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This Remembrance Profile was originally created by Sgt Stephen Willcox - Deceased
Contact Info
Home Town Enid, Oklahoma
Last Address Tucson, Arizona
Date of Passing Nov 25, 2006
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Wall/Plot Coordinates Court 8, Section Q, Column 7, Niche 4
Brigadier General Kenneth Taylor "rose to the rank of Colonel during his 27 years of active duty service having served at various bases stateside during and after the war, including the Pentagon, where he retired as a colonel in 1969 (Note: actual year was 1967). He then became commander of the Alaska Air National Guard and retired as a Brigadier General in 1971. Following retirement he then worked as an insurance underwriter in Alaska, representing Lloyds of London, until 1985." Source: http://www.456fis.org
"General Taylor split his retirement between Anchorage and Arizona. He was a technical adviser for the 1970 film 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' in which his character was played by actor Carl Reindel. In the 2001 movie 'Pearl Harbor,' actor Ben Afflect played a character based on Gen. Taylor, although he was not consulted and considered the film 'a piece of trash...over-sensationalized and distorted,' according to his son.Source: http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net
"After contracting an illness from a hip surgery ....Taylor died on November 25, 2006 of a strangulated hernia at an assisted living residence in Tucson, Arizona..." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wika/Kenneth_M._Taylor
Brigadier General Kenneth Taylor is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Other Comments:
Note: I've listed his service years from 1940 to 1971, though his active duty service is recorded from 1940 to 1967, after which his second career in uniform was with the Alaskan Air National Guard, where he became a Brigadier General before retirement from that service in 1971. It is also noted that before his enlistment in 1940 he served in the Oklahoma National Guard in 1936-38 and again in 1939. As to his medals on the right panel, in cases when I did not know the date of the award, the default date was used. Below are excerpts from a more comprehensive biography. I
"General Taylor was born in Enid, Oklahoma on 23 December 1919 but spent most of his youth in the small eastern town of Hominy where he graduated from high school in 1938. Like many young men of the community he also attended the University of Oklahoma. In 1940 the excitement of aviation lured hm away from academe and into Army pilot training. He completed the aviation cadet program in 1941 and went to his first assignment with the 47th Pursuit Squadron of the 15th Pursuit Group at Wheeler Field in Hawaii.
The new second lieutenant's enjoyment of the glamorous fighter pilot's life was rudely interrupted by the Japanese attack on Hawaii on December 7th 1941. His squadron's aircraft escaped destruction in the initial attack because they had been deployed to an outlying airfield for gunner training. He and a squadron mate, Lt. George Welch, were the first Americans airborne in their P-40s to meet the Japanese. The results of his two sorties that day were two confirmed kills, two probables (later confirmed), the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart.
Other wartime experiences included flying P-40s from the carrier USS Nassau to Guadalcanal via Espirito Santos. He stayed with the 44th Pursuit Squadron there until 1943 scoring two additional victories. He finished the war as a Major. The late war years and the immediate postwar years were turbulent ones with many assignments: command of several units including the P-47 Replacement Training Unit, the 12th Pursuit Squadron and the 18th Pursuit Group. Immediately following the war in the Philippines, he commanded a squadron of the first USAF combat jets, the P-80.
Subsequent assignments included command of the 4961st Special Weapons Test Group at Kirtland AFB, tactical evaluator duty at USAFE/IG and a tour as a planner at Headquarters USAF. During this last assignment the general, then a colonel, made his first visit to Alaska where he evaluated the command planning process. His criticisms may have resulted in his assignment in 1958 as the Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans for the Alaskan Air Command. In 1961 he was reassigned as the Director of Operations for the 28th NORAD Region in California and then in 1964 to a final Pentagon tour as a long range planner on the Joint Staff.
In 1967 he retired from the active Air Force and assumed the position of Assistant Adjutant General, Air, for the Alaskan National Guard and was promoted to the grade of Brigadier General....During his career the general graduated from the Army Command and General Staff College, the Royal Staff College and the Air War College. His decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Service Medal, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, the Air Medal, the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Achievement Medal and several wartime campaign ribbons in addition to his two Pearl Harbor decorations." Source: http://www.456fis.org/GENERAL_KEN_TAYLOR.htm
Further biographical information is available in detail at http://veterantributes.org
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.