SPRINGVILLE, Utah — Helen Joe Stoddard has seen 101 Memorial Days, and to her, each one has been sweet. She loves this country. Very much.
Helen’s late husband, Loren, was a B-24 pilot in World War II, and was shot down on May 29th, 1944, about 50 miles off the coast of Saipan in the South Pacific.
“16 months he was missing in action,” said Helen Joe. “It was terrible.”
She had nothing but a telegram from the military saying Captain Loren Stoddard and his crew were missing in action. Naturally, anyone would think the worst.
But not Helen Joe.
“The last line of my Patriarchal Blessing (a blessing given in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) said I would marry a good man, and that I would have a family,” said Helen Joe. They had no children at the time, but those words were enough to keep her faith alive that her husband was still alive. She repeated, “He is a very good man.”
Captain Stoddard and his crew were flying a bombing and reconnaissance mission over Saipan, the northernmost island in the Northern Mariana Islands north of Guam in the South Pacific. While in enemy territory, one of the planes in their group lost an engine and started to fall behind. Alone, they would have been easily shot down by Japanese forces.
Captain Stoddard surveyed his crew, and to a man, they determined to stay with the crippled aircraft to provide cover with the guns of their B-24, knowing they too would be in grave danger.
And sure enough, a fierce dogfight developed with Japanese fighters. As Captain Stoddard’s crew struggled to protect the other plane, one Japanese Zero took aim at Captain Stoddard’s B-24 and fired. Flames erupted behind the number 2 engine on the left wing, and started to spread. Captain Stoddard fought to keep the plane in the air, but it became clear what was about to happen. He and his men prepared to crash into the Pacific Ocean.
Using all his training, Captain Stoddard took all the measures he could to lessen the coming impact with the water. But the B-24’s hydraulic system had failed, and the flaps couldn’t be extended. Rather than landing in the water with the plane slowed by extended flaps and slats, they hit the water at about 120 mph, 40 miles an hour faster than a customary landing.
Because this was also a reconnaissance mission, the other planes in the group had cameras, and documented Captain Stoddard’s B-24 going down. The burning plane broke apart on impact, still on fire. The six crew members aft of the bomb bay lost their lives in the crash. But Captain Stoddard, his co-pilot, navigator, and bombardier all survived. Loren and his co-pilot’s cockpit seats tore loose from their moorings, and both flew through the wind screen, the men still strapped in their seats.
The impact knocked them unconscious, but the blast of sea water quickly revived them. Coming to his senses under water, Loren realized he was sinking fast and quickly unbuckled himself from his seat, which continued to drop into the deep. Desperate for air, he cried out in his mind.
"He just said, 'Lord, I need help!'” recalled Helen Joe. “He says he bumped his head on this life raft that had come out of the airplane.”
Most of the World War II aircraft that flew over water were equipped with uninflated life rafts that were positioned just under the outer skin of the plane. Upon water landing, they were designed to deploy and self-inflate.
“And so he got into the life raft,” said Helen Joe. One of the surviving crew members was on what was left of the burning wing of the B-24, still full of fuel and about to explode.
“[Loren] said jump!” remembers Helen Joe. The crew member’s legs had been seriously injured in the crash, and he exclaimed, “I can’t!” With the wing about to explode, Captain Stoddard sternly and urgently replied, “Jump! That’s an order!” True to the command of his superior officer and the man he considered a dear and trusted friend, he jumped from the wing, and was retrieved from the water, as the wing became engulfed in flames.
The two other crew members were similarly collected from the water, and all four positioned themselves sideways in the two-man raft, face up in the sun of the South Pacific Ocean.
Each raft carried a supply of drinking water for two, along with C-rations meant to last several days, and crude fishing tackle. The men knew they were about 50 miles from Saipan when they crashed, but didn’t know how long they’d be at sea before they either washed ashore or were picked up, hopefully by friendly forces. Each rationed the fresh water to one gulp a day. The paddles that came with the raft were somewhat effective, but in truth the tiny vessel was at the mercy of the currents.
It took about three days for the men to finally reach the coast of Japanese-occupied Saipan, which they had bombed just days before. As they came ashore with their raft, they were met by Japanese troops assigned to keep an eye on the coast. "And it was interesting,” recalls Helen Joe, “because the Japanese spoke good English, having graduated from the University of California.”
The four American fliers were sent to a Prisoner of War camp in Yokohama, not far from Tokyo. As it turned out, it was the same Prisoner of War camp in which 1936 Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, who had joined the war effort, was confined and tortured, as depicted in the movie Unbroken.
When he was 12 years old, Captain Stoddard’s father died of a heart attack, leaving him and his brothers, who were all excellent musicians, to provide for their mother and the rest of the family. But their living conditions were extremely sparse and very difficult at best. So ever the optimist, upon arrival at the. prison camp, Captain Stoddard took a look around and determined the conditions weren’t all that bad.
But as time went on, life in the camp became terrible. Minutes turned into hours, hours to days, days to weeks, and weeks to months. Forced labor and beatings were routine. The food was awful and often inedible. Even though the Red Cross had sent aid packets, the prisoners never saw them. And letters home were never permitted.
With the forced deafening silence from Loren, who was confined in mind, body, and spirit, Helen Joe waited, still certain he was alive. She said, “My family had no idea what to say to me.” So many other families with loved ones reported missing in action would never hear from them again. She moved to Berkley, California, where she got a job working in a nursery, watching the children of other military mothers who were working while their husbands fought for freedom in countless places around the world. In that setting no one but her knew about Loren’s status as MIA. And she didn’t talk about it.
It wasn’t until August of 1945, about 16 months after being shot down, that things changed. After failed negotiations with the Japanese, and the prospects of heavy U.S. and Japanese casualties in the anticipated invasion of Japan, President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima died either instantly, or over the course of several extremely painful days.
But something strange happened in the Prisoner of War camp where Captain Stoddard and the other U.S. captives were being held. Once the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the devastating destruction became clear, the previously absent Red Cross packets suddenly appeared, and the Japanese guards who had been so ruthless became friendly. While Captain Stoddard and the others had no idea what was going on in the outside world, they sensed something dramatic had happened.
Then, three days later, when the second U.S. atomic weapon decimated the city of Nagasaki, the camp became eerily quiet. All the guards and prison command staff disappeared, leaving the gates to the prison wide open. At first, the prisoners were unsure of what to do, but then realized their captors were not coming back, and began to make their way to freedom, and ultimately into the company of their comrades in arms who had come to retrieve them.
Word filtered back to Helen Joe that her dear Loren, the good man the Lord had promised she would marry and with whom she’d create a family, was alive! His weight had fallen to 112 pounds, but he was ALIVE!
She never doubted.
Helen Joe remembers, "When they did find him, they took him to the Philippines for a month. We didn't know that. They took them there to fatten them up.”
Steadily gaining strength and weight, Captain Stoddard sent his dear Helen Joe the telegram she’d being praying for, and knew would come eventually.
To Helen Stoddard, Gridley, California
“STILL WAITING TRANSPORTATION FROM MANILA GETTING AWFULLY IMPATIENT SEE YOU BE HOME FEELING WONDERFUL MISS YOU MUCH ALL MY LOVE LOREN STODDARD 550P”
Finally, Loren’s brother called Helen Joe from his farm in Woodland, California, about an hour from San Francisco.
"And he called me he says, Loren just called me from San Francisco. And he says, “Come and pick me up,”” she remembers.
She had always known it would happen. At his brother’s place in Woodland, she recalled ”He came in, and he looked around, and of course, we had hugs and kisses and so forth. And then he looked around, and he said, “Where's Aaron?” And his brother had been killed him in the Battle of the Bulge." As a consequence of time, the echoes of America’s “Greatest Generation” are beginning to fade. But Helen Joe’s voice remains strong, a warning for all of us.
“They just take America for granted, and the government for granted. They just don't realize what freedom really is.” “And what it costs,” I added. “Yeah. Lives,” she said. I continued, “It almost cost you your husband.” “Right. Yeah. Hm hm,” she concluded. Helen Joe Stoddard will turn 102 years old on Halloween this year. This delightful centenarian has the wit, charm, vitality, and humor of someone half her age. And she still counts her age in half-years.
With both of us laughing hysterically, I asked her, “What’s up with that (counting in half years)?
She replied, “When you get this old every month counts!”
Loren passed away several years ago. She misses him dearly, especially the closeness they shared. They could talk about everything and anything. Honesty was the core of their love for each other. She is anxious to be with him again.
Loren Stoddard was a great American hero. Truly, this story doesn’t scratch the surface of the things he did in uniform, and went on to do in civilian life. He survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, at first unknowingly returning a wave from a Japanese Zero pilot, about to drop his bombs on the U.S. fleet sitting in the harbor that Sunday morning.
He was a highly decorated pilot, and stayed in contact with each of his surviving crew members, visiting them at their homes around the country. And for years, members of the crew of the plane they were protecting when he was shot down in 1944, met yearly to pay homage to Captain Loren Stoddard and his crew, “who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life,” knowingly facing death to protect their fellow patriots in their crippled aircraft. That disabled plane actually made it back to base, and those crew members went on to live their lives after the war because of the sacrifice of Captain Stoddard and his men, most of whom paid for it with their lives.
Maybe this Memorial Day we can all reflect on Loren Stoddard, and the countless other like him, who saved the world from tyranny back then, and continue to do so today.
