28 Jan Fort Lewis, Washington
US Infantryman in training at Fort Lewis, WA in 1942
On March 18, 1942, four months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) … Herman F. Allen joined the U.S. Army Air Forces, AKA the “Air Corps.” He enlisted in Spokane, Washington at Geiger Field, which was renamed in 1960 to be the Spokane International Airport.
I asked my friend, Lt. Col. Monroe F. Stamps, a veteran who flew in the Pacific, why he enlisted. “We were all signing up. It was the greatest show on earth, and I didn’t want to miss it!” Knowing Herman, I would think he might have had the same opinion.
Herman had been taking graduate courses at Washington State College in Pullman, Washington, and “it was the deal then if you were in the middle of a semester, that if you joined the Air Force and you came back, you could pick up where you left off, and go ahead with whatever credits you had so I thought that was a good deal.” Herman’s first stop was at Fort Lewis, Washington, just over 300 miles away. He was there for 3 months. “I remember I used to get $21 a month and they kept $3 off for laundry. I had more money then than I have now to spend. (This is from a recorded conversation in the late 1970’s.) …Well, you could take these gals out and mess around and do everything with all that kind of money.” (Daddy, Daddy, Daddy)
Fort Lewis is a huge army post, dating back to World War I … a “reception center” where young men who were entering the army were first processed. (At that time, they were all in the army … both infantry and air corps.) They would have had medical examinations, shots, and testing. They were interviewed about preferences in job assignment, and then went through physical and psychological testing if they indicated that they wanted to be an Air Corps Cadet … for example, could they tolerate enclosed spaces and such. This would have been a period of basic training, and Herman was in the Aviation Cadet Division.
After Pearl Habor, this entire Pacific Northwest was on alert for possible bombings by the Japanese. The cover of Life Magazine on November 9, 1942 was of a US mountain infantryman in training at Fort Lewis, WA. (I don’t think Herman was doing anything similar to this while he was there.)
Herman was at Fort Lewis “about three months, then you had to wait your turn to get into training camp … then I went down to Santa Ana and became an Air Corp Cadet.”
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