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75 YEARS LATER, HE REMEMBERS

Davis Helped Fly General

To See Missouri En Route

Otego's Bill Davis was on a B-29 crew that flew General MacArthur 3,000 miles round trip to see the USS Missouri headed for Japan. He holds picture from the Japanese surrender five days later in Tokyo Bay. (Ian Austin /AllOTSEGO.com)

By JIM KEVLIN • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com

The valuable cargo on Bill Davis' B-29 75 years ago last Friday was Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

OTEGO – Last Friday, Aug. 28, Bill Davis wasn't thinking about the thunderstorm warnings for Otsego County.

He was contemplating Aug. 28, but the one 75 years earlier, when he was aboard a B-29 bomber high over the Pacific Ocean with a special sightseer, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater, as World War II was nearing an end.

Below -- Radioman Bill Davis, 19, couldn't see it; he was crouched over his radio transmitter – was the USS Missouri, steaming toward Tokyo Bay.

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