The front-page story that greeted Tacoma News Tribune readers on Aug. 31, 1945, must have gladdened their war-weary hearts.
Their hometown war hero, Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, had returned from the dead.
In true Boyington style but not of his design, the story of his surprise rescue – from a Japanese prison camp in the Pacific after 20 months of secret captivity – upstaged the day’s other big story: Gen. Douglas MacArthur opened his headquarters in Tokyo.
The photograph that dominated the front page that Friday showed some of the 18,000 U.S. Marines and British soldiers marching ashore in Japan in full battle gear. There were no bullets flying, no more dying; the war in the Pacific was over.
Two days later, on Sept. 2, Tacoma would read of the “grim but colorful” surrender ceremony by the Japanese to MacArthur aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, restoring “peace once more to a war-ravaged world.”
But on that Friday of the Labor Day weekend, the pugnacious face of Pappy with his leather helmet and fighter-pilot goggles stared out at readers. The man who’d grown up in Tacoma, shot down 28 Japanese planes and won the Medal of Honor after his disappearance wasn’t dead, as most everyone thought.
He was shot down Jan. 3, 1944, over Rebaul near the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea.
By then, his legend had already been written.
Born Dec. 4, 1912, he reportedly took his first airplane ride from a famous barnstormer when he was 6 years old and living in St. Maries, Idaho.
Boyington’s parents divorced when he was a child. His stepfather was an alcoholic, and the family moved often.
The family came to Tacoma in 1926, and Boyington graduated from Lincoln High School. In high school he took up wrestling, which one writer said Boyington put to good use throughout his life in impromptu wrestling matches when he had “a few too many.”
He graduated from the University of Washington in 1934. After a year working for The Boeing Co., he joined the Marine Corps.
He first made a name for himself in World War II with the Flying Tigers in China, and in 1942 helped form what became known as the “Black Sheep” squadron.
Operating in the Pacific, the flyers fought their way to fame in just 84 days, recording 197 planes destroyed or damaged, plus ships sunk, according to a story on AcePilots.com about Boyington and the Black Sheep.
In four months Boyington alone shot down 22 enemy aircraft, adding to six other kills in China.
He finally was shot down during a large dogfight and was presumed lost.
His mother, Grace Hallenbeck of Okanogan, Okanogan County, never gave up hope, according to an Associated Press story. She had frequently told newspapers she thought her son would return, though she never heard from him during those 22 months.
Boyington’s story of his capture and his treatment as a prisoner was hair-raising.
“I had 20-millimeter wounds in my head, neck, arms and ear and a broken ankle,” the Marine ace told reporters after his rescue. “My main gas tank blew up. I flipped the Corsair on her back, unfastened my safety belt and dropped 1,200 feet to the water, stunned.”
In the Pacific with a useless life vest, he treaded water while enemy planes strafed him until they ran out of ammunition.
After finding his lifeboat, he stayed afloat until a Japanese submarine picked him up and took him to Rabaul. His captors did not treat him as a hero and finally moved him to Japan.
“It was here I was given the baseball bat treatment,” he said. “It consisted of standing with my hands tied while a guard slugged my back and legs as hard as he could. My rump was so swollen I could see it over my shoulder. Then I got slapped in the jaw about 300 times.”
The Japanese never announced his capture, according to The Associated Press, and the world found out only after fellow prisoners placed pieces of wood in the prison yard that spelled out “Pappy Boyington Here.” The war had ended two weeks earlier.
Boyington didn’t find out about the Medal of Honor until after he was rescued. He also had been awarded the Navy Cross.
His fortunes changed after the war. Financial instability, divorces and marriages, and battles with alcoholism dogged him throughout his life.
He became a celebrity again in 1958, when he published his well-received memoir, “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” The upturn in his life didn’t last. But in the mid-1970s, the TV show “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” loosely based on his memoir, introduced him to a new generation.
The legendary ace, if not the man himself, was back on top for a few years.
In 1988, Boyington died after a long battle with cancer.
Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692
This is one of a series of stories appearing during The News Tribune’s 125th year. Every Sunday we look at what happened during the same week sometime in the past 125 years. To suggest a week or an event for an upcoming story, e-mail your idea and any details to randy.mccarthy@thenewstribune.com. “Pappy” Boyington wasn’t the only South Sound prisoner rescued Aug. 31, 1945, from a Japanese prison camp.
Sgt. Ward B. Lyons, 24, of Parkland was liberated from the same camp in Japan. He’d been captured the previous May after he parachuted from a crippled B-29 bomber.
“He’s got a 9-month-old daughter, Rebecca Ann, whom he has never seen,” Lyon’s wife, Doreen, excitedly told The News Tribune.
She enjoyed the first Labor Day holiday in peacetime in nearly four years.
That holiday has a special connection to Tacoma, according to a News Tribune story that weekend.
John Harmon, father of Tacoma resident Cora Thorning, first introduced a bill in the Wisconsin Legislature in 1873 to set aside one day of rest and recreation for each year “for the laboring classes.”
Wisconsin approved the holiday, and Labor Day spread throughout the states and territories.
Mike Archbold, The News Tribune
