By Jon Davis Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted 4/15/2004
An Arlington Heights man's memories of a 59-year-old World War II air battle might help prove whether a Louisiana boy is a reincarnated Navy pilot killed in that same raid.
It sounds like something from a tabloid in the checkout line, but believe it or not, this is a story on tonight's edition of "Primetime Thursday" (at 9 o'clock on Channel 7).
The segment features Anna and Bruce Leininger of Louisiana, who are pretty sure their 6-year-old son, James, had a previous life as James Houston Jr. - killed in action on March 3, 1945, over Chichi Jima, a Japanese island near the more-famous Iwo Jima.
Ralph Clarbour, a former Arlington Heights trustee and interim village president, was a 20-year-old turret gunner in a Navy Avenger torpedo bomber participating in a strike on Japanese ships and air bases.
Houston's squadron was providing fighter cover for Clarbour's. And because Clarbour sat rearward, he saw Houston's Hellcat get shot down (one of 13 U.S. planes and five pilots lost that day).
"He provides an eyewitness account of what happened to James Houston's plane that day," said ABC News spokesman Adam Pockriss.
Fast-forward to September 2003, when Clarbour met Bruce Leininger at the reunion of his squadron, VC 83. As Clarbour said, this is "the long and difficult part of the story."
Leininger explained that his son began to have nightmares at the age of 2 or 3, and in explaining them to his parents, James said he thought he was a WWII fighter pilot.
"His dad pooh-poohed the whole thing," Clarbour said. "In order to prove his son wrong, he began investigating the thing."
But Leininger stumbled over the word "natoma," which his son had mentioned. He discovered Natoma Bay was the aircraft carrier whose fighters flew escort for Clarbour's squadron. So in January 2003, he posted a query on the Internet for information about the March 3 raid on Chichi Jima.
Jack Durham, who was the radioman in the one torpedo bomber VC 83 lost to enemy fire that day, saw the query and invited Leininger to the squadron's reunion.
"I kind of just pooh-poohed it, and just confirmed that the pilot was killed," Clarbour said.
"We had already made one run on the bay, and were going around and coming back," he said. "This was our last run. It was the last time that we would go through the bay, and both of the last planes in the flight were hit.
"The torpedo plane in our squadron got hit, but nowhere near as severe as the fighter plane. He went in the drink."
In October, ABC News came to Arlington Heights to interview Clarbour, who remains just a bit skeptical.
"What the true story is, I'm gonna have to watch it, too," Clarbour said.
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intid=3809210