I am sure he is alive hidden somewhere to have his final sayĮven if it did, I do not believe that the Japanese leadership gave a fig about the populace. He will be buried in Northumberland next to his wife, who died in 1975. Interviewing VanKirk for the book, she said, “was like sitting with your father at the kitchen table listening to him tell stories”.Ī funeral service was scheduled for VanKirk on 5 August in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania. VanKirk was energetic, very bright and had a terrific sense of humor, Dietz recalled on Tuesday. VanKirk’s military career was chronicled in a 2012 book, My True Course, by Suzanne Dietz. “I didn’t even find out that he was on that mission until I was 10 years old and read some old news clippings in my grandmother’s attic,” Tom VanKirk said. Like many second world war veterans VanKirk didn’t talk much about his service until much later in his life when he spoke to school groups, his son said. He later moved from California to the Atlanta area to be near his daughter. Then he went to school, earned degrees in chemical engineering and signed on with DuPont, where he stayed until he retired in 1985. VanKirk stayed on with the military for a year after the war ended. But if anyone has one,” he added, “I want to have one more than my enemy.”
