Training and Duties

When Thurston was drafted in 1942, he labeled his next of kin as his older sister, Maime, and served in the highly specialized 2nd Chemical Decontamination Company, later designated the 29th Chemical Decontamination Company. He trained in Fort Leonard Wood, a U.S. Army training installation in the Missouri Ozarks. There, he was a Fifth Grade Technician, a very high rank for an African American man with limited education. This rank was likely due either to his past work experience handling chemicals or to his age, as he was in his early 30s when he enlisted in the U.S. Army. 

Technician Thurston’s specific duties with the company included putting out grass fires, handling dangerous Chemical Warfare Service weapons, and organizing anti-mosquito spraying efforts to combat the very real risk of dengue fever in Honolulu. The 29th Chemical Decontamination Company “were building infrastructure, fighting fires, protecting combat troops from chemical weapons, loading ammunition and fuel. Wars couldn’t have been won without them,” according to the President of the African American Diversity Cultural Center in Hawaii, Deloris Guttman. 

West Loch Disaster

On May 21, 1944, the 29th Chemical Decontamination Company was in the process of unloading 4.2-inch mortar shells onto a row of 29 Landing Ship, Tanks (LSTs) for a pre-departure mortar shell experiment when Pearl Harbor’s West Loch exploded three times in a little-known accident. The explosions threw pieces of wood, body parts, and shrapnel hundreds of feet, sank six LSTs, seriously damaged several others, killed 163 people, and wounded over 350 more. The West Loch Disaster was Hawaii’s second-greatest disaster in terms of casualties after Pearl Harbor’s December 7, 1941 attack. 

Technician Thurston and an estimated 58 others from his mostly African American unit represent a significant number of those casualties. The sacrifices of the 29th Chemical Decontamination Company remained unacknowledged throughout evaluation by the Court of Inquiry and eventual memorialization after the events at West Loch were declassified in 1962. The unit was blamed for dropping the mortar shell that started the first explosion on LST-353. “The Court of Inquiry found that a dropped mortar round was a likely cause of the explosions. One problem with that conclusion is that testimony showed that the men [of the 29th] were on break at the time of the explosion so they weren’t handling the shells. Another problem is that…they were unarmed. Finally, dropped 4.2? mortar shells will not explode…,” explains Associate Professor John Theil (United States Army Retired, Chemical Corps Hall of Fame). It was later discovered that a rogue cigarette butt from another unit was likely the catalyst. 

The West Loch Disaster as a whole was kept secret and did not delay the invasion of Saipan. The 29th Chemical Decontamination Company remained stationed at Schofield Barracks and participated in preparing for Operation Forager, the invasion of the Mariana and Palau Islands that occurred in the Pacific Theater between June and November 1944. Punchbowl officials and advocates hope that the remains of the 29th Chemical Decontamination Company’s West Loch victims, now only known as being missing in action and buried in unknown graves, be recovered and identified with the help of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.