PORTRAITS OF COURAGE: Bruce Ellison

Understandably, many World War II veterans have memories of the war that they would rather forget.

For Bruce Ellison, his memories still affect him more than 60 years later.

“If I’m watching TV and a war picture comes on, I get up and leave,” he said.

Ellison flew the P-40 Warhawk and the P-51 Mustang during the war. But, most significantly, he was a prisoner of war for two years. And there is very little he likes to say about those two years.

Ellison volunteered to join the Army Air Corps at 17 in 1942 since “it was just a matter of time anyway.” He already knew how to fly. His father, a Navy pilot, had taught him and he was crop dusting by himself at the age of 15.

At first, Ellison flew the P-40 Warhawk for the 14th Air Force in China, Burma and India. After a short time there, he was transferred to the South Pacific to fly the P-51 Mustang out of New Guinea. He was attached to the Flying Tigers and flew fighter cover for a rescue squadron.

When he was transferred, he got a quick promotion from technical sergeant to lieutenant, since, as his supervisor put it, “we don’t have any non-com(missioned officer)s flying.”

At the time of his fifth or sixth mission, he had 17 kills and was right behind the top ace in the theater. However, this mission would end his race to be the top ace.

They had escorted a rescue plane that landed and picked up someone who had been shot down. As they were flying the plane back and were within 10 miles of landing back at the base, six Japanese planes came on them out of nowhere.

“They got all three of us and by the time we were down, they had taken off,” he said. “They thought they had taken us out.”

All three pilots bailed out into the water and found each other in their one-man life rafts. They tied the rafts together and tried to dry out their crank-radio, which wasn’t working. The current started taking them out into the ocean, so they didn’t think a rescue plane would find them even if they started looking soon.

On the morning of their second day at sea, a young lieutenant in the group thought he saw hope so he shot off the flare gun.

“I looked up and I was heartbroken,” Ellison said. “There was a Japanese destroyer coming right straight for us.”

Ellison spent two years as a prisoner of war spending time in the Pacific from the Philippines to Japan.

While Ellison doesn’t want to remember much of the two years, there were some small glimmers of humanity while he was a POW. His kneecap had been cracked by a samurai sword and the Japanese medical officer who replaced it was “all right.”

The medical officer lived in California and had traveled back to Japan to visit his dying mother. A few days before he was set to leave, Pearl Harbor was bombed and he wasn’t allowed to leave the country and had to serve in the Japanese military.

“I’ve been to his house here in the U.S.,” Ellison said.

When the U.S. dropped the atomic bombs on Japan, Ellison said they knew the end was near.

“They couldn’t do enough for us,” he said. “We knew it was ending. It was like someone pulled a switch.”

Ellison came out of the war in a wheelchair and spent two years in it. He worked with military intelligence at the Pentagon and wasn’t discharged until 1952 after he was sent to the war trials in Germany.

“I wanted to go back to Japan, but they wouldn’t let me,” he said. “They said I was too bitter.”

After Ellison’s wife passed away, he moved to Wasilla with his stepson, who is now taking care of him.

His message for today’s generation is to “thank God for a wonderful job [the troops] are doing to keep our country free.”