Ring points to lost flier: Project to reconnect WWII allies leads to Mapleton man
By Winston Ross The Register-Guard
MAPLETON - The news came by telephone.
A young Wayne Johnson was working at the U.S. Forest Service outpost in Mapleton when he got a call from military officials. His childhood buddy, U.S. Army Air Corps Sgt. Edgar Plowman Loomis, had gone down in the foggy mountains of Southeast Asia after a successful bombing run in Lashio, Burma. His body wasn't recovered.
It was June 3, 1942, and the first World War II casualty to hit the tiny logging town. Johnson had to deliver the message to Loomis' parents. Their only son was gone.
"It was tough," Johnson remembers. "What can you say?"
Not much, for the next 62 years. All that his family and friends would learn about the crash came from another pilot in the squadron: The bomber had skimmed the top of a mountain in a dense fog, and there was a flash. Nothing more.
But now there is news. A University of Oregon student believes he has found Loomis' remains and has spent several months searching for relatives and piecing together the Mapleton man's story.
A UO ring and World War II Army wings may have belonged to Sgt. Edgar Loomis.
The discovery was an accidental byproduct of graduate student Pat Lucas' work as director of the university's exchange program in China.
With some friends from both countries, Lucas founded a program called "Remembering Shared Honor" to reconnect Chinese and Americans with the days when they were allies in the fight against an invading Japan.
In researching the oral histories of several different veterans, Lucas encountered a man named Shengkui Duan in January. Duan is a bank manager in Tengchon, China, near the Burma border.
The banker had purchased or found a treasure trove of 3,000 artifacts gleaned from old crash sites along the stretch of Burmese mountains where dozens of planes were downed during the intense fighting after Japan occupied that portion of the country in 1942.
"Here, I've got this interesting ring," the banker told Lucas, holding it up for a closer look.
"Boom - it's a University of Oregon class ring," Lucas recounted. "I had to look at it four times before I finally believed my eyes."
He could barely make out the year: 1937. But Duan also had separate pieces of Loomis' military insignia, and Lucas later learned that the relics were found with scraps of a uniform and the bones of a hand or foot.
Lucas was intrigued. "I've got to figure this out," he told himself.
So the student worked his connections at the university, which keeps records of its World War II veteran alumni. The only UO student to go missing in mainland Asia was Edgar Loomis. He'd entered the school in 1933, which would have put him in the class of 1937 if he'd graduated. He must have bought the ring when he entered the school.
Searching for living links
Lucas contacted the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a branch of the Army that searches for the remains of lost soldiers and keeps a database on the circumstances of their disappearances. The agency confirmed that Loomis' plane was in a squadron of five others that had gone down in Burma, right where villagers had found the ring and insignia before selling them to Duan.
"I was sure," Lucas said. "It had to be Edgar Loomis."
So he set about trying to find Loomis' relatives. After checking all the matching names in the Eugene and Florence phone books, Lucas enlisted the help of a reporter from the Siuslaw News for a visit to several Mapleton families in late July.
They first found Loomis' grave marker in the Pioneer Memorial Cemetery. Then they went to Loomis' old school, which is now the town library, and they got a list of old-timers who might remember the man.
It wasn't long before Lucas ran into Wayne Johnson, who lives in Florence. Now 79, Johnson still has letters that Loomis wrote to him after heading to war.
"Dear (little) Swede," wrote Loomis in a March 25, 1942, letter to Johnson, using a nickname. "You little two-faced chump. For such a long time you haven't written, and when you do it says nothing. If I didn't get the Mapleton High School's monthly breeze and some letters from home I might think you were dead."
The two often gave each other a hard time, Johnson explained. But it was affectionate, alternating between good-natured ribbing and a vivid description of the soldier's surroundings.
"This place is a hell hole if there ever was one," Loomis wrote. "If we had a longer time to stay I'm afraid I'd have a little time to do behind bars. The first sargent (sic) is sure asking for it."
When Lucas contacted him last month about his old friend, Johnson said, "I was just flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it."
Lucas also contacted Gale Miller, who has lived in Mapleton since 1935 and grew up just down the street from Loomis. Oddly enough, she'd been talking to a friend about the lost airman only a day before she got Lucas' phone call.
Back when they heard Loomis had gone missing, Miller said, "Everybody was upset. It was a small community, and everybody's important. It's so sad his parents are gone."
A cousin gets the word
Despite those connections, Lucas had found no relatives. Loomis had a sister who had two boys, but the sister died, and no one knew what happened to her sons. But a story in the weekly newspaper sparked local memories. Friends of Mary Platt, Loomis' first cousin, called her as soon as they saw the article.
"It's kind of blown my mind," said the 83-year-old woman, who now lives in Veneta.
What shocked Platt wasn't just that her cousin's remains were found, but she was surprised to learn where they were discovered - without any sign of wreckage.
"We had always thought his plane had hit the mountains and suddenly demolished, so he would have been killed instantly," Platt said. "That means somehow he got out."
It also means the news was a mixture of pain and happiness for Platt.
"He must have gone through some suffering," Platt said. "He always said, `At least if I go down, I won't come back maimed or anything. I'll just be done for.' "
Platt also remembered a young man who would have given anything to get out of Mapleton. Nothing against the town, but by 1942, he had lived there long enough.
Loomis grew up along the banks of the Siuslaw River before roads and bridges were built there. The boy took a boat to school. He rowed to his favorite cousin's house to play.
"We did everything together," Platt said.
But Loomis didn't want to live out his years in Mapleton. He enrolled at the University of Oregon in 1933, but could attend only for a year before the family ran out of money. He went to work at the Mapleton shingle mill, but couldn't save enough money to return to school.
By the time Japan invaded China, Loomis was ready to join the fight. Listening to Adolf Hitler's "rants" on the radio, Platt remembers her cousin considering joining the Canadian military, frustrated that his own government wouldn't get involved.
Loomis got his wish. But his town lost one of its own.
Lucas hopes he can make something more of the discovery.
He has videotaped interviews with the people who knew Lucas for a documentary on the Remembering Shared Honor project, and he's working with Chinese officials on a memorial to honor the men who lost their lives in the crash that killed Loomis.
Lucas will send all the information and photographs he's collected back to Duan and the Chinese government.
"Our whole goal is to remember who these people were," Lucas said. "The Chinese consider these guys to be heroes."
Winston Ross can be reached at (541) 902-9030 or wross@ guardnet.com.
©2004 The Register-Guard unless labeled as being from the Associated Press (AP),in which case © 2004 Associated Press