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Anne Price-Family
to remember
Shaw, James Richard, Capt.
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Contact Info
Home Town San Diego, California
Last Address Biak Island, New Guinea
Date of Passing Jul 15, 1944
Location of Interment Golden Gate National Cemetery (VA) - San Bruno, California
USAAF July 1944 - Far East: www.usaaf.net/chron/44/jul44.htm
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I am the sister of Chaplain James Richard Shaw who died in July, l944 at Biak Island of the western coast of New Guinea. I have many pictures of the AAF 39th Fighter Squadron's advance across New Guina, east to west, building airstrips many times till they supposedly were now safe on the little idland just off the western coast. A kamakazi pilot made a direct his on the Biak fowxhole one Sunday before some of the could make it to Austrealia. The squadron aparantly, in 1990 had a reunion in Loa Vegas and were going to have an exhibit at the AirSpace Museum in Oklahoma City. (My younger brother died last year and in his papers I received the letter announcement 20 years too late.) Is there a record of the New Guinea campaign and would these photographs be of interest to you? Many thanks, anne shaw price, annima275@aol.com 909-625-9896
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Source: www.pacificwrecks.com/people/veterans/hilburn.html
In Memory of Chaplain James Shaw Today we miss our Chappy,
'Twas but a week ago;
He gave us Communion,
And stressed the things that go
With God and home and country,
And other truths we know.
He set a fine example,
Of a young mans cleaner life;
He showed it could be followed.
Throughout this mortal strife.
And so we know he was ready,
For even deaths long knife.
When home again we're sitting,
When war has had its day;
We'll speak of comrades fallen,
who with their lives did pay.
Then Jim shall have our honor,
We saw him lead the way.
The 39th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) was constituted on paper on 22 December 1939. The 39th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) was initially assigned to the 31st Pursuit Group on 1 February 1940. In early 1940 personnel were drawn from the old 94th Pursuit Squadron. This was a Squadron from WW1 which Eddie Rickenbacher had served in. The 39th Pursuit Squadron started to train in Seversky P-35 aircraft. In early 1941 they received the first P-39 Airacobras to run off the production line at their base at Selfridge Field in Michigan.
The 39th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) was then assigned to the 35th Pursuit Group on 15 January 1942.
Maurer shows the 39th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) arriving at Brisbane, Queensland on 25 February 1942, then moving to Ballarat, Victoria on 8 March 1942, then to Mt. Gambier, South Australia on 16 March 1942, then Williamstown on 3 April 1942.
The 39th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor), of the 35th Pursuit Group (Interceptor), relocated from Williamstown to Woodstock airfield with their P-39 Airacobras on 20 April 1942.
The 39th Fighter Squadron were based at Woodstock near Townsville from April 1942 until June 1942. The 39th Fighter Squadron, 35th Fighter Group, moved from Woodstock airfield to Port Moresby, New Guinea with their P-39s on 2 June 1942 and flew their first mission that day. 2nd Lt. David L. Silverman (0-427011), a new pilot assigned to the 39th Pursuit Squadron, 35th Pursuit Group was killed landing on the center strip at Woodstock airfield on 10 May 1942.
The 39th Fighter Squadron then returned to Townsville on 26 July 1942 and returned to Port Moresby with their new P-38's on 18 October 1942.
On 27 May, another leap of over 300 miles was made to seize airfields on Biak Island (dominating strategic Geelvink Bay) where fierce enemy resistance was encountered. The delay at Biak led to the order for the U.S. Sixth Army to seize Noemfoor Island (60 miles west of Biak) on 2 July and clear it of Japanese defenders to make its airstrips available for Allied operations. The advance continued to Sansapor on 30 July and to the island of Morotai on 15 September 1944.
While Biak and Noemfoor were secured, 500 miles to the east intelligence reports warned that the Japanese Eighteenth Army was approaching Aitape, held by the Allies since their 22 April landing. Engineers had converted the Aitape Japanese airdromes into a major fighter base, well defended by prepared positions close to the base and by a weak outer defensive perimeter along the western banks of the shallow Driniumor River, about fifteen miles east of the airstrips.
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Source: www.worldwar-2.net/timelines/asia-and-the-pacific/pacific-islands/pacific-islands-index-1944.htm
03/07/1944
Prime Minister Curtin returns to Australia after the Commonwealth conference in Britain.
07/07/1944
Vice-Admiral Nagumo and General Saito, commit suicide as the Japanese position on Saipan deteriorates.
09/07/1944
U.S. Marines defeat the Japanese on Saipan after a final Banzai charge. 27,000 Japanese and 3,116 Americans were killed on Saipan.
18/07/1944
Buffeted by more than two years of military and naval defeats, Gen. Hideki Tojo is forced to resign his offices of prime minister, war minister and chief of the Imperial General Staff. While Tojo's removal strengthens somewhat the elements of the Japanese government inclined to seek peace, Tokyo's official policy of fighting to the end remains unchanged.
21/07/1944
U.S. Marines land on Guam, establishing beach-heads up to a mile inland.
22/07/1944
The last organised Japanese resistance on Biak ends.
24/07/1944
The U.S. 4th Marine Division (15,000 men) lands on Tinian.
25/07/1944
1,246 Japanese are killed in a Banzai charge in Tinian, another 3,000 die on Guam.
26/07/1944
President Roosevelt arrives in Hawaii for a conference on Pacific strategy with Gen. Douglas Macarthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. FDR authorizes Macarthur's plan to liberate the Philippines instead of bypassing them, as desired by the Navy and Nimitz.
29/07/1944
The Orote Peninsula is secured on Guam.
31/07/1944
The last Japanese counter-attack on Tinian is annihilated. U.S. forces make further landings on the North West coast of Dutch New Guinea and begin a jungle push from Aitape.
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.