William Francis Hellstern of USS Oklahoma-- Part 2

William was missing, but he was not alone.  Navy personnel spent more than two years uprighting the USS Oklahoma before they could begin getting at the remains.  By that time it was difficult to do any identification.

The remains were buried together at the Halawa and Nu'uana cemeteries.

Those remains were later transferred to 46 plots at the National Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl.  In 2015, DPAA  started exhuming the remains for analysis using DNA.

Ted Hummel said that he had first been contacted by the DPAA about five and a half years ago.  Hummel provided them with his DNA, some of his mother's from her locket of hair from the family Bible.

They identified his uncle.

William Francis Hellstern was buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge next to his sister, Ted's mother.  Hellstern also has a marker in Illinois, but the family decided to bury his with his sister.

Again, What a Great Thing the Government Is Doing.  --GreGen

Gunner's Mate 2nd Class William Francis Hellstern, One of USS Oklahoma's Unknowns-- Part 1

From the May 18, 2018, 9 News NBC, Colorado "Missing sailor killed at Pearl Harbor brought home after 76 years" by Noel Brennan.

Years ago, before she passed away, Ted Hummell's mother, Jeanne, cut off a piece of her hair and placed it in her Bible next to locks of hair from her siblings.  One of those locks of hair belonged to Ted's uncle, Gunner's Mate 2nd Class William Francis Hellstern, a man Ted never got to meet because he died on the USS Oklahoma that day in 1941.

The 20-year-old from Peoria, Illinois, never made it off his ship.

Letters were sent from the Navy to the family afterwards.  On December 20, 1941,  Rear Admiral  Randall Jacobs, wrote:

"The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your son, William Francis Hellstern, Gunner's Mate 2nd Class, U.S. Navy, is missing following action in performance of his duty and in the service of his country."

Another from February 1942, began, "After exhaustive search it has been found impossible to locate your son."

--GreGen

Five Illinois Unknowns on USS Oklahoma Identified

The Pearl Harbor National Memorial list of the Oklahoma Unknowns who have been identified has a lot of their home towns and states also listed.

These are the ones from Illinois:

Fireman 1st Class Michael Galajdik, 25,  of Joliet, Illinois

Gunner's Mate 2nd Class   William Francis Hellstern, 20, of Peoria, Illinois

Fireman 3rd Class John H. Lindsley, 22,  of Waukegan, Illinois'

Signalman 3rd Class Charles E, Nix, 26, of Danville, Illinois

Seaman 1st Class Harold W. Roasch, 25, of Rockford, Illinois

--GreGen

Two Sites With the List of USS Oklahoma Identified Unknowns

I haven't been able to find out if two of the recently identified USS Oklahoma Unknowns, Gerald J. Bailey and Robert E. Bailey were brothers or not, but I did find two sites that give a complete list of the now-identified Oklahoma Unknowns.

Unto the Breach:  Honoring Our Nation's H  "Never Forgotten Heroes:  Remains of over 200 Pearl Harbor  sailors, Marines identified" by Chris Carter.

Pearl Harbor National Memorial, Hawai'i  "USS Oklahoma casualties identified."

--GreGen

Six Sailors Aboard USS Oklahoma Identified After Almost 80 Years

From the January 28, 2021, Connecting Vets site by Julia LeDoux.

The Defense POW/NIA Accounting Agency (DPAA)  has identified six sailors killed on the USS Oklahoma during the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

In a release Wednesday, the DPAA announced that these remains have been identified:

Seaman 1st Class Gerald J. Bailey, 24

Shipfitter 3rd Class Robert E. Bailey

Fireman 1st Class Wesley J. Brown, 25

Water Tender 1st Class  Oliver K. Burger, 26

Fireman 1st Class  Beoin  H. Corzatt, 24

Radioman 3rd Class  Earl M. Ellis,  23

(I have to wonder about the names of the first two in this list.)

The attack on the Oklahoma that day resulted in the deaths of 429 crewmen.  The majority of them were not recovered until years later and their remains were unidentifiable and they were buried together.  DNA is now being used for identification.

To date, the DPAA has accounted for the remains of over 200 of the Oklahoma Unknowns.

This Is a Wonderful Thing the Government Is Doing.  --GreGen

The Passing of the Greatest Generation: Nolfo, Dryman and Geyer

**  JACOB NOLFO  (1927-2020)  Died December 28, 2020.  Served on USS Pennsylvania in WW II.

**  TALMAGE LAMAR DRYMAN, 94, Died Jan. 15, 2021.  He served as a gunnery officer on the USS Tennessee in the Pacific during the war.

**  CHARLES E. GEYER, 96, Died Jan. 5, 2021.  Had just completed junior year in high school when he was drafted into the Army.  Served in Europe 1944-1945.  

Interesting story about him, while at Patterson High School, he met a girl named June Rosalie  Hoskins, who was four years younger than him.  While he was overseas, she  was a part of  the school's letter-writing team and wrote to him regularly.  

When he returned after his 1946 discharge, he went back to that school, a romance ensued and they got married the following year.

Pen Pals.  --GreGen

USS West Virginia Pearl Harbor Victim Welborn Ashby Identified

From Jan. 24, 2021, Tennessee 10 News (Tennessee) "Kentucky WWII soldier who died at Pearl Harbor identified" by Conner Farrell.

According to a release from the  Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), the remains of Navy Fireman 3rd Class Welborn L. Ashby from Centertown, Kentucky, have been identified.  He was 24 when he died on the battleship USS West Virginia on December 7, 1941.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 106 crew members aboard the ship.  During salvage of the ship, the remains of at least 66 individuals were recovered.  Those who could not be identified, including Mr. Ashby, were interred as Unknowns at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, known as the Punchbowl in Honolulu.

To identify Ashby, dental, anthropological analysis and DNA were used.

He will be buried May 31 in his hometown.

A Hero Comes Home.  --GreGen

Sgt. Stryker Coming Home in 1945

From the September 23, 2020, MidWeek  "Looking Back."

1945, 75 Years Ago.

"Mrs. Barbara LaSeur-Stryker of Victor received a telegram from her husband Sgt. Roger Stryker saying that he had arrived in the States and hoped to be home soon.

"Sgt. Stryker  left the States two years ago April and saw action in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, England and the European Theater of war."

--GreGen

Puerta Princesa Airfield, Palawan island, Philippines-- Part 3

After capture.

US Army and Navy engineers of the 1897th Engineer Aviation Battalion and the 84th Naval Construction Battalion immediately began to rehabilitate the facility and completed their work on the facility and completed their work on March 18, 1945.

The Army and Navy engineers further expanded the runway by laying steel Marston Mats and concrete, adding air control facilities and tanks to store aviation fuel and oil.

--GreGen

Puerto Princesa Airfield-- Part 2: The 'Palawan Massacre'

On December 14, 1944, Japanese soldiers herded the remaining 150 U.S. POWs who had constructed the airstrip on Palawan Island into air raid trenches, doused them with gasoline, set them on fire and then machine-gunned and bayoneted survivors.

Among them was Army Captain Fred Bruni, the Palawan POW senior officer who was from Janesville, Wisconsin.  Before capture when the Philippines fell, he had been with the 192nd Tank Battalion.

Only eleven of the POWs escaped in what became known as the "Palawan Massacre."  They were rescued by guerillas.

The story of this ordeal persuaded General Douglas MacArthur that the rumored order of retreating Japanese soldiers to "kill all" prisoners was being implemented, thus speeding up his plans for the liberation of the Philippines.

When U.S. forces took over, the U.S. Army and Navy Engineers  of the 1897th Engineer Aviation Battalion immediately rehabilitated the facility and it was in use by March 18, 1945.  They further expanded the airfield by laying steel Marston Mats and concrete and added  air control facilities and tanks to store  oil and aviation fuel.

--GreGen

Puerto Princesa Airfield, Palawan Island, Philippines-- Part 1: Built By American POWs With Crushed Corals for Illuminating Night Landings

From Wikipedia.

Puerto Princesa International Airport, the field on which Dan Crowley worked on as a prisoner of the Japanese is still there  and in operation.  It also serves as the main gateway to the Puerto Princesa Underground River, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of Nature.

The airport was built by American POWs during World War II from August 1942 to September 1944.  It was used to accommodate large Japanese transport aircraft in addition to the large grass airstrip south of  it.

The airstrip was constructed by hand by the POWs using crushed corals that also illuminated night landings.  The finished airfield had an area of 7,200 feet by 675 feet with two runways.

--GreGen

Puerto Princesa Airfield, Palawan Island, Philippines

From Pacific Wrecks site.

Built by the Japanese using POW labor.  The runway was made of crushed coral.  During the war it was used by both the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and Japanese Army Air Force (JAAF).

During late  1944 until  February 28, 1945, it was heavily bombed by American aircraft.

On February 28, 1945,  the U.S. Army  41st Infantry Division "Jungleers" Regimental Combat Team (RCT) made  an amphibious landing at Puerto Princesa and captured it.  Afterwards, it was turned into an American air base and used until the end of the war.

--GreGen

Philippines Veteran Dan Crowley Honored-- Part 3: An Atrocity

For almost 18 months Dan Crowley worked on carving out a runway  for the Japanese on Palawan Island in order to "escape the unspeakable conditions" of the camp the POWs were housed in at Camp Cabanatum.  The airstrip he helped build was called the Puerto Princesa Airfield. It is now a civilian airfield.

Crowley said that while he was there the Japanese "burned alive a hundred-plus Americans."  He recalled  that the Americans were forced to "dig a long ditch", then forced into it and covered with gasoline.  The Japanese guards then lit the gasoline with torches.

Altogether, Crowley was a prisoner for three and a half years and endured "unspeakable  tortures"  and saw "many  of his friends suffer the most inhumane murders of the war."

He was finally liberated two days after the Japanese surrendered in the Philippines in 1944.  Two years later he was honorably discharged from service.

He was promoted to sergeant in October 1945, before he left the Army but never learned of his promotion.

On Monday, he received that promotion he earned so many years ago.

The Greatest Generation.  --GreGen

Philppines Veteran Dan Crowley Honored-- Part 2: The Fall of Corregidor

On April 9, 1942, U.S. commanders determined that further resistance to the Japanese forces was useless and decided to surrender.  Allied troops were ordered to move south on the peninsula and  congregate there in the Mariveles.  Crowley and others did not agree with the decision.

"The men did not surrender, either on Bataan or on Corregidor," Dan Crowley said.  "They were surrendered by their commanding officers to prevent a massacre, which was threatened by the Japanese commander."

Instead of surrendering, Crowley and others made plans to escape.

Refusing to become prisoners, Crowley and a number of soldiers and sailors hid and at nightfall made their way across three miles of shark infested waters to Corregidor.  On Corregidor they joined up with the 4th Marines  regimental reserves and continued their fight against the Japanese.

They fought overwhelming odds until Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942.  Dan and nearly 1,200 others were held at the 92nd Garage Area on Corregidor on an exposed beach with little water or food and no sanitation.

--GreGen

U.S. Philippines Veteran Dan Crowley Honored-- Part 1: December 8 Japanese Attacks

From the U.S. Department of Defense, Jan. 6, 2021, "World War II vet, POW who endured 'Hell Ship,' gets CIB, promotion, POW Medal" by C. Todd Lopez.

Army veteran Dan Crowley who fought in the Pacific Theater in the Philippines was honored with the Prisoner of War medal, the Army Combat  Infantryman Badge and was also promoted to sergeant.

A Connecticut native, Crowley joined the Army Air Corps in October 1940 at the age of 18.  he was assigned to an aircraft unit on Nichols Field near Manila in the Philippines, arriving there in March 1941.  he had nine months of peace there until December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Nichols Field was attacked the next day. All hangars, most of the aircraft and infrastructure there were destroyed. His unit fought in the improvised air defense.

On December 24, Crowley and others sailed across 25 miles of Manila Bay to the Bataan Peninsula in the dark.  The fighting continued on the peninsula.  Crowley and the others from Nichols Field became a part of the  U.S. Army's Provisional Air Corps Infantry Regiment and were joined in the fight against the Japanese by the Philippine Scouts.

They fended off three Japanese amphibious attacks.  After three and a half months, on April 9, 1942, American leaders decided to surrender

--GreGen

Effort Underway to Identify 'Unknown' World War II Troops Buried in the Philippines

From the January 5, 2020, Navy Times.  AP

They were buried in the Philippines and now have been sent to Hawaii for identification. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency recently conducted an  "honorable carry" ceremony at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for 40 sets of  unidentified remains. They were exhumed from the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.  They will be examined for DNA at a lab at Hickam.

The agency, which has an annual budget of $169 million and hundreds of personnel in Hawaii, investigates, recovers and identifies American military personnel from past wars.

--GreGen

Remains of USS West Virginia Sailor Identified: William L. Barnett

From the January 5, 2021, KMBC News, Fort Scott, Kansas  "Remains of Fort Scott, Kansas, sailor identified decades after Pearl Harbor attack."

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reported Tuesday that the remains of  a sailor from Fort Scott, Kansas,  have been identified nearly 80 years after his death.

Navy Fireman 3rd Class William L. Barnett was 21 and assigned t the battleship USS West Virginia moored by Ford Island at Pearl Harbor when the attack came and William died.  The ship lost  106 crewmen, including him.  Sixty-six were unable to be identified.

By the time his remains were recovered, there was no way to determine who was who and he and the other 65 were buried in 35 caskets of West Virginia crewmen.  Those were exhumed a short time ago and DNA analysis used to identify them.

His remains were identified back on September 14 2020.

His remains will be transferred to Fort Scott and buried on May 29.

It Is So Wonderful That the Government Is Making This Effort to Identify These Men.  --GreGen

An Oklahoma Sailor Returns Home 80 Years Later: Charles Alan Jones

From the January 4, 2021, Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal Star "A sailor returns to Clay County, nearly 80 years later" by Peter Salter.

He never made it back to Clay County.  The 21-year-old died December 7, 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor took place.  He was aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma and among the 429 crewmen killed that day.

His nephew Robert Alan Stett was born 165 years later and had Charles's middle name.  He knew about his uncle from stories and pictures around the house.

Using DNA, the identification was made in September and the family hopes to have Charles's remains  home by Memorial Day.

--GreGen

IJN Hosho-- Part 2: Sino-Japanese War and World War II

IJN stands for Imperial Japanese Navy.

The Hosho participated in the  Shanghai Incident  in 1932 and the opening stages of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.  The carrier's air group supported Japanese forces on the ground and also fought the Nationalist Chinese Air Force.  The small size of the Hosho limited the number of planes it could carry to 15 and as a result limited its effectiveness causing it to be placed in reserve on return to Japan.

In 1939, she became a training ship.

During World War II, the Hosho participated in the Battle of Midway in a backup role.  After that, it was back to training pilots in Japanese waters for the duration of the conflict.  It sustained just minor damage during U.S. air attacks in the final stages of the war.

Surrendered, she participated in the return of Japanese troops in the Pacific and was later scrapped.

--GreGen

IJN Hosho-- Part 1: The World's First Purpose-Built Carrier

In the last post, I wrote about the commissioning of the Japanese ship Hosho on December 27, 1922 as the first-ever naval ship built as an aircraft carrier.  This is of special interest since it was the Japanese aircraft carriers and their planes that did most of the damage at Pearl Harbor that day.  Was the Hosho among the attackers?

I did some more research on the vessel.

From Wikipedia.

It was the world's first  commissioned ship that was built to bean aircraft carrier.  Before this, aircraft carriers were converted ships.  Japan's second purpose-built carrier was the Akagi which did take part in the Pearl Harbor attack.

The Hosho provided Japan with valuable lessons in the construction of their future carriers.

The Hosho stats:

552 feet long,  59-foot beam, 25 knots,  512 crew and could carry 15 planes.

However, unlike most Japanese aircraft carriers, the Hosho survived the war.

--GreGen