FORT MITCHELL — The old men stood side-by-side in the Ivanhoe Room at the Drawbridge Inn, singing all four verses of “America The Beautiful.”

        When they came to the first two lines of the third stanza, they could well have been singing about themselves:

        O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife, who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life.

        They are the men of the 504th Bomb Group, a World War II outfit that was a major part of the U.S. Army Air Force campaign to bomb Japanese cities such as Tokyo and Yokohama in advance of an expected invasion of Japan.

ABOUT THE 504TH BOMB GROUP

• In 1945, the last year of World War II, the 504th Bomb Group was an indispensable part of the 20th Air Force's bombing campaign over Japan. The group's two B-29 squadrons, based on Tinian Island in the Mariana group, had an aircraft population that averaged nearly 50 men in the last months of the war, in addition to hundreds of ground personnel.     In its bombing raids, the 504th:     • Destroyed or severely damaged 602 major Japanese war factories.     • Dropped 3.1 million tons of bombs.     • Was responsible for “Operation Starvation,” the mining of Japanese homeland waters.     The 504th paid dearly for its part in the war:     • 26 aircraft were lost in combat operations, carrying more than 260 crew members.     • While dozens of crew members of the 504th were taken prisoner after being shot down over Japan, only 18 survived to be liberated after “V-J Day.”

        From Thurday through Sunday, 60 veterans, along with their families, held a reunion at the Drawbridge Inn — a chance for fellowship, relaxation and a rekindling of the camaraderie they shared nearly 60 years ago at their base in the Marianas Islands.

        “There are fewer and fewer of us each year,” said Tom Schoolcraft of San Antonio, the reunion's organizer. “But we will always get together, as long as there are some of us around.”

        Of the 16 million American men and women who served in World War II, about 5 million are alive.The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that number will be cut in half in five years.

        But Mr. Schoolcraft said that veterans of the 504th are discovered by other group members all the time through Web sites and the reunions they hold every other year.

        Saturday afternoon, at a memorial service in the Ivanhoe Room, the men — all between the ages of 75 and 85 — sat silently as the names of their comrades who were killed in action — nearly 160 — were read.

        Most bowed their heads; occasionally, a gray or white head would raise at the name of a friend.

        Each man in the room had his own story to tell of a time when he was very young and, often, very scared.

        There were men like James Martin of Martinsville, Va., whose plane was shot down over Japan three months before the war's end, and he and 11 fellow crew members were taken prisoner.

        “They took us out in a clearing in the woods,” Mr. Martin said. “We had to dig a big hole in the ground. We knew it was going to be our grave.”

        Then, he said, a Japanese officer called for mats and wicker baskets to be placed on the ground next to the line of prisoners.

        “He wanted something to catch our heads in,” Mr. Martin said. “Then this little dressed-up fellow — he looked like a street car conductor to me — showed up with some papers in his hand and he gave them to the officer,” Mr. Martin said. “The execution was called off immediately.”

        Both he and the pilot of his plane, Marcus Worde, ended up in a prison camp run by the Japanese secret police in Tokyo where they lived in squalid conditions — 16 men in an 8-by-10-foot cell — and were beaten daily with fists and every imaginable tool their captors found handy — a saber scabbard, a stick, a rifle butt.

        “I remember once going through 16 straight hours of interrogation,” said Mr. Worde of San Antonio. “They would beat me until I passed out. Then they'd pour water on me to wake me up and start over again.”

        It was a horrible experience, Mr. Worde said, but the quality of the men who were his fellow prisoners made it bearable.

        “They were the best men I have ever known,” Mr. Worde said, looking around at his 504th brothers. “Some of them in this very room.”

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