The Fighting Sullivans
The deaths of these 5 sailors changed how US manned military units.
By 1948, a new 'Sole Survivor' policy barred an entire family from serving in war.
By: Bruce Kuklick, World War II Magazine
In the late evening and early morning of Nov. 12-13, 1942, the United States and Japan engaged in one of the most brutal naval battles of World War II.
Minutes into the fight, north of Guadalcanal, a torpedo from Japanese destroyer Amatsukaze ripped into the port side of the American light cruiser Juneau, taking out its steering and guns and killing 19 men in the forward engine room.
The keel buckled and the propellers jammed. During the 10-15 minutes the crew was engaged in battle, sailors vomited and wept; to hide from the barrage, others tried to claw their way into the steel belly of their vessel. The ship listed to port, with its bow low in the water, and the stink of fuel made it difficult to breathe below deck.
The crippled Juneau withdrew from the fighting, later that morning joining a group of five surviving warships from the task force as they crawled toward the comparative safety of the Allied harbor at Espiritu Santo, in the New Hebrides.
Fumes continued to foul the air in the holds; many of the ship’s original complement of 697 sailors — which included five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa — were crowded together topside, blistered from the sun.
At 11:01 a.m., a Japanese submarine tracking the vessels fired another torpedo into the already off-kilter Juneau.
A sudden, furious explosion ripped it apart; underwater blasts followed, likely as its boilers burst. The forward half of Juneau at once disappeared. Then the sea swallowed the stern.
The blasts shot an array of material into the air and fragments of the cruiser struck its sister ships. The turret from a huge antiaircraft gun flew from the vanishing vessel to within 100 yards of another.
Body parts fell from the sky.
The men below deck almost certainly drowned at once. The explosion’s aftereffect might have sucked most of those on deck to the bottom, while the blast blew others to bits.
Many of those pitched clear soon died of their injuries, or of poisoning from the black fuel oil, scalding water, or flying metal. They were burned from the fire of the blowup, covered with thick oil, belching salt water.
The dead, the quickly dying, and assorted human carnage floated in a huge oil slick.
Almost two months later, in early January 1943, the Navy gave fuller details of the eventual American victories at Guadalcanal, but also announced the great cost of the engagements.
Among the losses on Juneau were the five brothers from Iowa, the Sullivans: George, 27; Francis, or “Frank,” 26; Joseph, known as “Red,” 24; Madison, or “Matt,” 23; and Albert, or “Al,” 20.
It was — and remains — the single greatest wartime sacrifice of any American family.
The Navy immediately picked up a thread begun before the brothers’ deaths to weave a story about the Sullivan family — one continued by newspapers, filmmakers, and Midwestern and national leaders. It was American myth-making at its finest, serving to distract a grieving family from its loss, misdirect attention from a series of Navy bungles, and help accustom a nation to the idea of sacrifice for the greater good.
Varied authorities with mass media pull would convince Americans of the boys’ luster as the brothers and their family became cogs in a propaganda machine that would transform them all into heroes — individuals unrecognizable to their Waterloo, Iowa, hometown.
The five Sullivan brothers and their sister Genevieve, or “Gen,” grew up with little parental guidance, according to interviews conducted soon after the disaster and in the years that followed.
Locals repeatedly told investigators that their father, Tom, was a physically abusive alcoholic who went on benders whenever he had a couple days off his job as a freight conductor on the Illinois Central railroad. Their mother, Alleta, was often “blue” and, when she had her “spells,” would take to bed for days at a stretch.
All five boys had left school at age 16 or so, barely completing junior high, and were often out of work — in part a result of the Great Depression. Without jobs, Tom’s underage sons snitched their dad’s moonshine and shadowed him to the downtown backstreets to pick up drink.
In 1937, George and Frank enlisted in the peacetime Navy, serving together for four years; when they returned home in May 1941 they found work with their brothers at the local meatpacking plant.
READ MORE: https://www.navytimes.com/veterans/2019/11/10/the-deaths-of-these-5-sailors-changed-how-us-manned-military-units/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NT%2011-11-19&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Navy%20-%20Daily%20News%20Roundup
