My overseas orders arrived during the last week in May 1945, couched in classical “Army Speak”:

I was about to embark on one of the most interesting journeys of my life and by far the most hazardous. Perhaps it was just as well that I did not know exactly where I was going. The war in Europe had ended and it did not take a genius to figure out that my destination was the Pacific theater of war, I was pleased to be assigned to a numbered general hospital, the crème de la crème of overseas duty, or so I thought. Thus far, each of my previous assignments had been with general hospitals. Number one was the Army and Navy General Hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a brief period followed by over three years at the brand new Valley Forge General Hospital, adjacent to the historic valley for which it was named.

The short leave provided a few days of leisure to spend with my wife driving South and visiting with her cousins who lived in Knoxville, Tennessee, nearby a massive, newly built, and mysterious installation called Oak Ridge by some and the Manhattan Project by others.

In Knoxville we were told by friends and relatives that they all knew a secret weapon was being developed at Oak Ridge that would wipe out the Japanese and end the war. It sounded like a Buck Rogers story, but it was nice to hear and seemed consistent with other information I had acquired during my professional work at Valley Forge.

On reporting to the 303rd General Hospital on 5 June 1945 in Camp Shelby outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, I was quickly informed by the C.O., Colonel James W. Howard, that I was the last of his officers to arrive and that I had exactly twelve hours to arrange my affairs because we were departing soon by troop train for the West Coast.