It’s with a heavy coronary heart that I came across this clip from our archives.
This solemn activity, reaching again into the pages of the Boston Herald each week to assist us all to always remember, is one I do with honor. Today with emotion.
Thomas J. Jones, 24, died out within the Atlantic Ocean serving with the U.S. Coast Guard simply earlier than the Pearl Harbor assault on Dec. 7, 1941. How quickly earlier than? I don’t know — but. As you possibly can see within the clip above, he was “missing.”
Missing within the chilly Atlantic as German U-boats have been knocking off oil tankers as they headed to England to assist the Brits. That’s the story, however there’s received to be extra to this.
It’s one among many analysis initiatives, however this one hits proper to the center.
“Tommy” was my uncle. He was from Lowell the place my mom and father have been born. My mother seldom speaks of her massive brother, besides to say she has a hazy reminiscence of him saying goodbye to the household on the finish of the driveway. She was little and he was off to the battle.
“My life belongs to my country,” the clip says my grandmother shared about his final phrases. “and if this country goes to war, I’ll be there fighting for it. If I die, so what? It’s the least I can do for my country. It’s the America of all of us. And it’s worth fighting and dying for.”
Amen, Tommy. Amen and relaxation in peace.
The clip goes on to inform that my uncle was “missing in action against the enemy.” My mother typically stated her mom proudly displayed a gold star in her window in the course of the battle. She knew the ache of loss earlier than numerous others. I by no means knew my grandmother, however I ponder how she stayed so sturdy for thus lengthy.
Mu uncle, the clip provides, was as soon as stabbed by a Japanese soldier “in a Chinese city” whereas serving abroad in 1938. He recovered.
The clip directs the reader to a leap web page, “Page 10.” That’s the place I’m heading subsequent to seek out that lacking clip.
I’ve lengthy puzzled what it might have been wish to develop up with an uncle who may share tales of the battle. Would he be a Herald reader? Probably. I do know he was in our sister paper the Lowell Sun.
What would he consider the politics of at the moment? The pandemic? What did he study from surviving in the course of the Great Depression?
I can’t erase that he was killed in motion, however I can maintain digging.
All archive concepts are welcome. Email away to [email protected]. You by no means know what you’ll discover.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”