I was just a young kid, he says.
I had been there for about six months.
I had been on the graveyard shift most of the time, working 24/7.
The Japanese just attacked us at Pearl Harbor.
The next month, January, I turned 20.
I wanted to fly, but this was a bigger deal.
I knew I was going to go to war.
He flew 116 missions and became a major at the age of 22.
I shot down 16 and one-quarter enemy airplanes in aerial combat, he says.
What we needed to do was to go anywhere that the B-17s wanted to go to bomb.
We had enough endurance to do that.
No other fighters could do that.
The P-51 was very fast at high and low altitudes.
It was the perfect airplane.
Being a great pilot meant you had to be motivated, number one.
You had to want to do it.
You had to have good eyes because we didnt have radar or anything to help us find the enemy.
Your eyes were your best weapon.
You had to know what to do in situations in a flash.
It has to be an instinct.
Among his fellow aces was one who became famous later.
Chuck Yeager was in our squadron and he and I became very good friends.
Anderson remembers others from his squadron, too: I had two close friends in my flight.
Jim Browning and Eddie Simpson were two excellent guys.
They were both killed in action.
I liked them so much I named my son after them, James Edward Anderson.
The loss of so many others still haunts him.
He would see B-17s shot down and would count the parachutes as they fell from the sky.
At the end of the war, Anderson was in Texas, where he celebrated with his wife.
The lesson of Pearl Harbor, Anderson says, is that America was tremendously unprepared for WWII.
We should never let our guard down.
We should always have a strong military and be prepared and expect anything.
The U.S. was a far different place after that attack, Anderson says: totally united.
Young people rushed to the recruiting stations.
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