An American industrial miracle produced immense numbers of airplanes, tanks and ships for the United States and its allies in World War II. And the nation’s young responded to the call to use them.
Ships flowed into the Pacific Ocean, in particular, including submarines. One officer described his crew as “clerks, haberdashers, soda jerkers, bell hops, high-school athletes and farm boys.” That was America fully at war. About 70% of them had never been to sea at all.
They nevertheless took on the hard missions, and few were more hazardous than diving into the Sea of Japan, attacking shipping late in the war in the heavily protected sea lanes there. It was the lifeline for Imperial Japan from its colony in mainland China. And it was mined and constantly patrolled.
Like others who took on that assignment, the USS Albacore was lost with all hands — including two young men from New Orleans — but it was not clear until recently where the boat went down.
A retired Japanese scientist, using a remotely operated submersible, provided the images allowing the United States Navy to identify the wreck.
One of the local men lost, Nicholas John Cado, was just 20. Another was 22-year-old newly minted ensign John Francis Fortier Jr., a graduate of Tulane University.
That the work of identifying and protecting the final resting place of these brave souls continues nearly a century on is a tribute to the services.
Fortier’s name was among the 134 onetime Tulane students marked at a postwar convocation attended by Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who spoke these wise words: ”If civilization is not only to endure but to progress, if our America is to realize the richness with which God endowed it, then we must all dedicate our lives in living, as these your brothers did in dying, so that liberty, peace, and progress shall embrace all mankind.”
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