It was 1942, and Walter Sowa had just graduated from Newport Township High School in Luzerne County.
He was the only male still at home with his widowed mother Katherine — a Polish immigrant — and three young sisters. But the world was at war, and Sowa, 17, faced heavy choices about his future.
“She was hoping I wouldn't go,” Sowa recalled last week.
Signing up for government-funded engineering and science training, Sowa hoped the work would take him to Philadelphia, where he could earn a civil service salary for his family and support the war effort relatively close to home.
Uncle Sam had other ideas.
“Little did I know it was the government preparing me,” Sowa said.
Drafted in 1943, Sowa would go through more training stateside before being deployed to Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean, 1,500 miles from Japan, where he repaired airborne radar systems for the U.S. Army Air Forces' B-29 “Superfortress” bombers.
The technology was critical to crews as they navigated dangerous skies during bombing runs over Japan, enabling them to operate with precision even when clouds obstructed their view.
“My job was to make sure that the radar was functioning,” said Sowa, who turned 100 on Sunday.
Sowa spoke about his experiences during an interview last week at the Nanticoke home he shares with wife Marie, 96, whose father built it.
One of the planes he came into contact with was Enola Gay, the B-29 which dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945 — the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in combat.
Another bomber, Bockscar, dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days later. Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, 1945.
While Sowa wasn’t involved in the atomic missions, he did get close to Enola Gay when it landed at Tinian after the bombings, and has pictures of himself beside the aircraft and waving from its cockpit.
Sowa and his colleagues didn't yet grasp the plane's place in history, but "we thought it was significant,” he said.
Daughter Rebecca Bartuska noted her father’s encounter with Enola Gay has earned a place in the plane’s history: A photo of Sowa with the bomber is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia.
“Every time we go, we take a picture of us in front of it,” Bartuska said.
Heritage, family history
Both of Sowa’s parents were born in Poland and spoke very little English. They courted in the homeland but married in the U.S. where they started a family, he explained.
“Why he zeroed in on Nanticoke, I do not know,” Sowa wrote in a written family history he shared during the interview. “My guess is he had friends here who preceded him and encouraged him to come here.”
Sowa’s parents spoke Polish at home, and he recalled learning English at school, starting in first grade. He attended Holy Trinity School in Sheatown, where the nuns would buy milk from the family, which kept cows to help make ends meet.
Like so many immigrants in Northeast Pennsylvania, Sowa’s father Mike worked in the coal mines. And like so many miners, the job would claim his life: He died at 49 from silicosis.
According to Sowa’s written memoirs, the 1940s brought more tragedy: He lost a brother, Joe, who was killed in the mines at the age of 22; while a sister, Helen, died at age 24.
By this time older brother Stanley was married with a family of his own. Another brother, Eddie, was working at a defense factory in Connecticut. Sister Anna was hospitalized in a tuberculosis sanitarium near Reading.
That left young Walter, now a high school student, at home with his widowed mother and three younger sisters as the war was intensifying overseas.
“So it seemed at that time, I was to assume taking care of ‘domestic responsibilities’ at the age of 15,” Sowa wrote.
He longed to see more of the world, which was why Sowa signed up for the “Engineering Science Management War Training” (ESMWT) program, thinking it would lead him to work in Philadelphia after high school, as the recruiters had promised.
“Me, who never traveled farther than Wanamie and Nanticoke,” he wrote. “I do recall my mother saying, ‘You are not going.’ Several times — not in a demanding way, but more in a hopeful way that I might change my mind,” Sowa wrote. “To this day I cannot understand what possessed me to be so adamant.”
Other family members recognized that young Walter probably needed to leave home to achieve his potential — and avoid the fate that had befallen his father and brother.
“There weren’t a lot of other opportunities here. And his older brothers pressured him to not go into the mines,” Bartuska said of her uncles.
Education and career
The ESMWT training did take Sowa to Philadelphia, Reading, and also New York, but his journey didn’t end there.
While Sowa’s decision did ultimately lead him into a war zone he returned home unharmed, and the experience would change the course of his life.
“The fact that he was in the war gave him the opportunity (to take advantage of) the GI Bill, which gave him the opportunity to go to college, which got him out of working in the mines,” Bartuska said of her father. “We're appreciative of that.”
Sowa returned to the U.S. in 1946. He admits he didn’t hear much afterward from the men he had served with, who were from other parts of the country.
“That’s the sad part. We all wanted to get back to our own lives,” he said.
Sowa went on to earn an electrical engineering degree from Penn State in 1950, followed by a master's degree in physics from what was then Wilkes College.
He worked in industry for a few years before he began teaching engineering at Penn State Wilkes-Barre. Sowa taught for 32 years, retiring in 1987. He also authored an electronics book that was later translated into Chinese.
He and wife Marie, who married in 1952, have three children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Despite some of the tragic losses Sowa's family suffered in their early years, his mother lived into her late 90s, and he has surpassed that mark.
His 100th birthday was marked with a large party at his daughter's house in December, followed by some phone and Zoom calls on the actual date last weekend.
To what does Sowa attribute his own longevity?
"I think it has to do with the genes. And it has to do with physical activity, because I golfed a hell of a lot," Sowa said. "And some relative to my faith. It all contributed."
When he could no longer golf, Sowa began using a treadmill and exercise bike in his basement to stay active, and he goes to physical therapy twice a week.
Bartuska said her father also keeps his mind sharp, and retains his curiosity about the world — especially electronic devices.
Sowa was very interested in the iPhone used to record this interview and take his photo for the story. He is familiar with email, and uses an Alexa virtual assistant around the house.
During a road trip to Philadelphia a few years ago Bartuska was listening to a podcast in the car, and her dad was very curious about how the podcast and GPS would overlap.
"I'm playing the podcast through the radio, and he's like, 'OK, so then what happens when the GPS needs to give you directions and you're listening to the podcast?' Like he puts it all together and asks that question," she said.
"I'm like, 'Just wait for it, Dad, you're gonna see,' but he's just very curious."
And he is passing that curiosity down to a new generation.
"One of my daughters was here, and she's working on research for a PhD, and he asked her better questions than I would have about what she was doing and how it worked," Bartuska said.
"And then my other daughter comes, who had just been to Kathmandu, and he starts asking her questions about Nepal that, you know, even I wouldn't have thought to ask," she added.
Along with that curiosity, Sowa hasn't lost his sense of humor.
"You reminded me of GPS," Sowa chimed in.
"A guy was using GPS, and he wound up in a cemetery," he said, pausing briefly.
"GPS says 'You've now arrived at your destination,'" Sowa said.
"Dad always has a joke for you," Bartuska added with a chuckle.
