By BILL WELCH
(interviewed March 1995)
Sailor Ray Parker got sick and it saved his life. War is filled with small events that consequences beyond what anyone imagines. In Parker's case, it happened
March 20, 1945.In Europe, the Allies were on the move, having crossed the Rhine and now pushing forward in to the heart of Germany. The Soviet Army was closing from the east. Hitler's days were
numbered. While we know now that the war in the Pacific would be over by September, it did not look that way in March 1945. Based on the tenacious, costly fights the Japanese had put up on nearly every
island invaded by U.S. forces, it seemed that only more death and carnage would be dealt out as the fight drew closer to and on to Japan. Best estimates for the end of the war had it sometime in 1946, and only after
Japan had been invaded and hundreds of thousands of lives lost on each side.
U.S. strategists decided the next step before invading Japan should be the conquest of the island of Okinawa. It would give the
U.S. an anchorage from which to launch the invasion, as well as airfields within easy striking range of Japan. Before hitting Okinawa, the U.S. fleet sent a task force built around aircraft carriers to hit
Japanese bases and airfields. Their presence off Japan brought a torrent of kamikaze attacks. The Japanese would inflict more casualties on the U.S. Navy in the last year of the war with its kamikaze attacks
than it had in the years before.
On March 19, the USS Franklin was hit, knocking that carrier out of the war. The Navy task force stayed in the area, using its other carriers to hit back at the Japanese,
who in turn hit back, this time aiming their aircraft at the USS Hancock, but hitting the destroyer next to it.
Parker was a sailor aboard the U.S. Navy destroyer Halsey Powell, one of the fast,
hard-hitting destroyers built launched after the war began. His routine job was as a shipfitter, one of the dozen or so men assigned to make repairs and alterations as needed to the ship. His battle station was
with one of the ship's main, five-inch guns, training the aim of the gun from side to side. On this day, he and the rest of the shipfitters were in their normal duty station at the aft-most part of the ship, the
fantail, while the ship took on fuel oil from the aircraft carrier USS Hancock. It is the most vulnerable time for both ships.
"Suddenly, I got real sick. I told my chief I was so sick and asked
if I could go to my bunk. He said to go ahead." Parker just got curled into his bunk when he heard the Hancock start firing its antiaircraft guns. "I went up to the hatch to see what
was going on and saw the wing of an incoming Japanese aircraft get blown off. It came spiraling in." The destroyer's captain ordered flank speed at that moment, a move that severed the re-fueling lines and
made the Halsey Powell spurt ahead.
The ship moved just enough so that the plane didn't hit Parker, instead crashing into the fantail. Most of the men in the shipfitter's shop were wiped out. Burning
gasoline or fuel oil sprayed forward towards Parker, who was on the deck by the time the plane hit. His hands, face and arms received first, second and third degree burns.
The kamikaze's hit also
jammed the ship's rudder in a 45 degree turn. The destroyer was cutting in front of the much larger aircraft carrier's path. "I thought, "Oh my God, it's gonna cut us in half,'" Parker
recalled. But the Hancock was able to throw its own rudder hard over and just missed. Parker saw his chief petty officer, the man who had given him permission to go to his bunk, come up out of the
shipfitter's shop on fire. "I ran over to him and put the flames out with my hands. Another guy came up burning too and I put those flames out too. That's how I got some of the burns on my
hands." The chief later died from his burns. Ten other men from the shipfitter's station died, too. Only Parker remained from the original section.
From there, Parker went to his battle station
at the five-inch gun. For the rest of the day, the Halsey Powell tried to regain its steering ability while its sister ship, the USS Sullivans, and rotating flights of U.S. Corsair fighting planes fought off
kamikazes that tried to come in and finish the destroyer off. One two-engine Betty bomber made a run at the Halsey Powell. Guns from both ships, including Parker's own gun, opened up on the bomber.
"I could see the pilot's face through my telescopic sights like I'm looking at you right now. He crashed between our two ships.' It was a frantic, deadly day for the Navy's task force and the Halsey
Powell, but they were able to get away from further danger. The destroyer steered using its twin screws, eventually reaching a major fleet anchorage at Ulithi atoll a thousand miles away.
The ship was
safe now, but Parker's worst ordeal was yet to come. The Halsey Powell was put into a drydock and work was begun on the heavily damaged fantail. Base repairmen found the body of one of Parker's best friends,
a sailor from Brooklyn, N.Y. "I was assigned to build the coffin out of pine boards for him so he could be buried on the island. That was the worst thing I ever had to do. "We had been
together since we started training. We were on the Halsey Powell since it was launched. One time, during a big typhoon, the two of us were out welding stanchions back into place when a wave washed him
off. The fleet gave us the OK to go back and get him. We came back and saw his head bobbing in the waves. He was a helluva swimmer.
"I only wish now,"Parker said, "I could have
gone to see his family after the war.' Though burned badly enough to receive the Purple Heart for being wounded in action with the enemy, Parker's wounds did not leave scars.
He attributes that to the salve put
on the burns and to handling hot shell casings for the five-inch gun. Handling those casings took the skin off his arms and prevented the scarring, he theorizes.
Parker's career in World War II, goes
hand in hand with that of the Halsey Powell. He was with the destroyer from the time it was launched in autumn 1942 until it was placed in mothballs in 1946. The ship was one of the escorts from President Franklin
Roosevelt when he crossed the ocean aboard the USS Iowa for the Casablanca conference in 1943. It was the destroyer's first voyage, a tough one for the speeds the ships maintained while taking their VIP back and forth
across the ocean and tough for the heavy seas encountered on the way home.
After that the Halsey Powell headed for the Pacific, taking part in one campaign after another, never getting leave in a real port
until they got to San Pedro, California. Rest came during stops at back areas where the sailors could go on an island, playing ball, swimming, writing letters and drinking warm beer. "There was never
any time for us to rest. We were always needed.' The ship had a reputation for putting down accurate gunfire, especially on land targets. "Our gunnery officer could put the shots from all five of our
runds right where they were supposed to go. First salvo would be high and right. The next salvo would be right on target.'
Throughout the Saipan campaign, the Halsey Powell was called upon.
"We'd
get a call for Lone Tree (our call sign) to go here and Lone Tree to go there." The ship would then blast away at some target called in by Marines on shore. Several years ago, Parker visited the island of
Saipan where he came upon the ruins of gun emplacements that he had viewed through his sights in 1944. The Halsey Powell also saw action against submarines and as an antiaircraft platform, shooting down attacking
aircraft, either kamikazes or planes making conventional attacks.
After the war, Parker worked for a time with Penelec, and then opened his own business in Albion Parker Home Appliance, which he still owns
and operates today (1995). He and his wife, Shirley Fromknecht Parker have five children and 18 grandchildren. He remains active in veterans organizations, including the Erie chapter of the Military Order of
the Purple Heart, the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
