LA to Honolulu is like 2500 miles, so that's a problem. Anchorage to Tokyo is like 1 1/2 times that. Maybe they shipped them to Okinawa or the Philippines and flew from there.
There were still a lot of US airbases around Thailand when I was growing up there in the late 70s. None were still in use, but the nearby towns had an awful lot of English signage and American beer and cigarettes for sale.
So I did a quick lookup with Google. The C-47 has a range of around 2100 miles. It's over 8200 miles from LA to Bangkok and I know for certain they were flying out of Thailand during the Vietnam War. It's either in flight refueling, several shorter hops, or boats.
