Then he considered the thought, watching and waiting for a response, and
realized that he'd really waited a lifetime for it, since the age of ten, when in
February 1944, he alone of his family had boarded the ship that would take
him from Saipan to the Home Islands! There were
forty-eight fighters believed based on Saipan, and another sixty-four at
(iuam's former Andersen Air Force Base, whose two wide runways and
huge underground fuel-storage tanks had accommodated the arriving air-
craft very comfortably indeed.