United States Marine Corps Reserve colonel Gerald Sanders, who was the division's recreational officer and played college football at Louisiana Tech, approached second lieutenant and quarterback Angelo Bertelli to help him.
The two received equipment from United States Navy sailors, while they built bleachers and goal posts out of wood scraps.
Bertelli and Sanders were teammates on the Nagasaki Bears, which consisted of players from colleges like Colorado State, Duquesne, Texas Tech, and UCLA.
In the first half, he threw two touchdown passes to Duquesne alumnus George Pukoski and Benjamin Franklin High School (New York)'s Pat Donat; although Bertelli missed one of the extra points, his team led 13–0 at halftime.
"[3] In a 2005 interview with The New York Times, Bertelli's son Mike quipped, "My dad didn't lose any sleep over it, but of all the games he played in, he remembered that incident.
[5] When Bertelli returned to the United States later in the year and signed with the All-America Football Conference's Los Angeles Dons, he recruited Atom Bowl players Bill Joslin and Gorham Graham, who were still stationed in Japan, to join him.