World War II vet looks back on eventful life

There was a loud, metal-on-metal bump near the nose of the plane.

The starboard engines were hit, then the B-17's right wing. The bombardier was injured, the plane over Bremen, Germany, on fire.

Through the plane the pilot's voice boomed: "Attention! Attention! Prepare to bail out. Prepare to bail out."

As Samuel Lum recalled, there was barely a pause before Harvard-educated pilot Nate Adler urgently abridged his directions: "Bail out!" he called.

A Hawaii native spurred to fight in World War II after watching the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lum helped bombardier Joe Richter into his parachute and out of the plane; Richter would later have his leg amputated below the knee.

The sputtering plane was about 18,000 feet above the ground when Lum finally jumped, his breath stolen by water and wind from the propellers. He counted to 20 and pulled the cord on his parachute. In moments, the B-17 exploded high above him.

Lum floated slowly toward earth, barely missing high-tension wires before landing on his feet, surrounded by armed German soldiers.

Now 90, Lum, of Wesley Chapel, said he doesn't often think about what happened that day - Aug. 4, 1944 - or what unfolded in the ensuing months.

"It was hectic," he said with a polite grin. "I don't worry about it. What's past is past."

After a pause, he added, "It's good to be alive and in one piece."

Island boy

Wally Lum, 53, the youngest of Lum's two children, knows well his father's practical, even-keeled refrain. He described his father as a happy-go-lucky "island boy" who enjoyed swimming in the Pacific Ocean as a child and rarely lost his temper as an adult.

"As a father, he was always very patient, never heavy-handed," Wally Lum said. "He never spanked me or gave me a beating. As his son, I really don't have anything to complain about."

Despite his gentle nature, Samuel Lum was inspired to fight after watching the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"He was like, 'The nerve of those people,'" Wally Lum said.

While he went on 17 successful bombing missions before his plane was shot down, Samuel Lum never saw the resulting carnage up close. Unlike infantrymen, he wasn't exposed to the kind of graphic death scenes that have helped tell Hollywood war stories - and left real humans with permanent psychological scars.

It probably helps that his post-war life was practically idyllic.

Before being sent overseas, he went on a blind date with his future wife, May, in New York. They corresponded throughout his service, and he came back for her after the war.

While the couple raised a family (Wally has an older brother named Wesley in Maryland), Samuel Lum also went to college on the GI Bill.

He studied at the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in New York, the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and the David Taylor Model Basin in Maryland, now known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center.

He later worked for the Department of the Navy, where he designed craft that could, among other things, retrieve information from sunken Soviet submarines.

Samuel and May have now been married almost 60 years. They live with Wally, his wife, Robin, and their four children in a large, comfortable home off State Road 56.

Of course, Samuel Lum could foresee none of that as he passed 20 feet above the high-tension wires and landed amid the gun-toting Nazis. At the time, he wondered whether he'd ever know freedom again, or see May's smile.

His thoughts also turned to his mother, who raised him with the help of uncles; his father had died of pneumonia before his first birthday.

Prisoner of war

In 1941, Lum was a 22-year-old boat builder in Honolulu. A master apprentice, he knew how to construct a vessel piece-by-piece. It was a painstaking process, but cutting planks and forming sterns was work he enjoyed.

On Dec. 7 of that year, he was busy building a boat when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

"I was lucky I didn't get killed" that day, he said. "It came over the radio that this was the real McCoy. You could see the smoke and hear it from Honolulu. I signed up right after that. I got out and said I want to fight. They bombed the whole damn city."

He was sent for Army Air Corps training near San Antonio and wound up in the 486th Bomb Group.

"I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I washed out" of training, he said, so he became a navigator.

Among other commendations, he was later awarded a Silver Star for helping save Richter, the bombardier. The clear-headed thinking that helped him usher his wounded friend out of the burning airplane probably also helped him survive in the German prison camp.

Fortunately for Lum, officers were separated from enlisted men in prison, and were treated better. He said he was never tortured or mistreated, but he and other captives often went hungry, and the German winter was torturous, especially for a native Hawaiian.

In a book titled "War Stories of the O & W," Lum contributed several stories. In one, he said that prisoners from colder climates offered him their blankets when they saw that he was struggling.

The worst part, he said, was when the camp had to be moved and prisoners were forced to march long miles through the freezing snow. He said that was the only time during his captivity that he nearly lost all hope.

Lum wound up at a prison camp in Mossberg, Germany, along with British, Russian, Canadian and French prisoners of war. On the morning of April 29, 1945, tanks from Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army stormed the camp.

In "War Stories of the O & W," Lum wrote:

"The place was in pandemonium. Everybody was coming out to greet the tanks. We did not see any of our guards. We learned later that they apparently knew the jig was up and they just disappeared."

In celebration, he said, American prisoners took down the "hated German swastika" that flew over the camp and replaced it with an American flag.

"Everyone felt so much relief," he wrote. "Liberation was wonderful."

That sentiment has apparently never waned.

"Everything I've ever given him, he's eaten," said daughter-in-law Robin. "I could give him dog food and he would say it's fantastic. I've never heard him complain - ever. That could somewhat be an effect of being a prisoner."

'Always Sunny And Happy'

Lum is now one of roughly 2.5 million surviving World War II veterans, a group that is dying at a rate of about 900 per day, according to the most recent numbers released by the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics.

It isn't easy to gauge precisely what effect the war had on the former island boy and boat builder. In the 1970s, he endured a series of nightmares that doctors said might have been related to post-traumatic stress, but his family says he seems to have left the discomfort of hunger and winter marches far behind.

Nowadays, he seems content to sleep as late as he wants, live medicine-free and enjoy being surrounded by a loving family in a spacious environment.

"There's not a mean bone in his body," Wally Lum said. "He's a very philosophical guy. He's always just sunny and happy."

"I used to ask him if he hated the Japanese and the Germans, but he had no bitterness. He just thought it was the right thing to do. They would have tried to take over the world."