Looking for World War II submariners

[csziggy]

My father served on the USS Spot (SS-413) in World War II. As a result of an incident in which he was part of a boarding party on a crippled Japanese freighter he received the Navy and Marine Medal. We have one photo of Admiral Nimitz awarding him the medal, but no other pictures of the ceremony.

Since Dad died in August 2013, my sister and Mom have been going through the house to sort out stuff. The other day they found a box with all sorts of treasures - Mom's dog tags (she was a Navy Nurse), Dad's report cards, the certificates for his Boy Scout medals, etal.

One of the oddest things they found were four envelopes with photos from the Nimitz ceremony - each envelope had a different person's name, a note of their rank and rating and "Spot." The pictures in each envelope are presumably of the man whose name is on the outside. And of course, there are no other copies or views of Dad getting his medal. My sister wants me to locate the families of those men to give them the photos.

The names as deciphered by my sister are:
J. H. Strong, RM1c
L. M. Small Jr, FC2c
R. R. Granes, GM1c
Lt. A. H. Clark

I've located obituaries for two of the men - one actually lists him as serving on the Spot - and found contact information for children listed. So far, I've left a message for one of the families. The other lives in Idaho so I'm waiting until a little later to try to call.

On Fold3.com in the War Diaries for the USS Spot I found the page where Commander Post listed the medal recipients of the boarding party. As listed in his report they were:
Lieutenant A. H. Clark, Jr., USN
Lieutenant (jg) O. H. Wright, USNR (my Dad)
Graves, Robert R., GM1c
Walters, Carl C., QM1c
Stamp, Raymond F., MoMM1c
Strong, Joseph H., RM1c
Fish, Burton, S1c (GM)

But I've got some mysteries. First, there is no L. M. Small Jr in the list of medal recipients. In fact there is not only no L. M. Small Jr listed in the Muster Rolls for the USS Spot, there isn't one in the Navy as far as I can find. I've asked my sister to check if it could be some other name, apparently the hand writing is not very clear on the envelopes. As you can see from the two lists, she read "Graves" as "Granes" so an incorrect reading is possible. But in looking at the Muster lists I can't see any other name that could be mistaken for "L. M. Small" and there certainly wasn't any in the boarding party.

Although A. H. Clark clearly served on the USS Spot - not only did he receive the Navy and Marine Medal, he also received a Silver Star and he's listed by name on other reports - he is never listed on the Muster Rolls for the USS Spot. My husband theorizes that he may have been an intelligence officer. A previous posting was on the USS Moosehead:

Moosehead carried out her most important service as an at-sea platform for training officers and men of Combat Information Center crews. She carried the latest radar and sonar equipment as well as a CIC classroom and berthing facilities. In July 1943 she began training CIC crews of escort carriers. During the next two and a half years she trained CIC teams for all escort carriers of the Casablanca and Commencement Bay classes. Early in 1944 she broadened the scope of her training to include CIC teams from APA’s, AKA’s, DE’s, AD’s, and PCE’s. In addition, she served as a test and evaluation ship for experimental rockets, radar equipment, and radio jamming devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Turner_%28DD-259%29#As_Moosehead

(Anyone wishing to assist in this - This is neither the LtCmdr Albert Hobbs Clark who was lost on the USS Trout nor his son.)

I did find A. H. Clark' obituary and am attempting to contact his family, same for J. H. Strong.

My last problem is Robert R. Graves. I found his Navy history all the way through to 4 May 1945 when he was transferred to COMSUBDIV 202 for duty. Nothing after that. No obituary or entry on FindAGrave that could be him. No indication of a family. The best clue is that he enlisted 17 Oct 1939 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Unfortunately, that means no 1940 US Census listing that might have provided family information. There are several Robert R. Graves in the 1930 US Census in that part of the country that could be him, but there is no way to narrow it down.

Any help anyone can give me on finding the last two men - Robert R. Graves and the elusive L.M. Small - would be wonderful! All we want to do is to get the photos of them from 1945 to their families. If we cannot locate family members, I'll suggest to my sister that we give them to the Florida State University Institute on World War II here in Tallahassee: http://ww2.fsu.edu/

[Thor_MN]

1. There was a FCS2C Leonard Masters Small, Jr on SS394 Razorback...

Found through Ancestry.com (I have a subscription) he is on the Razorback muster lists throughout the war. Not the Spot, of course, but same class boat, name, initials and Rate match... Perhaps the medal ceremony was not just men from the Spot?

[csziggy]

2. I'd looked on Ancestry and didn't find him - thank you!

The ceremony where my father received his medal was held after the end of the war and over a year after the incident for which he earned it. It was held on an aircraft carrier (from what I can see in the photo of him and Admiral Nimitz) and I expect that it was a massive award ceremony to catch up on giving the medals to the men.

We don't why or how Dad ended up with the envelops full of photos. From the collection of items in the box they were found in, this could be stuff that was retrieved from his parents' house after he moved back to Florida. (He returned to engineering school in Lansing, Michigan then moved back to Florida after he graduated about a year and a half later.) Maybe those were sent to him and he never knew how to contact the men in the photos. By the time the internet came along, he'd forgotten all about them, I'm sure.

Dad even had two different letters informing him of the medal - one was sent during the war and does not detail what he did to receive the medal. The other was given to him later and has more information. The rationale was that if the submarine were damaged and the men taken prisoner the War Department did not want anything with the men that let the Japanese know that the sub was responsible for sinking ships and killing Japanese sailors.

Thank you very much - now to see if I can find where Leonard Masters Small, Jr lived after the war and if he has any family left!

[Thor_MN]

3. Your welcome, I love finding links.

Please update if you find his family, pretty sure that he was born abt 1924 in Saugus, Massachusetts.
There is a 1940 census record and a marriage record.

Name: Leonard Masters Small Jr
Birth Year: abt 1924
Birth Place: Saugus, Massachusetts
Father: Leonard Masters Small
Mother: Lillian Mabel Scar
Spouse: Anna Marie Frederick
Spouse Birth Place: Lynn, Massachusetts
Record Type: Marriage
Marriage Date: 17 Mar 1944
Marriage Place: Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Navy Yard
Age at Marriage: 20
Spouse Age at Marriage: 18
Spouse Father: Anall P Frederick
Spouse Mother: Wilhelmina Stahl

[csziggy]

4. I got a call back from the one family I have good phone numbers for!

The daughter is excited - she knew her father had received the medal but never knew the details why. Dad had written accounts of the incident so I will send her copies of that and of the log entries concerning it. She's thrilled and thinks her son, a history teacher, will be able to use the information in his classes.

Yes, I have the information on Leonard Small's parents and marriage - he and his wife show up in the City Directory for 1951 and 1956 in Lynn, Massachusetts. Since they are at the same address both of those years, I'm sure there were there in between. There are several Leonard Smalls in Massachusetts of about the same age which complicates things - and I haven't got a lot of extra time to spend. I'll keep working on him.

I still haven't found children or a death record for him or for Robert R. Graves. Robert R. Graves is just too common a name! Why, oh why couldn't the Navy have entered the birth dates as part of their information? I even found some places where they listed wives - but not for these guys, darn it!

[csziggy]

5. Oh, I found when and where the awards ceremony was

From my Dad's account:
"We were surprised when all seven members of the boarding party were awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal. It happened that we were at Guam for a refit and Admiral Nimitz himself made the award of the medals. He was always going to honor submarine sailors! We never found out why, but the rumor was that the logs and charts that we recovered showed important data and routes through mine fields."

I'll have to go through the logs and check the date of that refit to get a date, but that is possible!