[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 18024-18025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO KEN BARKWILL

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LATHAM

                                of iowa

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 18, 2010

  Mr. LATHAM. Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize Ken Barkwill, a World 
War II Air Force veteran from Boone, Iowa, and to express my 
appreciation for his dedication and commitment to his country.
  The Boone News Republican is currently running a series of articles 
that honors one Boone County veteran every Tuesday from Memorial Day to 
Veterans Day. Ken Barkwill was recognized on Tuesday, November 2. Below 
is the article in its entirety:

             [From the Boone News Republican, Nov. 2, 2010]

                  Boone County Veterans: Ken Barkwill

                           (By Greg Eckstrom)

       Ken Barkwill found himself in World War II as a result of 
     his love of model planes and trains.
       Not in a literal sense, mind you. It's likely that Barkwill 
     would have been drafted into a branch of the military during 
     WWII and called to serve his country, but this love of 
     building models--a seemingly insignificant interest--set in 
     motion a series of events that guided him through an 
     intriguing life thus far, and one that was guided by these 
     interests.
       Originally from Marion, this love of building models led a 
     young Barkwill to a job at the local airport as a youth. As 
     part of his pay, he received instruction at the airport and 
     did some flying. He was hooked.
       ``That's why I wound up in the Air Force,'' he said. ``Back 
     in '43, there was a draft and I was going to be drafted. I'd 
     been in the civil air patrol in high school. If you wanted 
     to, you could go sign up ahead of time, and I wanted to go 
     into the Air Force, so I went in April and signed up to go 
     into the Air Force and finally got called up in September.''
       Barkwill took his training at Keesler Air Force Base in 
     Mississippi. The training was, in a word, ``sandy.''
       ``All I could think of was sand all over the place,'' 
     Barkwill said. ``Hot and sandy.''
       After getting through basic training, Barkwill went to 
     college for five months at the University of Alabama before 
     going to Texas where he worked on the line with guys waiting 
     to get into school at Randolph Field in San Antonio. From 
     there, Barkwill was sent to armament school in Denver, where 
     after learning from others for his entire military career was 
     given a strange offer from one of his instructors.
       ``Barkwill,'' he recalled the teacher asking. ``How would 
     you like to stay in Denver?''
       He was offered a job as an instructor, after being 
     identified as a ``high achiever'' along with two other 
     individuals. Having a girlfriend in Denver at the time, the 
     decision was not difficult . . . especially for someone with 
     a love of airplanes.
       ``That was an interesting stint,'' he said. ``We got B-17s 
     in there. We didn't have a plane with a chin turret on it. 
     One day they come in and belly-landed a B-17 and we wound up 
     with that one to teach the chin turret on, because it didn't 
     wipe it clear out. And then, B-29s were just out when I was 
     there. We got some through there, too, and got to teach 
     armament on them.''
       Barkwill worked as an instructor from December of 1944 to 
     July of 1945, when he was sent to a replacement depot in the 
     Philippines.
       Upon arrival, Barkwill recalled a great deal of 
     uncertainty. The depot was a jumping off point, and all he 
     could do was wait for his orders, which came one day in the 
     form of a simple phrase: ``Get your gear together, you're 
     shipping out.''
       He got on a truck and was transported down the road a few 
     miles. Barkwill unloaded in a new camp with some others 
     before being given his orders.
       ``There were several of us pulled out of the depot and 
     moved down the road a ways to an outfit called recovered 
     personnel,'' he said. ``And we were supposed to go in behind 
     the first wave of troops in to Japan and evacuate POWs.''
       Fortunately, the cover of the first wave of troops was not 
     needed, as the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, 
     effectively ending the war.
       The war was over, but Barkwill's duties on the recovered 
     personnel outfit were still needed, and he was sent to POW 
     camps in Japan to look for soldiers, check out graves for 
     information and report back.
       ``It was interesting work,'' he said.
       From there, Barkwill was sent to a different unit--this one 
     in Cebu City in the

[[Page 18025]]

     Phillipines--for some more interesting work. He was to 
     investigate claims that the Filipinos made in regards to 
     G.I.s' stealing items.
       ``It was interesting,'' he said. ``They come in to our 
     office. We set up an office down in Cebu City, and they come 
     in and file applications with their claims. We had a bunch of 
     Filipinos working for us, and they'd fill out their forms for 
     them, and then we'd have to go out and investigate. Try to 
     figure out whether they were legitimate or not. That was 
     fun.''
       Everything from stolen chickens, cows and bicycles was 
     investigated, as best he could, by Barkwill and his men. He 
     was there for only about a month before finally coming home 
     in February of 1946.
       For Barkwill, his military experience, while not always 
     pleasant, was beneficial.
       ``I . . . can't say I enjoyed it, but it was something I'll 
     never forget,'' he said. ``It was . . . an education. Quite 
     an education. To this day, I don't think it hurts anyone to 
     spend some time in the military. I feel it's quite an 
     enlightening education.''
       That experience is also one that is not easy to share with 
     a stranger. Barkwill said that it's a difficult topic for 
     many veterans to share, with even their own families.
       ``I've enjoyed talking to a lot of old guys like myself 
     around,'' he said. ``We've talked about things that happened. 
     You get to talking about what happened here and there, and 
     you talk about things you haven't thought about for years and 
     things you never told your kids. My daughter from Colorado, 
     it was just a couple of years ago, found out a little bit 
     about my military history. She was asking me questions and so 
     I sat down and told her a little bit about what had happened. 
     It was interesting overseas to see what the Japanese had 
     done, what they were doing and how they had dug in. They were 
     there forever. They found some of them in recent years still 
     living in the hills still thinking the war is on.''
       It's also interesting, he said, how your memories work. 
     Barkwill's wife, Mary, joked that he could remember his time 
     in the military with such clarity, yet he doesn't remember 
     what he did yesterday.
       ``Yeah, some of it comes back, Mary,'' he laughed. ``It's 
     amazing how your memory works.''
       Many of the memories came to Barkwill without any trouble 
     as he recalled specific incidents. Being caught in a typhoon 
     in Japan, finding a place for a haircut and a shave over 
     there, and most of all arriving back in the United States 
     after serving.
       ``Anybody that goes into the military, you get what you can 
     out of it,'' he said. ``You go and serve your time and hope 
     that you get home. I tell you, that's a thrill. When you get 
     on a ship and come back under the Golden Gate Bridge and see 
     that bridge up there and see that harbor and that ship pulls 
     up to the dock and you know you're back on terra firma in the 
     United States. That was very, very exciting for me.''
       For Barkwill, it all started with a young man building 
     models . . . and after the hobby managed to lead him into the 
     military, it also brought him to the Boone & Scenic Valley 
     Rail Road in 1983, where he joined the Boone Railroad 
     Historical Society and designed and oversaw the construction 
     of the depot for the new railroad. His reason for doing so? 
     Model trains.
       It's amazing where a love for a simple hobby can take you, 
     and the stories that follow as a result.

  I commend Ken Barkwill for his many years of loyalty and service to 
our great nation. It is an immense honor to represent him in the United 
States Congress, and I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

                          ____________________