Dr. Preston Jones: Joseph Saxon, thank you very much for taking time to talk with us and to tell us about your memories when you were an Air Force officer at Dover. Just to get started, did you retire from the Air Force?
Joseph Saxon: Yes, I did. And that was in 1994.
Jones: So was it a 20 year time in the Air Force?
Saxon: It was just shy of 20 years.
Jones: So when Jonestown happened and you were at Dover, that was pretty early in your career in the Air Force?
Saxon: Yes, it was. I was a Second Lieutenant when that occurred.
Jones: And what was your job at that time?
Saxon: I was the Deputy Chief of Public Affairs for the 436th Military Airlift Wing. I participated in operating the Media Relations program and Community Relations and our Internal Information program.
Jones: So as the Second Lieutenant, this huge news event happens and Dover gets pulled into it.
I imagine there must have been a lot of media who descended on Dover.
Saxon: We had, for that day, quite a bit of media. At that time, there was no 24/7 cable news system in effect. But also on that particular day, when the first remains started coming back, that was Thanksgiving, I believe. And so Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two family days, so there wasn’t a lot of news happening on that particular day. We were the news.
Jones: Let’s back up a little bit. When did you first hear of Peoples Temple or Jonestown? Was this something you were aware of before November 1978?
Saxon: No. I first became aware of it that Saturday when I was watching the news, and I saw the human remains in the jungle, and I got a phone call after that newscast went off. And it was from our headquarters at the Military Airlift Command. They inquired if I was aware of what had happened and if I was watching the news.
And I told them I was. And they said, “do you see those remains in the jungle?”And I said, yes. And they told me, “get ready. They’re coming your way.”
Jones: Wow. The event took place on a Saturday. So not even 24 hours had gone by when you had an indication that the bodies were going to come your way.
Saxon: That’s correct.
Jones: This gets to an interesting question because—you and I have discussed this a little bit before, but I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on this—one of the folks who’s written a number of books about Peoples Temple and Jonestown has asked why the bodies did not go to a base in Oakland, which apparently had, or at least the claim is had, a large mortuary. And this person’s claim is that Dover was chosen for 3 reasons:
One, it was closer to Washington, DC and would be easier then for federal officials to get there. Secondly, that it was closer to Guyana so the planes would not have to refuel. Thirdly, that authorities wanted some separation between the family since almost all of the family members lived in California.
There’s some concern that family members might get in the way. Do, do you have any thoughts about that claim that the bodies could have gone to Oakland, but they went to Dover for those reasons?
Saxon: I don’t have any direct knowledge of that. But I think it was closer to fly the remains to Dover, and it would’ve made sense to take them to Dover because you would’ve wanted some separation to allow the pathologists and the forensic staff to perform their duties. Processing the remains of 911 people was not something I don’t think that had ever occurred at one facility, in our country, at our time. It was a unique situation and a unique setting. We would have needed just some space to be able to do that job efficiently and quickly.
Jones: So you mean by space, you mean not having to—I’m trying to think of a diplomatic way of putting it, or even a humane way of putting it—but not having to—
Saxon: Well, if you’ve had hundreds of thousands of family members. it would’ve complicated our ability to process the human remains and to return them to the family.
Jones: That makes some sense. So within 24 hours, you’ve got a phone call that you are certainly going to be dealing with the media in your capacity as a Public Affairs Officer. What are your first memories of the remains from Jonestown actually showing up? I mean, when you think about the coffins or caskets first showing up in Dover, what are your first memories of that?
Saxon: Well, before they arrived, there was a great deal of preparation that had to be conducted at the base. And for our part in the public affairs arena, we had to ensure that, there were enough telephones and typewriters for the media. So we had to set up a media center. Back in those days there were no cell phones. You had to have a phone bank available. You had to have typewriters available. So we had to set that up. And then, the honor guard, as I recall, was called upon to conduct a ceremony for the first of the remains that arrived so that they could be handled with care and dignity.
And then, we had to make arrangements to get the media there and to have an area where they were allowed to observe the remains coming off of the plane and being onboarded to vehicles.
Jones: As this preparation is going, I’m imagining this kind of consumes all of the energy at the base, right? I mean, was this sort of an all-consuming thing, even for folks who weren’t involved? Was this just sort of an all-consuming thing at the base? As time goes on, at first we think we have 300 bodies, and then the number goes up. Eventually we get up to 900. Did this kind of almost consume the life of the Air Force base for a while?
Saxon: It did, for about 3 or 4 days. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation in that you needed to have volunteers to assist. As you indicated, a large number of human remains had to be moved and had to be placed into appropriate settings in the hangers so that we could hold the remains prior to sending them forth to the West Coast.
There were a lot of volunteers that were needed to assist in that effort.
Jones: I don’t know of a lot of cases, but I know of one specific case where a fellow volunteers to help and after a couple hours of it, he just says, “I can’t do this anymore.” Did that become a bit of a challenge where some of the guys and the gals volunteered, but after a while they just said they didn’t want to do it anymore? Do you remember that being one of the challenges that came up?
Saxon: I don’t know that that was an issue for us because, keeping in mind this nation, over the years, has called upon its military to step up into the arena and to provide service for things that they were uniquely qualified for. And that was the case here. Our men and women in uniform stepped up, they volunteered and performed their duties, and I think they performed them to the best of their abilities. I—I’m not aware of anyone who was not willing to, to provide their services.
Jones: You described the atmosphere at the outset: all hands on deck, let’s get ready, and the media’s going to be here. Not only do we have our jobs to do, but some of it’s going to end up on camera.
Let’s fast forward a couple weeks after that initial sort of rush has passed. Did having these 900 plus bodies on the base continue to affect the atmosphere at Dover in any way that you can remember?
Saxon: I don’t think that having the remains on base affected folks as much as going through that initial process of getting the remains prepared for transport and eventual burial. The initial onboarding of the bodies, preparing them, and trying to identify those as best they could using primarily dental records, and then getting them processed and into the caskets—that initial effort was the major impact to the base, I would imagine. But once those remains were processed, they were put into a hangar—I’m not sure how long it was before they were moved—it wasn’t.
I don’t know when they were actually moved; maybe you have some record of that. I think even into 1979. I think it took a few months at least. February stands out as to when the last remains left.
Jones: What do you remember in terms of the caskets coming back and arriving in Dover? What are some of the things you remember seeing?
Saxon: Well, the remains were inside of the caskets. From our vantage point, that’s what we saw. We saw the outside shell. We saw the aluminum caskets. We did not observe any of, or at least I did not observe, any of the human remains directly.
Jones: Now were some of the caskets different sizes?
Saxon: Yes, they were. You had 911 victims of this mass murder-suicide, but there were about 200 caskets that were just a couple of feet long. And those were the human remains of infants who were born outside of the country and for whom no records existed. And that was the big tragedy in all of this. , the, the adults made a decision to go down for better or worse, but they made their own decision. But then, the children didn’t have a choice in that. And so they accompanied their parents to Jonestown and they were murdered down there.
In the end, many of them, probably most of those 200, nobody knew to whom they were related, and so that, for me, is the biggest tragedy of all of this.
Jones: My understanding is that in Oakland, California, there’s kind of a mass grave for children who were never identified. Did you have any personal interaction with family members? Physically, most of the family members are in California, but did some try to get through to you on the phone or communicate with you in other ways?
Saxon: I believe some family members did talk to personnel within our office. And some came to the gate and ended up at a makeshift family resource center.
Jones: So one of the things that’s interesting is that your name comes up in at least 2 books by the same author and she reflects on the decision to take the bodies to Dover. These books were written in the mid-1980s, and she lost family members in Jonestown. So we take all of that into consideration, but many families were generally not very happy with how things worked out in terms of dealing with the bodies. But your name comes up in both cases as someone who is appreciated. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but actually in the acknowledgement section of one of the books, your name is mentioned as one of the people who was sympathetic and kind in an atmosphere that generally did not seem to be very sympathetic and kind. I’m wondering what your reaction is to that.
The claim is that these are family members who were trying to figure out what was going on and they felt a lot of indifference or apathy or even hostility. But then they do have memories of you as being someone who, in that context, was sympathetic. I’m interested in your response to that.
Saxon: I appreciate someone saying that we—that they had experienced a kindness from me. But I think in this particular situation, you’re looking at something that was of a magnitude that overwhelmed many, many people. I’m sure the families were overwhelmed. Those who had to deal with the remains were overwhelmed. I would imagine that some of our policymakers were stumped in terms of how to deal with a, a mass casualty event on this scale.
You’re talking about almost 1000 people who perished. And so trying to find a way to efficiently deal with that is. Is not something that most people can readily do. Things that we do every day, the routine things that occur in our lives, we probably do very well.
The things that we have no experience dealing with are the ones that are most problematic, because there is no experience level for you to draw upon. And so with this situation, people just did the best that they could. But I can understand it from a particular family member’s perspective; just trying to find out if a loved one was dead could be frustrating because I don’t know if they performed many identifications prior to the remains arriving. I think that initially, the plan was to do that, but I don’t think that that actually occurred. And so, you’ve got all of these human remains arriving at Dover.
And they have to be identified. I think they had 35 pathologists there and 29 or 30, other forensic folks who were augmenting the Dover Mortuary staff. It would’ve taken some time to acquire the records and to work through the identifications. I imagine that process of doing that. , led to a high degree of frustration with many of the families.
Jones: I just have a couple more questions. As you look back or just reflect back on yourself as a young Second Lieutenant and, all of a sudden, you’ve got this massive story that you’re dealing with as a Public Affairs Officer. What was your impression of the media at the time? Of course the media did a lot to shape the story. That’s what the media does. What was your impression of the media at the time?
Saxon: Well, the media can be kind of difficult because you have a natural competitiveness among media. So when you’re trying to gather them all up to take them somewhere, and if you’re trying to keep them in a group, you’re going to find that the competitive juices rise to the surface. And you’ll get photographers of competing newspapers or magazines or competing media not wanting to be in the same area as their competitor because they may be afraid that that person is going to take their shot. You’ll get that type of thing. But overall the media, I thought, played it pretty straight. There was one gentleman who tried to pay off a truck driver to take him into the back of the mortuary so that he could get a camera shot. We didn’t allow media back there because the doors were open to the facility and we didn’t think it was in anyone’s best interest to show human remains.
I know you had a full career with the Air Force and that you were involved in other historically important events. Once this whole episode is wrapped up at Dover and you carry on with your career. Did the story just kind of pass for you as well? Or did you find yourself over the years just kind of interested in this story and interested in finding out what happened, and how did all these people end up at Dover and all that? What was your own kind of reaction to the broader story that led to these 900 plus remains coming to Dover?
Saxon: When I look back over it, the thing that I’m struck by is that you’ve got people who made decisions and they put their fate or their families into a man. And the problem with putting your life in the control of someone else like that is because you’re outside of the country in a place called Guyana, in Jonestown and your freedom is limited. So the problem with putting yourself into that type of situation is that when you’re dealing with these guys with a Messiah complex, like the David Koreshes of the world or the Adolf Hitlers, when they go over the edge, they have a tendency to take the followers with them.
One of the lessons I learned from that was that you can never, ever afford to put yourself in a position that you’re not in control of your actions and your life. While I was at Dover, a couple of years after that, I got a chance to look back on this, and it was a tragedy. But there were other things that happened in my career. Like I said, a couple years after that, I got a phone call from the Associated Press, and it was a reporter inquiring about 6 hostages, 6 former employees of the US Embassy in Iran at our US Embassy in Iran, who were en route to Dover Air Force Base.
And so I went down to see the Wing Commander to let him know that we had gotten a query. And he took me with him. When this plane touched down on American soil, there were 2 people standing there. I found it interesting that you had these folks coming out of Iran. The only people there were him and me; I had a chance to deal with that and to be a part of that.
About a year after that, I ended up in Turkey at Lake Airbase. And it was the middle of a civil war and about 8 months after I had arrived in country or maybe about 6 months after I had arrived, the military overthrew the civilian government because at the time, like I said, you had a four-way civil war. You have Leftists fighting Rightists fighting Islamists, who were at war with fascists.
So I had a chance to see what happens when a country is in a civil war like that. I had a chance to see what happens in that type of situation. But when I step away from all of that, I think that the thing that had the biggest impact on my life was what had happened at Jonestown. Seeing those 200 coffins for the children stuck with me. It is, it showed, that you’ve got to take care of your children. And you have to make decisions that you may not necessarily want to do at the time, but you do it to benefit your family. You’ve got to take care of your family; you got to take care of yourself and your kids. You can’t leave somebody else to do that. You have to be responsible for that yourself.
Jones: Just to follow up, when you’re mentioning Iran, is that related to the Iranian Revolution of 1979?
Saxon: Yeah.
Jones: It’s interesting just listening to you talk about these three events. It just confirms what I’ve gathered, talking to so many military veterans. That is, most people read about history while it’s happening in the newspaper, but if you’re in the military, you have a pretty good chance of actually participating in it.
Saxon: That’s true for a lot of people.
Jones: Well, Joseph Saxon, I really appreciate you taking the time to share your memories. It’s important; it’s an important part of the story and I appreciate you taking the time to share your memories with us.