At 98, WWII veteran Albert Hall has more energy and spunk than people half his age, and if you ask about his service, he remembers every detail.
Hall is one of more than 80 veterans from Kentucky and Indiana who had the chance to board an Honor Flight this May.
"Now, I'm not a hero. No way near it. I'm just an old man that was fortunate enough that God took me through that without a scratch. The ship was the hero,” Hall said.
In the summer of 1945, Nazi Germany had surrendered, and Hitler was dead. However, the war with Japan continued and Hall was transferred to the USS Halsey Powell at Pearl Harbor.
"I knew something was wrong because the horizon is 15 miles and as far as I could see there was every conceivable type of ship – it was there,” Hall said.
"On the sixth day of August, on the same course we was on, they dropped the first atomic bomb. They didn't surrender. They was being hard headed, obstinate, crazy! On the ninth they dropped the second one. We changed from an invasion force to occupational."
The USS Halsey Powell was one of hundreds of American ships anchored in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, and Hall was there.
"I was on a destroyer and the Missouri was right close to us. We anchored close to them and I got to see them sign the peace treaty. I had a bird’s eye view. I saw them when they signed it. The end of the war,” Hall recalled.
“That’s about the end of the story,” he laughed.
During the veterans’ visit to the Vietnam Wall in Washington D.C., Hall was able to find his son’s best friend’s name—Jack Meacham.
Hall said he has dinner with Meacham in Nashville just before he was sent to Vietnam. Mecham was killed after 19 days there.
“I tell you what. I'm not impressed by a whole lot, but I am impressed and just feel a deep sorrow for this right here,” Hall said.
After spending the day alongside his fellow veterans in Washington D.C., Hall thought it might have been the best day in his 98 years.
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