4/3/1930 - Certainly a vastly different United States that will come together as one in its crusade against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan after the "Day of Infamy" sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that takes place on December 7, 1941 ... a war with thousands upon thousands of American heroes, thanks to Griffin football teammate Nelson Chamberlain for bringing this story to my attention, the tale of the youngest U.S. serviceman to fight in the war, Texan Calvin Leon Graham.
Graham
Born in Canton, a small town east of Dallas in the Van Zandt County of Texas, on April 3 of 1930, Graham is a member of a troubled family of seven children that face the poverty of the Depression era, the death of their father, and abuse from a caustic step-father when their mother remarries. Family moved to the town of Crockett, north of Houston, Graham begins attending school and starts dreaming of escape and a better future. While still attending school, escape begins for the youth when he runs away from home with an older brother and settles in to a cheap rooming house on the other side of Crockett, where he contributes to the monthly rent by selling newspapers, shining shoes, and working as messenger when he isn't studying. Only 11 when Pearl Harbor is attacked on December 7, 1941, the patriotic (he is already no fan of Hitler's Nazi Germany and is told he has lost cousins in the opening battles of WWII) and parentally unsupervised (his mother stops by from time to time to say hello to her two sons and sign Calvin's report cards) six grader soon concocts a plan to join the United States Navy ... thinking it will make his beard come in early, he begins shaving long ahead of any need to, and to seem older, he begins talking in a deeper voice. Notary stamp stolen from a local hotel and his mother's signature forged (to cover his absence he will tell his mother that he is going to California to visit family in San Diego) on an authorization for early enlistment, now 12, he puts his plan into effect on a busy Saturday at the Navy recruitment center in Houston on August 15, 1942.
At 12
Five feet and two inches tall, weighing 125 pounds, Graham dresses in one of his older brother's suits (including a matching fedora hat), and gets into a line of recruits he is sure are also underage. Sixteen the legal age okay to join the Navy if parental consent has been given, claiming he is 17, Graham crosses his fingers and marches up to the navy dentist checking age by the development of teeth, and sure enough the man exclaims that he is only 12 years of age ... a fact Graham denies while loudly pointing out that the dentist has already passed several other inductees that he knows are also underage. A period early in the war in which the Navy is desperate for men after several disastrous engagements with the Japanese, and not wanting a long argument to delay the long line, the dentist lets the youth enlist. Mission accomplished, Graham is sent to San Diego, California for six weeks of basic naval training (pretty sure they have an underage recruit on their hands, his instructors try to get the boy to quit by giving him extra duties and send him on longer runs than other recruits and have him haul heavier loads than other men, but Graham doesn't break), then is sent off to Pearl Harbor where he is assigned to the newly commissioned (March 20, 1942) battleship, USS South Dakota.
San Diego Naval Training Center
Built by the New York Shipbuilding Corporation (1939 to 1941) as Japan decides to leave treaty constraints it has made with the United States, the first of four "South Dakota" style battleships, the USS South Dakota has a fully loaded displacement of 45,233 tons, a length of 680 feet, a beam of 108 feet and two inches, a draft of 35 feet and one inch, is powered by four General Electric steam turbines (and eight oil-fired Babcock & Wilson boilers) that turn four screw propellers to a speed of 27.5 knots (and a cruising range of 15,000 nautical miles). It's armor varies from six inches of steel on the deck to eighteen inches for it's turrets. For firepower, the vessel carries nine 16-inch Mark 6 guns, sixteen 5-inch DP guns, seven quad 40mm Bofors guns, seven quad 1.1-inch guns, thirty-four 20mm Oerlikon cannons, and eight 50-cal. machine guns. The ship also has two catapults for launching three "Kingfisher" floatplanes. Crewed by 2,500 officers and enlisted men, the USS South Dakota is commanded by 51-year-old Captain Thomas Leigh Gatch of Salem, Oregon. Graham joins the crew of the battleship just in time to participate in the vessel's first battle actions of WWII in the South Pacific waters off a 2,047 square mile jungle island called Guadalcanal where a new American commander has recently taken over the region, an aggressive Vice Admiral and naval aviator (his creed is "Hit hard, hit fast and hit often") who states after Pearl Harbor, "Before we are through with 'em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!" ... William Frederick "Bull" Halsey Jr.
Gatch
Halsey
Escorting the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise along with nine destroyers as part of Task Force 16 (they will be joined by the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and the escorts of Task Force 17, and combined, become Task Force 61), at the end of October the USS South Dakota will take part in the three-day Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands ... an air and sea clash that will result in the loss of the USS Hornet (the Japanese will have two carriers and a cruiser damaged, but fail to exploit its victory) and the destroyer, USS Porter, and the USS Enterprise being damaged. Damaged, but not sunk, partly due to the anti-aircraft fire the USS South Dakota pours into the sky (protecting the USS Enterprise, the ship will claim to have shot down 26 Japanese planes during the battle and its crew will receive a Navy Unit Commendation for outstanding heroism in action against the enemy), a portion of which comes from the 40mm anti-aircraft gun 12-year-old Graham serves as a loader (after the war, naval historians will reduce the number to 13). During the battle, the battleship will be hit on the roof of her forward main battery by a single bomb from an Japanese Aichi D3A dive bomber that kills two sailors and wounds over fifty more (one of which is Captain Gatch who is hit by a bomb splinter and knocked unconscious by the concussion of the explosion.
USS Enterprise Under Attack
USS South Dakota Is At Center-Left
USS South Dakota Firing At Torpedo Bomber
Bomb damage to the USS South Dakota repaired (along with damage incurred when the ship collides with destroyer USS Mahan leaving the area on October 30, 1942) at the French island of Noumea, and Captain Gatch back in command, detached from guarding the USS Enterprise, on orders from Vice Admiral Halsey, the battleship becomes part of Task Force 64 in November of 1942 (under the overall command of former Olympic shooting champion <five gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal at the 1920 Sumer Olympics held in Antwerp, Belgium> Rear Admiral Willis Augustus "Ching" Lee Jr., the rest of the force consists of the battleship USS Washington and four destroyers, USS Walke, USS Preston, USS Benham, and USS Gwin) and is ordered to stop a Japanese force on it's way to bombard the Henderson Field airbase on Guadalcanal so that Japanese soldiers can be successfully landed on the island (days before, a first attempt at taking out the airfield during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal fails after the Japanese force given the task departs the area after losing the battleship Hiei, two destroyers, a heavy cruiser, and seven troop transports at the awful American cost of losing two light cruisers, four destroyers, having two heavy cruisers severely damaged, and the sea taking the lives of Rear Admirals Daniel J. Callaghan and Norman Scott). Patrolling around Savo Island to the north of Guadalcanal in the waters of Ironbottom Sound (so named for the many sunken Japanese and American warships at its bottom) on the evening of November 14, 1942, the USS South Dakota will play a key role in The Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal ... a fight that will prove to be a turning point in the struggle for the island.
Lee
Traveling in column formation with the destroyers in the lead followed by USS Washington (which Rear Admiral Lee has made his flagship and is three nautical miles behind) and USS South Dakota bringing up the rear (a nautical mile to the rear of USS Washington), at 10:55 the radars aboard the battleships begin picking up the presence of intruders approaching Savo Island, the Japanese task force of Admiral Nobutake Kondo (Kondo's flagship, the battleship Kirishima, the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao, the light cruisers Nagara and Sendai, and nine destroyers). Though heavily outnumbered, shortly after 11:00 the American force engages the Japanese and a slugfest soon develops in which the USS Walke and USS Preston are sunk within the first ten minutes of the clash, the USS Benham has it's bow blown off by a torpedo and has to retire from the area (it will sink the next day), and the USS Gwin is struck in it's engine room and leaves the fight (meanwhile USS Washington is setting the destroyer Ayanami alight). At the worst time, the USS South Dakota suffers electric failures that make her radar, radios, and most of her gun batteries inoperable (the chief engineer has violated safety procedures during repairs and locked down a circuit breaker) just as the ship is illuminated by Japanese searchlights and fires from sinking ships and becomes the main target for most of Admiral Kondo's vessels shortly after midnight. Placing shells into Kirishima and on to both heavy cruisers, though the USS South Dakota avoids being hit by any torpedoes, it takes between 26 and 42 hits from the Japanese force that set it's upper decks on fire and knock out most of its gunnery and communication systems (in the words of Rear Admiral Lee, the ship is rendered "... deaf, dumb, blind, and impotent"). But in the chaos of battle, with the Japanese firing at the USS South Dakota and lacking radar, the USS Washington is able to close on Kirishima and undetected, at a range of 5,800 yards, pummels the Japanese battleship with nine hits from it's 16-inch guns and over 40 from it's 5-inch guns (the battleship will eventually capsize and sink at 3:25 in the morning of November 15). Then the American battleship turns it's guns on the Japanese heavy cruisers, and bracketing both vessels, forces them to turn away from the fight to the point that when they fire their Long Lance torpedoes at USS Washington, all of the weapons miss. Moving north after the misses, luring Admiral Kondo's force out of the area, the USS Washington becomes the only battleship of WWII to destroy another battleship in a one-on-one contest. Additionally, because of its victory over Kirishima, the USS South Dakota is able to escape the area and survives to fight another day. In the morning, once again not flattened by Japanese battleships, Henderson Field is able to launch fighters and bombers, supported by the guns of the destroyer USS Meade, that destroy four beached transports, kill hundreds of Japanese soldiers, and send between 2,000 to 3,000 men into the jungles of Guadalcanal with little food or ammunition (out of a force of 12,000 soldiers).
USS Washington Firing On Kirishima
Damage To The USS South Dakota
Battle Damage
Japanese Hit On The USS South Dakota
Limping back to the naval base at Noumea, with the help of the repair ship, USS Prometheus, the USS South Dakota undergoes emergency patchwork that allows the battleship to steam back into the Atlantic Ocean from the Panama Canal and undergo permanent repairs and a complete refit at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. Letting the Japanese believe they have sunk the USS South Dakota, she is heralded by the press upon her return as Battleship "X" ... and as such, Graham's problems with the U.S. Navy begin. Viewing a newsreel of the battleship and it's crew, Graham's mother spots her son and relates to the naval authorities that Calvin is only 12-years-old, while at the same time, denied proper leave to attend his dead grandmother's funeral, the youth heads for Texas to be with his family (and arrives one day too late to attend services for his grandmother). Embarrassed that they have enlisted a child in their service that has now gone AWOL from his ship in their eyes, when Graham reaches Corpus Christi he is slapped in the naval station's brig for almost three months, and only released when his sister Pearl threatens to make a stink in local papers about the U.S. Navy's treatment of the heroic "Baby Vet." Message received, the authorities release Graham from confinement and more ... on April 1, 1943 (two days before his thirteenth birthday, the youth's enlistment in the U.S. Navy is voided and he receives a dishonorable discharge and is stripped of his commendation ribbons and medals, along with any ability to receive disability treatments or payments.
USS Prometheus
Sent off as if he had never been on the USS South Dakota or experienced naval war firsthand, for a short time Graham becomes a 'flavor of the Month" celebrity. There are interviews on the radio and in newspapers about his time aboard Battleship "X," and when the movie "Bombardier" premieres in Houston, it's star, Pat O'Brien, calls the youth out of the crowd to take a rousing bow. Eventually though the spotlight moves on to others, and Graham attempts to return to his pre-war life, but it is not to be. Returning to school, because of his experiences he has little in common with his classmates and has trouble keeping up with the educational level other students his age are at. Dropping out and plunging himself into the world of adults once more, by fourteen he is married and finds work as a welder in a local Houston shipyard. The following year he becomes a father. But both the job and marriage come to an end, and by seventeen he is divorced and looking for work. Service record erased by the U.S. Navy, now of age, in 1948, Graham enlists in the United States Marine Corps. His days as a "Leatherneck" are numbered too however, and he receives a medical discharge from the Corps in 1951, after falling from a pier and breaking his back (an injury for which he gets only a 20 percent service disability).
Movie Poster
Post service, the rest of Graham's life is also filled with one struggle after another. Disabled because of his fall, the only work he can get is selling subscriptions to Life, Look, and other magazines while campaigning to have his awards and commendations returned, and his discharge from the U.S. Navy changed to an "honorable" one. In 1976, with the presidential election of Jimmy Carter, a naval veteran himself, Graham finds a sympathetic audience to his cause and in 1977, Texas Senators Lloyd Bentsen (Democrat) and John Tower (Republican) introduce a bill in Congress to give Graham the discharge he was asking for. Passed and approved by the president, Graham's status is changed on the official records of the U.S. Navy and his medals and commendations are returned ... with one exception, his Purple Heart is not part of the package, for awhile. Public attention finally brought to his story with the 1988 playing of the CBS prime time television movie (the rights to his story sell for $50,000, but two agents receive half of that total, and a third vampire, a writer of an unpublished book about the patriot gets 20%, leaving Graham with only $15,000 before taxes for his own tale), "Too Young the Hero" (with "Hollywood" drama added where it is deemed necessary), starring Ricky Schroder as Graham (the 18-year-old-actor playing a 12-year-old). President Ronald Reagan becomes involved in the story shortly afterwards, signing special legislation that grants Graham full disability benefits, increases his naval back pay to $4,917, and allows the former sailor $18,000 for past medical bills (but as always it doesn't quite work out that way, and with many of the doctors that treated him passed away and bills lost, Graham only receives $2,100 of the money allotted his plight). But for some unknown reason, there is still no Purple Heart until after Graham dies of a massive heart attack on November 6, 1992 in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 62. No Purple Heart that is until two years after Graham's passing when the wrong is noted and righted by President Clinton's Secretary of the Navy, John Howard Dalton, at Arlington, Texas on June 21, 1994 giving the award back to Graham's family. Parade rest and gone to his true glory, the youngest American to serve in WWII is buried in Fort Worth, Texas at the city's Laurel Land Memorial Park.
Schroder As Graham
Graham
Resting Place Of A Hero
Thank you for your service, Sir!
Purple Heart
Hero
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