Looking for World War II submariners

[csziggy]

2. I'd looked on Ancestry and didn't find him - thank you!

The ceremony where my father received his medal was held after the end of the war and over a year after the incident for which he earned it. It was held on an aircraft carrier (from what I can see in the photo of him and Admiral Nimitz) and I expect that it was a massive award ceremony to catch up on giving the medals to the men.

We don't why or how Dad ended up with the envelops full of photos. From the collection of items in the box they were found in, this could be stuff that was retrieved from his parents' house after he moved back to Florida. (He returned to engineering school in Lansing, Michigan then moved back to Florida after he graduated about a year and a half later.) Maybe those were sent to him and he never knew how to contact the men in the photos. By the time the internet came along, he'd forgotten all about them, I'm sure.

Dad even had two different letters informing him of the medal - one was sent during the war and does not detail what he did to receive the medal. The other was given to him later and has more information. The rationale was that if the submarine were damaged and the men taken prisoner the War Department did not want anything with the men that let the Japanese know that the sub was responsible for sinking ships and killing Japanese sailors.

Thank you very much - now to see if I can find where Leonard Masters Small, Jr lived after the war and if he has any family left!