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Ret. Maj Joseph Cullen’s 95th Birthday

9th Reconnaissance Wing

Jan. 17, 2020 | 2:03

Video package featuring World War II veteran Ret. Maj Joseph Cullen. Three pilots from Beale AFB had the opportunity of attending the birthday party to thank him for his service.
Additional footage provided by Airman First Class Joshua Altice
Photos provided by Nathan and David Cullen

TRANSCRIPT:
David Cullen: He served a total of 31 years in active and reserve. He flew, I think it was 52 combat missions in the South Pacific in the Reconnaissance version of the P-38. They were rated as combat even though he didn’t have any guns to shoot back with. But he was flying, doing a lot of low-level work over Japanese installations and getting shot at. He said “my mission was always to get the film to someone so that it could be developed to save lives and to have these combat people operate efficiently without risking their lives unnecessarily.” It wasn’t just a bunch of bravado. It was boys who probably were scared. And he admitted as much when he reflected back on this in his diary. He said, to show up, and the very first night he was in Morotai, the Japanese sent over a bomber from the North end of the island. And he said “the next day we went out and dug a deeper foxhole.” He wouldn’t certainly think that he was a hero., He was just 20 years old and he’d been overseas for a year and a half. It’s a pretty heroic enterprise to think about leaving high school, getting right out of high school, and going off and fighting a war.
Pilots: This is just a token of our appreciation on behalf of the 13th Reconnaissance Squadron.
David Cullen: He retired in ‘74, so he’d getting close to 50 years of being out, 45 years of being out and yet to have people come and say “Thank you. Thank you for your service” it really means a lot. He might have been one of those boys that got lost in the clouds over Morotai, people that flew off and never came back.