Fred Hargesheimer, at age 90, is paraded in a ceremonial canoe past cheering crowds of New Britain islanders on a return visit in July 2006 in Ewasse, Papua New Guinea.

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BIALLA, Papua New Guinea — The Japanese fighter caught the American pilot from behind, riddling his plane with machine-gun rounds. The left engine burst into flames. It was time to bail out.

The American yanked on the release lever, but the cockpit canopy only half-opened. He unbuckled his seat belt, rose to shake the canopy loose and was instantly sucked out.

Swinging beneath his opened parachute, he plunged toward a Pacific island jungle of thick, towering eucalyptus trees, of crocodile rivers and headhunters, into enemy territory, and into an unimagined future as a hero, "Suara Auru" (Chief Warrior), to generations of islanders yet unborn.

Fred Hargesheimer was shot down in the southwest Pacific on June 5, 1943. A lifetime later, he sits in his quiet California ranch house amid the snow and soaring sugar pines of the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The light-blue eyes, at age 91, can't see as well as they once did. But when he looks back over 65 years, the smiling former Minnesotan sees it all clearly — the struggle to survive, the island rescuers, the Japanese patrols and narrow escapes, the mother's milk that saved him. He remembers well his return to the island of New Britain, the people's embrace, the fundraising and building, the children taught, the adults cured, the happy years beside the Bismarck Sea with Dorothy, his wife.

"I'm so grateful for getting shot out of the sky," he says.

Garua Peni is grateful, too, as a member of those once-future generations here on New Britain.

"I thank God from the depths of my heart for blessing me in such an abundant way when he brought Suara Auru Fred Hargesheimer," she says.

The improbable story of "Mastah Preddi," a story of uncommon gratitude and the heart's uncanny ways, begins when the 27-year-old Army lieutenant crashes to the tangled underbrush of the jungle floor.

Picking himself up, "Hargy" Hargesheimer found no broken bones, but felt a bloody gash on his head. He cut off bits of nylon parachute for a bandage. Then he looked around.

He had been on a photo-reconnaissance mission from his base on the main island of New Guinea, tracking ship movements.

He came down halfway up the slopes of the 4,000-foot-high Nakanai Mountains, in a wilderness of torrential rains, giant ferns, venomous insects and vicious wild pigs. Hargesheimer checked his survival kit, finding compass, machete, extra ammunition for his pistol, and two bars of concentrated chocolate, his only food.

After 10 days, as his chocolate dwindled, he came upon a riverside clearing and an empty native lean-to, and decided to settle in. Snails he found in the river-bed became his staple for weeks to come, roasted by the dozen.

His daily existence in the jungle was miserable. Losing weight and strength, out of matches and desperately keeping his fire going, he suffered through nightmares of dying alone in the jungle. From his youthful days as an Episcopal lay reader, the lost pilot summoned words of hope.

"The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want," he told himself, over and over. From memory each day, he'd recite that 23rd Psalm to its comforting final verse, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. …"

And on the 31st day, he heard voices on the river. When they came to him, he cried.

Villagers here on the north coast had seen the distant plane go down. Now, in an outrigger canoe on an upriver hunting trip, they had their eyes out for a pilot.

Finding Hargesheimer by the riverside, Lauo, their "luluai," or chief, showed the bearded, haggard white man a note written by an Australian officer saying these villagers had saved other pilots and could be trusted.

That night by the river, Lauo's party exploded with wild singing and feasting, unnerving the young American. Then, as they sang in an island tongue, he picked out the melody: "Onward, Christian Soldiers." He felt reassured.

They took him downriver to their seaside village, Ea Ea, a place of grass-roofed lean-tos. They gave him a hut and fed him boiled pig, shellfish and taro, their starchy tuber mainstay. He began to learn Pidgin, the islanders' simple, English-based common language.

In his tattered aviator's uniform, he joined in services each Sunday led by three Christian missionaries, natives who had fled New Britain's main town, Rabaul, when the Japanese landed 17 months earlier.

Because enemy troops patrolled the beaches, Hargesheimer spent many days in a hut hidden in a nearby swamp. But one day he was caught away from his hide-out when an alarm went up that Japanese were approaching. Village friend Joseph Gabu led the American into the rain forest, sending him up a eucalyptus tree to hide.

Through the night, he was tormented by swarms of mosquitoes, until finally the next day Gabu came for him. All was clear, but within weeks he was stricken with malaria.

It left him prostrate, weakening, not eating for days. He asked for milk, but there was none. Then a missionary, Apelis Tongogo, asked whether he would drink "susu." The Tolai Methodist missionary brought his wife, Aida, to the hut, carrying their month-old baby.

She slipped behind the grass wall and returned with a cup of milk. For 10 or more days following, she supplied Hargesheimer with her susu, mother's milk that helped restore his health.

Villagers protected "Mastah Preddi" apparently because they hated the Japanese for their cruel treatment of natives.

The village took a great risk by protecting him from the Japanese, he says.

In February 1944, eight months after he was shot down, Hargesheimer was picked up from a New Britain beach by a U.S. submarine, in a rendezvous arranged by Australian "coastwatcher" commandos.

He returned to civilian life after the war ended in 1945. By then he had married Dorothy Sheldon of Ashtabula, Ohio, and by 1949 they had three children — Richard, Eric and Carol. In 1951, he took a sales job with a Minnesota forerunner of computer maker Sperry Rand, his employer ever after.

But the people of Ea Ea never left his mind. He corresponded with a missionary to learn how they had fared.

"The more I thought about my experience with the people in New Guinea, the more I realized what a debt I had to try to repay," he says.

In 1960, with the family vacation money and the family's blessing, Hargesheimer made a solitary, 11,000-mile journey back to New Britain.

The villagers, hearing "Mastah Preddi" was coming, lined the beach and sang "God Save the Queen" as he stepped from a boat in the moonlight.

"It was wonderful, overwhelming," he says. He was met by Luluai Lauo, Joseph Gabu and others, and later found Aida and her 16-year-old son, to thank her, too.

But "a simple thank you didn't seem enough," he recalls. Back home, he consulted with a missionary, who told him what the people needed: a school.

The Minnesota salesman went to work. He raised $15,000 over three years, "most of it $5 and $10 gifts."

With the money and 17-year-old son Dick in tow, he returned to New Britain in 1963. He was given church land in Ewasse, a central settlement near Ea Ea, now renamed Nantabu. There a contractor raised the area's first permanent elementary school — concrete floor, metal roof, sturdy walls.

He brought in New Guinean teachers, American volunteers and an Australian headmaster, and the Airmen's Memorial School opened in 1964 with 40 students and four classrooms.

Back in the U.S., a brief spurt of publicity drew more contributions, he got more ideas, and this story of a debt repaid grew.

In 1969, his fund built a library at the school and a clinic for Ewasse. By then, too, the school's successful plot of oil palm helped pave the way for a large plantation of the lucrative crop, with scores of jobs.

Once his own children were grown, Hargesheimer saw an opportunity to "say thank you in a meaningful way." In 1970, he and Dorothy packed up and moved to New Britain, to teach the children themselves and to build a second school.

Garua Peni, then 10, was one of their first students.

But the couple, leaving New Britain in 1974, had less than a dozen more years left together. In 1985, at age 63, Dorothy died of a heart attack.

The old pilot flew on alone, visiting New Britain every two or three years, funneling fresh funds into his causes, finding ever-warm embraces. On a visit in 2000, they proclaimed him, in a great tribute, "Suara Auru."

Then, in 2006, Hargesheimer, at 90, returned for what he said would be his last visit.

As he was carried past them in a ceremonial canoe and Nakanai headdress, thousands cheered. "The people were very happy. They'll always remember what Mr. Fred Hargesheimer has done for our people," says Ismael Saua, 69, a former teacher at the Airmen's school.

Hargesheimer's two schools had an enrollment of some 500, and a list of well-educated alumni numbering many hundreds more, including Garua Peni. She had an advanced degree in linguistics in Australia and now was taking over Hargesheimer's New Guinea foundation as chairperson.