“Anything that moved, you bombed. If it moved, it wasn’t ours,” he said.

That was the plan. But the war ended before Ferriday’s crew saw combat.

“We just trained,” he said. “If Truman had not dropped the atomic bomb and ended the war when he did, we would have bombed the home islands” — an extraordinarily dangerous mission.

“So I thank Harry Truman,” he said. “The Japanese would rather die than surrender. It was the right call. An invasion would have cost countless lives on both sides.”

Ferriday was stationed in San Diego, Calif., when the war ended. He continued to serve until 1946.

A civilian again, Ferriday pursued an interest in agriculture that began when he observed the plight of the the Dust Bowl farmers in the 1930s. He studied animal husbandry at Rutgers College of Agriculture. He spent some years as a lab technician and researcher, but when an opportunity emerged to teach high school science, he grabbed it.

Ferriday taught science at New Brunswick (N.J.) High School for three years before being named assistant to the vice principal. He stayed on as an administrator until his retirement in 1984.  His first wife, with whom he had a son and a daughter, died.  He later married a woman who taught science at his high school, but she died in 1984.  In 1995, Ferriday and his third wife settled in Sedgwick, where they had previously vacationed.

Though proud of his service in World War II, Ferriday is opposed to the present hostilities in Iraq. 

During World War II, it was different.

“I have never seen the country come together with such oneness of purpose … Everybody did something.”

“Right now, in this war, the only people paying the price are the military,” he said. “The rest of us are footloose and fancy free. War is a serious business, not something you help by going out and shopping.”

—Stephen Fay