Harold D. Collipriest: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, June 10, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 61

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Harold D. Colliprie t Jun 10 2 0 fireworks and so forth and that was such a spectacular event that 3 v ry n w and celebrating into the night. So then they started making the arrangements for the surrender to be signed on the battleship Missouri, but my uncle became very ill and they couldn't treat him medically in the Pacific. So they flew him back to the United States for medical purposes and he never returned to the Pacific. He had been through nearly the whole war and missed the surrender. So that was very hard on him, but the reasons were obvious. Manila had become a huge staging area for the invasion of Japan. Every nook and cranny of Manila, and the surrounding area, was filled with equipment. To this day I am stunned by what they had. You could literally drive for miles and miles on a road, and three, four, five, sometimes six deep on either side of the road would be various types of equipment, either tanks, or radar units, or weapons carriers and so forth- just an unlimited amount of equipment ready for the jump off. This was really a staging area for the invasion. And then the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. WIN: Did you have any notice, or rumor, or anything preceding the dropping of the A-bomb, or was that just something out of the blue? HAL: No. Later, of course, rumors were rampant of what this weapon was. I don't believe we even called it an A-bomb at the time. It was just this-I remember the comment being made that, "There is a new weapon that is so powerful." And then it was described as a tiny little piece you could place in an ashtray that would blow up a building or something- trying to give some kind of credence to what this huge secret weapon was. 18