USS Juneau: When four Belmar boys went down with the ship

BELMAR - There is a big, haunting photo in the lobby of Belmar’s Borough Hall that was taken on Valentine’s Day 1942, on the deck of a Navy warship, upon the day of the vessel's commissioning at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

It’s a “class picture” of the 673 officers and men of the U.S.S. Juneau, remembered this Memorial Day weekend as almost all those photographed would be dead nearly nine months later. On the morning of Friday, Nov. 13, 1942, the ship went down in the South Pacific after it was struck by two Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Guadalcanal.

The photo is large enough to reveal the face of every sailor aboard. On closer inspection, it’s a greater snapshot of the era itself – complete with a photo bombing longshoreman and a vintage car from the period beside them on the dock.

It’s easy to get lost in that photo, to imagine the frigid temperatures on that deck, as the sailors are bundled in their pea coats while bits of ice float alongside the Juneau in the harbor.

Some of the sailors smile broadly, others don somber expressions. Some are not even looking at the camera, distracted by the activity around them just as we are 75 years later. It’s all a split second in time, frozen on film for all eternity, of an ordinary day a little more than two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s subsequent entry into World War II.

What must they have been thinking? 

Sullivan brothers

The Juneau was a 6,000-ton light cruiser best known as the ill-fated ship that carried the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, whose request to serve together led to their simultaneous deaths and their heartbroken mother. Their story served as the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's 1998 film, "Saving Private Ryan."

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For us on the Jersey Shore, the ship occupies an equally important place in our local history as it carried four sons from Belmar: Robert E. Sherman, 20, Joseph R. McConnell, 19, Alfred J. Ferruggiano, 25, and Francis E. Class Jr., 20.

"The selfless sacrifice by the four brave men from Belmar is remembered on this Memorial Day," said Mayor Matt Doherty. "They continue to inspire generations of Americans in a way they could never have imagined."

There was also one son from Freehold Township: James A. Borden, 21; and one son from Eatontown: Charles S. Hayes, 22, all of whom perished on the Juneau.

Another son from Monmouth County, Frank A. Holmgren, 19, of Eatontown, survived; one of only 10 survivors aboard the entire ship. Holmgren died of natural causes in 2009 at the age of 86, but he told his story to the Asbury Park Press a number of times since the end of the war.

The Juneau was part of a task force that had been sent to intercept a Japanese naval armada that was en route to Guadalcanal Island to attack Henderson Field.

The ship was damaged in the engagement but managed to limp along under its own power, intending to rendezvous with the rest of its fleet, which had been scattered in the sea battle.

“We were at general quarters – standing by,” Holmgren recalled in a November 1963 interview with the Press for the 21st anniversary of the event.

“I was at my station topside on the fantail when the torpedo hit. There was no warning,” he said. “I figure it was about noon because I was hungry. I was facing forward when she blew up. I landed on the ship and went down with her. I was hanging on the shield of a gun mount. I grabbed a life jacket and put it on. When the water hit me, I thought I was a goner.”

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The next thing Holmgren remembered was the buoyant force of his life jacket rushing him to the surface of the ocean.

“There were some guys on life rafts already,” he recalled, as he got his bearings in the open sea. “The rafts and cork nets were loaded with men. I think there were at least 70 or 75 men there. I climbed aboard one of the rafts.”

The wreck of the Juneau – engulfed in flames – had disappeared beneath the surf in less than a minute, leaving behind a column of smoke that rose a thousand feet into the air, according to an official Navy account of the sinking.

Holmgren remembered an oil-slicked ocean filled with sharks and a sun that was relentless as it beat down onto the water.

“A lot of those guys were badly hurt. Many died,” he said. “We had only crackers and a little bit of water. Sea water got into everything, but we were able to drink the water while it lasted.”

What happened after dark was horrific.

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Then came the sharks

Several of the survivors in his raft died from the injuries they suffered aboard the Juneau during the attack. When their fellow sailors removed their dog tags and put the bodies overboard, the sharks moved in and devoured the corpses.

When the sharks ran out of dead bodies, they made brazen runs at the life rafts in an effort to snatch a living one, he said.

After dawn, a B-17 American bomber spotted the survivors and dropped a rubber life raft. But communication failures and the fog of war resulted in confusion and the men would not be rescued from the ocean for eight days after the Juneau went down.

Of the 140 crew members who initially survived the destruction of the Juneau, only 10 would last for that additional week and a day. Holmgren was one of them.  

“The sun was brutal out there. … We started to bake,” he said. “We threw water on each other to keep from roasting. We figured this was it.  A lot of the guys were going out of their heads. They thought the ship was down below and they jumped for it. Some thought they saw food, some saw land, some saw mermaids.”

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Holmgren was not immune to the delirium that set in, particularly at night. At one point, he thought he could see a forest beneath the sea – as if it the ocean surface was a single layer that could be peeled back to reveal a life-sustaining landscape below.

Some of the men who could no longer distinguish between such visions and the reality before them leaped into the water and were picked off by the sharks. A few safely pulled back into the rafts.

“The sharks grabbed most of them,” Holmgren said. “I did plenty of praying all right, but there was so much excitement all the time, we didn’t have much time to think.”

Eventually, an amphibious plane – a Consolidated PBY Catalina – landed on the water and picked up the 10 sailors who were left.

The crew of the Juneau and Belmar’s lost sons are honored each year in the borough on Veterans Day rather than Memorial Day, due to the fact the anniversary of the Juneau's sinking falls near the Nov. 11 national observance. The memorial ceremonies are rotated at different churches in town each year to reflect the diversity in Christian faiths of the fallen men.

Belmar Mayor Doherty said up until a couple years ago there was also local Veterans of Foreign Wars Post – No. 2620 – called the Belmar-Wall-Juneau Post in honor of the lost ship and its four Belmar sailors, but that the post was forced to close after nearly 70 years due to an unsustainable attrition in membership.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com