My Father's Band of Brothers

Sunday, June 17, 2007; Page B08

My father died on Aug. 6, 1989, at the age of 69. On May 12, I saw him again.

That was the day my wife and I attended a reunion of the USS Hugh W. Hadley for the first time. This year, the surviving members of the Hadley crew came to Washington, their second visit to the city. At the Naval Academy Chapel and the National World War II Memorial, they gathered to pray for their departed shipmates, my father among them, who served with them on the sleek destroyer that 62 years ago stared down a horrific new weapon of war and passed into Navy legend.

The USS Hadley was commissioned in San Francisco on Nov. 25, 1944, bound for the Pacific war. As the Hadley set out to sea from San Diego in February 1945, Bill King, a young officer who was assigned to the boiler room and who would be my father's friend for the rest of their lives, flew a huge, handmade kite high above the stern. One of the enlisted men thought him odd for doing that, but his young children, Billy and Susan, watching from shore with their mother and mine, knew exactly where their father was.

The battle for Okinawa was already well underway as the Hadley patrolled offshore on the morning of May 11, 1945. At 7:45 a.m., the first Japanese plane was sighted, heading directly for the ship. In the ensuing hour and thirty-five minutes, the action was nonstop.

Must register with washingtonpost.com to read the rest of the article. Worth the read:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...61501889.html?sub=AR

http://www.usshadley.com/indexh.htm I found this page with all the Citations as the results of the action that day.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: SULLY1,

Thanks for sharing this story. It is difficult to understand the scale of war that took place in the Pacific during WW2 and how it affected the lives of so many. History seems to look at war on the larger scale and individual ship engagements are seldom so vividly pointed out.