Thomas Gardiner

Interviewed by Brian Gardiner

Thomas Gardiner Full Interview

            “I was gonna wait to be drafted.  And so I worked for a year and we were doing war work, and so you could get deferred.  And there were two things that were bad, 4-F, where you couldn’t be drafted because of physical disability, and the other thing was being deferred.  So I really didn’t want to be deferred.  But, my boss said ‘yeah, it would just be for a while’…”                 

           

            “The day we were to ship out, we heard that he had checked into sickbay with a nervous breakdown.  I tell you, we were so upset.  Mahaney was our bombardier and he and I, we were literally cried in our beer that night at the beer garden.  Because all our friends were going out to San Diego and eventually out to Hawaii and out to the Pacific.  And so this was really a kick in the tail.  So we had to go through training again.”

           

            “What happened when I was flying out there, they dropped the bomb on Japan.  So we knew that the war was going to be over.  And we were saying, ‘Damn, we missed the war!’”

           

            “My thing was just to get back at the damn Japs who did this to us.” 

 

                                                                                                                                               

 

 

 

            Thomas Gardiner was born in Mount Vernon, New York on October 26, 1925.  He grew up during the Great Depression, and many of the things he did as a young boy influenced him in his decision to enlist in the Navy during WWII.  He was drafted, but was deferred for three months because his boss persuaded his local draft board that the company could not afford to lose him at that point in time.  Once the three months deferral was over, Thomas enlisted in the Navy because he really liked the Navy.  During the war he was the second radiomen of Air Crew 88, as well as second mechanic.  In the interview, he describes his experiences in the Navy, specifically all the training and preparation in all the Navy schools he had to go through before he would be shipped out to fight.  However, Thomas never ended up going over seas to fight in the war, and in the interview he tells of three important incidents, including the deferral, that really delayed and prevented him from seeing combat.  In addition to the deferral, there were two other incidents that prevented him from seeing combat.  Two times Thomas and his aircrew were ready to be shipped out to combat, but both times something came up which prevented the trip over seas.  One will have to read the interview to find out exactly what happened. 

            Thomas also discusses the patriotism of the American people during WWII, Pearl Harbor, President Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb, the difference between his view of not having to go fight over seas at the time it happened and in the present.  Thomas also makes connections between our present situation and the terrorist attacks on September 11th and WWII, among other things.  Thomas discusses many events that stood out in his WWII experience, and readers will find out that he really enjoyed his experiences in the Navy during WWII.  After the war, Thomas finished his time in the Navy and then went back to his job that was waiting for him in New York, and he eventually moved to Connecticut and raised a family.  Now Thomas is retired and lives with his wife Mary in Norwalk, Connecticut.