MORGANTOWN — Members of the Rotary Club of Kingwood came to Morgantown Tuesday evening to honor longtime member Charles “Charlie” Brown – a retired Kingwood lawyer and World War II naval aviator held prisoner in Japan – who now lives at the Village at Heritage Point.
“We really wanted to do this – spend this time with Charlie and honor him tonight,” said club President Bob Meissner.
The fifth Tuesday of the month is spouse’s night, members said, and they decided to bring this spouse’s night meeting to Brown, since he can’t get back to Kingwood now. Brown’s wife of 70 years, Betty, passed away in July.
Brown, 94, said he joined in 1950, the same year he began his law practice. He doesn’t recall exactly why he joined, but his brother, Donald, was a member and someone talked him into joining. “They were trying to compete with the Lion’s Club then,” he said with a smile.
Brown had a short career as a naval aviator. Brown and Rotary members explained Tuesday night — with additional details drawn from a short PBS video – that he signed up in October 1942 while he was a student at Potomac State College. After training, his first assignment was aboard the USS Randolph in January 1945.
On Feb. 16, 1945, on his first mission, Brown flew the second dive bomber – a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver – in the lead squadron of the first bombing raid on the Japanese homeland since the 1942 Doolittle raid. He took anti-aircraft fire over an airfield northeast of Tokyo.
The engine was burning but he managed to bomb his target and make a successful water landing. He and his crewman were taken prisoner, blindfolded, interrogated and beaten. At one point, kneeling on the ground, he thought he was going to be beheaded.
According to an article in Stars and Stripes, Brown was held at the Ofuna Naval Interrogation Center and later transferred to the Omori POW Camp #1, an island built by prisoners.
Japanese prison camps were notoriously brutal. Brown described it concisely, “It wasn’t pleasant, I’ll tell you. I weighed 97 pounds when I got out.”
He was released Aug. 29, 1945, after VJ Day.
He returned to Japan three times after that, he said – twice as part of the Kingwood Rotary. The first was in 1961, when Rotary bought him and Betty two round-trip tickets to the Rotary International Convention.
“I wasn’t sure about going or how I’d react, but it worked out alright,” he said. “The Japanese people aren’t like their warlords were. They’re friendly. They’re concerned about their children and good education. They were very polite with me when I went back. I don’t know – it worked out good.”
The second was as part of a Rotary International group study exchange, where six members from each country visit their counterparts. He doesn’t recall the year.
The third was in 2015, when he and four other former POWs visited Ofuna and Omori on a trip paid for by the Japanese government.
Rotary member Dennis Lusin has studied Brown’s career in detail and provided some of his history Tuesday evening. He also brought Brown a special gift: a laminated maritime drawing of the Randolph as it looked when it set sail for Japan.
Brown was delighted as he unrolled it and looked it over, but his words were few: “Oh my gosh!”
