If you can take it, you can make it.

I was raised to face any challenge.

All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices.

I ended up in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific, operating out of Ayuka field in Hawaii.

Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God.

Even at my age, I'm trying to improve. Never give up, no matter what. Even if you get last place - finish.

People say, on the raft, you must have hallucinated. Baloney. We were sharper after 47 days than the day we started because our minds were empty of all the war and contamination; we had clean minds to fill with good thoughts. Every day we'd exercise our minds.