The Saddest Letter

Last week my friend LDC (for his pithy words of wisdom read the right sidebar) and I visited two WW2 Museums.  The better known is the National WW2 Museum in New Orleans, while the lesser known National Museum of the Pacific War is located in the lovely small town of Fredericksburg in the Texas hill country west of Austin.

It was at the Pacific War Museum I found myself in a small alcove reading the letter below, an inquiry from Mrs Alleta Sullivan of Waterloo, Iowa to the Bureau of Naval Personnel, inquiring about a rumor she'd heard regarding her five sons serving on the light cruiser USS Juneau.  The combination of her humble apologetic inquiry ("I hated to bother you") and my knowledge of the fate of her boys made it very distressing to read.  I barely made it through.  As a child I learned about the Sullivan brothers from seeing the 1944 movie The Fighting Sullivans on TV but had never seen Mrs Sullivan's letter.

Thomas and Alleta Sullivan had six children.  Five boys, George (27), Frank (26), Joe (24), Matt (23) and Al (22), and a daughter, Genevieve.  George and Frank had already served in the navy and been discharged when Genevieve's boyfriend, also a sailor, was killed at Pearl Harbor.  All five brothers enlisted on January 3, 1942.  At their request, they were allowed, despite Navy discouragement of the practice, to serve on the same ship.  Al was married and had a child while Frank and Joe were engaged.


In November 1942, the five brothers were on the USS Juneau, a new light cruiser, on station in the Solomon Islands.  From August through the end of that year, the US and Japanese navies fought a series of fierce engagements, triggered by the American landing on Guadalcanal, actions in which both services suffered severe losses.

In the early morning hours of November 13 the Juneau was damaged by a torpedo.  Late that morning as it limped back to base a Japanese submarine fired a torpedo which struck the ammunition storage area of the cruiser.  The ensuing explosion was so huge that the Navy determined there could be no survivors and did not even perform a search.  Eight days later a Navy plane spotted ten survivors.  It turned out that perhaps 100 of the 697 man crew may have survived the initial explosion but only the ten rescued eight days later made it.  All of the Sullivan boys were gone; at least one survived for a while after the sinking.

However, because the Navy hoped more survivors would be found, the affected families were not notified for some time.  Which explains Mrs Sullivan's letter.

Thomas and Alleta Sullivan displayed remarkable resilience in the face of this terrible news with Alleta, in particular, making enormous contributions to the war effort.  Alleta, her husband, and daughter spoke to employees at more than 200 plants and shipyards across America and appeared in support of war bond rallies.  By war's end they had spoken to more than 1 million workers in person and millions more through radio broadcasts.

Here's Mrs Sullivan with Marlene Dietrich serving servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen in 1944:


On September 30, 1943 Mrs Sullivan christened a new destroyer, USS The Sullivans, the first American navy ship named for more than one person.  The Sullivans saw heavy action in the Pacific during 1944 and 1945, remaining in service until 1965.  Alleta Sullivan's grandson served on the ship in its last years.  The Sullivans can still be found on station at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Servicemen's Park.

In 1997, a new USS The Sullivans was commissioned and present for the event was Alleta Sullivan's great granddaughter, Kelly Sullivan Loughran.  The Sullivans remains in service.  In early 2000, while at port in Yemen, Al Qaeda unsuccessfully tried to attack The Sullivans but its overloaded boat sank.  Later that year, Al Qaeda succeeded in its attack on USS Cole in the same harbor.

According to Kelly:

"the story that sticks with her the most is that long after the war, after the movie, the media and the ceremonies had faded, Alleta would receive house calls from Sailors that either knew her sons or who just wanted to stop by and extend their condolences. Kelly said her great-grandmother would often cook them a hot meal and offer them a place to stay for the evening or the weekend."

Thomas Sullivan passed in 1965, Alleta in 1972.  On March 17, 2018 Paul Allen's exploration team located the wreckage of USS Juneau at a depth of 13,800 feet.