HOLMGREN: As
bad as I was laying there in that thing took off and I could swear to God he
was submerging instead of going up. I
had to pull myself up and look through that window.
Yep. -- That's about it
Z IN ECU And we met the rest of them on Gilbert Island.
Yeah, that was about it.
NARRATOR:
On the following morning, the last two survivors were picked up by a
destroyer.They were the sole survivors on each of their rafts.
Arthur Friend
had had part of his buttocks ripped off by a shark the day before his
rescue.
Allen Heyn
suffered multiple injuries, which were to plague him the rest of his life.
All
but 10 of the Juneau crew were lost, including 2 Rogers brothers and all 5
Sullivans.
JAMES ROGERS (USS
Juneau Crew): My brother Joe was coming back from loading the motor launch
with supplies. He says “...the Juneau got hit."
So I says "Jesus it got hit" I says "what about Pat
and Lou?" He says "I
don't know." He says
"they say it's almost the whole crew that went down." So that's
when he went to the captain and he says "can I go on the beach to the
hospital and see if my brothers are killed or what."
So he went and then he come back and he told me "Jim" he
says "Jim both of them went down."
And we couldn't take it for a while, but then we decided that those
are the things that was gonna happen and we should be thankful that we did
make the swap and get off.
NARRATOR:
George, the oldest Sullivan brother, had survived the blast. For the first 5
days he went from raft to raft, seeking his dead brothers among the
oil-caked survivors, calling out their names day and night.
KURZMANN:
Finally on the 5th day he went mad and he figured that he could swim to an
island and he jumped into the water and three sharks leaped for him and that
was the end of George Sullivan, the last of the brothers.
NEWSREEL
FIVE HERO BROTHERS MISSING IN ACTION FIGHTING THE JAPS
“The
home that lost 5 brothers in the sinking of the cruiser Juneau. George,
Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan. They insisted on serving
together.
Wife
of the youngest and their son Jimmy. And the brother parents, Mr & Mrs.
Thomas F. Sullivan.”
NARRATOR:
Jim Sullivan is the only child of the Sullivan brothers.
JAMES SULLIVAN
(Son of Albert Sullivan): To tell you the truth I don't know how they
handled it, but of course there were a lot of news people there, a lot of
military people stopped in.
NEWSREEL
“As I give you these purple hearts, I can say only that the Navy is as
proud of the Sullivan parents as it is of the Sullivan boys.”
“They
gave 5 sons. Let’s buy an extra war bond.”
SULLIVAN: And
then almost immediately they were on a war bond drive and I think that's
probably how they were able to keep their sanity because it kept there- kept
'em busy.
My
grandmother, she got everybody's attention.
My grandfather, he kind of stood back in the background. He served as
a father figure to me and I'm sure I served - or took the place of the sons
that he lost. I was closer to him than anybody I've ever been to in my life.
NARRATOR: The
Navy command arranged for the Sullivans to speak at 235 bond rallies and
defense plants nationwide during a 4-month tour. Sympathy for the Sullivan
family quickly turned into a national call to arms.
While
promoting the Juneau crew’s heroic fate, the Navy suppressed the full
story of its failure to quickly rescue the Juneau survivors. The tragic
details stayed buried until 1994 -- 52 years after the sinking.
CREDITS
