On Feb. 20, 1941, the Catalina Islander began a weekly column that listed all of the Avalon residents who were serving in the armed forces.
The first bombs would not drop on Pearl Harbor for another 10 months, but the winds of war were already blowing and American merchant seaman were already dying in the Battle of the Atlantic. We all knew it was just a matter of time before the war came to America.
On Feb. 20, 1941, the Catalina Islander began a weekly column that listed all of the Avalon residents who were serving in the armed forces.
The first bombs would not drop on Pearl Harbor for another 10 months, but the winds of war were already blowing and American merchant seaman were already dying in the Battle of the Atlantic. We all knew it was just a matter of time before the war came to America.
In that February 1941 issue, the “Honor Roll” as it was called, featured a mere eight names. But by war’s end nearly five years later, the list had grown to more than 150 names.
As news of battlefield deaths trickled in to the Catalina Home Front, a small star would be placed to the right of the individual’s name, indicating that they had been “Killed in Action.” As a final epitaph to this series on World War II and its effect on Catalina, it was my desire to present to you, Dear Reader, who these individuals were, how they died, and where they are now. It is a project I have worked on for at least four years and it’s a project that, unfortunately, is not complete. Due to less-than-inspiring government recording-keeping, fading memories and the passing of friends and family members who could have contributed to this compilation, the finished product here still leaves much to be desired.
At the suggestion of our illustrious editor and office manager, Jennifer Leonhardi, I have decided to devote this week’s column to the six casualties about whom I could find little or no information. Next week I will focus on the remaining five KIA’s about which I have more information.
The idea behind the ordering of these two columns, of course, is that more information might come out of the historical woodwork over the course of the next week and can be included in the second instalment.
I am especially interested in the connection to Catalina that these men had.
I suspect some of them were not permanent residents of the Island, but were perhaps the relatives of property owners or even frequent visitors to the Island. Whatever their relationship to the Island, they were evidently deemed “local” enough to have their names listed in the Honor Roll each week.
The first “KIA” star to appear in the Honor Roll was placed next to the name of William Rexford Smith in the March 5, 1942, edition of the paper. Smith was an aviation cadet with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and was based at the newly-formed Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi, Texas, at the time of his death.
According to his obituary in the Catalina Islander, Smith was only 9 months old when the family moved to Avalon in 1919. He had spent most of his life on the Island, a place he “loved dearly,” and spent summers working as a deckhand on the glass bottom boats.
He graduated from junior high at Avalon Schools before the family moved to Santa Monica where he later graduated from Santa Monica High.
On the evening of March 2, 1942, Smith was practicing night dive bombing when his plane—probably a T-6 or a BT-13 Valient—crashed, killing him instantly. His parents, Sherman and Irene Smith, received the telegram in the early morning hours of March 3.
Today, William Rexford Smith can be found in plot L80-4 at the Los Angeles National Cemetery in West Los Angeles. Of the 11 casualties in the Avalon Honor Roll, geographically-speaking he is the closest to the Island.
Another one of the early KIA’s on the Honor Roll was “Johnny Botello”. Sandy Putnam is much too young to remember the war, but she does remember the Botello family and believes that Johnny died in the Bataan Death March in 1942. The Botellos were family friends and Johnny and Sandy’s uncle often worked on cars together in the garage at the family-owned residence at 117 Whittley Avenue. Military records do show a “Pete” Botello, who served in the 200th Coastal Artillery Regiment in the Philippines and who, in fact, was classified as KIA in the Death March, but he entered the service through the New Mexico National Guard. Whether or not it is the same Botello is unknown at this point.
Sandy also remembers the family of John “Jack” Voelkel, another name on the Honor Roll, but had no information about John. I did find a grave listing for “Jack Voelkel” at the Golden Gate National Cemetery south of San Francisco. According to the cemetery’s website, he was a Marine Corps private and was born January 27, 1922. He died on March 13, 1945, location unknown. He is listed by National Archives data as having had a sister, Mrs. Virginia Vivian Lund, in Alameda, California.
U.S. Navy Machinists Mate 1st Class Alvin Silva was born July 12, 1912, and died on February 4, 1944. According to the weekly Honor Roll, he was in the U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalion, or “Seabees.”
However, Gina Nichols, archivist for the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum at Port Hueneme can find no record of him. I did, however, manage to find a grave for “Silva, Alvin” at the Golden Gate National Cemetery. Then there were two names on the list that eluded virtually all attempts at identification. These names did not appear on any of the casualty reports for the Army, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard or Merchant Marine. They are Tom B. Jones and William Donner.
There were two possibilities for Jones, including a “Thomas Booker Jones” and a “Thomas B. Jones, Jr.” But the former hailed from Tennessee while the latter was from Maryland.
Thomas Booker Jones was in the Navy and is listed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines. Thomas Jones, Jr., was in the 17th Tank Battalion and is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery.
The name William Donner was the greatest enigma of them all. His name first appears in the Catalina Islander (with a “KIA” star next to it) in the April 22, 1943, edition of the paper. But in all of my internet searches and interviews with local Islanders, no one could place the name.
I could not find any “William Donner” or any variation thereof in any of the National Archives casualty reports for the Army, AAF, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard or Merchant Marine. In fact, no one even with the surname “Donner” is listed as having been killed during the war.
Next week, I will focus on the remaining five Islander’s killed in the war about whom, as mentioned earlier, I have a great deal more information.
If you have any information on the above individuals, please send it to Mysterious Island, c/o Catalina Islander, PO Box 428, Avalon, CA 90704, or send email to: jim@channelcatalina.com.
