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Date: 11/9/2022
SOUTHWICK — Each year around Veterans Day and Memorial Day, Martha Arnold would thank her father, Southwick’s Gilbert “Gib” Arnold, for “saving the world” while serving as an airman in World War II.
“He once told me that the greatest tragedy — the thing that was etched in his memory — was the incredible loss of life of these men he met from different bomber crews,” recalled the oldest of his three children, now 69 and living in Connecticut. “One day they’d be there. The next day, they’d take off, and they’d never come back. That absolutely changed him — and his outlook on death, his outlook on life — as a member of his generation who was helping to save the world.”
As this year’s Veterans Day observance approached, she, along with her brothers, Craig and Stetson Arnold, and their mother, Joyce Arnold, shared memories of the war’s effect on this lifelong Southwick resident — especially as one of 291 young U.S. Army and Navy airmen interned in Siberia.
Arnold was among 37 bomber crews whose planes either crashed or made emergency landings in Soviet Union territory between 1942 and 1945 after striking Japanese targets. He was 21 in September 1944 when his B-24 Liberator ran out fuel evading Japanese fighter planes, forcing it to land in the sprawling Asian territory controlled by Russia. Arnold was the navigator and a first lieutenant in the 404th Bombardment Squadron.
The story of this secret internment — it wasn’t declassified by the U.S. government until 1986 — is revealed in “Home from Siberia: The Secret Odysseys of Interned American Airmen in World War II.” Written by Army and foreign service officer Otis Hayes Jr., the book was published in 1990.
According to Hayes, the Soviet Union interned the flyers to avoid risking its status as a neutral country in the Pacific theater, where U.S. and British units were fighting Japan.
The airmen weren’t considered prisoners of war (POWs), but were held in various locations throughout Siberia. They got little information about when they would be released and sent home. Crews were released at different times, but Soviet and U.S. officials made it appear they had “escaped.”
During months of captivity, the men were treated well, but received inadequate medical care, food, clothing and housing. Under constant surveillance, they felt uncertain about their future. At one point, Arnold led a real, but unsuccessful, escape, while he and other airmen were transported to a different location.
“My father learned to value freedom, because the Soviets took away his freedom,” said Stetson Arnold, 65, his oldest son who lives in Southwick.
“Dad knew the difference between freedom and communism,” he added. “He saw men, women and children walking off to Siberian salt mines. He couldn’t wait to get back home — he knew he lived in the greatest country.”
Craig Arnold, 63, now living in North Carolina, said the men “desperately” wanted to live.
“They wanted to get out of there. And they wanted to make it through that war— wanted to get home. When he came home, he had a much greater appreciation for life and freedom.”
The ordeal affected the airmen for the rest of their lives. For nearly 40 years, Arnold shared little about what he endured, from bedbug bites to frigid temperatures. Before their release, the servicemen were forbidden by their government to disclose where they had been held or that they had “escaped” from the Soviet Union.
Arnold, smuggled into Iran in January 1945, returned to Southwick and the family’s shade tobacco business following the war. In 1950, he started his own tobacco farm on North Longyard Road, which he ran until retiring in 1996. He became involved in town government and politics, eventually serving as chair of the Republican Town Committee.
A historian, he also served on Southwick’s 175th, 200th and 225th anniversary celebration committees, as well as the committee that designed Southwick’s town flag. The war and the internment were rarely mentioned.
Gib and Joyce Arnold married in 1949 when he was 27 and she was 20. Now 93, and still living in Southwick, she said for most of their marriage, her husband didn’t discuss the war or his internment.
“After he got back from the war, Gib was scared about what the Soviets might do to him. He had a terrible fear for many years that somehow the Russians would come and get him,” she said.
She said the one thing he did tell her was that if anybody called regarding the war, just hang up. “That was the last time he discussed it.”
One day in the late 1970s, Joyce Arnold got a telephone call at the farm from a Navy officer visiting family in Agawam. He decided to call Arnold after seeing a sign for Southwick.
“I quizzed him a little bit, because there was a panic when he said they were in the service together. When he called him ‘Gibby,’ I knew he was the real thing,” she recalled. The caller was John Rosa, a Navy flyer who had been held with Arnold.
Arnold took the call and later became close friends with Rosa, as well as with his former pilot, Jack Ott, a successful businessman in Pennsylvania. That led to contact with other internees.
Stetson Arnold believes Rosa’s call provided momentum for his father to start opening up about his experience in Siberia: “I think it propelled him to share with Hayes what he remembered for his book.”
Information about the internments from U.S. military files was “impersonal and sketchy” at best, and many internees found it too traumatic or too intrusive to speak publicly about their experiences.
But what Arnold and 36 other surviving internees told Hayes brought to life a long-forgotten military and human story. Arnold’s collaboration with Hayes was especially valuable since he provided not only factual information but also personal material: a diary — basically notes on paper — and photos that detailed his captivity.
“The government confiscated most of the diaries they could get their hands on. But he did get his diary out — and good for him. I’m very proud of my dad for doing that,” said Martha Arnold. “I think it was finally time for him to talk about it — and I think he wanted it chronicled.”
Craig Arnold said he believes his father, who was likely in his late 60s when Hayes contacted him, felt that time was of the essence and wanted to speak to the author.
“I think he needed to talk about it while he still had his faculties, which within 10 years, he began losing, because of quadruple heart bypass surgery. He also may have lost some secretiveness toward the end of his life, because he figured his sons and daughter wouldn’t be punished for anything he said.”
His sons, daughter and wife said Arnold — despite physical and mental stresses from the war and his internment — still lived life to the fullest.
“When you look at everything he did for his family, for people he employed, for the community, for his country, he basically lived two lifetimes in one,” said Stetson Arnold of his father, who died in 2005 at age 84.