[Annotator's Note: The interview begins with a conversation between the interviewer and Donald F. Goyette who goes off camera for quite some time.] Goyette was born in February 1925 in Detroit, Michigan. Goyette grew up during the Great Depression. His father, who sold professional golf equipment, lost his job three days after the stock market crash in 1929. For about three years the family lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Goyette, the youngest of three children, did not know how poor they were. Goyette was 15 years old when he heard the President [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] make the radio announcement about the Pearl Harbor disaster [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He knew that he was too young to be drafted, but his older brother was of the right age, and Roosevelt was pulling men from every nook and corner of the United States who were not ready for war.

After his brother was drafted into the infantry, Donald F. Goyette was accompanied by his parents when he went off for four years in the Army. Goyette kept up correspondence with brother through V-mail [Annotator's Note: Victory Mail; postal system put into place during the war to drastically reduce the space needed to transport mail]. Goyette was 17 and in college at Bowling Green State University [Annotator's Note: in Bowling Green, Ohio] when he volunteered for the Army Air Corps flight cadet program, with the understanding that he would be inducted when he became 18. His ambition, always, was to be a fighter pilot. While waiting, he went to work for Ford Motor Company, building aircraft engines at Willow Run [Annotator's Note: Willow Run manufacturing complex in Michigan, also known as Air Force Plant 31, operated by Ford Motor Company]. In January of 1943, he underwent testing at Selfridge Field [Annotator's Note: now Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Harrison Township, Michigan], and began cadet training in a PT-17 [Annotator's Note: Stearman Boeing PT-17 Kaydet trainer aircraft] in Tennessee. He excelled at his studies and was made commander of all the cadets. Goyette had nearly completed primary flight school when he was informed that the Air Corps no longer needed pilots, and his class was being closed down. Given his choice, Goyette selected armament school because it had the shortest training time, and he was ready to get into the fight.

Donald F. Goyette was sent to armament school in Denver [Annotator's Note: Denver, Colorado], just before Christmas [Annotator's Note: December 1943]. Goyette learned how to strip a .50 caliber machine gun [Annotator's Note: Browning ANM2 .50 caliber machine gun] and put it back together, blindfolded. When he graduated, he went to Salt Lake City [Annotator's Note: Salt Lake City, Utah], then to a small airbase in Pratt, Kansas for more training. He was not ready for all this. They were introduced to the new B-29 Superfortress [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. Experienced airmen were brought into work alongside the new recruits. One day, Goyette's sergeant came into his barracks and announced to everyone that they were on their way, but he gave them no information as to where they would be going. [Annotator's Note: Goyette backtracks to mention that while he was stationed at Pratt, the first B-29 was put together, tested and improved there.] The FBI [Annotator's Note: Federal Bureau of Investigation] and the Air Force police showed up. Security tightened. The majestic B-29 landed and was shut up in a hangar for about six weeks. Everyone was impressed with the new plane, but no one could get the thing off the ground. Nevertheless, they kept it clean and shiny until it was made to work properly. About that time, Goyette, as a qualified armorer, was put on a troop train headed for Las Vegas [Annotator's Note: Las Vegas, Nevada] and learned he would be going on to the South Pacific. Goyette guesses it was around June 1943 [Annotator's Note: June 1944] when he was shipped out. Like most of the men he served with, he had never been to the west coast, and they all found the weather quite pleasant, compared to Kansas.

Donald F. Goyette boarded the SS John Land [Annotator's Note: USS John Land (AP-167)], a makeshift troop ship, that did not have a lot of conveniences. He traveled with about 125 other guys, all assigned to the 869th Heavy Equipment Bomb Squadron [Annotator's Note: 869th Heavy Equipment Bombardment Squadron, 497th Bombardment Group (Very Heavy), 21st Bomber Command, 2nd Air Force]. The ship was run by the Merchant Marines, and everyone was instructed on how to abandon ship. Their first stop was going to be Hawaii, and the men were thrilled, even with the knowledge of the destruction at Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. He was anxious to get this thing over with, and he wanted to beat up on Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]. Everyone in the armed services hated the Japs. On day two of their journey, the ship broke down. Once it was running again, they ran into foul weather, and many of the passengers were seasick. Goyette was one of the first to take his blanket and sleep on the deck. The food was spoiled, and he quit eating in the mess. He became a waiter in the officers' dining room, and for the next 51 days he ate what the brass ate. He also used the officers' showers. He surreptitiously shared some of his bounty with the guys he had served with at Pratt [Annotator's Note: Pratt Army Air Field, Pratt, Kansas]. They sailed to Eniwetok [Annotator's Note: Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands], and finally ended up at Saipan [Annotator's Note: Isley Field, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands in September 1944]. When they stopped briefly in Hawaii, the port was pretty well cleaned up. He was able to go ashore for a few hours, which he spent drinking beer. He could tell that it was a romantic spot, and a wonderful place to be.

When Donald F. Goyette first landed on Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands], conditions were fairly rough. The officers were great guys, but they didn't know any more about the land than the grunts. The ground crewmen slept in two-man pup tents in a rain-soaked sugar cane field. Saipan was a beautiful place, but it was all shot up. The natives lived in a small town called Garapan [Annotator's Note: Garapan, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands], and all the sugar plantations, where they usually worked, had been blown away. As time went on, the soldiers occupied larger tents set up on wooden platforms. During the first month or so the ground crewmen pulled double duty. In addition to their regular work they did guard duty, since there were still a large number of Japanese troops on the island. The men had been issued carbines [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic carbine], and one night, the guard on duty woke everyone up when he started shooting. The man had put about six shots in a wandering cow. The cooks butchered the animal, and the men ate stew for a while. For this stunt, the shooter earned the name of "Killer." He was the first in their outfit to fire a shot. Soon, Saipan began to change. Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] and truck drivers were brought in to quickly build a long landing strip for B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. The first 12 planes that arrived were assigned to Goyette's 869th Bomb Squadron [Annotator's Note: 869th Bombardment Squadron, 497th Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force]. Access roads and the landing strips were built with local coral and completed within a month. More planes flew in with their own trained crews. Those first 12 B-29s that joined the 869th were the first to bomb Japan [Annotator's Note: by planes based in the Mariana Islands, on 24 November 1944].

Bombing Japan was a joint effort, according to Donald F. Goyette. He remembers loading bombs onto his squadron's [Annotator's Note: 869th Bombardment Squadron, 497th Bombardment Group, 20th Air Force] B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] and gassing them up. The engineers made sure everything was working beautifully. The first 12 that took off were flying bombing raids over Japan at an altitude of 3,600 feet and were employing the new Norden bombsights [Annotator's Note: Norden Mk. XV tachometric bombsight]. They sank three tankers in Tokyo Bay [Annotator's Note: Tokyo Bay, Japan]. Then along came Curtis LeMay [Annotator's Note: Curtis Emerson LeMay; US Army Air Forces then US Air Force General; Fifth Chief of Staff of the US Air Force]. Bomb loading procedures were improved, and the bombing altitude was adjusted. LeMay was a hands-on guy. More planes were brought in, and things started running like a well-oiled machine. Several planes were lost to Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero], but soon, a whole flock of these planes came in. Goyette spent the rest of his time on Saipan teaching new personnel how to load and ready B-29s for action. He remembers a stupid, new bomb, made up of propeller-equipped cylinders all wired together, that the B-29s dropped on Nagasaki [Annotator's Note: Nagasaki, Japan]. They burned 65 percent of the city to the ground. Japanese houses and manufacturing centers were built of wood, which readily burned, and Nagasaki was decimated in one raid. After that, you couldn't hold the old general back, and he innovated a lot of things to make operations run smoothly. Goyette said they did the maximum damage to a country that deserved it. From late 1943, the B-29s were just blowing cities away.

Donald F. Goyette got to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands], really early in the air war, but as a ground crewman, he didn't get to see much of the combat action. Before LeMay [Annotator's Note: Curtis Emerson LeMay; US Army Air Forces then US Air Force General; Fifth Chief of Staff of the US Air Force] came in, it was sort of a dull assignment. Goyette was an armament crew chief and was responsible for loading bombs on B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. He worked with up to three other guys and got the loading technique up to a science. Over time he and the other ground crewmen became close with the air crews who flew the planes they serviced, including Captain Yon [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] and the crew of the B-29 "Classy Chassis from Tallahassee." During the course of the war it bothered the ground crewmen considerably when one of their planes did not return from a mission or returned shot-up and with injured crewmen. [Annotator's Note: Goyette describes the B-29 aircraft and its armament.] He went up in the aircraft on several occasions, and although he would have loved to, he never flew on a bombing mission. Goyette was a member of the 869th Bombardment Squadron, 497th Bombardment Group, 21st Bomber Command [Annotator's Note: of 20th Air Force].

At the end of the war, Donald F. Goyette says, the United States could put 130 B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] in the air at one time. Goyette was impressed by that, and in many other ways, with the war and the world. He had never before considered the vastness of the ocean, nor had he imagined the great number of ships that he witnessed out in force. When he wasn't working, Goyette remembers playing football. The ground crewmen didn't have access to transportation for recreational purposes, and only occasionally did they get a ride in a transport vehicle. There were frequent air raids, and his airfield [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands] was bombed several times. During one of the bombing raids, he was near a fully loaded B-29 that exploded. The concussion deafened Goyette for about two weeks. He went to work the next day but suffered a 40 percent permanent loss of hearing in one ear. The island enjoyed beautiful weather and was lush in foliage. One night, Goyette worked late and when he finally got back to his tent to rest, the airbase was strafed by twelve fighter planes from Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. They came in low, wide open, and killed ten or 11 guys. When he looked out his tent, a Zero [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] came right across his line of vision. Goyette took off down the hill and headed for cover in a cave. Another Zero came right up the road, so close that Goyette could see the pilot's face and goggles. He dove under a big plant and avoided the aircraft, but landed on a hornets' nest, and suffered about 125 stings.

Donald F. Goyette spent time on Iwo Jima [Annotator's note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. When the Marines were preparing to invade the island in February of 1945 Goyette volunteered to go ashore to help repair and service any B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] that landed on the island. Goyette spent over a month there. He describes how the Marines cleared the many caves where the Japanese were hiding. He jokes about how the entrepreneurs among the Marines made fake Japanese flags out of Japanese parachute material and sold them as souvenirs. Goyette and some buddies went into a cave, armed to the teeth, to do some authentic souvenir hunting. They met no enemy troops, but Goyette found a Japanese infantry rifle with a fixed bayonet, and a leather pouch. When he returned to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands], he shipped them back to the United States. His experience on Iwo Jima left him with great respect for the Marines. He also says, in trying to be fair, that the Japanese were brave and resourceful fighters.

Donald F. Goyette volunteered for Iwo Jima [Annotator's note: Iwo Jima, Japan] because his plane got shot up, and he didn't have anything to do on Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands]. He arrived on the island soon after the invasion [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945], and the fighting was still going on when he left a month later. The Marines had hastily constructed dirt roads to get their equipment over the volcanic ash of the beaches. He lived within a barbed-wire perimeter. He remembers traveling one night to return to the compound, and seeing a foot sticking up out of the surface of the road. The road had been laid over the body of a dead Japanese soldier. He said he rarely saw a live Japanese on the island, but once he got involved in a fire fight. It was a minor banzai charge [Annotator's Note: Japanese human wave attacks], but he did not do much as he did not want to get killed. Goyette praises the P-38s [Annotator's Note: Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft] and P-47s [Annotator's Note: Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter aircraft] that were sent to Iwo Jima to act as escorts for the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber]. One day a B-29 made an emergency landing on the fighter strip on Iwo Jima. When it reached the end of the short airstrip, the massive plane looped and skidded, coming to rest on top of an old Japanese pillbox [Annotator's Note: type of blockhouse, or concrete, reinforced, dug-in guard post, normally equipped with slits for firing guns]. Goyette's commanding officer told him to go take a look at the smoking plane, and when Goyette reached the plane, it was teetering back and forth on top of the pill box. The crew had all rushed out of the plane because a 500 pound bomb, fully armed, was still hanging up in one of the bomb shackles. Goyette got up into the bomb bay with pliers, wire cutters and a screwdriver. He removed the fuses, and manually released the bomb from its shackles. The bomb hit the ground and rolled down the hill, sending people scattering in all directions. It looked like a scene from a slapstick [Annotator's Note: comedy based on deliberately clumsy actions] movie and was very funny.

After rejoining his unit [Annotator's Note: 869th Bombardment Squadron, 497th Bombardment Group, 21st Bomber Command, 20th Air Force] on Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands after a brief stint on Iwo Jima, Japan], Donald F. Goyette's outfit was too busy killing Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] to feel any effects when news came of President Roosevelt's [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] death [Annotator's Note: on 12 April 1945]. He says that many of his colleagues had been turned off by the disclosure that Roosevelt had a mistress [Annotator's Note: a woman having an extramarital sexual relationship with a married person]. When word reached them that the war in Europe had ended, they were elated. However, the prospect of having to invade mainland Japan concerned Goyette, because he knew the Japanese would fight to the death. Along came a hush-hush deal that was happening on the neighboring island of Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands]. He saw the 501's [Annotator's Note: 509th Composite Group (509 CG), 58th Bombardment Wing (Very Heavy) flying modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bombers codenamed Silverplate B-29s] come in, and said they looked like ordinary B-29s. Nobody was allowed to speculate about anything, but they knew something was up. Then, our boy [Annotator's Note: Brigadier General Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan 6 August 1945] took off, headed for Japan. They did not know what an atomic bomb was, or how many Japanese had been killed, but it sure ended the war. During his time on Saipan his girlfriend's father had sent him a monthly gift of an aftershave bottle that contained Scotch [Annotator's Note: type of alcoholic beverage]. He stayed on Saipan for about four weeks, converting the B-29s into cargo planes that made food drops to the troops in Japanese concentration camps. In the process, the servicemen on Saipan ran out of food, and had to pillage supplies from the Army guys. In October [Annotator's Note: October 1945], he was moved to Tinian for a couple of weeks, then boarded a Navy transport vessel and traveled to the West Coast of the United States. It was a small, fast ship, and made the trip in three and a half days. He took a train to Ft. Sheridan, Illinois where he was discharged from the service on 13 December 1945 as a corporal. He was awarded bars for service in Saipan and Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan], and a citation. [Annotator's Note: Goyette speaks off topic]. He went to college on the G.I. Bill, studying pre-law courses, while working in sales, a business in which he finally made his career.

Donald F. Goyette has four sons, all of whom have achieved success in their lives. When he retired, he and his wife of many years spent a year at their holiday cottage in Canada, where the family still enjoys vacations. Asked why he fought in World War 2, Goyette says that nobody even thought about it; it was a given. The United States was threatened by a foreign power that was going to change the United States into a vassal, and no red-blooded guy could wait to put Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] in his place. He does not think the war changed his life. He grew up in that and he continued with the goals he had set for himself. His does not feel his service figures in his life today. He thinks the most important thing for a man is to plan his life and live it for and with his family. He recommends a good education. Looking back, his most memorable experience of the war was his time on Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan], because it was such a violent, bloody massacre on both sides. He feels it important that there be institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana], that inform future generations about the war.