In 1942, Seaman Calvin Graham, age 13, was decorated for valor in a South Pacific battle. When his mother learned where he’d been, she revealed his secret to the Navy,
The newly christened battleship USS South Dakota steamed Calvin Graham out of Philadelphia in August of 1942 spoiling for a fight with a crew of “untested recruits” who enlisted after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Brash and confident, the crew couldn’t get through the Panama Canal fast enough, and their captain, Thomas Gatch, made no secret that he held a grudge against the Japanese.
In less than four months, the South Dakota would limp back to port in New York for extensive damage repairs. After the repairs, the ship screened carrier forces in the Western Pacific and provided support for the invasions of Leyte, Luzon, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. In July and August 1945, she joined with other battleships to shell the Japanese home islands and was present for the formal surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay, Japan.
The Japanese were mistakenly convinced they inflicted severe damage on. They were convinced the vessel had been destroyed at sea, and the Navy was only too happy to keep the mystery alive — stripping the of identifying markings and avoiding any mention of it in communications and even forbidding mentioning it in sailors’ diaries. When newspapers later reported on the ship’s extraordinary accomplishments in the Pacific Theater, it was referred to simply as “Battleship X.”
