Healing Stories by a WW 2 P-51 pilot

I flew P-51's in the invasion of Iwo Jima and over Japan. I am an author, my books are available through amazon.com on the retail side and through Ingram on the wholesale side should you wish to carry them in your book store. My first book, Of War and Weddings, a memoir of my life as a P-51 fighter pilot in combat over Japan and the impact my youngest son’s marriage to a Japanese woman, the daughter of a member of the Japanese Imperial Air Force during the war, had on my life. My second book, The Blackened Canteen is written as historical fiction that tells the story of 5 Americans, 4 who perished in a mid-air collision of their B-29’s on a night raid over Shizuoka, Japan and Richard Fiske, who was the bugler on the battleship West Virginia when it was sunk at Pearl Harbor and 3 Japanese men. Fukumatsu Itoh, Takeshi Maeda and Hiroya Sugano. Sugano was 12 years old on the night of the raid, Maeda was a torpedo man who dropped a torpedo that sunk the West Virginia and Fukumatsu Itoh who as a 49 year old city councilman of Shizuoka, buried the 23 American crewmen who were killed in a grave next to the 2000 Japanese who were killed in the raid on June 20, 1945.

Maeda and Fiske met at the Arizona Memorial in 1991 and became friends, Itoh erected a monument to the Americans on top of Mt. Shizuhata near Shizuoka and began an annual ceremony to honor the American dead and Sugano at the age of 40 returned to Shizuoka as a doctor, discovered the monument and has conducted the ceremony every year since. I attended in 2006, wrote the book and returned in 2008 with a marble slab with the names of the 23 Americans.

You can view a 3 minute video of the 2008 ceremony at my website, www.jerryyellin.com

In this troubled world we live in stories of healing and connections between former enemies are important. I do hope you agree with me on that point and will make my books available in your book store. Further, I can arrange for price reductions of on volume purchases and you can use the book as a fund raiser at functions you might sponsor or know of. Also, while I am 85 I still have the ability to walk and talk and I can make myself available should you need a speaker.


Jerry Yellin