The Pacific War of Donald James Towey

My father, Donald James Towey, was born on July 26, 1926, in Lincoln, Nebraska. From January to July 1944 he worked at the Marine Electric Company in Portland, Oregon. He also worked as a janitor at an electronic institute in Omaha, where, besides maintaining equipment, he supervised Marines on work detail. He got permission from his parents to join the service before he was eighteen and went to boot camp at Great Lakes, Illinois. He was promoted to the rating of Storekeeper third class, V6, in the Naval Reserve. Just two months before the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki he was sent to the Philippines. In December 1945 he was sent to PT Boat Base 17, the largest PT Boat base in the world. In April of 1946 he was transferred from PT Boat Base 17 back to the continental United States to await discharge. He had to accumulate enough points under the system that rotated service men and women home. For a while at least, he had no knowledge that the atomic bomb