Thomas Ard Sylvest was born in September 1925 in Provencal, Louisiana. He had 12 brothers and sisters. His father was a farmer. As a family, they grew their own food and had their own livestock. As a young boy, he had an ox which he trained to obey his voice commands. He grew up in an area that did not have running water, electricity or plumbing. They also did not have a radio. In 1942, he graduated high school and enrolled at Louisiana State University [Annotator's Note: Baton Rouge, Louisiana] that fall. He also took part in ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps]. He volunteered for the Army Air Corps and completed his basic training at Keesler Filed in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Thomas Ard Sylvest enlisted in the Army Air Forces and began his training at Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi. He recalled a big portion of his time marching, then two weeks in the hospital with pneumonia, and two weeks with the flu. He also was on kitchen police duty for two weeks at a time. In January 1944, he was shipped to Bradley Field, Connecticut for Advanced Training. He completed plotter and teller school in about six weeks. They completed training around May 1944, and he was assigned to a new unit which was being formed, the 302nd Fighter Control Squadron [Annotator's Note: 302nd Fighter Control Squadron, 7th Fighter Command]. He was issued winter clothing and he thought the Army would be sending his unit to Europe, but then the military eventually took the clothing back at a later point. He was sent to Seattle, Washington via train and from there took a ship to Hawaii. They stayed in Hawaii for about five months monitoring air traffic around the islands. He was responsible for keeping an open line of communications with the planes which were in the air and knowing their position.

Near Christmas of 1944, Thomas Ard Sylvest's unit [Annotator's Note: 302nd Fighter Control Squadron, 7th Fighter Command] finished waterproofing their vehicles which had been a long drawn out process. He was told to pack his bag and he was put on a plane with 40 other men. While flying over the Pacific, one of the engines caught on fire, but eventually went out because the pilot cut the oil to it. They made it safely to Johnston Island [Annotator's Note: Johnston Atoll, United States] after several hours of flying. A work crew replaced the plane's engine then they flew to Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands]. He was then put on another plane and was sent to Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. He worked in the Air Defense Control Center while stationed on Guam for five months. In May 1945, he flew to Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. On the first day on the island, he was given the task of picking up Japanese body parts. He recalled that as he passed a Marine Cemetery, the thousands of bodies being interred was unforgettable.

Thomas Ard Sylvest landed on Iwo Jima, Japan shortly after the United States had secured the island. His squadron [Annotator's Note: 302nd Fighter Control Squadron, 7th Fighter Command] was to work in the control center in the communication section where he kept track of the location of airplanes. He also monitored the air channels. His unit monitored the B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] which flew overhead for their bombing runs on mainland Japan. The planes would start flying over at two in the morning and the last one would fly over at eight in the morning. He recalled watching a crew jump out of their plane on their return from mainland Japan. One of the guys was wounded during the jump. Sylvest enjoyed watching the color film that the pilots would bring back from their missions. He worked in there for the next 10 months, through the war's end.

[Annotator's Note: Thomas Ard Sylvest served in the USAAF with the 302nd Fighter Control Squadron, 7th Fighter Command based on Iwo Jima, Japan.] On 6 August 1945 a plane requested to land. After the plane landed, there was a circle of military police surrounding the plane. The crew of the plane were given food and then they took off again. Sylvest, for years, believed it to be the Enola Gay that had just come from dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan, but found out later that it was a decoy plane. When the war ended, he stayed on Iwo Jima until February 1946, then boarded a ship to return home. It took 19 days to get to California because they were in a storm the whole way home. He was discharged at Camp Fannin, Texas. Sylvest believes that The National WWII Museums is a great institution.