Hi Steve,
Just finished reading the le Shima stuff for the second time. lt was really enjoyable and filled in a lot of info I missed when I was there. I would differ on a couple of things though.

The night the sick bay was hit I happened to be out of the tent watching the action. We had this sort of false alarm with no apparent enemy planes around. The ships in the harbor shot up the sky anyway then we had the all clear and every thing was quiet. It's strange how far you can hear things when .every thing is so quiet otherwise. I heard an engine start up and then rev up pretty fast. It was deemed later that a Jap seaplane had come in under the radar and landed in the harbor way out past the ships. 

When every thing was settled in he took off and got just enough altitude to drop his bomb square on the sick bay tent. I watched him climb at a 45 degree angle right over my head. The exhaust fire was plainly visible from all around the cowling as he climbed for altitude. Not a shot was fired but like it stated our guys shot him down just off the island. I felt real bad about an incident that happened a few hours before. 

One of my buddies in our tent said he didn't feel good and his throat hurt. When I looked into his throat it was red raw. I said you better go down to sick bay and get that swabbed out. Well I found out later that he was running a fever and they were going to keep him over night. That was the last we seen of him. 

We lost 11 from our outfit in that mess. The shrapnel riddled all the equipment in the area. I saw a carbine rifle with a shrapnel hole in the barrel I. Also a combat boot with a slice from the heel to the toe split right open. They asked for volunteers to help with the dead and wounded but I didn't feel up to it.

I was disappointed more wasn't said about the typhoon. It blew almost everything away except that Quonset building that was 3/4 buried in the ground. Our tent held because we had it tied to a big rock at the base of the mountain and the other corner tied to a jeep. 

We went up to the air strip and saw the c-47 that was blown off the strip and into the water. There was a cliff at that end of the air strip. 

On time with nothing else to do we went up to the air strip to watch the bombers come back from a mission. As usual the worst hit came in first. He landed real hard and bounced up and the second time he came down he lost maybe 10 or so bombs that were coming down the runway like footballs. Needless to say we were looking for a hole to dive into. There wasn't any but then they didn't go off anyway. I know a little about bombs, the arming wire was probably still on them and also the little propeller that spins off didn't have time to act.

I could go on and on because this brings back old memories as you remember them. Our paths must have crossed a good number of times. One other thing that comes to mind was that a first class storekeeper and I run the only movie on the island. We were able to show the world premier of GI Joe. For that extra duty I got thirty dollars a month! Well I'll stop gabbing and get this sent.

Bill Hengervelt