By Deborah Larsen
Lawrence Arnold Mills
Lawrence Arnold Mills was born in Port Austin, Michigan, on September 30, 1913, the son of Bert and Edna Veeder Mills. The Mills family moved to Avon Township about 1940 and lived on South Rochester Road. Lawrence worked for Briggs Manufacturing in Detroit before the war.
In April 1941, Lawrence enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was assigned as a machine gunner in the 64th Coast Artillery at Fort Shafter, Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, Lawrence survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He described the event to the Rochester Clarion:
We were ordered to move over to Hickam field to set up our machine gun. As we moved along the road toward the airfield with our guns mounted in the bed of the trucks one of the Jap planes swept low along the road and began strafing. We stopped the truck and jumped into the back and fired back as he came in to strafe again.
Before the attack was over, Lawrence’s battery was credited with downing 11 enemy aircraft. He continued:
It was peacetime, and it was hard to realize that the Japs were shooting at us and shooting to kill. The attack came so suddenly that we didn’t have time to even think of fear, but after it was all over and I saw all the wreckage around us I know that I was plenty scared. After shooting down the first plane while we were on the road we moved over to a position on Hickam Field where we could see the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor and the ships rolling in fire and smoke before sinking. It was an awful thing to watch.
Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, Lawrence left Hawaii to attend officer candidate school. He received his commission as a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 696th Airborne Anti-Aircraft Regiment in Algeria. In July 1944, he transferred to the Army Air Forces and joined a B-26 “Marauder” squadron in France as transportation officer.
Lawrence was released from active duty in March 1946, but returned to service during the Korean War. He retired from military service in January 1966.
Lawrence Arnold Mills died at age 76 on July 14, 1990, and was laid to rest in Camarillo, California.