Category: Uncategorized

March 2011

Sorry for the slight delay in posts, my brother and I have been working on improving his living situation with hammers, nails, and drywall. 🙂  As I continue to enter sailors into the database, I noticed another trend, during march of 1944 another 100 or so sailors were sent home and another set of new sailors joined the USS Boston in Espiritu Santos in the western pacific.  They were shipped from hawaii as raw recruits, many of them joined the Navy in mid-1943.  The 100 sailors that left were mostly posted new ships under construction on the east and west coasts of the US.

Consider that the Crew of the Boston, after commissioning in June 1943, added a group of sailors in august 1943, so that they were more sailors than were a full crew.  When they arrived in San Francisco and exchange sailors took place, some new sailors replaced some sailors commissioned in june; the old sailors were sent to new ships.  In Hawaii in Dec 1943, some sailors were transferred to other cruisers.  Then in march of 1944, 100 or so (that’s every 1 in 17 men) were transferred back to new cruisers being built and they were replaced by new recruits.

I’ve had really slow going in the archival data, because the pages from Espiritu Santos were almost unreadable.  I have to try and go to the next period and see if they were added to the roster.  Every three months, the entire ships roster was re-accounted for.  This process is really tedious; especially when you can’t read the names.  sometimes the re-accounting is unreadable, then you just guess.

Making slow progress,

Bill

1-29-11

There were two distinct phases of naval action in the Pacific War.   In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on the ships and facilities of the US Navy in Pearl Harbor, Phase One was played out in the South Pacific   –     mostly between the Equator and the islands north of Australia.   During that time, the United States was bogged down in aiding the British Government’s desperate fight against the relentless aggression of Nazi Germany.

When the heavy cruiser USS Boston arrived in Pearl Harbor on December 6, 1943, one day short of two years after the Attack, Phase Two was ushered in with the creation of Task Force 58. The Boston was a unit of this one hundred-warship fleet that systematically and aggressively took the fight to the enemy.   The combination of carrier fighter planes and the heavy artillery of American warships reduced the Japanese Navy one ship at a time for a year and a half.   When Japan surrendered in August of 1945, all that was left of her Navy was the hulks of a few destroyed ships sticking up in the shallow harbors of her Inland Sea.

I have recently read two amazing books about the War, No Ordinary Joes (2010 by Larry Colton) and Japanese Destroyer Captain (1961 by Tameichi Hara)   –   both essentially about the War in the South Pacific.

I don’t want to spill the beans, so I won’t go into much detail.   No Ordinary Joes is the remarkable account of four submarine sailors whose sub (USS Grenadier) was torpedoed by a fighter plane and sunk in the Java Sea.   Survivors were rescued (captured) by a Japanese merchant ship.   The book chronicles their hellish survival as POWs through the balance of the War, and follows their post-war lives.

The first-hand account of a Japanese Naval Officer’s experiences during World War II was so compelling, I could not put it down.   In Japanese Destroyer Captain, intelligent, dedicated and operationally-successful Captain Tameichi Hara recounts his bird’s-eye-view of the great Naval Battles of the South Pacific of which his ships participated in and was on the receiving end and “giving end” of   ship destroying torpedo attacks.   (Of great interest to me was his first hand account as a ship commander of the Final Japanese Sortie of the War, in which the Super Battleship, Yamato, Mara’s cruiser and a handful of destroyers were sent on a suicide run against the US invasion of Okinawa.)

This book is awesome!   My hats-off to Captain Mara for having written this insightful, honest account of the War from viewpoint of a Japanese Officer.   His revelations of the workings of the decision-makers in command of the Japanese Army and Navy were in line with everything I have already read.   What was fascinating to me was realizing that the turning of the tide in favor of the Americans came much earlier than I had realized. By the time Task Force 58 assembled off Oahu in January 1944, Japan’s capacity to wage war was pretty much done.   It took another year and a half of countless bombs, blood and casualties on both sides to finally bring the devastated Empire of Japan to her knees.

Oh, the book is long out of print, but can be found in used book stores and online at places like Amazon and Ebay.   WORTH THE HUNT!

Oh yeah, the Ballantine paperback (1965 edition) cost 75 cents. . .

1-9-11

Here’s what I know about Ensign Dwayne Russell Witherspoon.   His wife, Mrs. Mildred Witherspoon, was kind enough to send me several letters full of information about “D.R.” and his service aboard the Boston.   He was finishing high school in Kansas in 1943, just when the Boston’s work crews were scrambling round-the-clock to get her finished. He attended college in MO and Midshipman’s School in Fort Schuyler, NY.

His Separation Papers show that he was commissioned Ensign and assigned to the Boston in early July 1945.   Here’s where it gets a little fuzzy. The Boston was anchored at San Pedro, CA for several months while being retrofitted with new radar and other improvements in preparation for the Invasion of Japan.   She sailed from San Pedro back to the war on June 1, 1945, a month before Ens. Witherspoon was assigned to the ship.

In October 1945, Witherspoon was among a party of Boston sailors and officers who visited Hiroshima, less than 3 months after the A-bombing. (The one-of-a-kind picture below graciously supplied by the Witherspoon family).   We also know that D.R. was aboard throughout Occupation Duty and stayed attached to the ship through her retirement in Bremerton, WA, detached from duty on Aug. 6, 1946.

How did he get onboard?   The Boston was back on station in Task Force 38 late in July and participating in the late war bombings of Japan.   Among his “Navy things”, his wife Mildred found a copy of the Boston Cruise Book.   But she also found a copy of the Cruise Book of the Battleship USS Colorado. Did he fly to Pearl Harbor and then hitch a ride on the Colorado and get transported via destroyer to the Boston?

Eventually, Bill and I think we’ll find the answer, or at least part of the answer.   Whenever he came aboard, it will show up on the daily Deck Log.   Bill has been mining the deck logs (from whence comes the “promotions” and “discipline” entries that he is adding to the Crew Records.)   It’ll be a while before he gets there . . . .

By the way, Bill tells me he will eventually get to the Officers (and Aviators)   –     after he finishes the Enlisted Men.

HIROSHIMA VISIT 1945, Mike Lusk’s Party

Ens. Witherspoon, second row, seventh from right

NOTE: all photos and images on this website are copyright protected and cannot be used without the express written permission of the Kellys and the contributors.

January 2, 2010

Both Steve and I have had a busy month of December, but we are hoping to get back to the blog very soon.  In the meantime I have added a new subscription service which allows you to enter your email address and get an email of all new blog entries.

The link is on the Green header and says “Subscribe to Posts’, you’ll have to enter your email address and one of those annoying Capthca entries to subscribe.  Then every time we post something you’ll get an email.

Bill

12-1-10

It is funny, a little bit, to see pictures of the CA-69 guys. During their service at the height of the Pacific War, they were heavily censored.   Letters were carefully read to make sure the boys did not reveal anything   –   especially which ship they were on and where they were headed (or had already been.) Journals / diaries were strictly forbidden.   And, it goes without saying – NO PHOTOS ALLOWED.   So when we see a picture of individual sailors or groups of guys, they were invariably on leave or on liberty.   Liberty pictures more often than not show the boys “unwinding”   –   often with a drink in hand.

This did not happen very often for the crew.   Most of their time in the Pacific was spent in combat.   At the end of each operation, the ship would anchor in a remote lagoon for repairs and resupply.   A few anchorages were so short that the guys did not even get liberty.   When they did get liberty, they would be allowed to swim in the lagoon and go ashore with their “liberty rations” (two cheese sandwiches and two cans of cool beer each.)

The two pictures below are from my dad’s scrapbook.   There were only two times when the guys were in “liberty port” long enough to buy a cheap camera and have the pictures developed.   The first was in Pearl Harbor in December 1944.   He has pictures of pals from this first leave.   I can tell because the guys have their “whites” on and there are no medals or rank badges.   The second was a year and a half later, when the ship returned to San Pedro (CA) for six weeks for repairs and radar retrofits.   That’s when these pictures were taken   –   you can tell because the guys have their Campaign Ribbons and Battle Stars on their uniforms.

Steve