Destroyers of of DesRon 12 make formation "S-turns" in Ironbottom Sound. SHIPMATES OF DESRON 12
I first compiled the history of the USS Farenholt. While doing it, I realized that without too much more effort the Squadron history could also be done, so I started getting connected with shipmates of the other ships from their reunion notices in the different magazines. This started Ships of DesRon 12 and DesDiv 22. |
almost 15 years ago. I have even attended one of their reunions as was accepted like a fellow shipmate. We were all victims of the same period of time and destined to accomplish these deeds.
Another real reason after things started coming together, so little of it was getting into the history books by the authors who were capitalizing on the war in books that were being written. I also started collecting all the Navy books I could find and had others also looking for them for me. We were barely mentioned in them and others whom were less involved than us seemed to be in them. Guess the authors should have been there like us. Guess another reason, most of the real veterans buried that war for almost fifty years until we started seeking out each other and having reunions in the early ’80s. This is when a lot of my good material started coming in from the shipmates who were actually involved in these struggles. Shipmates tried their senators and representatives to get us some of the citations that were due us. The response came back from Washington that time had run out on us. It is easy for them to erase that time but I’m sure that none of us will ever do it in our lifetime and will feel that way until we are in our graves. They didn’t experience the time when things were really a very dark period of time and had to be changed with many hard struggles to get the momentum stopped in their favor to ours. This took a long period of time and these days, a day was like a week, a week was like a month and a month was like a year.
Our ranks are now becoming vastly diminished. It is time to put this book into the hands of our children and anywhere it can be seen. I am going to send a copy to the Archives in Washington, DC and to the Destroyer Museums in America. At this time it is being published just for the shipmates of DesRon 12. Am hoping the response from it will let me expand it to others. The response at our reunions is already opening up the eyes of our families and friends who are attending them. It has been a pleasure showing and communicating with them at our reunions. They had a very vague knowledge of what happened in the years 1941–45. Some even think today we were the aggressor. It is too bad that the real story remains hidden for so many years and a lot of it is never told.
Different accounts will tell you what our life was really like during those desperate days of our real young youth. We have to grow up overnight. Things weren’t like it was being told to the people in the states. All sides always proliferated their victories in the early part of the war as our victories were few to begin with as we learned to fight an experienced for. Our forces were spread pretty thin in the global war that was taking place. That situation changed when our factories could give us the armament needed to fight such a war.
I realize a lot of the history of the other ships of the squadron is missing. I hope I have brought out what DesRon 12 did and our important part in every type of duty in the early part of the war to turn the Japanese tide of victories and start our own desperate struggle to Tokyo. | 
