MOCKSVILLE , N.C. (Tribune News Service) — History was being made in Tokyo Bay that day in September 1945, and Leo “Sheek” Bowden Jr. was slated to play a small role in the formal end of World War II.

Whether he knew it or not.

Bowden — Junior to his friends — was a gunner with the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was scheduled to go on a mission to take photos.

The issue, though, was secrecy. Details about the ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri were shared only on a need-to-know basis, and as a callow 19-year-old sergeant, Bowden didn’t need to know.

“There was an awful display of boats and airplanes,” he said about the show of American power. “The air was full of planes. We didn’t think about (what was going on) that much.

“We were just wanting to come home, you know?”

More than 16 million Americans served in World War II. Some 418,500 were killed, nearly 672,000 wounded, and some 10 million, like Bowden, returned home as heroes between 1945 and 1947.

Some volunteered, others were drafted. Some saw heavy fighting in Europe and the Pacific. Others not so much.​​

The experience haunted some men for years after they returned home. Others left the memories in the past, stored away in the back of their minds as they got on with life.

They all did their bit, though. Whatever the nation asked, they gave.

“It was just something we had to do,” Bowden said. “You’re supposed to stand up for what you think is right.”

And that’s why Bowden enlisted in an air cadet program at N.C. State. He wanted to be a pilot or a navigator. Maybe a bombardier.

But as luck would have it, he didn’t get the chance. He and a couple of other cadets were dismissed from the program after one of them “decided to refight the Civil War” with some guys from Pennsylvania while training in Florida.

It was more like an argument, Bowden said, but enough to end officer training. “We got shafted,” he said. “(The Air Corps) didn’t need us anymore. They were looking for something to get people out.”

Still, a contract is a contract.

Bowden went in as an enlisted man in January 1944, trained as a central fire control gunner and was assigned to a B-29 bomber bound for the Pacific in 1945.

By that time, U.S. forces were taking control of the sea and the air. Marines and soldiers on the ground were pushing the Japanese back toward their home island.

Bowden wasn’t thinking about the big picture at that point. He was concerned about doing his job, whatever that might be.

He was initially assigned to a replacement crew in the 504th Bombardment Group on Tinian, an island in the Marianas near Guam. His pilot was injured in a training exercise, so Bowden wound up the odd man out on another replacement crew. He was assigned to work on a ground-based trainer with a civilian.

A near-miss accident caused him to reassess, however.

He’d been sitting in a tractor-trailer converted into a bus with his arm hanging over the side. Someone nearby said (or did) something that drew his attention and caused him to turn, seconds before the fuselage of a plane hit the area where his arm had been. “I almost lost it,” he said.

“I thought about it all the time at lunch, so I went and told (commanders) that I came over on a combat crew and wanted to be on one.”

Three days later, his request was granted.

Bowden flew 45 missions, including bombing runs early on in 1945, trips to mine the waters around mainland Japan later and historic photo operations at the end.

“We had Japan bottled up,” he said. “I didn’t realize it, but they were starving.”

He did know — still does — that he was fortunate when compared to some of his peers. Bowden said by that point in the war, crews with the 504th were losing more men to mechanical failure and accidents than combat.

“I had an easy time of it,” he said. “I fired my guns once in the combat theater. Saw one burst of flak. I never saw an enemy plane in the air.”

Perhaps it’s due to a mischievous streak, a pronounced sense of humor or a soldier’s natural inclination to notice military absurdities, but when asked about memories from his time in uniform, Bowden recalls oddities rather than historic moments.

Such as the time a USO dancer, who’d been given a brief tour of his crew’s plane, was climbing down a ladder at the same time a buddy was climbing up. “When we asked Pete about it,” Bowden recalled, “he just said, ‘Pink panties is all I saw.”

When it came time for his discharge, Bowden decided to look forward, not back. He took a few mementos home. He didn’t save any old uniforms.

“I missed out on a .45 (caliber pistol). I didn’t sign a statement of charges,” he said, referring to an agreement to pay for “missing” gear. “The officers were celebrating the end of the war and shooting up in the air. (The Army) took all the guns up after that.”

These days, Bowden doesn’t give much attention to Veterans Day. He said he plans to attend a dinner at a local senior center to honor veterans, and that’s about it.

Nor does he assign any special meaning to being among the last living members of the Greatest Generation.

Actuaries estimate that maybe 66,000 remain. Bowden said it’s a simple matter of genetics and good fortune.

“I don’t know if I made a difference or not,” he said. “We just did what we were supposed to do.”

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