Transcript of Grandpa Sorensen's audio tape about WWII
Japan bombed pearl harbor and a year later I was drafted.  I came home in  six months for a short furlough.  This I remember well with my father having been in World War I he told me what I could expect to encounter and how I should conduct myself through these times.  I encountered what he told me I would.  Today I am grateful for the council and advice.  The morning I was to catch the Trailway bus in Gunnison he walked with me up town to meet the bus and bid me farewell.  I remember as I shook his hand farewell.  I sat on the side of the bus near the sidewalk by the Gunnison Drug store where it always stopped, so I could wave to him as it moved out.  I saw tears running down my father's cheeks and then he wiped them and turned from me at the same time.  This was the last time I saw my father.  He died when I was leaving New Guinea.  He had a stroke and mother nursed him for a month or so before he died.  It was hard on her.

It was not long after I graduated from high school until Japan invaded and put me high on the list to be drafted in the service.  I tried to join the Marines, but was too late.  I was drafted in the army and was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas to train in the 224-artillery as a 177-radio operator.  Then was sent to Florida for jungle training.  Six months later I was shipped by training to Sacramento, California and boarded the USS Mount Vernon to New Guinea and landed in Miline Bay.

I spent one rainy season in Maline Bay.  It rained 55 days straight through without let up and then off and on for 30 more days. This I remember well because the supply Sergeant crossed every day off on the calendar.  Then we kept moving up towards the Philippines.  After Yamashita surrendered we then went through training by Six Rangers for landing in Japan.  Then the first part of August 1945 the Atomic Bomb put an end to the war.  We later learned that we were to hit the beaches on November 2nd between China and Japan.  I felt like the Atomic bomb saved my life.

By Christmas I was on my way home to the good old USA, the greatest land of all.  "The land of the free and the brave."  The land I know is a blessed land to live in as the Book of Mormon said it would be.  I was proud to serve my country, just as my father was in World War I in France.  I hope and pray my boys and grandchildren do not have to taste the bitterness of war.

Story told by Grandpa to Tom Anderson
When he served in the Philippines he was young he had a couple of buddies who were returned missionaries.  During his time there he had found a rifle or a machine gun, I don't know which, that was Japanese make and brand new.  Still in the casing and oil and grease that preserved the gun.  He thought this was a real keepsake for him - something that he would take home and treasure the rest of his life.  So he put it in his pack and he hauled it around for a few days and then the orders came that they were going to move.  Well these two other LDS boys came to him and said,"Bernard, we've carved some sacrament trays out of wood.  You need to pack it for us in your pack."  But he says, "The thought went through my mind that I didn't want to pack those sacrament trays, I've got this rifle in my pack."  But he says, "It didn't last too long I took the rifle out, threw it away.  Someone else soon picked it up.  I put the sacrament trays in my pack and hauled them the rest of the time I was there with those boys."