An Old News Clip Helps Tell an Amazing Story
By Pat Murkland
An old Banning, California, newspaper clipping appeared randomly in a pile of papers I was sorting: “Local Hero of Attu Killed in Action; Parents Notified.” Beneath that, a smaller headline: “Elmer Lomas, Who Received Mention For His Bravery in Rescuing the Wounded, Killed on Attu, May 29.”
May 29? I was holding the article on May 30 — exactly 78 years and one day after courageous Elmer Lomas was killed on May 29, 1943, during World War II. And it was the day before Memorial Day 2021.
“While they were still rejoicing that their son, Elmer Lomas, Banning Indian, had distinguished himself in the battle for Attu Island by rescuing wounded men in the height of fighting with no regard for his own safety,” the Banning Record newspaper article reported, “a telegram arrived Tuesday morning (June 15, 1943) to tell Mr. and Mrs. Joe Lomas that their son had been killed in action …”
From a Telegram
At Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 2016 Native Voices Poetry Festival, a Daughter of Morongo shared a Cahuilla story told in 1964 by her great-grandfather, Joe Lomas. Elder and Singer Joe Lomas was instrumental in saving and sharing Cahuilla traditional culture and language. He worked with anthropologist Lowell John Bean, linguist Hansjakob Seiler, and others, before he died in February 1969 at age 88.
How devastated Mr. and Mrs. Lomas must have felt that day 78 years ago, after receiving the news of their son’s death, in that era’s equivalent of a text message. In 2021, bits of the story lie here and there, like pieces of fabric not yet sewn together into a quilt. This week’s News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center attempts to piece together the basics, to honor Elmer Lomas for his service and sacrifice.
Who Was Elmer Lomas?
Elmer Lomas was raised on Cahuilla homelands, near the site of the village Pūichekiva, on the Martinez Reservation (now called Torres-Martinez) in the Colorado Desert, where people had thrived for countless years. His story represents a generation continuing to live in two worlds. Cahuilla people of the early 20th century faced the challenges of maintaining their cultural identity, while adapting to massive changes that had begun arriving with thousands of newcomers to their Native homelands in the 1800s. The Bradshaw stagecoach trail and later, the train lines, ran close to Martinez.
And all the while, Southern California Native Americans were fighting for basic civil rights.1 Elmer Lomas, who died in World War II, was born Aug. 2, 1916,2 in a world torn apart by World War I. Although Native Americans were not officially United States citizens until 1924, some would fight in the United States military when the nation entered the war the following spring.
In March 1918, when Elmer Lomas was a toddler, the first U.S. deaths from the influenza sweeping the world were reported in Kansas. That pandemic spread death globally for the next two years, including locally. Local Native Americans already had experienced measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, and other diseases that also arrived with immigrants starting in the 1800s.
President Ulysses S. Grant had established the reservation by decree in 1876. In Elmer Lomas’s childhood, the Martinez U.S. Indian Agency, today one of the few desert landmarks named in the National Register of Historic Places,3 had served as headquarters of four Cahuilla reservations since 1907.
As times changed, Native American people joined Roman Catholic and other churches of that era. (Many were not displacing their Native American culture. For example, Katherine Saubel recalled in 1999 how, in Palm Springs, when she was a child, it was a short walk from the Roman Catholic church service to the Cahuilla ceremonial house.4)
At Martinez, members of the Lomas family, including Martinez ceremonial leader August Lomas, joined the Moravian church. Elmer Lomas was Moravian. William Weinland, the Moravian missionary at Morongo Reservation for about 40 years starting from 1889, apparently often visited Martinez.
“Moravian Mission Cottage, Martinez,” undated photo from Moravian missionary William Weinland’s photo album, photCL 39 (171) William H. Weinland Collection , courtesy of Huntington Library
Yet many Cahuilla memories of older times, stories, songs, and traditions were still intact, and some ceremonies still practiced. When Elmer Lomas was a teen-ager, anthropologist William Duncan Strong visited with area Native American leaders and was entrusted with detailed ethnographic information about the Cahuilla for his classic work, Aboriginal Society in Southern California. This work today remains a valuable resource about Southern California Native American people in older times.
I don’t know (yet) whether young Elmer Lomas attended the tiny government day school at Martinez. He later attended Indian boarding schools. “Before entering the service two years and two months ago [in 1941], he worked as a farmer at Sherman Institute in Riverside,” the Banning newspaper article reported.5 “He had been transferred from the Indian school in Phoenix to Sherman.”
Elmer Lomas in Boarding Schools
The Phoenix school was about 250 miles away from the Martinez reservation in Southern California. But that distance wasn’t unusual. The Phoenix Indian School in its earlier years, like similar schools in North America, wanted Indian children to stay separated from their families. Like other Indian boarding schools, Phoenix School used military-style, severely strict disciplines to assimilate Native American children, banning contact with relations, and punishing any use of Native language or cultural practices. 6
By 1931, the school no longer had military disciplines; starting in 1936, the school served grades seven through 12, teaching mostly vocational skills, such as carpentry. Elmer Lomas was in Phoenix around this time.
The band building, built in 1931, has been renovated into the Phoenix Indian Center, which serves the Native community in 2021 with youth services, language and cultural revitalization programs, education and workforce development. (Wikipedia photo)
Old Phoenix Indian School records, held by the National Archives and Records Administration, simply aren’t accessible at this time. Further, Google showed that copies of the 1937 Phoenix Indian School yearbook, The New Trail, can be found in Arizona, New Jersey … and in New Zealand and Denmark.
Fortunately, the WorldCat online library database lists the 1937 Phoenix Indian School yearbook contents, and there in the fine print is Elmer Lomas, named as a member of the “junior class.” Phoenix, though, didn’t have an agricultural program or a farm, like Sherman’s. Also, Riverside was closer to home.
A Sherman Farmer
The next step was to find Elmer Lomas at Sherman Institute (now Sherman Indian High School) in Riverside, California, in 1938. The online Sherman Indian Museum Collection records are more accessible, thanks to a major grant from the Council on Library and Information Services.
And there’s Elmer A. Lomas, in the 1938 Blue and Gold yearbook, p. 24. He’s listed as a Mission Indian in the class of 1938, “to complete community service training.”
Courtesy of Sherman Indian Museum Collection7
Seeing this photo helped us feel the tremendous loss of Elmer Lomas, 78 years later.
Other Sherman records showed that he graduated as a “day student” in 1939, and that Elmer Lomas was working on the Sherman school farm in 1940 as an “assistant farmer,” a dairyman. He left that same year and apparently was drafted into the U.S. Army sometime in 1941. Sherman school leaders found out he was dead when his copy of the school newsletter, the “Sherman Bulletin,” was returned in the mail in 1943, with the inscription, “Killed in Action.”8 The death date given to the school was incorrect.
The Battle of Attu
“The young hero was … stationed at Camp Ord in Northern California until about a month ago,” the Banning newspaper article reported on June 17, 1943. “His parents did not know he was on Attu until they were informed by local people who had heard a [radio] broadcast on June 2 telling how outstanding he was in crawling out on the battlefield and bringing back the wounded. This broadcast came four days after his death, but since the death of a man in action cannot be disclosed until after the nearest of kin has been notified, the commentator could not say that the young man had already given his life in trying to save the life of others.”
An Associated Press dispatch by William L. Worden, published in newspapers on June 1, 1943, also mentioned Elmer Lomas: “Massacre Bay, Attu Island, May 16 — Delayed (AP) Out here in an anti-tank company the officers are glad they never had to fight the Mission Indians of California. They're glad because they've seen one Mission Indian fight. He is Elmer Lomas, who so far has jumped up every time anyone asked for volunteers. His last feat was to make his way a quartermile through a Japanese patrol at night to take information to an American platoon, cut off and endangered. He made it, shot a couple of the enemy en route, came back looking for more jobs to do.”9
U.S. soldiers fire mortar shells over a ridge onto a Japanese position in 1943. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Elmer Lomas was a private in an anti-tank company; his grave marker at Torres-Martinez tells that it was the U.S. Army 32nd Infantry, 7th Infantry Division. The soldiers were training at Fort Ord for desert warfare when they were suddenly sent instead to the mountainous, snowy Arctic island off the coast of Alaskan territory, which had been taken by the Japanese. The U.S. military believed that Attu could be turned into strategic airbases from which the Japanese could attack Alaska and the rest of the West Coast.
The battle became one of the most costly in U.S. casualties and wounded in the Pacific, according to historian John Haile Cloe. The battle ended with a hand-to-hand suicide combat attack by the remaining Japanese soldiers. Via the U.S. National Park Service, Cloe’s free downloadable book in pdf format, Attu, the Forgotten Battle, gives a detailed, step-by-step account of the brutal several-week battle amid mountainous snow and ice. Elmer Lomas died shortly before the battle ended. He was 26 years old.
“Finally, overlooked by most and known to only a few, the Aleutians and the Pribilof Islands to the north were the scene of a U.S. military forced evacuation and relocation of the entire Aleut population, now referred to as Unangax (Seasiders or Coastal People),” historian Cloe writes. “It also saw the loss of four Aleut villages (Attu, Biorka, Kashega and Makushin) and the only imprisonment of a North American community in Japan when the Attu village residents were taken to Hokkaido Island in 1942.”10
None of the surviving villagers ever returned home. Today, Attu is a wildlife refuge and historic site.
“Conspicuous Bravery”
Sometime later in 1943, Joe Lomas and his wife, who were living in Banning, received mail from the War Department: the emblem of the Order of the Purple Heart, presented to their son, killed in action. With it came a citation for “conspicuous bravery.” They didn’t know whether their son received the honors before or after his death. They displayed the Purple Heart at his memorial service at the Moravian Church on Morongo reservation. His body was brought back home from Attu for burial several years later. Survivors were his parents, and brothers Clarence, Toro and sister, Ruth.
Thank you, Elmer Lomas.
Memories of the Lomas Family
Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares memories of attending Elmer Lomas’s memorial service, and of the Lomas family.
Upcoming Events
SAVE THE DATE: Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s beloved Dragonfly Gala is scheduled to return on Saturday, August 14, 2021, at Morongo Reservation Community Center. More info to come!
Monday’s ZOOM ONLINE WORKSHOP:
“Build Your Own North Star” Time: 5 pm June 7, 2021
The North Star in ancient times always could be relied on to guide one’s path forward. This family online workshop with Renda Madrigal (Chippewa), a clinical psychologist, draws on Indigenous traditional stories and circle practice, offering both fun and profound activities aimed at helping you and your family tap into cultural wisdom and find a path forward filled with purpose, connection, and shared joy. Based on Renda Madrigal’s new book, The Mindful Family Guidebook: Reconnect with Spirit, Nature, and the People You Love. Sign up and you will receive your own personalized link to join the conversation.
CHILDREN’S ART DISPLAY: At the Haven coffee shop, 42 W. Ramsey, Banning, see paintings of Banning’s historic trees by Gloria “Toti” Bell’s art students, ages 8 through 12, through June 18, 2021.
Thank you! Please EMAIL. Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, saves and shares Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and music and other traditional arts. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook. Thank you! Pat Murkland, Editor. June 2, 2021.
Read more in This War is for a Whole Life: The Culture of Resistance Among Southern California Indians, 1850-1966, by Richard A. Hanks, 2012, Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s Ushkana Press.
Inscription on Elmer Lomas’s grave marker in Torres-Martinez Reservation Cemetery. Newspaper reports stated he was 27 years old when he was killed. His grave marker shows he was 26.
Jennings, Bill, with Ron Baker, Tom Patterson, and Diana Seider (editorial committee), Guide to the Historic Landmarks of Riverside County, California, © 1993, Riverside County Historical Commission Press, Riverside, California, page 69.
Communication to Pat Murkland for newspaper series, “Family Album,” published in four sections in The Press-Enterprise newspaper, Riverside, California, throughout October 1999.
Two clippings from the Banning Record newspaper provided some biographical information about Elmer Lomas, “Local Hero of Attu Killed in Action; Parents Notified,” no byline, Thursday, June 17, 1943, p. 1. The other article is undated but also was published in 1943, “Purple Heart for Attu Hero and Citation Reaches the Parents of Dead Youth.”
Purple & Gold (1938), Sherman Indian Museum collection via Calisphere, date of access: May 31 2021 19:33
Sherman Bulletin, “Lomas lost in Alaska,” Friday, Oct. 13, 1943, Vol 36, Number 1, page 1, Sherman Indian Museum Collection, via Calisphere, date of access: May 31 2021 20:54
Worden, William L. , “Notes from Attu; What Life is Like on Island,” Associated Press report in San Jose Evening News, June 1, 1943, p. 2
Cloe, John Haile, Attu, the Forgotten Battle, Introduction, p xi