12/7/2007 - An AFS Driver at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941
The late Thomas M. Sawyer, an AFS Driver has been an eyewitness to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. At the time Sawyer has been teaching English at the Iolani preparatory school in Honolulu, Hawaii. In his memoir (which he donated to the AFS Archives in 1986), Sawyer describes that fateful day:
“December 7th, 1941 started off as a normal Sunday morning. We were aroused at &:00, a half-hour later than on the normal school day, and gathered for breakfast at 8:00. During breakfast we noticed the “pop-pop-pop” sound of anti-aircraft fire somewhere in the distance, but we took it for granted that it was normal maneuvres and paid liitle attention. But since it was fun to watch the bursts chase the sleeve target across the sky, the students left breakfast in a hurry to watch the show from the veranda. We saw over the tops of palm trees in the distance to our right toward Pearl Harbor black anti-aircraft bursts peppering the whipped cream clouds.
We were just turning away when one of the teachers came running out of the dormitory shouting, “We’re being attacked!” “Who says so? we shouted back. “It’s on the radio right now!” “Oh it’s just practice. More propaganda.”
We all scattered to our radios. The broadcast of the Gospel Tabernacle from Salt Lake CIty was suddenly interrupted by the excited voice of Webley Edwards, the KGMB radio announcer, “The island of Oahu is under enemy attack! All Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel are ordered to their respective stations! The attacking planes have been tentatively identified as Japanese. Please be calm. I repeat, this is the real McCoy. The island of Oahu is under enemy attack All Army, Navy, and Marine Corps personnel report to stations at once!”
We decided to drive to the harbor to drop off Bert Ecklund, a sailor who was a friend of mine from my home town of Hillsdale, Michigan, The stream of honking cars gradually worked its way out of the narrow downtown streets onto the broad Dillingham Boulevard, the main route to Pearl Harbor. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines were running on the streets from every direction. Now the view was clearer and we could see a big horizontal funnel of black smoke blowing out toward the sea on our left from somewhere in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor about five miles ahead of us.
Above this the white clouds sihouetted an occasional tiny plane plunging like a mosquito straight down toward the smoke. All around the clouds were small, black, pockmarks of anti-aircraft bursts aimed at the tiny cluster of reddish, mosquito-like glittering planes heading over the harbor.
As we drove in fits and starts along the palm trees bordering the Boulevard, the traffic slowed to a standstill. The sky was empty of planes now. Where were the Army planes that were supposed to defend the islands? At the crossroads police and MP’s were directing all non-military trafic off to a side of the road on the right towards the mountains and back to Honolulu. We let Burt out to climb in a taxi with several other sailors and waved “Good luck!”. (Bert escaped injury and I met him again in Honolulu several months later.)
Then I got a scare of my life! Cruising slowly down this side road straight at us and only about 200 feet up came a low-winged red and white plane, the red circles of the Rising Sun distinct on its sides and wing tips, and a torpedo or a big bomb under its belly. I statred at it in fascination, thinking “Oh boy! Here we go!”, picturing it dropping a string of bombs straight down the road. However, it veered to the right and a moment later there was the sound of a great “SMACK”, We saw the black burst of an anti-craft shell about 200 feet in the air on the left side of the road. Later we saw six more red and silver planes streaking low over Dillingham Boulevard toward Pearl Harbor.
That night Honolulu was pitch black, not a light showing, martial law has been declared, all the schools were closed, and a curfew was in effect. Anyone caught on the streets after sundown without a military passwas liable to arrest.”
Sawyer graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. in 1939. Following Pearl Harbor, Sawyer returned to Kenyon College and taught at the Speech Department. He wanted to serve, but couldn’t enlist in the U.S. army because of chronic sinusitis. He was 25 years old when he joined the American Field Service as an ambulance driver in July of 1943. He was sent to India in October of 1943 and served with the 14th British Army in the Burma campaign in 1943-44. He participated in the battle of Kohima in 1944. Following his service in India and Burma Sawyer was transfered to Italy in January of 1945. He later served with the British Liberation Armies in Belgium, Holland and Germany. He was released from AFS in June of 1945.
After the war Sawyer joined the University of Michigan College of Engineering where he taught English until his retirement in 1986.
Sawyer asked Stephen Galatti in a letter dated September 7, 1945: “Is there any chance that the organization may again sponsor scholarships to foreign universities?” Stephen Galatti’s answered: “As regards AFS scholarships, the ones which were established after the last war will continue to function, but they are only to French Universities.”
During his service in Burma Sawyer picked up a Japanese flag and “belt-of-thousand stitches” near Sittaung on the Chindwin River. He wanted to return the flag to the Japanese soldier’s family. After many years he found out that the flag originally belonged to Asajiro Igarashi, who died in battle in Burma in September of 1944. Sawyer returned the flag and belt to Mrs. Igarashi, the widow of the soldier. Here’s an excerpt from his 1988 letter to Mrs. Igarashi:
“Everyone who was involved in those campaigns learned that war is hard, cruel. frightening business. And they now feel that those men who marched with them – and those who marched against them – have gone through the same trial and now together make up a brotherhood of men committed to a world based on law and justice rather than conflict and war.”
 |
Printer Friendly |
