The Lessons of the USS Boise

Yesterday, my dad sent me this photo of a United States Naval Brooklyn-class light cruiser, the USS Boise (CL-47). At the time he sent it, he only said “your Grandfather was on board at the time this photo was taken.” My first thought was “Cool! I wonder where he was on the ship.” A great deal of patriotic pride swells in me, knowing my Grandpa Easton (come to think of it - Grandpa Gott included) was one of those young men who simply did what was required of him at one of the most pivotal moments in human history. I replied back to my dad something about the smoke and that’s where the real story unfolds.

The USS Boise was a light cruiser, built for speed, interception, and distraction – often serving as bait while something bigger was happening elsewhere – and was commissioned to the Pacific seas during World War II. Bait was exactly her mission in the Summer of 1942, when she was sent to distract the Japanese Navy while marines landed on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands (northeast of Australia for the geographically challenged). Guadalcanal was a base of operations for the Japanese to harass shipments from the United States into Australia. It was the marines’ job to chase the Japanese off the island, while the Naval ships intercepted Japanese shipments to the island.

Allied forces slipped into Japanese territory on the night of August 8th, completely taking the Japanese by surprise and throwing off their base of operations. The Japanese retaliated over the next few months. This is where Grandpa’s story comes in.

On the night of October 11, the Japanese were sending a major supply and reinforcement convoy to the islands. His ship, the Boise, along with three other cruisers and five destroyers were tasked with intercepting the convoy. Shortly before midnight the two forces met. The allies under Rear Admiral Norman Scott retained the upper hand through surprise and quickly sank one cruiser and one destroyer, while severely damaging another cruiser (the Aoba) and mortally wounding her rear admiral, Aritomo Goto. The Japanese retreated under fire. Scott lost one of his destroyers and one cruiser. Another cruiser, the Boise was heavily damaged.

In Boise’s case, she was heeled over after firing and took the Japanese round in a thinner portion of the hull below turrets 1, 2, and 3. The impact caused a flash fire in the powder room, rather than an explosion. The damage appeared so severe that the call to abandon ship was made, but for some reason was never executed. Good thing too, Grandpa couldn’t swim. However, he was a member of the party that entered the turret (as I understand it, the one stuck pointing upward) to cut out the charred bodies. In all, 107 sailors were killed in the fire, and buried at sea.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had to cut out charred bodies after a barrage of 6-inch gun fire. I’ve never seen a charred body, let alone those of men you once knew living only moments before. I’ve never considered risking my life to save it by jumping into the “wine-dark sea” choked with bodies and debris when I couldn’t swim. And by the way, Scott’s mission was a strategic failure, the Japanese succeeded in getting the shipment through Allied lines, even though they suffered great losses and retreated. But that illustrates my point with greater emphasis.

I realize that there is some wisdom to shielding your children from the darker realities of life in an effort to preserve their innocence. However, there comes a time when children need to be taught the truth behind the trauma. Life in America (and the West in general) has become so cushy, so luxurious, and so entitled that the idea of evil has become passé. The current argument seems to be that only an uncultured neanderthal could possibly believe that concept, because every person or nation has a reason for their actions, and every reason is equally justified. And unfortunately, with the passing of “The Greatest Generation” and the rise of the postmodern, that truth is being incrementally lost with every re-write of history.

After years of teaching at a University, I realize that parents and teachers have largely failed to teach their children and students the core truths of human history. For example, many of my students had no idea why democracy is so important; no idea that it hung by a very thread in 490 BC; that the course of human history was full-speed ahead despotism until some backwater Greek farmers who had just begun that new experiment in free-choice took a stand. Why? It is becoming increasingly fashionable to not teach war. During my freshman year as a university student, I had a American History professor who in a lecture summed up all of World War II with "it was a great war, lots of people died." He told us outright that his philosophy was to not teach war.

At the time, I thought, "that's great! He's teaching peace." But I realize that he did his students a profound disservice. How can you teach the struggle for human freedom without teaching that democracy was saved on the field of Marathon, or in part at Guadalcanal? Unfortunately, the field of battle has always been the place where the entire gamut of human behavior is in microcosm. The ultimate lesson of which is that the dark and ugly side of human life and history will inevitably affect each of us at some point. If we are not prepared, or if we actively deny that evil exists, we won't have the ability to intellectually, spiritually, and maybe even physically counter it.

I think that’s a central message of the war chapters in the Book of Mormon, by the way: that no matter how good you are in God’s eyes, there will always be those (nations or individuals) who use their freewill to take what you have, or destroy the good that you have created. It is inspiring to think about those poor, rank-and-file Greeks on the plain of Marathon in 490 BC, or those poor, rank-and-file sailors off some remote island in 1942 doing simply what was asked of them.