Naval action on July 12, 1945

That goes to my point about what information is being communicated. The original (and reasonable) assumption was that the action took place on 12 July 45, thus the original title. As you have pointed out, that was probably the date he was officially listed as dead. The action that resulted in his death took place nearly 3 years earlier.

 

Normally the US, Army Air Force anyway, waited a year. I have my uncle's Purple Heart citation and death notification and they date his death as 5/28/44 [he was MIA 5/27/43].
Bill

 

Just stumbled on this thread.

Wgvsr,

Under "normal" circumstances, the US Navy did not take so long to declare one dead, the MIA from the USS Astoria(CA-34) - also sunk the same day during the Battle of Savo Island, were all declared dead on August 10, 1943. However, the loss of the USS Jarvis was not "normal", she was one of the few US warships sunk with loss of all hands. Given this unusual circumstance, the US Navy waited longer than normal to declare the men of the USS Jarvis dead.

As an aside, I came across this on another crewman from the USS Jarvis.

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/IDPAYETT/2006-01/1137656266

 

The circumstances surrounding Jarvis's loss were also somewhat unusual. Like Indianapolis she was far from any friendly witnesses. Further, if I understand it correctly, she was on a course of which much of the higher command structure was unaware. I was reading about Savo Island the other day, through the fringes of which Jarvis passed. Her loss was a footnote; sunk the next day by aerial attack. So I looked her up. From a bit of wiki-research it would seem Jarvis had taken a torpedo in an aerial torpedo attack against US ships offloading supplies during the initial landings. (Lundstrom's First Team: Guadalcanal details this attack, the first of many costly and not terribly successful raids out of Rabaul against American forces in the area.) The hit not only silenced something like half her guns, but slowed her down (severe hull damage tends to have this effect) and cut her radio. She was ordered, by radio, to Efate. Not getting the message, she proceeded of her own volition towards Australia. She was sighted a few times proceeding more or less south from Guadalcanal, but when she caught another Japanese aerial assault there was no one else anywhere nearby. It may well be that the first account of her loss received by the U.S. Navy came from translated Japanese documents after the war. There may have been considerable communications confusion, thanks to the battle the night before. (Lots and lots of damaged and sinking ships.) In the scramble to pick up the pieces I suppose it's quite possible that the destination port wasn't even aware she was coming. (Either Efate or Australia.) It may well have taken a while to notice she was missing, at which point it would have taken longer to figure out where she was last seen, and even then it may have been virtually impossible to figure out what happened with no witnesses available. Tough break. Sadly, it actually makes sense that it took a long time to report that one.

 

Thanks for all the research and insight. I was pretty young but I remember Mrs. Cavalero talking to my brother who was in the Navy. She was asking whether my brother may have known her son. I always thought how difficult it must have been to hold out hope that a miracle would happen. The Cavaleros moved shortly after we moved in and I completely forgot the name until Memorial Day.