On March 5, 1945, a US Navy Corsair fighter plane from the escort carrier USS Natoma Bay while attacking a target on Iwo Jima was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft shells. On fire and out of control, the Corsair crashed into the ocean. The pilot was US Navy pilot Lieutenant Junior Grade James McCready Huston Jr. He was listed as Missing in Action and ultimately declared dead in the ship's log book. Huston, born on October 22, 1923 had grown up in Pennsylvania with an early interest in airplanes. He entered the Navy in 1944, became a Navy aviator, was assigned the escort carrier USS Natoma Bay that took part in Pacific naval battles during 1944 and 1945. He was one of the 19 pilots from that ship killed in the war.

On April 10, 1998, James Leininger was born in San Francisco, California and soon after James with his parents, Bruce and Andrea moved to Louisiana. At the age of two, James began having nightmares. According to Soul Survivor, "On May 1, 2000, when James was just over 2 years of age, Andrea [his mother] heard her sons voice pierce the night's calm: 'Airplane crash! Plane on fire! Little Man ca't get out!' Andrea ran to his bedroom and saw James struggling like he was trapped. The same nightmare kept recurring four to five times a week." After one nightmare, Andrea asked who the little man in the plane was, James replied: Me." When Bruce [the father] asked James who shot his plane down, James stated, "The Japanese. When he asked James how knew that it was the Japanese who shot down his plane, he replied: "The big red sun."

James' knowledge of the war details, of other Navy pilots, the Corsair aircraft's construction and operating detailscould not be explained. At one point the parents learned a retired World War 2 Corsair wsa on display at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Texas and took their son there. More details emerged. The boy "walked around as though he was conducting a pre-flight check like pilots normally do before boarding the aircraft they were about to fly. He was familiar with the technical names of the Corsair's equipment and their functions. He knew the wartime history that Corsairs flew from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Natoma Bay in March 1945 during the Battle of Iwo Jima. He knew the difference between the famous Japanese Zero fighter and the smaller Tony fighter aircraft and later mentioned that during that battle he had shot down a Japanese Tony aircraft.

The parents went from being mistified by the young child's intimate knowledge of a World War 2 event to gradually exploring the possibilty and then accepting that their son's soul had been reincarnated from a previous person -- a Navy pilot killed when his Corsiair was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire. The parents kept researching. That led them to visit a reunion of the U.S.S. Natoma Bay's crew in 2002 where many more of James' detailed memories were confirmed. "One of the people who James saw at the Nimitz Museum was Bob Greenwald, who he recognized on sight and who he named correctly. When Bruce asked James how he knew that this man was Bob Greenwald, James said he had recognized Bob's voice," according to Soul Survivor.

Fifty-seven years after Navy pilot James Huston died in battle, young James Leininger met the former Navy crew who served with Huston the last hours of his life.

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