At 100 years old, WWII Vet Dr. Donald Owens Reflects on How the Army Shaped a Lifetime of Global Service

OLATHE, Kan**. —**Donald Dean Owens was an 18-year-old sophomore trying to help keep his family afloat. After his father left, Owens left his classroom in Joplin, Missouri, to take a job to help his mother and younger brother. Then on a day in October of 1944 a letter arrived that would change the course of his life. It started with the formal words, “Greetings,” from the president, ordering him to report to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The recruiter who spoke to Owens gave an interesting perspective on where he was going.

“We’ve got two institutions here at Fort Leavenworth, one is a federal penitentiary, and one is an induction center. Now, which one do you want to go to?" he was asked by a senior soldier. “That was an easy choice,” he recalled jokingly decades later. That decision would take the young Missouri boy into the Army and eventually thousands of miles from home.

Owens celebrated his 100th birthday on Sept. 12, 2026, a whole century to reflect on the experiences that molded his life. When he talks about his early years, he doesn’t just remember the places he was going. He pictures his younger self, a 155-pound young man in an Army uniform, still trying to figure out what his life might become. In January 1945, Owens started infantry training in Texas at Camp Fannin. He had been expecting to join his brother on the European front with Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. But that changed when the military policy of keeping 18-year-olds out of Europe led to Owens’s being sent to Camp Maxey. There he received more training for the Pacific theater and discovered a talent for marksmanship and became an expert with the M1 Garand rifle

“During that time, one of my great accomplishments was that I became an expert with a rifle, a Garand M1 rifle. It was well zeroed in. I just had a great rifle,” Owens stated.

His unit shipped out from Fort Ord, California, after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Owens deployed to the Pacific during a rapidly changing war and world. He spent his 19th birthday in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from home, where he remembers feeling isolated. Standing on the deck of the ship, Owens later described the moment as a “pity party.” Then he looked toward the moon.

“The light from the moon shone like a path right to me,” Owens said. “It seemed to me that my Lord was saying through that, ‘I know where you are, and you’re not forgotten.’ That was a great spiritual experience for me.”

The memory was fresh in his mind when he stepped off the transport ship in Manila, where his military assignment took a surprising turn. He was trained for the infantry, but his typing ability earned him a job in the Signal Corps, and he was sent to the mountains of the Philippines to run military message centers.

Shortly after, his unit was transferred to occupied Japan with the 8th Army#_msocom_2. Assigned to the 3159th and 304th Signal Operations Battalions and later working as a cryptographer in secure code rooms, Owens was responsible for the handling and safeguarding of encoded military intelligence.

The assignment also brought him to Tokyo’s Dai-Ichi Building#_msocom_3, across the plaza from where Gen. Douglas MacArthur had established his supreme headquarters. His days weren’t spent entirely behind closed doors, he also guarded motor pools, walked night patrols around empty buildings and, on Sundays, served as a chaplain’s assistant.

That role gave him an opportunity to see Japan and its people in a different way. While serving with the chaplain, Owens learned from a Japanese #_msocom_4pastor that his two young daughters had been trained with rifles to fight to the death if American forces invaded mainland Japan. The story made a lasting impression, leading Owens to believe that the atomic bombings, despite the difficult moral questions surrounding them, ultimately saved millions of Japanese and American lives.

His time in Japan also changed his mind about the people who had so recently been America's enemies. He saw a population struggling to survive, and instead of leaving Japan with a feeling of bitterness, Owens found himself wanting to help people trying to rebuild their lives. Sometimes that desire manifested itself in small ways, like saving ice cream from the military mess hall for the Japanese man who ran the elevator in his building. One day the man saw a Christian pin on Owens’ uniform. “You don’t smoke?” the man asked him with which Owens replied “No”.

“Okay, I will not smoke, and I will be a Christian too,” Owens remembers the man responding. For Owens, experiences like these became more than passing moments. During his time in the military, he began to discover a call to ministry, turning what had started as a two-year period of military service into a foundational pillar for the life that followed.

His story is not one of combat. Owens never fought in the battles that formed the memories of many of his generation’s other soldiers. His service, however, left a lasting mark. As he reflected on a lifetime of global leadership and academic excellence, Dr. Donald Dean Owens always traced his remarkable journey to the foundation he built in uniform. Although he spent less than two years as a cryptographer in World War II, he was always grateful for the discipline and character he picked up in the Army.

"My experience in the military was probably one of the most revolutionary, exciting, wonderful experiences I ever had.” Said Owens.

For today’s soldiers on their own missions, Dr. Owens’ legacy is a powerful reminder that the habits that are built in service shape a lifetime of impact stating how very proud he is of them, their uniforms and attention to duty and discipline.

“Remember what we're about, why were there, why we're needed,” Owens said as his parting remarks.

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