16 Thomas Lattimore was briefly a governor of American Samoa
Thomas Lattimore was a career officer in the United States Navy, who graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1914. He served during the First World War as a junior officer, promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade before the war ended, and during the interwar years served in many posts, including briefly as acting governor of American Samoa, since he was temporarily the senior officer present. In the spring of 1941 he was assigned as commanding officer of USS Dobbin, a destroyer tender based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaiian Territory. Later that summer the decision was made to keep the American Pacific Fleet in Hawaiian waters, rather than at the anchorages along America’s west coast.
Lattimore was known to enjoy solitary hikes in the hills surrounding Pearl Harbor. After one such hike he returned to his ship with an arm injury, which he claimed occurred as the result of an accidental fall, and which required his arm to be in a cast. In July 1941, after the cast had been removed, Lattimore again left for a hike in the Aiea Mountains. When he failed to return, search parties of sailors, soldiers, and Marines were sent to look for him, including search dogs. He was never found, nor were any clues as to what may have happened to him. Rumors about his fate included abduction by Japanese spies who were gathering information preparatory to the Pearl Harbor attack, but the Commander’s fate remained, and still remains, a mystery, largely forgotten following the Japanese attack in December, other than among sailors who knew him.
