Alfred Sadd, A Lovable Lms Missionary

First to Die in the Tarawa Massacre

THE Rev. Alfred Lionel Sadd, BA, of the London Missionary Society’s staff in the Gilbert Islands, was one of the British residents in the Colony who were so cruelly massacred by the Japanese at Tarawa Island on October 15, 1942.

There are references to this crime in the Webb Atrocities Report, published all over the world early

in September.

The following tribute to his late colleague was written by the Rev.

G. H. Eastman, of Beru, Gilbert

Islands.

ALFRED SADD was in many ways an unconventional missionary: he dif fered widely from the types senti mental novelists display, or splenetic beachcombers anathematise. He was a member of a well-known East Anglian family, the Sadds of Maldon, Essex. Edu cated at the Leys School and Cheshunt College, Cambridge, he imbibed the lib eral traditions of that well-known school and university. While not lacking in intellectual ability, he was not of a scholastic turn of mind, but was more inclined to the adventurous and active life of “the great outdoors.”

On his appointment to the mission field, a friend and fellow-student wrote of him: “His writing in illegible; his spelling is original; his memory proverbial; but he’s a jolly good fellow for all that.” He pos sessed to a high degree the gift of friend liness.

His writing was a sore trial to his cor respondents, and when he took to a type writer one of our mutual friends wrote plaintively to me: “Can’t you buy Alfred a typewriter than can spell?”

Owing to the unexpected death of a colleague, it fell to his lot to take charge for a time of the mission accounts.

Though it was a job for which he felt himself unsuited, he tackled it with his customary cheery goodwill. But occasion ally his spelling—or was it his typewriter? —let him down; as when he ordered “3 only bath mats.” As received by the firm in London the order read “30 only bath mats.” In due course the 30 bath mats arrived; and Alfred had for a time to adopt the role of salesman travelling in bath mats.

Never was a surname less appropriate.

There is a story—not apocryphal—of how Alfred burst one day into the office of an official whom he had not previously met, and announced, “I’m Sadd.”

“Oh,” said the astonished official, look ing up, “I am sorry. Can I do anything for you?”

Whereupon the visitor burst into such hearty peals of laughter that the official recognised that his first impression had been in correct, and joined in the merri ment of his visitor.

ALFRED SADD had been a Rover, and a member of the Sea Scouts in Eng land, where his family owned vari ous small yachts and boats. Though he was not a good sailor, and suffered not a little when Father Neptune was un kind, he readily took his share in the

frequent voyages by the mission schooner in the mission visitations of tho Islands, and in travel by launch and boat along the great lagoons of the Gilberts. His fancy was greatly tickled once when an enthusiastic letter of his describing one long boat journey to a seldom-visited islet on one of the largest atolls led a dis ingenuous sub-editor to write up the story with a map, which placed the islet as a new discovery far out at sea.

An exploit of which Alfred told in the last circular letter written by him in August, 1942 (copies of which did not reach his friends till well on into 1944, having been hidden away with unfor warded mail during the Japanese occu pation) was the amazing feat of walking by night along the reef of Tabiteuea Island for a distance of some 25 miles in order to catch a vessel which he could not otherwise reach in time. Two native companions were so knocked out that they were laid up for a few days, but Alfred’s chief concern seemed to be the effect on his shoes, which came to pieces with the rough going on the jagged coral.

His experience as a Scout at home stood him in good stead when he became a leader of the Ist Gilbert Scout Troop at Rongorongo (LMS), Beru. He started a Rover Company for the senior boys, and was never happier than when sitting round a camp fire outside his house with his Rovers, or away at camp in the bush with the Scouts for a week.

ALFRED SADD travelled out to the Gilberts with a senior colleague towards the end of 1933. In 1938 he paid a short visit home to England.

Barely two years later he narrowly escaped death by poisoning. He enjoyed entertaining friends in his bachelor establishment, and had developed no small skill in the culinary line. On this

occasion he had invited a missionary col league to dinner. After dinner both felt unwell Within a few hours his colleague was dead, and Alfred escaped as by a miracle, for it was discovered that the fish sauce had been accidentally con taminated with arsenical rat poisoning.

“There can be no doubt,” wrote Alfred in a letter home, “that I ought to have died when Levett did. It would appear that God has some purpose that He intends me to fulfil. The only thing that I hope and pray is that I shall be given the strength and courage to fulfil that purpose when the time comes, and not to fail Him.”

THE time came, and Alfred did not fail.

When the Japanese invaded the islands, all remaining British women were evacuated only just in time. Alfred and a senior colleague remained behind.

As the situation deteriorated, urgent orders came from the High Commissioner

for the immediate evacuation by any means possible of the remaining mem bers of the Administration and of the remaining British missionaries. But no ship was left in the Colony, and efforts to prepare boats for an almost forlorn hope of escape in a season of squalls and rough seas proved futile; until some three months later, by devious means, most of the remaining British residents did get away to Suva.

Meanwhile, in spite of all pressure, Alfred had made up his mind to stay on the held. He was a convinced pacifist, and dreaded the possibility of becoming entangled, as a young unmarried man, in some service of a military character. As the Japanese appeared to have no inten tion of coming further south, he thought they probably would not take any interest in the small islands without ship pas sages to the lagoons. And he had bound less faith in the might America was bring ing to the aid of Britain and the Allies.

Alas, his optimism was not justified by events. Letters written as late as August, 1942, and received after British re-occu pation of the islands, showed that Alfred Sadd was then more than ever confident that the southward advance of the Jap anese had been stayed.

But in September, 1942, the Japanese called at Beru and other southern islands, searching for radio stations and their operators. Alfred was called to see the Japanese commandant. A Union Jack had been laid on the steps of the veran dah before the commandant’s table, so that anyone approaching must tread upon it. Mr. Sadd, so native eye-witnesses report, quickly stooped and picked up the flag—some say he kissed it as he did so —folded it, and place it on the table before the Japanese recovered from their surprise.

He was taken to Tarawa; and there, with other British and New Zealand men, was cruelly treated by the brutal Japs.

Natives say they were tethered to trees for two or three days and nights, and taken one by one for examination. Later they were quartered in a wired-in enclo sure which had been the Colony asylum.

They were compelled to work on the fortifications the Japanese were prepar ing. It is said that despite the dis approval of their guards, Alfred Sadd tried to cheer the prisoners by leading them in songs and hymns.

Their imprisonment did not last long.

On October 15, 1942, they were all brutally executed by the Japanese. It appears that a few hours before, Allied warships and planes had shelled and bombed Jap anese installations and ships at Tarawa, causing considerable damage, and, it is believed, sinking one enemy vessel. It is said that one of the prisoners got out of the enclosure and attempted to signal to the Allied warship, so arousing the anger of the Japanese.

Native reports say that when it became evident the Japanese intended to kill the

prisoners, who were drawn up in line, Alfred Sadd stepped out in front and spoke words of encouragement and exhortation, which doubtless helped the men to meet death with the courage and fortitude they are reported to have shown. Then he took his place in the foremost rank, and was, it is believed, the first to die.

His radiant faith and personal courage made a deep impression on the Gilbertese, not on Tarawa only, but throughout the Islands where he was known. Thus passed “a very gallant gentleman.”

Nine years; and we hoped it might be nine and thirty years’ work on the mission field. But “love’s service standeth in love’s sacrifice.” A Gilbertese sums it up for us in these words: “We remember our elder brother of grace and kindness, Mr. Sadd. Although his time amongst us was but little and short, I think it was very long and of great dura tion, for the work that he did for the people of Rongorongo and the Gilberts was complete in its goodness. Although Mr. Sadd is dead yet he lives on in the thoughts and the hopes of many people who mot with him and grew used to him.”

In January, 1944, when the news of the tragedy at Tarawa was first partially made public, the LMS headquarters in London received an official intimation that Rev. A. L. Sadd was reported “Miss ing, believed killed.” The then Foreign Secretary for the South Sea Fields of the London Missionary Society, Rev. Norman Goodall, MA, wrote an article published in “The Christian World” of January 20, 1944, under the heading, “Missing, Be lieved Immortal.” The article concluded with these words: “So long as a glimmer of hope remains that we may again have the joy of coping with Sadd's most ori ginal despatches, we shall hold on lov ingly to the possibility, but it will be in the deep certainty, surer than hope, that whether here or beyond the flaming ram parts of the world he belongs to ‘the ever-juvenile eternities’ and is living to the glory of God.” (A brief biography, “Alfred Sadd of the Gilberts,” by Rev. Nelson Bitton, former Home Secretary of the LMS, has been published in England at 1/-; and copies may be obtained from the offices of the London Missionary Society, National Building, 250 Pitt Street, Sydney, NSW.)