WWII Brought Home: Harry F. Bradshaw, USN

Photo by C Voukon

I went to hang out with my uncle last week and he had a small treasure trove of old family photos. He also had some idea of who most of them were. Kindly, he let me borrow them and I've scanned as many as I could.

I ran across the photo of a young woman and, my curiosity piqued, I had to do a little research. I discovered the story of Seaman 1st Class Harry Frederick Bradshaw, one of scores of thousands of young Americans who lost their life in WWII.

Harry was raised in Nashua and Belle Plaine, IA, graduating from Belle Plaine High School in 1939 and joined the Navy soon thereafter. While on leave on May 4, 1941, he married my grandmother's sister's oldest (twin) daughter, Jeanette Janis Scoles. According to researcher Evelyn Park Blalock, they were childhood sweethearts. They were married by a local Presbyterian minister. Jeanette went to live with his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Ray Bradshaw in Belle Plaine and also spent time in Nashua, while Harry served.


He was stationed on the USS Arizona until October 1941. He served briefly on the USS Wharton to get stateside to San Francisco. He headed to a training in Virginia from there.  His final leave was in November of 1941 and he returned home to his wife and parent. He returned to Hawaii via the USS Neosha, leaving port in San Francisco on 30 Nov 1941. The USS Neosha arrived in Pearl Harbor on December, 6, 1941.  He was supposed to return to the Arizona on the 6th, but because of the emergency, he did not reboard the Arizona, saving his life.. Having survived the attack, his emergency orders had him transferred permanently to the Neosha on the 7th.

Harry is honored on the list of survivors inscribed at the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial in Honolulu, Hawaii, and on the Tablets of the Missing in Manila, the Philippines. The U.S. Navy also placed a cenotaph memorializing Harry in Oak Hill Cemetery, Belle Plaine, Benton County, Iowa.

She was laid down under Maritime Commission contract by Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Kearny, New Jersey, 22 June 1938; launched on 29 April 1939; sponsored by Mrs. Emory S. Land, wife of Rear Admiral Emory S. Land (Ret.), Chairman of the Maritime Commission; and commissioned on 7 August 1939, with Commander AV. E. A. Mullan in command.

Conversion at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was completed on 7 July 1941, Neosho immediately began the vital task of ferrying aviation fuel from west coast ports to Pearl Harbor. On such a mission she arrived in Pearl Harbor on 6 December, discharged a full cargo to Naval Air Station Ford Island, and prepared for the return passage.

Next morning, the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor found Neosho alert to danger; her captain-Commander John S. Phillips-got her underway and maneuvered safely through the Japanese fire, concentrated on the battleships moored at Ford Island, to a safer area of the harbor. Her guns fired throughout the attack, splashing one enemy plane and driving off others. Three of her men were wounded by a strafing attacker.

For the next five months, Neosho sailed with the aircraft carriers or independently, since escort ships-now few and far between-could not always be spared to guard even so precious a ship and cargo. Late in April, as the Japanese threatened a southward move against Australia and New Zealand by attempting to advance their bases in the Southwest Pacific, Neosho joined Task Force 17 (TF 17). At all costs, the sealanes to the dominions had to be kept open, and they had to be protected against attack and possible invasion.

As the American and Japanese fleets sought each other out in the opening maneuvers of the climactic Battle of the Coral Sea on 6 May 1942, Neosho refueled the carrier Yorktown and heavy cruiser Astoria, then retired from the carrier force with a lone escort, the destroyer Sims.

Neosho burning, 7 May 1942.

Next day at 10:00, Japanese aircraft spotted the two ships, and believing them to be a carrier and her escort, launched the first of two attacks which sank Sims and left Neosho-victim of seven direct hits and a suicide dive by one of the bombers-ablaze aft and in danger of breaking in two. She had shot down at least three of the attackers. One of her crewmen, Oscar V. Peterson, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts to save the ship in spite of his severe injuries suffered in the attack.

Superb seamanship and skilled damage control work kept Neosho afloat for the next four days. The sorely stricken ship was first located by a RAAF aircraft, then an American PBY Catalina flying boat. At 13:00 on 11 May, the destroyer Henley arrived, rescued the 123 survivors and sunk by gunfire the ship they had so valiantly kept afloat against impossible odds. With Henley came word that the American fleet had succeeded in turning the Japanese back, marking the end of their southward expansion in World War II.

Harry was declared missing on May 8, 1942.  He was declared Killed in Action May 8, 1943 and awarded the Purple Heart.

Harry Bradshaw is Declared Officially Dead by Navy Dept 

Word Received here by his widow Monday brings sympathy from Sec Knox

Mrs Harry Bradshaw received word Monday from the Navy Department that on May 8, 1943, he was officially declared to be dead.  He had been reported missing since May 8, 1942 when the tanker, Neosha, was sunk in the Coral Sea.  Harry was in Charge of laundry on the Neosha.  With the official declaration of his death, was a message of sympathy from Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, which read as follows:  "I extend to you my sincere sympathy in your great loss and hope you may find comfort in the knowledge that your husband gave his life for his couuntry, upholding the highest tradition of the Navy.  The Navy shares in your sense of loss of his service.  

Mrs Bradshaw is the former Jeanette Scoles.

Nashua Reporter, 16 Jun 1943, pg 1

My heart felt heavy for Jeanette who really never got a chance to start her life with Harry. I thought of the power of young love and how all of her hopes and dreams were dashed as it would for too many other young wives  She'd remember Harry, though, through the eyes of their child, Dennis, who was born nine months after that leave. Jeanette remarried many years later and died in 2004 in New Hampton, IA.

Waking the Dead

I'm really not morbid. No, I'm not. In fact, the fascination I'm finding in the stories of a bunch of dead people brings them to life.  My mom has been doing serious, and I mean serious genealogical research for a few years. It keeps her curiosity gene humming. We talk about her discoveries quite a bit. I've decided to do some filling in of my dad's side of the family though since she has only done the rudiments of research there.

I vaguely remember them, those great uncles and aunts. My great grandmother Florence I remember much better, but she died when I was 22 and I can sum it all up here:  He Looked Down Upon Me and Laughed. It's a family of farmers and laborers - just regular hard-working folk who were born, got married, popped out some kids, and died from what I've found so far. Stubborn, too, from what I hear. This makes "me" a little bit clearer.

While I would no sooner speak up in a room of strangers than I would give myself a lobotomy with a spoon and no anesthesia, I have absolutely no problem calling or knocking on someone's door if I actually want information from them.

Since I've moved here, I've been overwhelmed by a lack of interest in almost everything.  I'd rather watch the hours of DVR things I recorded all week in one sitting or take a nap and read a couple of books than leave my house to go anywhere.

But, I'm taking a road trip this Saturday to this family's town about 40 miles from here to gather some information and visit some cemeteries. I might even find a living relative or two to surprise.These are things I don't expect anyone to want to do with me, but when I mentioned I was going to my daughter, she wanted to go.  She plans on wearing her "Undertaker" cosplay costume so we can do a photo shoot by the tombstones. Whatever it takes. I like the idea of spending the day with her and it will be cathartic to leave town for a few hours.

I just wonder what I'll have missed on DVR this week.

It's Been Years. In Fact, a Lifetime

I didn't even realize this was still here. And, on the spur of the moment, I've decided to see where this takes me.

In the past two years, a lot has happened.  I uncoupled from whomever the latest love was. Moved to another part of the country.  Spent two years hating my job which wasn't the job I took but resolute that they will part with me and not me them. Severance, you know. Still waiting, basically, for the multi-year reorganization to finally catch me.  Lost two dogs.  Missed old friends.  Gained family. Found home again.

I'm going to try to put down my thoughts about what's happened and the impact it's had on me here. Reintegrating into the place I grew up has been full of ups and downs - most of which I've kept to myself. Which, I've learned, is what we do.

Fickleness of Youth

My childhood was pretty sweet. Simple. Pure. Sure, our families had their issues and we had bad things happen to us, but for the most part, we could go where we want and our parents could be fairly certain we’d come home safely.

I must have been about seven or eight when my mom started letting me ride my bike alone downtown to the library and to the stores along Main Street to shop. The trip was over a mile each way. It was years yet before the library situation would get me into trouble. We still had a real live soda fountain downtown when I was growing up, where they served up the best ever root beer float or you could get a soda, which we called pop, with the exotic flavor called Cherry Coke.

On Wednesdays, the Cedar Bulletin would publish its swap paper and we’d race to grab the coupon inside for a double feature Saturday, popcorn, and small soda for 35 cents. I was all over that.

I had a little obsession with monsters from the movies due to my weekly watching of “Chuck Acri's Creature Feature.” I loved Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, and even Three Stooges whenever they met up with the Wolfman. Vincent Price was a god. My dad was pretty pissed one day when he learned I’d traded his vintage 1940 softball to Jordy Schaeffer for a stack of Monster magazines.

On one of my trips downtown, I discovered the “five and dime” as we called Harrison’s, had a basement. In the basement lay all kind of wondrous things for kids like me, including monster model kits. They cost about $1.45 as I remember, which was a small fortune for a kid like me. Time did not diminish my desire; I had decided it must be mine.

So, I did what every entrepreneurial kid would do, I set up a Kool-Aid stand. And broke out the gumball machine. My mom bought a bag of 100 gumballs for 50 cents or so, and I sold them for a penny apiece. The Kool-Aid was 3 cents. We set up across from Lookout Park (which I liked later in my life for a number of other reasons) for the good traffic. I think it cost more in sugar than we got in profit, but days and days and days and days of work and after consuming so much Kool-Aid I never wanted to see any ever again, I had 160 pennies or so (once I split the money with my various business partners).

I raced down on my bike and trotted down the stairs to the basement treasures. I scooped up my prize and paid for it and raced home. I was giddy—it was finally mine. I put the kit together in about 10 minutes. I stood back, looked at it, and sighed.

I heard the kids yelling in the distance outside. Abandoning my new love as quickly as it had wrapped itself around my heart, I ran out to play with my friends.

He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, still dead. ~ Unknown

He Looked Down Upon Me and Laughed

In the little town of Vinton, Iowa, just down the road a spell from the big state mental hospital, and home to of the best popcorn fields in the world, there sat a little tarpaper shack, where the weeds grew unchecked between the cracks of the neglected tar and gravel street, down near the railroad tracks.

The house sat right up against the street, with two lop-sided, rotting wooden stairs leading to the front door. The yard was huge and full of all types of Iowa wildflowers and a large, meticulously tended vegetable garden. In the back was an old outhouse that eventually became the garden shed. The entire house was probably 700 square feet. The floors sloped and waved and jutted from 70 years of settling and warping. The bare floor was sprinkled liberally with simple hand-made throw rugs to keep the chill of an Iowa winter at bay.

The house had that aged, musty smell yet was invariably spotless. Long-faded wallpaper with patterns out-of-date by the 1920s covered each wall. The kitchen was the largest of the rooms and obviously the most used. Under the simple kitchen table was a small rope with a knot in the end that served as the handle to lift up the cellar door. Once open, stairs led perilously down several rickety stairs to the tiny, pungent, dank, dark, dirt room where the year’s food supply, culled from the bountiful garden, were stored.

The living room was small—with a coal burning stove eventually replaced by an electric heating stove. A short couch lined one wall, and directly in front of the couch; facing the same direction as the couch, sat the one comfortable chair in which a woman sat for much of her day watching the small black & white television at the other end of the room. Hanging above the television, a small, lonely picture of Jesus looked down upon the room, surveying the every thought, word, and deed of generations.

The woman, who lived to somewhere between 99 and 101 years old, depending on who you took as authority on such things, was tall and lean. Her dress was always immaculately ironed. Her hair was white as pure driven snow, and was always covered by a hairnet. When she spoke, her voice warbled and rasped from too many years of use. Age and gravity had some interesting repercussions. Her face was very, very long, reminding me of a tired old Bloodhound with wrinkles on top of wrinkles. Her earlobes had somehow managed to extend nearly to her shoulders, and her breasts, well, she was never one to bother with such frills as a bra…she was old, let’s leave it at that. Whenever I saw her, a particular Girl Scout song would pop into my head, “Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro, can you time them in a knot, can you tie them in a bow, can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier, do your ears hang low?”

As a child, I paid little heed to her, and as my conversation wasn’t very interesting to her, we never made a connection. I probably spoke a total of 10 words to her my entire life. She visited freely with her son and grandson (my grandfather and father), but my sister and I were left to our own devices playing on most visits at the back of the house in the tiny closet-sized bedroom, with an ancient erector set and tinker toys. All I really knew is she spent over 65 years a widow, raising her kids the hardscrabble way, but most of it was spent alone in that little house, taking care of her business.

Our last visit came when I was about 20, on leave from Germany. Her hearing was nearly shot and her eyesight failing. My father pulled up a straight chair to be near her. She sat in her chair, facing the same direction we faced sitting on the couch behind her—which was always so odd to me—looking at the back of her head. My senses dulled as I listened vaguely to them speaking. Finally, out of the blue, she said, “Lori, where are you?” I snapped out of the daydream state I invariably slipped into, thinking, “Wow, she is actually speaking to me.”

I reached forward and gently and lovingly placed my hand on her arm, feeling suddenly quite warm and sentimental, sure she was asking because she could neither hear nor see me from her current vantage point, and said, “I’m right here Great Grandma.” Perhaps at last, we'd make a connection!  And, then she sighed heavily, and I swore I heard Jesus laughing as he looked down upon me.  She said, “No GOD DAMN IT, where are you in Germany? Larry, what is wrong with the girl?”

Copyright,  2008