Beyond Valor

by Jon Erwin

  At the height of the thirteen-day nuclear crisis, without the president’s knowledge and against procedure, General Power broadcast a DEFCON19 2 nuclear alert of SAC (approved by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara) on an open frequency so Soviet forces could pick it up, urging his pilots to be cautious and double-check all orders.

  In response, according to former Soviet military officers interviewed by Bruce Blair, the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces received orders to go on maximum combat alert, warheads were loaded onto ICBMs for a two-hour launch capability, and strategic bombers went on runway alert.

  On top of this, the commander in chief of the United Kingdom’s Bomber Command, on his own initiative, ordered a full combat alert of all British nuclear weapons, including 140 bombers, plus 60 PGM-17 Thor nuclear missiles poised to strike 230 Soviet Bloc targets in fifteen minutes or less.

  With his DEFCON broadcast, General Power may have made an incredibly dangerous moment even more hazardous.

  After retiring from the air force, Thomas Power became chairman of the board of Schick Inc., a razor blade company. He died of a heart attack in Palm Springs, California, in 1970, at the age of sixty-five.

  After the war, he said he had “absolutely no regrets” about the firebombing of Tokyo.

  Curtis LeMay died in 1990, at the age of eighty-three, also with no regrets.

  Henry E. “Red” Erwin died on January 16, 2002, at eighty years of age, fifty-seven years after he was expected to die of his severe burns in the Pacific War. He was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama.

  After Red died, Betty told me, “I wouldn’t have been anything without him. I wonder what would have happened to me if he hadn’t come home from the war.”

  Reflecting on the wounds he sustained on April 12, 1945, wounds that were highly visible for the world to see for the rest of his life, Betty said, “The only thing that bothered me about it, much more than it did him, was when people looked at him and stared at him. I just didn’t like it. Little children would ask, ‘Mister, what’s wrong with your eyes? What happened to you?’ I just didn’t want people to do that. It bothered me, but it didn’t bother him.”

  Betty Erwin died in 2018.

  Red and Betty had four children—Nancy, Karen, Bette, and Hank Jr.—and eight grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren.

  After Red’s funeral, my father, Hank Jr., gave our honor flag to representatives of the Air Force Enlisted Heritage Hall at Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Today, it resides in a special display case built in Red’s memory to inspire coming generations of air force enlisted personnel.

  In the decades that followed, the Medal of Honor story of Red Erwin continued to inspire. In 1951, it was recreated as a sequence in a movie about the B-29s, The Wild Blue Yonder.

  In 1997, the air force created the Henry E. Erwin Outstanding Enlisted Aircrew Member of the Year Award. It is presented annually to an airman, noncommissioned officer, and senior noncommissioned officer in the flight engineering, air surveillance, loadmaster, and related career fields.

  In 2002, the Erwin Professional Military Education Center at Kadena Air Base, Japan, was dedicated to Red’s memory and rededicated in 2011 after a major expansion.

  At Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, the Thirty-sixth Contingency Response Group headquarters bears the name of Red Erwin.

  In 2004, the Gunter Air Force Base library was named the Henry E. “Red” Erwin Library in Red’s honor. A large mural of Red and his B-29 by artist John Witt is on display, and a bust of Red’s upper body is on a nearby stand to greet arriving students. In earlier years, Red often spoke there at dedication ceremonies and addressed graduating classes.

  Betty Erwin with one of her eight grandchildren in front of the painting of Red Erwin at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. (US Air Force)

  One notable admirer of Red Erwin is pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who performed his own split-second, lifesaving aviation rescue achievement on January 15, 2009, when he safely crash-landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River, off Manhattan Island, after a bird strike disabled both of the jet’s engines. He evacuated all 155 passengers and crew on the aircraft. In his autobiography, Sullenberger20 cited Red as a personal inspiration.

  One year when the veterans of the Twenty-ninth Bombardment Group held their biennial reunion in Kansas City, Missouri, Red Erwin and his comrades traveled to nearby Independence, Missouri. There, they each placed a rose on the grave of their scrappy former commander in chief, Harry S. Truman, the man who approved Red’s Medal of Honor and created a professional mission that Red followed the rest of his working life.

  When the veterans of the crew of the City of Los Angeles got together for their first reunion, navigator Pershing Youngkin said to Red, “I never had a chance to thank you for what you did for us.”

  Red said, “Well, any one of the crew would have done the same thing.”

  Decades later Youngkin told me, “You know, looking back on that, I think, no, that took an extraordinary amount of willpower to do that, and I don’t know whether I would have been able to do it.” He added, “He didn’t just save twelve people, he saved generations of people. Our family wouldn’t be here today. Our grandchildren wouldn’t be here today. You wouldn’t be here today. And the same thing with the rest of the crew. What he did was extraordinary. He had a real faith in God, and I think that faith is what carried him through.”

  All of Red Erwin’s fellow crewmen are gone now except for Herbert Schnipper, one of the three gunners on the City of Los Angeles. When the war ended, he studied forestry at Syracuse University and worked in the lumber business in New York for fifty-three years. Today, he lives in an independent living community for retired people on Long Island, New York, and he helped with the research for this book.

  Beginning in the 1950s, the crew of the City of Los Angeles got together for reunions every two years or so, and Red attended whenever he could. The first time Schnipper saw Red at a reunion, he was startled at his appearance. “When I knew him, he was a pretty good-looking guy,” he recalled, but after his injury, “the doctors didn’t do a good job on him. I thought they did a lousy job.”

  In 1995, Schnipper couldn’t make it to the fiftieth anniversary of the incident, so he sent a note to Red: “I’m trying to remember our first meeting in Pratt, Kansas, when we formed as a crew under Tony Simeral. At that time you impressed me to the extent that I knew we had the best radio operator in B-29s. I knew then that you could be counted on to do whatever was necessary to complete our mission. We trained together, we lived together, and we flew together for about eight months. I only remember you as kind, considerate, and completely honorable in every act and deed. For almost fifty years you have been a part of my life. Though we have been a thousand miles apart I often think of you and all that you have accomplished.”

  Schnipper credited Red for giving him many extra decades of life on earth. “If Red didn’t do what he did,” he told a reporter, “we all would have been killed.”

  Recently, Schnipper, now ninety-four years old, reflected on where life had brought him, some seventy-five years after the day Red was injured and saved his life. “I’m doing really good,” he reported. “I went to the gym today, walked a half a mile, and I’m still driving. I go to the gym almost every day. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and we’re going to have a big family dinner. I have three boys and one girl, and four great-grandchildren now. The oldest is going to be six in January. I have another great-grandchild on the way. Everybody’s healthy and everybody’s doing well. They all worry about me, and I wish they wouldn’t, but they do. My wife died a while ago. Now I have a girlfriend who I’ve had for about nine years. She’s a younger woman. She just had her birthday. She’s eighty-eight.”

  Schnipper said he still thinks about Red Erwin often. “He saved our lives in two ways—he threw the bomb out and he aborted our mission over Koriyama, which was a long mission over land in Japan. We could easily have bee
n shot down.”

  After the war, the firebomb attacks on Japan and the cataclysmic Tokyo raid of March 9–10, 1945, were largely forgotten in Japan’s rush to modernize and rebuild. “For some reason the story of the Tokyo air raid was not talked about21 after the war,” said Kayoko Ebina, who lost most of her family in the raid. “It was as if somebody had locked the story up and hidden it somewhere.”

  According to historian Toshihiro Itaya, “I think Japanese just wanted to forget22 about it. Japan lost the war and people just wanted to get on rebuilding their lives, not dwelling on the past.”

  In Tokyo today there are a few small monuments and markers here and there about the firebombing, and some elderly Tokyo residents remember the time of iki jigoku (“hell on earth”), but it is otherwise mostly lost in the mists of distant time.

  A group of Tokyo air raid survivors tried to collect damages from the Japanese government for negligence in not properly preparing for air attack, but their class-action suit was rejected in 2013 by the Japanese Supreme Court.

  Today, a modest, privately funded museum devoted to the victims of the air raids exists on a quiet side street of eastern Tokyo, near what was the epicenter of the March 9–10 attack. Elderly survivors, scholars, and schoolchildren gather there to hear lectures, hold discussions, and view artifacts of the raids, including photos and maps of the horrors that occurred and napalm canisters that fell from the sky. When you enter the museum’s photo gallery section, you are first confronted not by photos of the American bombing of Tokyo but by photos of Chinese cities and civilians wounded and destroyed by Japanese bombs in the preceding years, which provides a full context for the Tokyo firebombing.

  In 2015, on the seventieth anniversary of what is sometimes called the Great Tokyo Air Raid, the Japanese government sponsored a visit of reconciliation by five B-29 veterans who took part in the firebombing. They visited places where they crashed and prisons where they were tortured. At the Tokyo Air Raid Museum, ninety-five-year-old Fiske Hanley, a B-29 engineer, met seventy-nine-year-old Haruyo Nihei, who, as a girl, survived the firestorm at the bottom of a pile of bodies that sheltered her from the fire.

  The American man and the Japanese woman walked through the museum together and reflected on the horrors of war. “I wonder if they had thought of the people on the ground23 when they dropped the bombs,” she said to a reporter. “But I’m more thrilled by the fact that we, who were witnesses of that moment in history, are reunited at this place seventy years later. They must have had mixed feelings about coming here, so I’m so glad they came.”

  One man who could not forget the firebombing of Tokyo was Vannevar Bush, the former dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and head of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, which oversaw the development of napalm incendiary bombs. According to a friend, “For years after the war, Van Bush would wake up screaming24 in the night because he burned Tokyo. Even the atomic bomb didn’t bother him as much as jellied gasoline.”

  The Medal of Honor casts a long shadow.

  It is a rare honor, and when a person receives the nation’s highest honor, they are catapulted, often from obscurity, to stardom. There is an unwritten tradition that generals, admirals, and even presidents should salute the medal worn by a recipient. Invitations to parades, speeches, autograph signings, and public events tumble into a recipient’s in-box for the rest of their life. Not everyone can handle the pressure. But Red Erwin did, and admirably so.

  How did Red manage the public recognition and demands of the medal? The Veterans Day parades, the Memorial Day speeches, the Fourth of July picnics, the thousands of people over the years wanting to shake his hand (until they realized at the last moment that his right hand was immobile), and the thousands who recoiled at his appearance when first meeting him? How did he do this and at the same time remain a modest, private person who was mainly concerned with being a good husband, father, and grandfather?

  I knew him for a relatively short time as a grandfather. What was he like as a father? Who was this man?

  After Red died, I began asking these questions to one of the people who knew him best: my father, Hank Jr. My father is a lot like Red. He’s loving, supportive, enthusiastic, dependable, devoted to his family, a man of God, and also very much his own man. Like Red and me, he is a storyteller. He had a long career as a television broadcaster, and he served as a state senator. When my brother, Andrew, and I were eleven years old, he gave us some video equipment to experiment with, and we went on to become filmmakers. So you could say he set us on our path. Over many long father-and-son conversations across the years, Hank Jr. shared with me his memories and reflections on Red’s life and legacy.

  “The true measure of a hero is really not necessarily the gallantry of his action, but essentially how he lives out the rest of his life after all the attention and glory have faded away,” my father told me. “When the bands quit playing and life has moved on, how does he or she grapple with everyday problems. That test really reveals the person’s depth of courage and essential character.”

  He added, “Your grandfather was a man of immense integrity. His whole life revolved around integrity. He kept his nose clean and he honored the Lord. He embodied all the ideals of the Medal of Honor. He wore them like a well-pressed suit. He was honest, thrifty, and patriotic. He never owed a debt, never was sued. He obeyed the law, attended church, and treated everyone with courtesy and respect.”

  My father explained that Red’s main struggle was adapting to his broken body. “He had to learn to cope with a useless right arm, limited eyesight, and visible burns. But he took it in stride. He never let it bother him. His philosophy was, ‘Make the best out of what you have.’ He never let his injuries get in his way and he never worried about it. He never complained about it. He was thankful for whatever he got. His left side was normal and intact, so he thanked the Lord for that. I was born after the burns, and I never had a before-and-after image of my dad. He was always dad to me, and it didn’t matter to me whether he was burned. He never complained or griped about his wounds. He never expressed bitterness or remorse for his injuries. He never blamed God for his plight. He made the best of it.”

  Slowly, I was beginning to understand my dad, and through him, my grandfather. My father and his siblings watched their father live out the daily life of a war hero. He was always gracious and always available for interviews.

  In 1978, Red and Betty had saved enough money for their dream home and moved out to Leeds, Alabama, to a five-acre plot of land with a split-level ranch-style home and a beautiful garden that became Red’s pride and joy. This would be their retreat for the golden years of life.

  An American love story: Red and Betty Erwin (Erwin Family Collection)

  It also meant a new connection with the small city of Leeds. Now this community would gain the distinction of having three Medal of Honor recipients among its residents: Col. Bill Lawley, Sgt. Alford L. McGlaughlin, and Red.

  Red and Betty lived quietly among the tall pine trees and appreciated the simple things of life. Red planted a vegetable garden in the backyard and worked hard in the soil, evoking boyhood memories of plowing farmland for fifty cents a day. Flowers were everywhere. Red was always working in the yard, keeping it neat and clean, ready for a white-glove inspection and a gardening competition. He was “Mister Yard Man.” Every Saturday he would spend at least two hours mowing the grass and trimming the hedges. His house was air force spotless.

  “When I was a boy, he spent many an hour at the Little League field hitting flies and skinners for the kids,” Hank Jr. remembered. “It was a true art form. He would clinch the bat to his stomach under his bad arm, toss the ball into the air with his left hand, and then snatch the bat just in time to hit a lazy, majestic fly ball into the outfield. He was fair as an umpire and even called me out when I stepped off the bag in a game. He loved it and the kids respected him. Dad rarely got angry. I never saw him scream
or curse anyone. In a few tense situations that I observed, he would rather lower the tone of his voice and forcefully express his point of view.”

  For a half century after his injury, Red Erwin loved life. He thrived personally and professionally. He taught himself to be left-handed in all his actions. He learned to write left-handed and how to dress one-handed. His penmanship was remarkable. He lifted, carried, and pushed everything with his one good arm. He kept his front lawn spotless. He devoured newspapers. He became a walking encyclopedia of American history and current events.

  He paid the bills and managed the family affairs. He loved to drive—with one hand—and his daughter Nancy recalled how he “drove like a racecar driver over hills and through sharp turns, leading us kids in the back seat, in the years before seat belts, to hold on for dear life.” He never had an accident. But he had a special knob placed on the steering wheel to help him guide the car. He never received a speeding ticket or even a parking ticket. He paid cash for each family car over the years. He despised debt.

  He learned to work himself up a ladder with one hand so he could putter around on his roof when it needed repair. Nancy would gaze out the living room window, expecting to see him come crashing down at any moment, but he never did. Red learned to see himself in the mirror every day appearing the way he did and to charge into life.

  Red didn’t mind having his picture taken—in fact, he loved it. If there was a camera nearby, chances are he would maneuver himself into the photo, discreetly favoring the left side of his face.

  He loved giving speeches to school assemblies and civic meetings across Alabama and beyond.

  Red enjoyed meeting presidents. In 1963, he met President Kennedy, a fellow combat veteran of the Pacific theater, who, as a US Navy lieutenant, had saved eleven men, including himself, after the Japanese destroyer Amagiri rammed his PT-109 boat in 1943 off the Solomon Islands, creating a 100-foot-high fireball and gasoline fire that severely burned one of his crewmen. In a photo of their encounter in the White House Rose Garden at a ceremony for Medal of Honor recipients, JFK is shaking Red’s left hand, and the two men share a look of camaraderie and brotherhood that perhaps can be felt only by those whose lives have been forged in courage and combat.