USS Boston CA-69 in WWII

12-29-11

Another year winds down.  I have the day off, and I’m not quite sure what to do with myself.  The first thing I did was update the excel file that I started a while back of people who have emailed me about the website or the book or both.  Naturally, this file is for my eyes (or Bill’s eyes) only. It does help me to keep things straight.

The emails are gratifying and sometimes intriguing – especially ones from folks whose dad or grandfather or uncle served aboard the Boston and who say they’re going to send in pictures and stories, etc. etc.  Sometimes this does happen, and when it does, we publish the pictures!  I swear, however, that I could have published another book about the Boston filled with the pictures and stories and souvenirs from family members that have not yet materialized!.. I now refer to this as A Bird’s Eye Two – the Virtual and Unseen Collection! 

 Okay, just joking, folks.  Keep those emails and pictures coming!  We love ‘em!

A couple of amazing things happened this year that I’d like to point out or remember.

The first is that several months ago, within a couple of weeks of each other, I heard from Ms. Lola Heiler-Stillman from the Emerald Conservancy in Boston, and original crewmember Bob Knight.  They were asking whether we knew anything about a Temple Bell that the Boston had brought back from Japan after the War.  Naturally, we did not.

Ms. Heiler-Stillman is preparing a lecture about the Bell slated for March of 2012.  The Bell and its fascinating story is still fresh on our minds.

I was hoping that when Bill went to Washington and spent a week at the National Archives, some thread of info might appear somewhere on say, the decklogs of December 1945 and January 1946.  There is so much material to go through – but a quick peek at all the files does not look promising . . .

Which leads me to the second amazing thing:  My brother Bill (and his daughter Rivka) spent an entire week photographing files and documents and records and photos from the Boston.  I’m not talking about a couple of hundred things . . .   I’m talking about nearly filling a whole hard drive with images!  Some of the material was at my request  -  as I work on yet another book about the Boston, I needed more source materials about specific battles and specific events.  Most of what Bill did was for his own painstaking research on the crew records.  If you have not looked at the crew records tabs on this website  -   you owe it to yourself to do so.  He has created this entire thing from his own research.  It is truly amazing.

Bill has plans for making his research available to readers of the website.  He also has plans for making other crucial info available.  I will not take away his thunder and reveal anything more than what I have already mentioned.

Thanks, Bill!

Happy New Year to all our friends and readers.

Steve

USS Boston CA-69

I just returned from the National Archives in College Park Maryland, where I was able to find some really interesting things about the USS Boston.  I had three strategic goals, find the rest of the crew members  on the Boston that I don’t have, expand the info and picture library, and copy the entire Decklog of the Boston.  As usual with trips to NARA, I mostly accomplished everything, but I’ll need to return to get more info.  This is absolutely how things go at a place with all the info hidden in boxes and researchers who need to find out more info.

In terms of my goals, here is my report: I found the 20-40 marine names who were assigned to the Boston from Jun of 1943 to February of 1946.  I ran out of time to get the last 6 months of marine records before de-commissioning.  I have not yet found records of the Aviation group.  I was able to photograph the Decklog: it runs about 3500 pages from commissioning in June of 1943 to decommissioning; I’m planning to have two organizations of the decklog, first in month order so it can be read online, and second as a series of files like the Personnel file that can be placed as references to Sailor records.  In the decklog I found info that two Admirals, leaders of Cruiser Division 10, were on board from Dec of 1943 to February of 1944.  With the Brass also comes the worker bees: over 20 Marines supported the Admiral and 20-50 sailors had permanent places on the Boston during the admirals stay.  My daughter Rivka helped photograph and scan pictures; We’ve done a lot of this before, but never so organized!  So as usual we got lots of info, but need more!

As I was reading more of records I was copying, I read one interesting nugget: The USS BOSTON held 730,000 Gallons of fuel oil when fully loaded and used about 38,500 gallons a day!  Wow!  That’s quite the load of fuel.  Success in the Pacific for World War II depended on the US being able to deliver fuel and food to ships operating 1/2 way around the world.  This leads me to Ulithi atoll.  When the US found this atoll it had people who were very primitive, living in a group of islands with on of the largest natural harbors in the world.  The US relocated some of the tribesman off of MogMog island, built a runway, and a rest and relaxation station, and proceeded to build the greatest Floating harbor that’s ever existed.  As many as 700 ships, including the USS BOSTON were anchored at Ulithi harbor between battles.  Logistically, fuel and supplies were delivered to Ulithi to support the fleet.  The exisitance of Ulithi was a secret until after the operations had been moved closer to Japan and by then it was only a memory for sailors and history buffs!

12-17-11

On my 12-7 (Pearl Harbor Day) post, I wrote about the worldwide magnitude of the War, stating that 48,200,000+ people (soldiers and civilians) died.  My source for this figure is http://warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm.

A reader emailed me and asked if this included victims of the Holocaust.  My answer was “I don’t know.  But I will dig some more.”  There are many other resources with estimates of WWII deaths, including: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties (which states there were 62,172,000 to 78,511,00 total deaths), and http://secondworldwar.co.uk/index.php/fatalities (which states there were 61,000,000 deaths).  You can surf these sites and see how they arrived at these estimates.

After looking more closely at my original source numbers, it seemed pretty clear to me that they were way low on civilian casualty numbers for Germany.  Wikipedia’s numbers are quite a bit higher than others – estimating as many as 20,000,000 Chinese civilians died during the War.  I now think my original number of 48,200,000 is low.  50 to 60 million seems to be the widely-held estimate for total WWII deaths to combatants and civilians worldwide.  I still don’t know if my original source factored in the Holocaust (estimates start at 6 million and climb steeply from there.)  So, I have decided to add 6 million to my original 48,200,000 to allow for the Holocaust victims (especially in the German civilian category).  That gives us 54,000,000 deaths.

Fifty four million!  My little brain has problems relating to big numbers.  So, while I was struggling with understanding in concrete terms how many is 54,000,000 I got an idea and found another source for comparison.  It can be found at:  http://exploredia.com/population-of-us-states-2011/. If we start at the northern border of the state of Washington and we kill every man, woman and child and keep going and do the same in Oregon, California, turn left and do Arizona, go north and do Nevada, we will have wiped out 53,452,000 people.  We’re still over a half million short, so we’ll take them out of southern Colorado.

If you’d rather do it in the Northeast, it goes like this: start at the northern boundary of Maine, head south  and do the same annihilation. Turn right, wipe out New Hampshire and Vermont. Turn south, take care of Massachusetts. Keep going, do Rhode Island and Connecticut. Head west and south and wipe out the state of New York (don’t forget the Yankees fans {LOL –just kidding}). When you finish the entire state of New York, cross the river and annihilate New Jersey.  Keep going – do Maryland and Delaware. That brings you to 49,289,000.  Still not enough.  Head south and remove half (4 million of the 8,000,000) folks in Virginia.  That brings us to  53,289,000 Americans, with another 700,000 or so to go.

Sobering, no?

On a happier note, I’m about to pick up my brother Bill and niece Rivka at the airport.  They spent the entire week at the National Archives researching deck logs, photos, action reports and the like from CA-69 (through to the final trip to Bremerton Washington and into the mothballs.)  More to come . . . .
Steve

12-10-11

Compliments of Cristina Vadala, Jimmy’s great niece

James enlisted on 6/29/43 in New York City

Arrived on the Boston 9/15/43 just before the ship sailed off to the Pacific

Separated from the Boston on 6/1/45 (San Pedro, CA) before the ship returned to the Pacific.

Jimmy and family in Queens, NY

12-7-11

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor minutes before 8 am on that Day of Infamy in 1941 awoke and galvanized our country.  We had been officially “neutral” until that moment, in spite of massive aid flowing from our Atlantic shores to England in the “lend-lease” program.  Pearl Harbor was the opening act of a broadly expansive and aggressive plan to expand the Empire of Japan.  The raid on Oahu was followed on that same day by attacks on such far-flung places as Singapore, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Midway Island and Hong Kong.  The Japanese had gone “all in.”

The history of antagonism between the US and Japan (leading up to the Attack) is long and complex and can’t be looked at in this brief format. The US “spun its wheels” in the Pacific until Jan 1944, when we were finally able to set afloat hundreds of new warships through the Panama Canal.  The War in Europe had consumed all our resources until then.  When we did go on the offensive in the Central Pacific with the formation of Task Force 58, we went “all in”  -  forcing the Surrender of Japan a year and a half later.

The Japanese were every bit as aggressive, ruthless and feared in the Eastern Hemisphere as were the Nazis in the Western Hemisphere.  The US was the “wild card” in WWII  -  as a nation of determined people we were underestimated by both the Germans and their Axis counterparts – The Empire of Japan  -  who pursued their dreams of dominance with a very heavy cost.

Final World War II death estimates (combined civilian and military):

United States                         400,000

Germany                              4,200,000

Japan                                    2,350,000

This of course , does not include Europe and Asia and The Mediterranean, and all the other places in the world that lost soldiers and civilians.

THE TOTAL WORLDWIDE LOSS OF LIFE DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO WWII:

48,231,700

Steve