Blog about the sailors in WWII who served on the USS Boston
In an earlier post, I mentioned that a few copies of the ship’s weekly newsletter, the Bean Pot, were sent to me by family members of seaman Augustus Harris. I waxed on about how words can touch us – even when they float across a period of 65 years . . . Well, here are a couple of cartoons that appeared in the March 3, 1945 edition :
Little slices of life aboard a combat ship in the height of the Pacific War.
Steve
1944: On the 18th and 19th, the ships of Task Force 58 steam west towards New Guinea. The dawn fighter launches from the carriers on April 20 marks the beginning of Operation Reckless — the support of General MacArthur’s invasion of Hollandia. On the 29th, the ships left the area and began heading north and east toward the anchorage at Majuro. On the way, however, they would attack enemy bases in the Carolines, especially Truk. During this action, the ship came under attack several times by enemy dive-bombers, and the Boston’s gunners splashed more than one “Jill.”
The action continued into early May. On May 1, Boston formed up with several other cruisers into a bombardment group and they pounded enemy targets on the Caroline Islands of Satawan, Ponape and Truk.
Courtesy of: the family of Robert O. Heidl, EM2C, CA-69
Born: April 14, 1923
Died: January 27, 1994
Robert attended boot camp at the USN Training Station, Great Lakes, IL.
He was a plank owner, serving on the USS Boston from pre-commission until he was transferred for discharge December 20, 1945.
In the early 40’s, our country was still trying to shake off the devastation of the Great Depression. Whole sections of Rural America were still not yet Electrified, nor did they have telephone service, or highways for that matter. For those Americans who had electricity, listening to the radio was their link to the outside world.
Hundreds of thousands of kids, still wet behind the ears, flocked to recruitment centers everywhere to join in the fight against our enemies in Europe and in the Pacific (Japan). Young men who never been away from home — never been off the farm or out of the hills were now training to be soldiers and sailors. Imagine finishing boot camp with orders to ship off to Boston for assignment. A new ship was almost ready there. Maybe you take a train to New York City en route to Boston. After a night in the Big Apple, you take a train north to Boston. You see the ocean for the first time in your life.
Months later, after making trial runs up and down the eastern seaboard, you transit the Panama Canal – you can hardly believe such a thing could exist. Later, you arrive in Pearl Harbor. Two years after the Sneak Attack, you are stunned to see sunken ships still spewing oil. You berth up next to the Battleship Arizona. Her upper gun turrets still stick up out of the water. More than a thousand dead sailors are forever entombed below within her bulkheads.
After joining up with dozens of other warships into a Task Group, you head off across the VAST Pacific into an unknown and uncertain future.
After the Boston spent half a year ranging up and down the coast of Japan on Occupation / Demilitarization Duty in the Fall of 1946, she steamed back to California and most of the remaining crew left the ship. Then she headed north to Bremerton and joined the “Mothball Fleet.”
From commissioning in Boston to retirement in Washington three and a half years later, the “Mighty B” traveled 286,000 nautical miles – 330,000 land miles for all you drivers out there.
No wonder the guys didn’t talk about it much after the war.
Steve
April 3, 2010
Dear Dad,
Five years ago today, a few minutes before 2 am Pacific Time, you died just the way you lived — The Hard Way. Admitted to the hospital around 6 am on April Fool’s Day, you were in a coma. You faced death just the way you wanted to — unplugged; no respirator; no life support. The doctors said you’d live for a couple of hours. You hung on, minute by slow minute for twenty-four hours. Then you hung on for another twelve. Then, for good measure, you beat Death for eight more hours. You finally drew your last breath seconds before we changed the clocks to Daylight Savings Time — effectively wrangling another hour from the Reaper. The Hard Way.
I don’t know for sure how you were with my brothers or my sister as we grew up. But with me, everything you and I did was The Hard Way. You and I both know what I’m talking about.
You didn’t tell me about your “Navy Days” or your grueling experiences aboard the Boston. You should have. I didn’t ask. I should have. I had to find out on my own, the hard way. I started doing some research a couple of months before you died. Right after your funeral, I started in earnest. Then I started writing A Bird’s Eye View. My original intention was to write an account of your service for my three sons. Guess what, Dad? When I finally started writing my book, within six months I lost you; the company I worked for was bought out. I lost my job. Oh, and after thirty years of marriage, I got divorced. And there was that lawsuit thing . . . Rough six months. But I bore down and wrote through all that turmoil. Sound familiar? The Hard Way.
Oh, I meant to tell you . . . some sons and daughters and grandchildren of your crewmates have stumbled onto my book and this website. They’re sending me pictures and documents and such so that their dads can be remembered too. A couple of your crewmates have read it also. They told me they cried. They told me I did a good job telling it just like they remembered. Not so many of them left, it looks like.
I think you’d be proud, Dad. I say “I think”, because you’d never come out and say that. That’d be The Easy Way. You’d make me try figure it out for myself – The Hard Way.
Steve