Normand Roland Brissette, Bombing Squadron VB-87, Aircraft Carrier Ticonderoga
Service Number 762 00 34, Aviation Radioman 3rd Class, U.S. Naval Reserve
Airman Second Class Normand Brissette was "the backseat" for Raymond Porter in the S2BC-4E torpedo bomber BuNo 21079 shown above with tail number 210. They were shot down while bombing the Tone and they were last seen on that mission in a rubber raft in the Iyo Nado area of the Seto Inland Sea at 4pm on 28 July, 1945, 5 hours after ditching. Harrowing details of his final mission were written in an eyewitness account by Paul Brehm, a fellow VB-87 pilot who also flew the 28 July, 1945 strike on the Tone. Normand Brissette story is told in a moving documentary by Barry Frechette and Max Esposito named Paper Lanterns. Portions of the US Navy official Aircraft Action Report, filed aboard the Tico, are included by Anthony L. (Tony) Archinski in his compiled and privately published tribute to Normand Brissette. Archinki's work inspired Frechette to create Paper Lanterns.
Normand Brissette grew up in Massachusetts and was just 19 years old when he was participating in aircraft carrier-launched S2BC air raids on Japan in 1945. His fate and his family are central to the 2016 documentary film Paper Lanterns about historian Shigeaki Mori's American POW research.
Normand Brissette, at age 19, was the youngest American who was killed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Photo courtesy of Susan Brissette Archinski. usawarmemorials.com
Normand Braisette is remembered as one of the 12 American POW's killed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This image captures his entry in the National Peach Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. (Photo courtesy M. Shavers)