four-wheel, ah, rubber-tired trailer-thing pulled by horses, ah, from Sunday school and church. And a friend of ours came out and stopped us, ah, to let us know that, coming over the radio that he’d heard that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. And it was really, of course, a shock to me. At that age, I probably wasn’t aware of how significant this thing might be or what it would turn into, but it didn’t take long to figure out that, ah, that the United States would certainly be involved in a war and, inevitably, even though I was at that age, I would be affected, ah, directly, and, and actually I was. I don’t think I felt that – that I can remember, anyhow – that it was inevitable that we were going to war before that Pearl Harbor incident occurred.
Q: What was the reaction from your family and your friends when Pearl Harbor was attacked?
A: Ah, mostly, I think, ah, Lee, the reaction was just staggering to me and, ah, friends of my age. Ah, but we all had a feeling that we were going to have to be involved. We had no idea how fast and how rapidly things would change in preparation to, ah, to enter this thing in full force. But it didn’t take too long to, ah, ah, for me to learn that I was going to be involved as well as four of the six boys in our family were involved in World War II at the same time.
Q: And you were – I think you said fourteen, is that right?
A: Fourteen, yes, during – when the attack occurred in December 7, ’41.
Q: But of course you weren’t in the military.
A: No, I wasn’t in the military, but I certainly could see the future that could very easily involve me, and which it did later on.
Q: Were you drafted or did you sign up?
A: Well, a little – you’d have to say both. I enlisted when I was a senior in high school and took the test and was going into the B-12 program – the air force, and, ah, when I passed my writtens I went for a physical exam and I was turned down because I’d had a kidney kicked loose playing ball in a state tournament. So, ah, they – while they did not want to take me – they wanted to take me, but they deferred me until they could see what, ah, if I’d be healed in time that I would be drafted, so, you know, at the time, if you were eighteen, it didn’t take but about three weeks until they drafted you. So that’s the way I ended up. And I was drafted, ah, after I had enlisted, and was drafted into the air force, which was unusual, but I’m glad it happened the way it did.
Q: So, you enlisted first, then were drafted. How old were you when you were actually drafted?
A: I was about three weeks past eighteen.
Q: All right. And how did the other men in your area feel about serving in the military?
A: Well, we were all living in a agricultural movement on the farm. We farmed rather heavily about 750 acres and at that time, believe it or not, with horses. And, ah, most of the men in our area were very receptive to the fact that, as I always remembered, one of our older neighbors saying “Well, boys, it’s like this. War is hell, but war is necessary when it comes down to things like this, we all should do our part and go on in there and it will be a lot better fighting them away from our country, rather than in our country.” And I can say that that was the general feeling, I think, of all of our people.
Q: Were there a lot of veterans of the previous wars?
A: Ah, the previous wars, mostly, ah, no one directly in our families, well, I wouldn’t say directly, because indirectly, I had people that were in the – in fighting – or looking through all our genealogy for the past ten generations, many people were involved that were distant relatives in the Civil War and, ah, ah, some in the Mexican War, but none in our immediate family, of course.
Q: How did your family and wife or girlfriend fell about you going off to fight?
A: Well, I think the family had already become, ah, ah, acclimated, so to speak with the, with the fact that, ah, (tape stops when phone rings in background). . . OK, ah, where we? Since my immediate family, you might say, was like an army instead of a family – we had six boys and six girls! Four of the boys were in the World War II at the same time, and since the older boys had been involved, it was not a shock at all – it was a feeling that they felt like we all owed allegiance to the country and the fact that, ah, we do our part and we’d hope that it wouldn’t last, ah, ah, so many years. My girlfriend didn’t like it because we were kind of at a stage when it was puppy love and it was hard to break up the things that you’d been going through, particularly in basketball and other sports that you were going off together in and having great times, but other than that, I think, that most of them were real receptive for the fact that we had a job to do and the sooner we got there, the quicker it would be over, we hoped.
Q: And you mentioned air force – you enlisted in the air force and then later they drafted you into the air force?
A: (laughing) Yes, that’s doing it the hard way, I guess, but, ah, when I look back on it, it really turned out to be a great thing for me. I was, at the end, inducted into the US Army-Air Force Technical Training Command. At that time, headquarters were out of Denver. And, ah, my assignments were all through them, and luckily for me, I was more in schools than anything else after I got my basic training.
Q: And, ah, where did you do basic?
A: The air force only one place in America to do basic training. You know – you’ll remember that Williford Hall and Lackland Army-Air Field was not in existence at the time, so they had a basic training center at Shepherd Air Force Base in Texas, which was massively involved. They only had room, ah, to where they had splinter villages that they put inductees and enlistees in tents, ah, after the overflow areas were taken up. And at the time I went through basic training at Shepherd Air Force Base there were 110,000 soldiers going through basic training, if you can imagine how large that was. But it was quite effective, and I won’t never forget it! That hot place, oh, you had to drop your old, oh, typical type uniforms that they issued you – you had to drop them down and lie down on that hot clay, ah, soil, just blistered you when you were, ah, taking calisthenics and particularly after you had all your shots, it was pretty hard to go through and do that, but they did a very effective job. I was impressed with their vastness of all equipment and the, ah, the quality of the instructors, and the fact that you could do nighttime problems and things by the stars that you never dreamed you could do before when you had to, and, ah, they had such, ah, areas of, ah, combat obstacle courses, which we went through – hand over hand over thirty foot areas of water that were filled full of moss you didn’t dare to drop in to areas where you actually utilized the things that they did for you to leave airplanes and jump out in parachutes and how you, ah, begin to understand how to use those things to survive. It was very impressive.
Q: You said Shepherd that that’s in Texas?
A: Yes, Shepherd Air Force Base outside of Wichita Falls, Texas.
Q: And the experience of doing that – tell us a little bit about your training and your interactions with men from different parts of the country.
A: Well, this experience was like one I’d never gone through before and, ah, overall was a great experience when I look back on it. To elaborate on the training, as I mentioned before, I think they had some of the best instructors I’ve ever been associated with. Everything was so, ah, ah, organized, and, ah, as far as the men from all parts of the country, that was, ah, hilarious. I mean, it was something that I’ll never forget. I, ah, had, ah, three good friends from the Bronx in New York. I had, ah, met, ah, ah, about six or eight fellow from California, which were very different from these old Okies. And, ah, I had, ah, several men in a flight that was from New Orleans and that was a hoot! We had (laughing) guys that were – if they weren’t Cajuns, they were really, ah, almost Cajuns from the way the talked and the way they reacted. And, ah, we also – I had one or two good friends that were in college at the University of Arkansas that were close friends. So we had a duke’s mixture – from – men from all parts of the country and it was a very good experience and I still stay in contact with some of them.
Q: Well, after you went through basic, where did the military send you?
A: Ah, let’s see, I, ah, when I got out of basic, they signed me to, ah, since the pilot program was actually running over and since I had my trouble with having that kidney kicked loose playing ball, ah, I was signed to the army-air force technical training command school, which trained flight engineers on B-24 bombers, and, ah, I went to two or three different places for various parts of the training. The first part was all, ah, didactic and it was out of, ah, the AAFTTC at, ah, it was the base at Biloxi, Mississippi – Keisler Field Army Air Base, and they had such volumes of training that you couldn’t hardly comprehend. They had – they went to school 24 hours a day, to give you an idea. And, ah, wouldn’t you know, when I got there, most of the things were taken up as far as preferences. And I went to school from six o’clock in the evening till two o’clock in the morning. And, ah, ah, I went through that in about eight months. It was all accelerated and, I mean, it was – it was technical – much more technical than I ever thought not ever having had much physics and, ah, ah, science, as was required in that, but, ah, even though you didn’t have it, it was geared toward most everybody could understand once you spent enough time and asked enough questions, it worked out fine. And, ah, I went – I went through that school.
When I got out and was certified, I was supposed to go to, ah, the, ah, I believe it was the Eighth Air Force in England, which at that time they were bombing most all of the installations where bombs and powder and stuff were being made in Germany, so it wasn’t much – it didn’t take me long to realize that – where I might be going. And, ah, ah, through – I’d always said “somebody up there liked me.” I had an option, instead of going there, they offered me a chance to instruct the next class in that school because they didn’t have enough outside civilian instructors to go around and so I did take it up kind of reluctantly, and. . . the thing that was unique, though, was we had a group of ah, it was either on lend-lease – I’m not specifically thinking which program – but we had a group of Chinese students and a group of French students that were going through there on a B-24, ah, program, and it was kind of odd that, while I didn’t speak either one of those, ah, languages, everything was – the cutaways were all written up in their native, ah, language, and we had interpreters. And it was an odd way to do this, but we always had to grade them after every class each day. And I never had the experience of 1 to 5 the way they graded them in my life before, but they had some very astute guys, you could tell, even though we had a language barrier. They did very well. They learned fast.
And when I got through with that, ah, there – the shock of my life was all the time I had spent in it and all the – you know, the involvement – working the nights and the days – you couldn’t separate them, really, and, ah, the B-24 bomber was placed in mothballs at the end of that time. I couldn’t believe that would happen. So, we said, “Where will we go from here?” And they said, “Well, you got from Friday till Monday and you’ll be starting into the new high-flying bomber which is the B-29 Flying Fortress,” which is the first pressurized cabin that we had and a very different type set of engines and very much of a high-flying type thing, which you know what it turned into. And, ah, let’s see, I didn’t give you the background on that. . .
Q: No, huh-uh.
A: When we went through it, it took a little bit longer than the B-24. And when I finished that – I was real impressed with that airplane, but we had no idea where it was going to go. And as you probably will remember, it was about that time that there was all kinds of news as to what might be occurring, none of which we were privy to that would tell us we would be involved. But when I finished that course on that B-29, ah, I was summoned to the classification office at about eleventh-thirty one night and was told that I had to make a decision, that I had two things to consider. One was they didn’t know what it would be assigned to, but we would be gone at seven o’clock the next morning – “could you pack in that length of time?” And I said, “Is there an option?” And they classification man said, “There is an option in your case. We know you want to go to medical school, and what we figured out is, ah, somebody must realize that this war maybe not going to be too far in existence and you can be sent to a, ah, a school which involved the Fourth Service Command Laboratory Training School with Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia and the United States Army Air Force Technical Training Command together.” And they had instructors from the various schools, particularly like George Washington, Walter Reed, Harvard and places of that nature that wrote out these textbooks and little, what we called paperbacks, that they just give you the meat of everything. And they said, “You can go through that and help us set up separation centers because the air force does not have any official separation centers.” For instance, Oklahoma soldiers in the air force would not go through Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, which is now, of course, called Fort Chaffee, and Camp Bowie, Texas, which is usually for the infantry and army.
Ah, so looking at that as a whole, knowing that we were going to be assigned to the Twentieth Air Force, which is the one that you’ll probably remember that assumed the big role of taking Big Boy and Little Boy [sic]bomb to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which we didn’t have any idea we would have been in, but that’s my group that went to that. And, ah, again, somebody up there like me enough that I got to do the option, and I stayed here and it helped me very much in what I did in preparation, even, when I wanted to go on to medical school. And I was greatly relieved when I found out that I went that route and took that option, because it was a great one for me to do.
Q: You were separated from the service after your duty at Oglethorpe or . . .?
A: Ah, they – what they – no, I was not separated then. I went ahead and helped set up separation centers for the air force personnel only. We did, we, ah, were able to discharge 135 to 150 enlisted men a day and 75 officers a day that were discharged from the service due to convenience of the government, so to speak, was the way they put it. And, ah, when I got through with that biggest part of that, that’s when they tentatively allowed me to go ahead and go, but they wouldn’t discharge me until about four months later because they didn’t know how well it was going to go. And, ah, ah, so since I had applied for and was accepted at the University of Virginia, ah, School of – I was actually going there for pre-medicine – and they had accepted me and they said with, ah, provisions that I go with the possibility of having to come back, that they would let me go ahead and start. And fortunately, four months came and I was ready to be discharged and I was already started at the university then and it worked out real well.
Q: What date or what time frame was it that you were actually discharged. . .?
A: Oh, ah, I was actually discharged the late part of December, I believe, December or January of ’46-7, and I started to school there in September of ’46. So I was actually able to go to school and was unencumbered as far as anything other than think about what I wanted to do in the school of medicine.
Q: OK. And during World War II, what was your duty, and rank, and all the places that you remember that served at?
A: Well, I would say that my reason – most of my duties were involved in one school or the other and associated with, ah, the, ah, B-24 bomber until it was really put in mothballs, and then the B-29, and then towards the end was when I was able to go to the, ah, ah, the school between the Fort Oglethorpe and the US Technical Training Command of the Air Force, ah, and then at the end for setting up discharge things – that was my primary duties for the entire time I was in.
Q: Did you travel quite a bit and go to a lot of different places?
A: Yes, we traveled from one end of the – at the least the United States – to the other, but that was better than having to travel to, ah, Europe and Germany and, ah, Japan, which could have been.
Q: Well, in terms of your own experience, what kind of conditions did you live and work under? Tell us a little bit about the food and clothing and lodging and that sort of thing.
A: Well, a lot of people felt like, at least in collaborating with men in different branches of the service, they had a lot of things to say and complain about, and it was no picnic, and it wasn’t supposed to be a picnic, but, ah, as far as clothing, I could not believe how well they did dress you, ah, and how well they respected one that kept up, you know, all of your, your exams of a morning – people coming through and making sure that you kept things in order and how you turned your shirts one way and how you displayed your foot locker and rolled your socks and all those things. And I kind of admired that because I think kids that came out of home that were rather loosely run and didn’t have a lot of respect, I hate to say, they learned that they had – they had to do it. And I think that was – that was good – good for everybody. And, ah, I was happy to have gone through that and to this day my wife wonders why, when we first get out of bed, I make up the bed before she gets back from brushing her teeth. But it’s just a thing that it teaches you and it stays with you. The clothing and the food – you hear all kinds of (garbled) remarks about what they fed you, but, ah, I feel like the food and clothing were great and, ah, ah, I really would have to say in most ways, I enjoyed what I did. Most of the schooling all that just fit together.
Q: So the food was pretty good and, excuse me, Felix . . . (tape stops momentarily). We’re on our way again, now, got the signal going, so let’s – what kind of contact did you have with the people back home and what kind of correspondence did the military permit you?
A: Oh, I had, ah, pretty close contact with the family, but during that period, as you know, a lot of the mail was – periodically they would check things and once in a great while they’d either clip out or use a magic marker to go through some things, but, ah, I was not in any critical area and very few times that that occurred. And, ah, correspondence was mainly not controlled where I was at and it was not a real problem.
Q: Well, you didn’t really have any combat experiences, though?
A: I escaped – I would say that I escaped those two areas that I mentioned to you and, ah, when I say that, maybe it was just fate, but I’m certainly glad that I didn’t have to be in combat, but I certainly was not going to shun it if I had to go, so it was just something there that was chosen for me to do and I went ahead and did what I was supposed to do and was glad it turned out like it did.
Q: What was your most memorable experience during World War II?
A: I guess the most memorable experience was the involvement with the different parts of training that they could actually set up for massive groups of people to go through. Everything from, ah, like rifle ranges to obstacle courses to night problems to real, real, real problems that you could get into in flying B-24s and B-29s, and, ah, it was an experience I’ll never forget. Ah, it was very exciting for a boy eighteen years old coming off the farm going into something like this was impossible to try to imagine what you were going to go into and how it turned out. It was just like bright lights every day and every night. It was really something to go through. And I can say it was something I certainly will never forget and something that was very valuable to me in my life and something that I’ll always be able to tell the kids and grandkids at the time for a country kid to get into something like that was really unusual and I appreciated all the time I was in there.
Q: And how long was your total amount of service during World War II?
A: Well, it was from the last of ’43 to the last of ’46.
Q: So about three years, more or less.
A: Ah-huh.
Q: Well, after you finished your service, where did they send you for discharge?
A: I was sent with an option of, ah, possibly having to come back, as I mentioned to you before for about four or five months and as it worked out, ah, ah, I went on immediate – the immediate thing was before I was officially discharged was when I was allowed to go ahead and start to school at the University of Virginia on my long stint for going into medicine. I was there for pre-med the first five or six semesters and then I, of course, was separated the last part of December ’46, and, ah. . .
Q: Were you ever overseas?
A: Never had to go right into overseas assignments, thank goodness. Like I said, I missed both England and the Marianna’s trip and was very glad that, ah, never actually involved in close-order stuff like where the shooting occurred.
Q: Well, how did you fell that servicemen when they came back from overseas or when they were just traveling around – how did you feel that their reception was by people in the United States here?
A: If I look back now, which, you know, is quite a while, when you compare what was happening in 1943 to ’46 and what we’ve gone through from that time through the Korean and the Vietnam and the areas in Bosnia and Kosovo and places like that, and now in Iraq, ah, the experiences, ah, as far as relations and interactions with family, friends, and spouse or girlfriend was much the same. And I think, ah, they all kind of just expected you to do what was laid out for you to do, and they all referred back to the fact that we’re thankful that we could go somewhere else to do something and keep them from coming on our own soil. And I always had this in mind and I think all the time it didn’t bother me as much as if I thought they were coming to our country to do it and losing members of our families and things like we, you know, were getting done overseas.
Q: Well in terms of your war experiences, how did those experiences affect, if at all, your relationships and your family, friends, and spouse or your girlfriend at this point? Did it change things substantially?
A: I think there was considerable change because World War II had such an impact on my life that – coming from a farming community and farming people, ah, going into mechanized world like, ah, like we witnessed in the air force and seeing the – the vast organization, what was set up in such a short period of time how it could produce such volumes and how they could actually get as much out of all of the people who had responsibilities of training was just phenomenal. And that affected my life greatly. It showed me that even though I was worried to death about being able to go through the, ah, ah, pre-med and medicine, which takes now about twelve to fourteen years depending on what you’re going into, this was a very good early training ground for me and it affected my life a great deal.
My views of that war and the other wars, ah, I think prepared me for the subsequent wars that we’ve seen since World War II in many ways. Mainly that – I’ve always felt like we – we’ve had a lot of criticism of those people who are in power and we think many times that they should do what we think, and without the privileges of knowing what is involved with anything from the CIA to the, ah, FBI, to all the different branches, we don’t have – we’re not privy to all those things they know and we can’t possibly think in terms of what they’re having to go through and it’s impacted me and my views of what everyday that we see – that those things become necessary and they may be evil and they’re hard to follow, but they’re in a much better position to do it for us than the average Joe that we see on the streets. And we’ve got to be behind them in every way.
Q: Do you still keep in touch with some of the people that you served with?
A: I, ah, some of the people I’ve had a hard time getting a-hold of. I have right now some, ah, ah, some tracing down about three or four people that I haven’t heard from in about eight or ten years, but some of them, like in California and in New Orleans and Tennessee and Arkansas, I’ve been able to keep in touch with. And it’s kind of a privilege to be able to go back and discuss some of the things we’ve gone through and to keep up our relationships, which I think is important.
Q: Well, you’ve already kind of explained about how the World War II experience impacted you and your views of US and other wars. Anything you’d like to add along those lines?
A: Well, for the most part, ah, as I mentioned before, about impacting World War II on my life – it had a lot to do because it allowed me, in a sense, to, ah, be able to, ah, to actually get all the things that the GI bill provided and in my case it really jump-started me to go into college for the next twelve years and helped me to succeed in what I was looking for to become a doctor of medicine. And I was able to not only get it, but to get a degree in, ah, in chemistry, and in, ah, bacteriology with a graduate degree in microbiology, or mostly the part that had to do with, ah, viruses and (garbled) which helped me along ways in what I’m doing today in the practice of medicine.
Q: Well, I think we’ve covered all the questions and I appreciate your time and sharing it with me the second time.
A: I’m glad to do it, Lee Allen, it’s just the kind of thing that – it’s pretty hard to go back and remember all these things you went through. This has been, well let’s say from ’43, ah, how many years are we talking about – 60 – 57 – about 61 years ago that started, could you believe? So there’s been a lot of water over the falls and a lot of things behind us, but it’s kind of nice to look back on all of them, and it won’t be exactly as it happened, but you try to remember most of the things. It’s been a privilege to talk with you and I hope you get something out this for people.
Q: I’m sure we will. Thank you, Felix.
A: Sure.
