Sixty years after he was shot down over Germany, B-17 navigator Sam Lum of Land O'Lakes remembers his nine months in German hands.
By MOLLY MOORHEAD, Times Staff Writer
LAND O'LAKES - Sam Lum tilts his head back and closes his eyes behind thick glasses as he tells the story.
It was 60 years ago today that Lum, then a 25-year-old Army Air Corps navigator, set out on his 18th mission in World War II in a B-17 bomber. The target was Hamburg, Germany.
"We didn't reach Hamburg. We got hit," Lum said in an interview Tuesday. "A fire broke out on one of the starboard engines, and the pilot could not quench it."
First the gunners jumped. Then Lum noticed his friend, bombardier Joe Richter, had been hit by a piece of flak and was bleeding below the knee. With flames creeping closer toward the fuel tank, Lum strapped Richter's chest pack on for him and pushed him out of the plane. Then he jumped himself.
Next, the pilot, Nathan Adler, popped the hatch and ejected. The plane exploded moments later.
The crew floated safely down to earth and into the outstretched arms of the German army. They would not be free for nine months.
Lum, now 85, was born in Hawaii to parents of Chinese descent. He was working in Honolulu as a boat builder when Japan bombed the naval base at nearby Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
"I didn't realize it was a bomb," Lum said.
Then he switched on the radio. "This is the real McCoy," the announcer said.
Lum was convinced that Japanese forces would invade on land soon. He quickly signed up for service.
"I said I'd be damned if we lost the war," Lum said. "Japan and Germany and Italy would run the world and the rest of us would be slaves. So I said, "I've got to fight.' "
Lum went to pilot training but popped his ankle during a pickup football game.
"I washed out as a pilot," he said. "So I had to wait until I got called as a navigator."
He excelled at the job of directing the plane, giving coordinates and aiming bombs. His instruments were a compass, a sextant and the stars. He graduated as a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps. The Air Force didn't exist yet.
Lum seemed to dodge a bullet after his original crew was shot down while flying a mission without him. It was Lum's day off.
So he flew his first 17 missions with the second crew, and always came back unharmed.
"We got all peppered full of holes, but they patched it up," he said.
After that fateful 18th mission, Lum found himself near the town of Wesermunde. He was grateful it was the German army, not the more hardcore Nazi units, who picked him up.
He was taken to a prisoner of war camp known as Stalag Luft III, and life wasn't all bad, save the hunger.
"Everything was all hunky-dory over there," Lum said, adding that no one was beaten or tortured and the Geneva Conventions were strictly followed.
He wrote in a diary provided by the Red Cross, mostly idle thoughts and accounts of the day's meals and activities. Sometimes he had hot water for breakfast and lunch.
He battled lice and smoked cigarettes and gave the diary to his buddies to draw sketches of life in the camp. He occasionally watched plays put on by other prisoners.
There was never enough food, even for the Germans. The camp was next to a railroad yard where supplies came in. It was always getting bombed.
Nine months later, Russian forces closed in, and the camp was evacuated.
"It was midnight and they said "Everybody out on the road,' " Lum said.
The whole population of the camp - Lum thinks there were thousands - had to march through the January snow.
"That was a terrible, terrible time," he said. "I didn't have any feeling under my feet."
They marched overnight, and then a train took him to another camp in Nuremburg.
Spring came, and he made another long march to Mooseburg. But this one was different.
"The hike was a joy, a pleasure. It was warm," Lum said, smiling at the memory.
People along the way gave him food.
And in May in Mooseburg, Gen. George Patton's Army freed them. The war was ending.
"The German guards all of a sudden disappeared, so we knew Patton must be nearby."
Lum went through the chow line twice. Today, Lum lives with his wife, May, and their son's family in Land O'Lakes. They moved last month from Maryland. The baby is Jack, but Lum calls him Jake because it sounds strong.
Lum said he never worried much about making it home from the war. Before he shipped out, his mother took him to a fortune teller to calm her fears.
"He looked at my face, he looked at my eyes and said, "He's coming home,' " Lum said.
His son, Wallace, confirms Lum's bright outlook.
"I think Dad was always optimistic that it was preordained that he was coming home," he said.
He speaks with pride and awe about the story of his father's heroism.
"I try to think, would I be brave enough to do all these things in those circumstances?" said Wallace, 48. "It was a fight for the freedom of the world."
But Sam Lum is much more matter-of-fact about the war and his role in it. He doesn't even take credit for rescuing his friend in the ill-fated B-17. It was Adler, the pilot, Lum says, who kept the plane out of a spin and saved them all.
"I'm so glad Nathan Adler had the guts to hang on so we all got out."
©2004 St. Petersburg Times