I can't believe I forgot his birthday.
My birthday was a week ago. I really
don't care about that; as you know, I actually worked through it.
But I have a birthday buddy, someone who shares the date with me, and
I can't believe I forgot to mention his big day.
Especially because, had he lived, he
would've been 100.
Alvar Liimatainen was born and died
decades before I was even a possibility. I wouldn't know that he had
even been around were it not for Loraine's massive research project
into World War II casualties. Once I saw he was born on December
4th—just like me—I became intrigued. And once I saw just how
amazing he was, even during his short life, I was hooked.
A couple of years ago, on the 70th
anniversary of his death, Loraine put together a little memorial for
him in Marquette's Park Cemetery. Because we share a birthday, she
asked me to say a few things about him. So to make up for the fact
that I (gulp) forgot that his big birthday last week, here's the
speech.
Happy birthday, Oliver. Sorry I forgot
your 100th.
*****
“As far as I can tell, there haven’t
been a lot of noteworthy people who’ve been born on December 4th.
There’s Jay-Z; there’s Dennis Wilson, the late drummer of the
Beach Boys; and there’s some British guy who did something with
economics back in the 1700s. They may be famous; whether or not
they’re noteworthy is another matter altogether.
So let me introduce you to someone born
on December 4th who, while he’s in no way famous,
certainly is most noteworthy. Alvar Liimatainen was born in December
4th, 1919, to Albin and Lempi Liimatainen. He was one of
four children growing up in what was then referred to as Marquette’s
“Piqua Location”; in fact, you can still see the family house if
you’re riding or walking down the bike path near Sherman and
Cleveland streets. Oliver, as absolutely everyone knew him, was a
typical kid in the 1920s and 30s; he had a paper route, he tried his
hand at ski jumping, he sang, and he ran track. He was most atypical
when he received an award at his graduation in 1937 honoring him as
never having missed a day of school his entire academic career. Not
one.
This wouldn’t be the only time in his
life Oliver was out of the ordinary.
After graduation he worked as a bellhop
at the Hotel Northland before joining the Army Air Corp for what was
supposed to be a three-year hitch in 1940. He had hoped to become a
pilot; however, he was given training as a radio operator and
assigned to a bomber crew that found themselves being sent to places
like Brazil and Egypt before ending up on the island of Java the day
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The Japanese also attacked other
U.S. installations that day, including the base where Oliver was
stationed. He found himself in the middle of the airfield when the
raid began, and took cover in a foxhole made out of sandbags. He
received a mild concussion and was put in the base hospital for a few
weeks. He didn’t mind, though; in a letter to his brother, he said
in the hospital he was finally getting food that was edible and,
quote, “that helps a lot”.
The next couple of months were busy for
Oliver and his crew. They flew 22 bombing missions in the South
Pacific. They were attacked by enemy fighters 15 times; Oliver
himself was credited with shooting down three of those fighters and
damaging three others. On August 6th, 1942, Oliver’s
crew—commanded by captain Harl Pease, and co-piloted by an
Australian, Fredrick Earp—left their base in Australia for a
bombing mission over Lae, New Guinea. On the way there, they had one
of the engines on their B-17 fail, and had to return to base. This
wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; what happened next was.
When Oliver’s crew returned to base,
they knew that they had another mission the next day. They didn’t
know what it was; they just had been told it was important. So the
entire crew found another B-17 that was barely flight worthy and
worked all day and all night to make sure it could get off the
ground. On just three hours sleep, Oliver and his crew took off the
next morning on a mission they knew was important but didn’t know
why. As it turns out, their mission that day was bombing a Japanese
fighter base at Rabaul Island. They were to bomb the base so that
the fighters could not attack U.S. Marines that would be, at the same
time, landing on Guadalcanal. They had no idea why they were flying
the mission; they just knew they had to fly it.
Oliver’s crew as one of thirteen
bombers that made it successfully to Rabaul and dropped their bombs
on the Japanese base. On the way back home to Australia, their
jerry-rigged plane started having mechanical problems, and fell
behind the rest of the squadron. Thirty enemy fighters had by then
appeared in the sky, and since Oliver’s plane had fallen behind the
rest of the group, they bore the brunt of the attack. The B-17 was
last seen losing altitude over the jungle, with no parachutes
observed leaving the aircraft.
With that, Alvar “Oliver”
Liimatainen became the city of Marquette’s first service casualty
of World War II.
Several months after the incident, each
member of the crew was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for
their work the day before and their actions that fateful day.
Captain Pease was also awarded the Medal of Honor, and to this day,
there is a Pease Air Force Base near his hometown in New Hampshire.
But it wasn’t until 1946 that searchers discovered the wreckage of
the plane, as well as two bodies. They moved those remains to the
National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, where they
spent several years trying to identify the remains. It took until
1950 for them to be able to distinguish that one of the bodies
belonged to the Australian co-pilot I had mentioned earlier. In
fact, that was thanks to the discovery of a shoulder patch of a
member of the Australian Air force. After studying dental and
physical records, the other body was identified as Oliver’s. His
parents asked that his body be returned to his hometown, and it was
on this spot on August 7th, 1951—nine years to the day
after his death—that Oliver was laid to final rest.
A total of 72 men and women from the
city of Marquette died in World War II. Some are buried not far from
here; some are buried in the countries in which they died, and some
were never found. They all have stories like Oliver’s, and that’s
one reason why we wanted to hold this ceremony tonight. Whether they
were born on April 20th or July 7th or December
4th, they were all among the most extraordinary people
ever born on that particular day. They were the men and women who
did things that most of us could never imagine doing ourselves, and
they were the men and women we honor tonight.
Alvar “Oliver” Liimatainen. Born
December 4th, 1919. Died August 7th, 1942.
Laid to rest here August 7th, 1951. Thank you for your
service. And thank you for being extraordinary.”
