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Thomas Moore Anderson Jr.

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Birth	:	23 May 1922 Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, South Carolina, USA
Death	:	29 Oct 1942 USA
Burial	:	Nazareth Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate	:	34.8967018, -82.0306015
Description	:	Thomas was the oldest son and namesake of Tom & Hattie Weste Harris Anderson, he was born in the Spartanburg City hospital, which was fortunate because he weighed over 11 lbs. Mama said the doctor was so agitated about the difficult birth that he reportedly stomped up & down the halls outside grandmother's room saying, "Babies should do their growing after they get here!" Thomas was always a big person, he grew tall & muscular working on the farm for his father. His father Tom was a frailer man, he had a heart murmur and atrial... Read More	Thomas was the oldest son and namesake of Tom & Hattie Weste Harris Anderson, he was born in the Spartanburg City hospital, which was fortunate because he weighed over 11 lbs. Mama said the doctor was so agitated about the difficult birth that he reportedly stomped up & down the halls outside grandmother's room saying, "Babies should do their growing after they get here!" Thomas was always a big person, he grew tall & muscular working on the farm for his father. His father Tom was a frailer man, he had a heart murmur and atrial fibrillation so he could not do hard physical work, and as his father got older his smoking caused emphysema and he became more frail. Tom kept his son out of school on many days to work on the farm during the Great Depression, a practice which his wife objected to, and it caused Thomas to get behind in school & eventually drop out. My mother Polly said her brother Thomas was always watching over the smaller kids, even those not his relatives, she related one story that happened on the school bus coming home one day. A bigger boy was picking on a smaller boy, Thomas stepped in & told him to stop. When he didn't, he physically stepped between them. The boy & Thomas started fighting, and the bus driver stopped the bus & told them to take it outside. He didn't drive away though, he stayed until the fight was finished, & mama said Thomas literally rubbed that boy's face in the dirt & told him if he ever bothered that kid again, he'd come after him. Mama said the boy left the kid alone after that. The bus driver made Thomas and the bully walk the rest of the way home that day. Thomas was a happy person, his cousin Edwin who was close in age said he was fun to be around. He was the oldest son in the family with two older sisters & four younger siblings, he developed a strong sense of responsibility. Physically, Thomas was what they called a 'strapping' boy, he was 6 feet tall and muscular, he played football at school & worked on the farm unlike his two younger brothers who focused on schoolwork. Thomas's dream job was to join the Navy. He wanted to go when he was 15, but his parents wouldn't sign him up. His father insisted he needed him to work the farm, and his mother of course didn't want to risk losing him to the coming war, but she eventually agreed because she found out he was getting into trouble. According to his cousin Edwin, one night Thomas was out late in town with some teenage boys, his mother's family were teetotalers so he was raised with no alcohol in the house, but he got drunk & he either couldn't or didn't want to get home which was many miles away out in the countryside, so he went to an aunt's house in Converse Heights & since they were all asleep he climbed into their car that was parked on the curb & slept there all night, they found him there the next morning. His mother Hattie was told by her family she needed to do something, she was worried about him, she realized there wasn't enough discipline at home to curb his dangerous ways, so she agreed for him to go into the military, knowing he might not make it back home but hoping the discipline would straighten him out more than she or his father could. His father evidently never agreed to him leaving according to my mother. It must've been a hard decision for grandmother, but she did what she thought was best for him. Mama said a Navy recruiter had visited their home, he sat with Thomas on the stoop & asked him why he wanted to go into the Navy so young, Thomas told him it was all he'd ever wanted to do. So he responded, "Then you'll be a wog in no time." According to military records, Thomas enlisted in the Navy at Raleigh, NC on 20 June 1940 for a 6 yr stint, listing his reason as "career". He trained at Norfolk, VA naval base. He was promoted 7 July 1941 to Fireman 2nd Class. He was initially deployed on the USS Harris. Thomas wrote home several times, mama said he told them he got or was working on his GED in the Navy, and at one point he almost died from injuries received in a car accident while on leave in San Diego, California on 25 August 1941 (this was 4 months before the attack on Pearl Harbor when we officially entered the war). Thomas was an excellent driver mama said, but he was not driving the car that night, he was a passenger along with 2 other sailors & 3 girls they had picked up in town while bar-hopping. The driver was very drunk and ran off the road in early morning & hit a pole; one of the girls was killed. Thomas was in the hospital for several months. He wrote home from the hospital & told them that the experience made him straighten up, he started attending church again, and he stopped drinking. He was soon promoted to Fireman 1st Class on 16 February 1942. His life was starting to go upward. Thomas did not make it back from the war, his new ship, the USS Porter, sank in the Pacific in October 1942 during the Battle of Guadalcanal while giving support to the nearby hospital ship by picking up downed pilots in the water. His ship was sunk by friendly fire. The original report to the public stated that the USS Porter was hit by a Japanese torpedo, but after the war ended, the Japanese files showed no sub within a 200 mile range. In the 1990's, the pilot of a TBF Avenger wrote on a military blog that his plane had been damaged in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands 200 miles away that day, and he had one torpedo still on board which was damaged & did not detach from the plane when fired; he & his crew had been hit by anti-aircraft fire & several were injured. He was directed to fly to the hospital ship which was anchored about 200 miles away out of the range of battle & then to ditch the plane in the water as close to the ship as possible once he had run out of fuel, and then they would be picked out of the water by Thomas's crew. According to the pilot, the remaining torpedo which was still attached to the plane came loose when the plane hit the water & it started swimming erratically around the area, he reported in his hearing later that he saw it swimming several times while in the water waiting to be picked up, it was going in an irregular circular pattern. (According to a former sub commander Edward L Beach, torpedoes at this time in the early part of the war swam very erratically, their directional gear was rudimentary & unreliable, so when a torpedo was put in the water, it would swim in an up-and-down wavelike pattern that would often miss the target even when fired directly at it, and when they hit the ship directly, sometimes the nose gear would collapse and the torpedo wouldn't explode. It was only near the end of the war that Pearl eventually put men on this very serious problem & redesigned the nose gear and propulsion, making them hit the target and then explode every time. This torpedo was also damaged, and the pilot said it was going in different directions each time he saw it, and of course it would keep going until it ran out of fuel or hit something.) Eventually the side of the Porter exploded. The pilot said that during the debriefing he reported to his superiors that he was sure the explosion came from his rogue torpedo, but they refused to investigate or release that to the press, they reported the ship had been hit by the Japanese. I have since read that friendly fire kills up to 30% of all casualties in war & most have been written off as enemy fire at the time. In this day of fast communications, that lie is getting harder to pull off. Thomas was a Fireman First Class by then, and he rescued over 25 crewmen from below before the boiler burst & burned him so severely he did not survive. Mama said they got over two dozen letters from crewmen who wrote to say Thomas rescued them at the risk of his own life from the bowels of a sinking ship, going back down over & over & bringing them out. Those letters burned in a house fire in about 1950, along with his medals. My mother said the Porter's chaplain wrote to say that Thomas had been a faithful attendee to his services every Sunday morning, that he was one of only 3 or 4 men on the ship that he knew believed in God & would go to heaven. I'm sure this comforted his mother, she was very religious. Mama said his family at home learned of his ship being sunk over the wireless (the radio) two weeks before the official Navy telegram came. They took comfort in the fact that Thomas died doing what he wanted to do. Thomas was buried at sea after being transferred to the USS Shaw & then to the USS South Dakota with extensive burns. His aunt Mella Harris put up the marker to him at Nazareth Presbyterian Church in the 1960's in the family plot. I have since learned that he is listed on a memorial to the fallen of WWII in the Pacific at Manila, as well as a local memorial in Spartanburg County to all the fallen from this county from all US wars, which is located near the American Legion Home at the entrance to Duncan Park off Union St. Note: Thanks to Frieda Davison who researched all the military records in person, and who is compiling a history of all the war casualties from Spartanburg County to be published in a year or two. --Jennie Rhinehart Revised 10/2017

frequently asked questions (FAQ):

Where is Thomas Moore Anderson Jr.'s memorial?
Thomas Moore Anderson Jr.'s memorial is located at: Nazareth Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Moore, Spartanburg County, USA.
When did Thomas Moore Anderson Jr. death?
Thomas Moore Anderson Jr. death on 29 Oct 1942 in USA
Where are the coordinates of the Thomas Moore Anderson Jr.'s memorial?
Latitude: 34.8967018
Longitude: -82.0306015

Family Members:

Parent

Thomas Moore “Tom” Anderson Sr.

(1877 - 1945)

Hattie Weste Harris Anderson

(1894 - 1972)

Siblings

Marguerite Mason “Margo” Anderson

(1918 - 2009)

Harriet Harris “Happy” Anderson

(1920 - 1979)

Flowers:

Nearby Cemetories:

1. Nazareth Presbyterian Church Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8967018, -82.0306015

2. Travelers Rest Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery
Reidville, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9079700, -82.0294570

3. Fairmont Methodist Church Cemetery
Fairmont, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9019390, -82.0549510

4. Fountain of Life Baptist Church Cemetery
Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9156400, -82.0418800

5. River Hills Baptist Church Cemetery
Duncan, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8897700, -82.0603110

6. Miller-Ott Family Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8763380, -82.0103750

7. Joy Lutheran Church Columbarium
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8840230, -82.0612620

8. Poplar Springs Baptist Church Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8669720, -82.0530410

9. Moore Church of Christ Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8608017, -82.0211029

10. Westwood Memorial Gardens
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8818900, -82.0722000

11. West Family Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8594818, -82.0374120

12. Bethany Wesleyan Church Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8602250, -82.0427340

13. Bethlehem Baptist Church Cemetery
Moore, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8851560, -81.9814130

14. Jones Cemetery
Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9352989, -82.0618973

15. Oak Grove Baptist Church Cemetery
Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9398000, -82.0061000

16. Foster Cemetery
Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9461180, -82.0381740

17. Wakefield Family Cemetery
Reidville, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8750130, -82.0904860

18. Penney-McMillian Cemetery
Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9203700, -82.0900660

19. Bomar Family Cemetery
Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9505900, -82.0233200

20. Roebuck Baptist Church Cemetery
Roebuck, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8814380, -81.9671240

21. Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery
Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9379680, -81.9870940

22. McElrath Family Cemetery
Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9282000, -82.0867000

23. Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church Cemetery
Spartanburg, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.9387000, -81.9846000

24. Roebuck Presbyterian Church Cemetery
Roebuck, Spartanburg County, USA
Coordinate: 34.8780200, -81.9636120