Ships
- USS John Rodgers (DD-574) Captain, 9 February 1943 – 8 August 1944
Herman Oliff Parish was born in Savannah, Georgia, on 19 January 1904. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in the class of 1926 and was a lieutenant commander by the spring of 1941, the rank in which he entered the war.
From 13 August 1941 he commanded the destroyer Gilmer. He was still in that ship when the United States went to war, and he left her on 9 December 1942. In those months he took Gilmer into the Aleutians campaign. A temporary promotion to commander came in August 1942.
His next command was a new Fletcher-class destroyer. John Rodgers had been built at Orange, Texas, and she was commissioned on 9 February 1943 with Commander Parish as her first captain. He worked her up in the Caribbean. She was at Charleston late in April. On 13 May 1943 he sailed from Norfolk in the escort of a convoy, passed the Panama Canal, and brought her into Pearl Harbor in June to join the Pacific Fleet.
After a short spell of training he put John Rodgers in the screen of a fast carrier force. In August 1943 that force struck Marcus Island, Tarawa, and Wake, raids that damaged the bases and gathered information for landings still ahead. From September 1943 the destroyer carried the flag of Destroyer Squadron 25. She stayed in the Pacific under his command. On 7 May 1944, off Cape Sudest on the New Guinea coast, she got underway with the squadron to escort transports toward Guadalcanal. The crew called him Hop. Late that spring they formed up on deck when he received a citation.
Parish left John Rodgers on 8 August 1944, and James Gilbert Franklin took command. In a year and a half he had brought the destroyer from commissioning into the forward Pacific and kept her with the carriers and on escort duty. The ship he had placed in service went on to earn twelve battle stars and finished the war without losing a man of her company.
He next commanded Destroyer Division 50. On 14 April 1945, on a radar picket line off Okinawa, Japanese aircraft came in on a suicide attack, some fifteen to twenty planes. Parish directed the division’s ships and the aircraft working with them so that ten of the attackers were destroyed and the rest were held away from his task group. The Navy Cross was awarded for that action. A Legion of Merit covered his commands of Gilmer and John Rodgers and his duty with the division through January 1945. He retired as a rear admiral and died on 27 March 1989 in Berlin, Maryland.