Many thanks gentleman. JB Cain cetainly seems to have been a chap that got lemons and made lemonade. The more I read of him the more fascinated I am that he was able to surmount difficulties (probably helped by a very large family led by a matriarch with a positive outlook). I have been poring through Fold3 for days and have masses of information about VF-45 too. It just shows how one memory can, like Proust's Madeleine, ripple and capture so much interesting social and military history. My madeleine was an article read years ago about the encounter with Ki-79s in February 1945 ("Cats over Chiba"). The name Schecter stuck with me...and here we are
. (Apparently his brother Alton Belus Cain was in the Army from 1939).