David Blum in 1945.
David Blum at his 90th birthday celebration, held in September.
Beverly Walker of Festus submitted photos of her father, David L. Blum of Herculaneum, who served with the Air Force from 1948 to 1952.
“After basic training he completed weather school and was sent to Leavenworth, Kan., as air support until the Korean War started in June 1950,” she says. “He was shipped out to Tokyo from California, and then to Nagoya, Japan. The ship to Tokyo was designed for 2,000 troops, but there were 3,600 on board. Two men were assigned to a bed, so they slept in shifts. He remembers having only 6 cents in his pocket when they docked in Tokyo.”
His job in the weather service was to draw maps notating temperature, wind speed and direction, cloud conditions and pressure areas. During the week, he stayed in Nagoya, Japan, and on weekends flew to Korea.
“He would stay up all night drawing weather maps to give pilots a forecast for bombing missions,” his daughter says. “When he returned to Japan, he would write a report of the actual weather conditions that were given to him from the pilots.”
Blum received the Sharp Shooter Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Korean Service Medal and the United Nations Service Medal.
When he returned to the states in 1952, he married Helen Roth and received his discharge papers two weeks later. They were married for 57 years until her death in 2009.
