Born in Massachusetts in 1915, Norman Millet Thomas loved to paint. In his high school yearbook, he noted his desire to attend the Yale School of Art. Instead, after graduation from Portland High School, in Maine, he attended the Portland School of Fine Art, and The National Academy of Design in New York City. In 1938 he was awarded a Pulitzer traveling scholarship for painting a mural of a lobsterman and spent the following year at the American Academy of Art in Rome.
In April 1942, at age 26, Thomas visited a Coast Guard recruiter. After the recruiter informed Headquarters of Thomas’s interest in the service, a memorandum from the Commandant made its way to the Officer-in-Charge of Recruiting Substation Boston:
In the event subject man presents himself for enlistment, and is found physically and otherwise qualified therefore, he may, in view of his background and qualifications as an artist be enlisted in the rating of Seaman 1st Class…. Inform Headquarters by letter when this enlistment is consummated.
The Coast Guard wanted artists, such as Thomas. He was subsequently enlisted, declaring his profession as a “freelance artist.” After completing boot camp, he was sent to New York, then Boston where he was assigned to the cutter Northland for duty in Greenland.
Coast Guard involvement in the war had already begun before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. To the far northeast, the Island of Greenland had become strategically important. It could provide a refueling point for aircraft bound for England and support weather stations for convoys transiting the North Atlantic. President Roosevelt expected the Germans to establish weather stations in Greenland, possibly even try to take the island. In April 1941, Greenland was placed under the protective custody of the U.S. Coast Guard ships, assigned to the newly established North East Greenland Patrol, were ordered to patrol along the island’s east coast. Originally, that patrol consisted of Coast Guard-manned vessels Northland, North Star, and Navy-manned USS Bear.
In October 1941, the Greenland Patrol was formed under the command of legendary Cmdr. Edward H. “Iceberg” Smith. When Germany declared war on the U.S., some two months later, additional vessels were needed for escort and patrol duties. Where did they find them? Iceberg Smith learned about a fleet of ten fishing trawlers in Boston. He cabled Vice Adm. Russell Waesche who commandeered the vessels and manned them with hand-picked crews. One veteran described the 120-foot vessels as resembling huge wooden shoes.
One of these vessels was Natsek, with a crew of 23 men and commanded by Lt. J.g. Thomas LaFarge. Prior to joining the Coast Guard, LaFarge was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) painter, creating the murals that grace the U.S. Post Office in New London, Connecticut.
In June 1942, Iceberg Smith requested “in furtherance of a program of public relations and an art record of the war operations of the Coast Guard’ that three artists be assigned to temporary duty with the Greenland Patrol.” Seamen First Class Norman Thomas and Seaman First Class Benjamin Wolf were two of those artists. They produced artwork outside of “normal” duties, including standing watches, with Thomas on the Northland and Wolf aboard North Star. Not surprisingly, they befriended Natsek’s commanding officer. By October 1942, the two artists had completed about 40 pieces of work. Iceberg Smith ordered those pieces inventoried and packed for shipment back to the States.
On Dec. 14, 1942, Natsek departed Narsarssuak with the minesweeper USS Bluebird and Natsek’s sister ship, Nanok, bound for Boston. Bluebird was delayed, and with Natsek and Nanok making greater speed than could Bluebird, the ships parted company. Boatswain’s Mate Second Class Thaddeus Nowakowski, serving aboard Nanok, kept a diary.
On December 14, he wrote,
Almost at the moment we enter open sea, a great ground swell develops and wind makes its hiding place known. It bites the cheeks, gently at the beginning, then intensifying like an arousing lover. Near day’s end, swells become monumental. Waves and wind become unbridled fury.
The following day, he recorded,
Sea and wind are very high and rough. Snow falls intermittently. Looking in any direction, the view is similar, either boiling mountains of water or white walls of falling snow. I am not knowledgeable about the dangers of heavy icing conditions…There is definitely an unspoken fear in the eyes of much of the crew. On board the Nanok, ice chopping is continuous around the clock. On board the Natsek on our port beam, there is no visible ice chopping.
No relief was in sight on December 16:
The deck is a wonderland of wet, packed snow, and ice. The Nanok carries almost twice the ice she carried yesterday. It clings mostly to her forward half and to its entire starboard side. The Natsek is riding heavily and deep in the sea. She is still abeam of our portside, beyond shouting distance. If anyone on board her is chopping ice, they are not visible.
Belle Isle Strait Lighthouse was sighted at approximately 1 a.m. on December 17.
Later we close-haul the Natsek so Maggie (Nanok’s commanding officer) and La Farge can shout back and forth to one another. Not being on the scene at the time, I do not learn the true state of Natsek’s icing condition. Others, however, say Natsek is an iceberg. Maggie decided both vessels would proceed together in the semi-darkness even though visibility was barely marginal. Nature had other plans. Snow soon thickens and the Natsek blends into it. To verify Natsek’s proximity, Maggie heaves-to and sounds two long blasts of Nanok’s horn. The only reply is a single flash of white light.
With her fathometer inoperative, Nanok proceeded slowly, cautiously, and alone.
The weather deteriorated rapidly. Winds reached gale force and the spray formed more ice on Nanok’s superstructure. The crew battled to break off the ice. Said Nowakowski, “We are in a witch’s cauldron. Mountainous waves, howling wind, and skin searing airborne wave tops. Either the waves are growing ever higher and more vicious, or my mind is on its way elsewhere!”
Nanok survived. Natsek was never seen again. She was declared officially lost with all hands on March 25, 1944. Stored within Natsek’s hold were more than 40 pieces of art created by Norman Thomas and Ben Wolf. A number of these works were recreated and featured in Life magazine. A second deployment to Greenland resulted in more work by Thomas.
Upon his return to the States, Thomas was ordered to the Fourteenth Naval District, Territory of Hawaii, for assignment to duty. On Oct. 17, 1944, he boarded USS Callaway bound for the Pacific. This Coast Guard-manned Bayfield-class attack transport had landed troops at Kwajalein, Emirau, Saipan, Angaur Island, and Leyte Gulf. Preparations in New Guinea preceded Callaway’s participation in the assault on Lingayen Gulf, a large inlet on the South China Sea, that cuts into the western coast of Luzon. It was here that the transport would distinguish itself as part of Blue Beach Attack Group. On Jan 3, 1945, Thomas’s temporary posting to Callaway was made permanent.
Five days later, on Jan. 8, 1945, only 35 miles off the beach, Japanese aircraft came in directly behind the convoy. Callaway’s guns downed two of the three. Despite being hit, the third aircraft continued its attack with Callaway’s starboard bridge structure in its sights. With the enemy aircraft hurtling toward them, several gunners continued to fire their anti-aircraft batteries. The impact killed seven men instantly. A blaze ignited by aircraft fuel consumed dozens more. Thomas wrote, “Men were turned into human torches. Flames leaped to the top of the stack and shot down toward the engine room.” In all, 23 Coast Guardsmen were killed, another ten wounded. Thomas witnessed the crash, helped put out the fires, and sketched the carnage he had witnessed. He later wrote, “Aboard Callaway, the air is filled with screams of wounded and dying men. The smell of burned flesh fills the nostrils and the eyes smart from the smoke. The chaplain administers last rites to the dying…”
Despite the horror, the fires were contained and the damage kept to a minimum. In fact, Callaway managed to maintain her position in the convoy, a testament to her fine crew, seven of whom were awarded Silver Star Medals.
Thomas went ashore at Luzon. A Coast Guard Public Affairs release praised Thomas’s work. It stated that while sketching on Luzon’s beachhead, Thomas produced some of the best art of the war. Three weeks after that historic landing, his pictures were reproduced across the country.
Artist Thomas captured the brutality and grimness of war in his Luzon sketches as few artists have done. The high caliber of this type of art cannot be achieved by copying photographs. It must be the expression of the artist’s own conception of battle conveyed to his sketchpad from direct observation. Artist Thomas made pictures which photographs could not make…in particular his death struggle, hand to hand and knife to knife, between a Yankee and a Jap in Luzon’s rice fields.
With temporary repairs completed at Ulithi, Callaway was back in action by early February. She carried marine reinforcements from Guam to Iwo Jima. As the marines went ashore, they were joined by Norman Thomas. A Coast Guard Public Affairs release stated, “He took part in the actual landings, but he set his pen to capturing part of the anguish and horror still upon the faces of the wounded, hastily evacuated from the Iwo battleground.”
On April 13, 1945, Thomas received a memorandum from the Coast Guard Public Relations Office via Callaway’s commanding officer. It read, in part:
I am in receipt of a letter from Fleet Admiral Nimitz of the U.S. Navy congratulating the Coast Guard public relations staff for the outstanding work accomplished in connection with the assault and capture of Iwo Island, which he states was ‘the finest in both quality and quantity to have emerged from the Pacific War to date.
On June 19, 1945, Thomas was transferred to Coast Guard Headquarters for assignment to temporary duty pending further assignment. He was chosen to design the Coast Guard World War II Memorial. It was not without controversy.
Thomas’s national war monument was the first of its kind to be commissioned. It depicted two Coast Guardsmen helping a wounded soldier to safety, his arms draped over their shoulders. That wounded soldier was a Black man. Thomas later talked about his experience aboard Callaway, stating that the African American gun crews inspired his work. “They were the best…” He told a reporter from the New Pittsburgh Courier that he had based the design of the monument on an illustration he had sketched at Luzon:
From the beginning I had the idea of including a Negro. I served with them. I saw them in action. I simply thought it was about time that they were honored symbolically for their services to our country in every war. The Coast Guard authorities agreed…. It is not generally known that our service is considered the most democratic with regard to the relationship between colored and white personnel.
Planned to be unveiled in 1948, controversy intervened. The memorial was to symbolically face New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. The fact that it featured a Black man was unacceptable to many. It was approved by the Parks Commissioner but not by the city’s Art Commission. When it was finally dedicated on May 30, 1955, The Honorable Robert Moses, who served as Parks Commissioner, spoke to the gathered crowd:
This monument, facing the Narrows and looking toward the broad Atlantic has had a checkered past. The original model was the subject of one of those murky, obscure, pointless controversies which seem to continuously beset the artistic world. As Park Commissioner, I confess I like this memorial for its sincerity and for the manifest identity of sculptor and subjects. Norman Thomas, who made the memorial, is a distinguished architect, artist and combat veteran. The idea of the memorial came to him at the Luzon beachhead where he saw two exhausted Coast Guardsmen supporting a wounded man to safety. This memorial, therefore, is not a piece of contrived romantic sentimentality. It was conceived in war and dedicated to actual heroism. Let yapping critics remember this!
Thomas spent the last 40 years of his life in Mexico, where he became a devotee of Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Orozco. Not surprisingly, much of his work from that time was marked by social commentary. In 1960, he produced a satirical film entitled “El Bravo Fuerte.” It was considered so politically charged that it was banned by the Mexican government. He passed away in 1986, at age 70. The Portland [Maine] Evening Express remembered Thomas as a “brilliant, versatile artist, equally gifted as a muralist, portrait painter, and sculptor.”
In 2021, The Coast Guard Memorial designed by Norman Thomas was rededicated after being moved to a redesigned setting at The Battery. In attendance was Admiral Karl Schultz, Commandant of the Coast Guard. Also in attendance was Captain of the Port of New York, Capt. Zeita Merchant, who would soon become the first African American woman to achieve the rank of admiral. Schultz noted that visitors to the memorial “will then look out towards the water, and see Coast Guard personnel carrying on the tradition, right here in New York Harbor.” A fitting monument to those who served…a fitting monument to Norman Thomas who believed that ALL who serve should be remembered.
National Coast Guard Museum insider tip: Deck 3’s WWII exhibit will highlight some of the amazing Coast Guard Combat Art made during the war by skilled painters like Norman Thomas.