Staff Sgt. Boston Postgate, left, 374th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron electrical and environmental systems craftsman, and Senior Airman Daniel Lowe, 374th AMXS scheduler, pose at Yokota Air Base, Japan, Sept. 4, 2024. (Natalie Doan/U.S. Air Force)

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Two airmen stationed at this airlift hub in western Tokyo were decorated recently for saving a kayaker who spilled into a frigid Alaska lake in June.

Staff Sgt. Boston Postgate, an electrical and environmental systems craftsman, and Senior Airman Daniel Lowe, a scheduler, received the Air and Space Commendation Medal last month for their actions at glacier-fed Eklutna Lake, about 40 minutes north of Anchorage.

The pair from Yokota’s 374th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron were in Alaska for the Red Flag exercise and decided to go kayaking on a day off.

“We had gotten off the night before and I didn’t want to sit in my hotel room or stay at the Air Force Inn on [Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson],” Postgate told Stars and Stripes by phone on Oct. 2.

A hesitant Lowe was swayed by a phone call with his father.

“I just got off the phone with my dad the night before, and he was like, ‘Yeah man, you better send me some pictures of Alaska,’” he said in a Sept. 22 news release from Yokota’s 374th Airlift Wing.

They drove to Eklutna Lake, rented a tandem kayak and received a safety brief explaining the risks of kayaking in cold water.

After about an hour on the lake, they heard a commotion as someone in another group fell into the icy water. The man was visibly shaken but was being assisted by his friends, Postgate said.

The pair were towing the man’s kayak to shore when they heard a second splash as a second person fell into the water.

“We didn’t care about the kayak at that point,” Lowe said in the release. “All that mattered was getting them out of the water.”

They rescued the kayaker and paddled hard for 20 minutes back to shore with him clinging to their boat.

“Deep water is one of my biggest fears, so I know I would be panicking,” Lowe said in the release. “So, thinking that, I knew that his life really depended on us. If we got tired and he didn’t make it, it would have been on us.”

The rescued kayaker was growing weaker.

“Right when we got to shore, he was telling us he couldn’t feel his hands. He’d already not been able to feel his legs, so when we got to the shore, he couldn’t walk,” Postgate said. “I dragged him up and started taking his wet clothes off, then I picked him up and had him start standing on his own.”

Once the man regained feeling in his legs, Postgate directed him to run in place and do other exercises to get his heart rate up and raise his body temperature.

A staff member at the equipment rental company arrived shortly after and thanked the two airmen for saving the man’s life.

“It didn’t really feel like anything too crazy right then and there because we were exhausted. My hands were in a ton of pain from white-knuckle gripping the oars and we were wet because we had to pull him out of the water once we got to shore,” Postgate said.

A second staff member approached them at the launch area.

“She stopped us, and she said, ‘You saved that guy’s life.’ We were like, yeah cool, and she said, ‘No, you need to listen to what I’m saying right now. He would have died if you weren’t there,’” Postgate said.

That’s when reality took hold, Postgate said.

“We were in the perfect place at the perfect time for that guy to still be alive,” he said. “That’s all I can think about when it comes down to it. If we had not been there when we were, that guy would have died.”