REMEMBERING
JAMES BOYD HARRIS

By Joe C. Fling

It was May, 1945. The war in Europe was over. But the fighting raged on in the Pacific. Okinawa. Okinawa was a terrible battle. It was the largest amphibious operation of the Pacific war and was the most deadly to both the Americans and the Japanese. Four Weimer men (George Huepers, Daniel Christen, Leroy Pavlik, and Bernard Kubenka) as well as Columbus’s Elo Ahlgrim died in action in less than five weeks there. The carnage of this long battle fought in April and May of 1945 has been said to have solidified American resolve to use the atomic bomb to bring the war to an early end.

Then came the kamikazes. These Japanese suicide planes came as waves crashing on the decks of American carriers, trying to destroy the advantage of air and sea power enjoyed by the U.S. late in the war. The American defense was to set up a picket line of radar-equipped destroyers to be a first line of defense. These ships took a horrific beating. Eagle Lake’s James Boyd Harris, Jr. served on one of these destroyers, the Braine.

Harris was born in Eagle Lake on January 18, 1927. He was the son of James Boyd “Jodie” Harris and Alice Woolridge Harris. He was the grandson of Tom Pettus, with whom he resided much of his young life. The elder Harris was a nineteen-year Army veteran who had served in Europe during World War II. He was wounded twice in fighting in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and was discharged with the rank of Sergeant. A brother Miller Ray Westmoreland served in the Air Corps. Harris attended schools in Eagle Lake and was a member of Mount Olive Baptist Church.

Eager to follow in his father’s footsteps, James fudged a little on his age and managed to get into the Navy at the age of fifteen. Harris’s sister, Mildred Faye Johnson relates that their parents did not want to let James go, but he begged them to let him enlist, and they finally gave in. A.J. Williams who married Harris’s cousin Marlene recalled that when the first young men came back from the service in their snappy white navy outfits, everyone wanted to join up.

Johnson and Williams also related the poignant story about Harris’s last trip home. Although he had been in the service for three years, Harris expressed grave reservations about returning to action. The family gave him a going away party and after midnight put him on a train at the Eagle Lake station. Harris’s feeling was true. He would never see Eagle Lake again. He shipped out on the Braine in the summer of 1944 and sailed for the Philippines by way of Pearl Harbor.

Braine DD-630 was a Fletcher Class destroyer, built by Bath Iron Works and commissioned in 1943. She was 2050 tons, armed with 5-inch guns and torpedoes and manned by a crew of 329. Braine had seen action at the invasions of Torokina, the Green Islands and Tinian.

In 1944, Harris, a Steward’s Mate First Class, saw action aboard Braine in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and the landings at Leyte and Lingayen. Braine was attached to the Seventh Fleet and was under the command of Cmdr. W.W. Fitts. Her last action was on the Okinawa radar picket line.

On May 25, Braine’s gunners shot down four Japanese bombers. On May 27, the Japanese launched what would be their last 100 plane strikes of the war. Braine was on picket duty with Anthony, another Fletcher class destroyer, when three or four Japanese Aichi D3A“Val” dive bombers fell out of the clouds at 7:44 a.m. According to Captain Samuel E. Morison in his monumental 13-volume work History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, relates how Braine and Anthony opened fire, splashing the first plane. The second was set on fire about 2000 yards from Anthony, passed over that ship, made a hard turn to port and crashed into Braine, demolishing the wardroom.

A second “Val” crashed the sickbay and its bomb exploded in the No. 3 boiler intake, leaving Braine aflame in three places. Communications were lost and the ship was dead in the water. Two LCS’s picked up survivors, while the Anthony came alongside to fight the fires, which were eventually controlled. Anthony towed Braine into the U.S. base at Kerama Retto. Braine suffered 66 dead and 78 wounded out of its crew of 329. Harris was one of the dead. The dead were buried at sea. The war was over for Braine, as the war would end before repairs could be completed.

At least 132 American warships suffered air attack casualties off Okinawa in the four months of fighting, but only nine lost more men than Braine did on this day.

Word of Harris’s death reached his family on a Sunday night when they got home from church. Just a few months past his eighteenth birthday, Harris was Colorado County’s youngest war casualty, although he was a three-year veteran.

Only four young black men from Colorado County are known to have died in World War II, Harris the only one from Eagle Lake. He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial in Hawaii. The names of 18,096 men missing in action, lost or buried at sea are included on this monument.

There is also an exhibit honoring Harris at the Prairie Edge Museum here in Eagle Lake. If you have not seen this display, you will be stirred by the young, almost baby-faced picture of this heroic young man.