Ball Turret Gunner of the B-24 “Lonesome Lady” which took off from Yontan Airfield, Okinawa on 28 July 1945 on a bombing mission against the Japanese battleship Haruna anchored in Kure Harbor by Hiroshima. After dropping their bombs, the plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and went into a vertical dive, crashing in a field near the town of Ikachi. The entire crew was able to bail out. Neal was taken prisoner by the Japanese, and was held at the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters in the center of Hiroshima. He was near the epicenter on 6 August 1945 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He survived the initial blast and died days later from the radiation poisoning