Ships
- USS Conway (DD-507) Captain, 1 May 1944 – 13 July 1945
The Lucky Bag of 1935 prints JOHN HENRY BESSON, JR., Portland, Ore. The Navy Registers print John Henry Besson, Jr. Nothing read for this essay uses Henri, and nothing treats Henry as a mistake. The junior is part of the name. He is not Frank Schaffer Besson, Jr., the Army officer whose name turns up in the same searches, and he is not Clara Virginia Besson, an ensign who sits near him in the later registers.
On 1 July 1944 the Register still lists him among the lieutenant commanders. On 1 July 1945 it lists him among the commanders, and the 1 January 1954 Register prints 1 March 1944 as the date of that rank. If that date is the one the Navy meant, he was already a commander when he took Conway, and lieutenant commander is the grade of the summer 1944 book, not the grade he wore for the cruise. The dates 1 May 1944 to 13 July 1945 are the compiled list's. NavSource prints the same two days and calls him lieutenant commander, later rear admiral. uboat.net prints 25 May 1944 to 13 July 1945 and cites that NavSource page, which does not say 25 May. No deck log was in hand. The end date is the one the lists agree on. The start is not.
Origins
He was born on 30 August 1912. The Register of 1 July 1944 prints that day on his line, signal 4870, and the Register of 1 July 1945 prints it again, signal 4334. The 1 January 1954 book prints the same day as the digits 8, 30, 12, in the birth place of a row whose neighbors match the birth days those earlier books give them. The registers do not give a town. The Lucky Bag puts "Portland, Ore." under the name, which in that book is the home line, not a sentence that says he was born there. uboat.net says he was born in Portland, Washington County, Oregon. That pairing is not in the register or in the class book as read here, and it is not used as a birthplace.
The class book is the first portrait, and it is a classmate's portrait. They called him Mike and Mickie. An active body and a keen mind, they wrote, went together in him. In academics he sat near the head of the class. Through the year he was in sports. His faculties went to worthwhile things. His fluency in German was to be envied. In his travels, here and abroad, he still rated Oregon first. He was at most of the hops, and he had not yet found his ideal. He was a true friend, and he would not sacrifice friendships for personal advancement. That is the whole sketch. It does not name a father, a mother, a school before the Academy, or a girl. The "Jr." is the only hint of a father, and it is only the suffix.
The Oregon Historical Society's name authority files him as Besson, John H., Jr. (John Henry), 1912–2011, and links him to Charles E. Smith, 1839–1912, with the relationship labeled grandfather/grandson. The catalog does not say which man is which, and it does not quote a family Bible. Smith died in the year the registers give for Besson's birth. The only reading that fits the dates is that Smith was the grandfather. The authority record is also attached to an oral-history interview with Katherine O'Neill, a Portland attorney's daughter, recorded in 1980. The finding aid does not say that Besson speaks in it, or that he is more than a related name. The interview was not heard. No parent is named in any Navy document read here, and none is invented.
The activity lines under the sketch, page 287, are class football in third- and second-class years, B squad in first-class year, wrestling in fourth-, third-, and second-class years, track in all four, the Log board in third-, second-, and first-class years, the Lucky Bag in first-class year, "1 P.O.," and a star in fourth-class year. The star is the yearbook's mark for that plebe year only. The sketch's "near the head of the class" is the classmates' gloss, not a printed order of merit. The Annual Register for the academic year 1934–1935 lists John Henry Besson, Jr., among the midshipmen, in the columns of relative standing. The figures in the text layer do not stay on their names, and no class rank is taken from them. A staff page of the Lucky Bag names Black and Besson as photographers, which is the same first-class year the activity line gives him on the book. A page of The Log and a page of the Trident put his name in a row of faces. Those captions are not used as offices. The Log board is the one he claimed on his own page.
The portrait is there, above the name, a midshipman in dress blues. The class book prints it.
Formation
He entered the Naval Academy on 18 June 1931. That is the date of entry in the 1944 and 1945 registers. He was graduated with the Class of 1935. The 1 January 1954 register and the 1 January 1956 index both print 6 June 1935 beside him, the ordinary commissioning day of that class, and the 1956 index pairs it with the line designator 1100. The ensigncy is that date in those books, not a sentence that says "commissioned ensign." uboat.net prints the same day. It is not an independent source for it.
The first sea duty the registers actually name is an oiler. In the register printed at Washington in 1939, its signal numbers effective from 1 January 1940 through 31 December 1940, he is a lieutenant (junior grade), signal 5255, page 200. The date of rank on that page is "do," and the chain runs back to Harold Jens Islev-Petersen’s explicit 6 June 1938 at the top of the same column. His present duty is Ramapo. The special-courses column on his line is blank. Ramapo is the fleet oiler, AO-12. The register does not say what he did in her, and her cruise is not retold here. He was a junior officer on an oiler, with a date of rank of 6 June 1938, in the book the Navy was still using as 1940 opened.
The register printed at Washington in 1941, its signal numbers effective through calendar 1942, still indexes him as a lieutenant (junior grade), signal 5115, page 178, and the body line carries (V). In that book's key, (V) means on the promotion list. It is not a decoration. The same letter means something else in the wartime registers, and that later meaning is not read backward onto this line. No ship was recovered from the 1941 text. The duty column and the name column do not stay together in the OCR, and no station is asserted for that year.
By 1 July 1944 the book has caught the promotion the (V) was pointing at, and then some. He is a lieutenant commander, file number 75020, signal 4870, page 87. The page is headed LIEUTENANT COMMANDERS. Date of temporary rank, permanent rank, and date of that permanent rank are all "do." The temporary-rank dittos on the page run back to Raymond Cole’s explicit 1 May 1943. The permanent rank, once the warrant officers at the top of the page give way to the Academy men, is lieutenant, and the date of that rank runs back to William Bomar Wideman's explicit 1 January 1942, with "do" unbroken from the line after Wideman through Besson. The courses column is "do" from Don Wesley Wulzen's 32 on the line above. In the 1 July 1945 key, 32 is a completed course in chemical warfare. He did not have it in the 1939 book. He had it by the summer of 1944. The register does not say where he took it, or why a destroyer officer needed it. The German that the classmates envied is not on the line. Code 5 is the interpreter's qualification, and 5-c is German. He is not marked 5-c.
There is no distinction symbol beside his name on 1 July 1944. Whatever the Bronze Star was for, it was not yet in that book.
The marriage, if there was one, belongs in these years only as an absence. The class book said he had not found his ideal. No later register, no citation, and no obituary in hand names a wife or a child. The ensign Clara Virginia Besson is not turned into one.
The war, as he lived it
If the compiled list and NavSource are right, he relieved Harold Gardiner Bowen, Jr., on 1 May 1944. NavSource's compiled list gives Bowen the ship from 16 October 1943 to 1 May 1944, and Besson from that day to 13 July 1945. uboat.net gives Bowen until 25 May and Besson from 25 May, and it cites NavSource for the dates. The two cannot both be the log. DANFS, which names neither of them, has Conway in the Solomons on escort, patrol, and exercises with cruisers until 4 May, and at Majuro on 8 May, joining the Fifth Fleet. She sailed from Majuro on 14 May for Pearl Harbor and Kwajalein, loaded troops for Saipan, landed them on 15 June under heavy gunfire, and stayed as close fire support and screen. If he had her from 1 May, the last days in the Solomons were his, and so was the passage into the Marianas. If he had her only from 25 May, Majuro and the sailing were still Bowen's, and Saipan was his either way. The log that would put him on the bridge for the 15th was not read. The ship's movements are the ship's. The man is attached to them by a date the compiled list and one compiled list agree on, and that another list, citing the first, contradicts.
After Eniwetok, DANFS sends her into the pre-assault bombardment of Guam and Tinian, then to cover the landings at Tinian. She stayed in the Saipan and Tinian campaigns until 12 August, and cleared for San Francisco and overhaul. The overhaul is the one quiet stretch of his command that the official history bothers to name. She was back at Ulithi on 21 November 1944 and joined the Seventh Fleet. She went out at once to patrol Leyte Gulf, to join an anti-shipping sweep in the Camotes Sea, and to fire in the bombardment of Plompon and Ormoc Bay. After Kossol Roads she covered the Mindoro landings, patrolled west of Mindoro in the Sulu Sea until 23 December, and put in to Manus. On 31 December she sailed for the initial landings on Lingayen, Corregidor, and Parang, and she kept on in Philippine waters until June 1945. None of those sentences names a captain. If the May date holds, they are the middle of his cruise: a shore bombardment and a screen, then a long Philippine year, not a single night battle with his name on it.
The Bronze Star sits in that year, and it sits without a story. The 1 July 1945 register prints (G-1) after John Henry Besson, Jr. In that book's key, (G-1) is the Bronze Star Medal. Distinctions in the book are those issued and recorded through 1 May 1945. There is no (B), which is the Navy Cross, no (D) for the Legion of Merit, and no (E) for the Silver Star. The original citation was not found. Hall of Valor has no entry that matched him. The register confirms the medal and the outer date. It does not say for what hour, or for which beach. By 1 May 1945 the ship, on DANFS's clock, had done Saipan, Tinian, Leyte, the Camotes, Ormoc, Mindoro, Lingayen, Corregidor, and Parang, and was still in Philippine waters. Borneo was ahead of her. The medal, if the cutoff is read strictly, is not for Balikpapan. Which of the earlier actions it was for is not in any paper read here.
On 7 June 1945 DANFS has her sailing from Subic Bay in the distant covering group for the Brunei Bay operation. She covered minesweeping, fired in the pre-assault bombardment at Balikpapan, guarded an underwater demolition team while it prepared the beach, and bombarded during the landings. The Army's history of the Balikpapan assault is not retold here. The point for him is that the official ship history puts her on that beach, and the compiled command still has him in her. She rested briefly at Leyte and then took part in the landings at Saragani Bay, which is DANFS's spelling. The Army's campaign history, in the volume Triumph in the Philippines, dates the work at Sarangani Bay more closely than the ship history does. A patrol of the 24th Reconnaissance Troop landed on the southeastern shore on 4 July 1945. On 12 July a battalion combat team of the 21st Infantry landed on the northwest shore. On 13 July that battalion made contact inland with another column. The compiled lists relieve Besson on 13 July and give the ship to Arthur Gernt Harrison. If both the Army day and the Navy list are right, the landing on the 12th was his, and the day of the inland contact was the day he left, or the day the list says he left. No log was read. Harrison is the relief on a compiled list. He is not the next name on the compiled list, and he is not biographied here.
What DANFS gives the ship after that is not his, if 13 July is the day. The close of the war, the patrol east of Leyte Gulf, the minesweeping in the Yellow Sea, Okinawa, Tsingtao, Jinsen from 20 to 24 September, and the China Sea passage as flagship for lifting Chinese troops are in the ship's history, and they are not narrated here.
No letter, no deck-log remark, and no oral history of his was found. The pressure the records actually describe is the ship's: troops landed under gunfire at Saipan, a screen and a bombardment through the Philippines, a demolition team covered at Balikpapan, and a medal recorded before the last of those beaches, with no sentence saying which hour he spent it on. The classmates had said he would not trade a friendship for advancement. The Navy's paper does not say whether that held on a destroyer's bridge. It says he brought the ship through a year of other people's landings and was given a Bronze Star before the year was over.
The cost
The private cost is a blank. The class book is the last place a voice describes him, and that voice is twenty-two years old, in 1935, telling the regiment that Mickie had not found his ideal and would not spend his friends to get ahead. Nothing after that page says whether the ideal was found, whether anyone waited out the Marianas and the Philippines, or what the Bronze Star meant in a house. Mrs. Bergin's kind of sentence, the wife who stayed on the beach, does not exist for him in any document read here. The ensign in the registers who shares the surname is not his wife on any evidence, and she is left as the other Besson.
What the Navy counted is easier, and it is not nothing. He went from an oiler, as a jaygee, to a destroyer in the year the Fifth Fleet was taking islands, and he stayed in her for the long Philippine campaign and the Borneo landings. The course in chemical warfare is in the book by 1944 and never explained. The German is in the yearbook and never used, on paper, for anything the war required of him. If there was a choice that cost him something, the choice is not written down. The record keeps the hull and the rank and lets the man go quiet.
After
The 1 January 1954 register still has him a commander, date of rank 1 March 1944, birth 30 August 1912, commissioning date 6 June 1935, in a block of his classmates who carry the same commander date. The ship's association of Haynsworth (DD-700) lists CDR J. H. Besson as commanding officer for 1948, with Harry A. Cummings as executive officer, and a different captain in 1949. NavSource's compiled list gives John Henry Besson, Jr., the ship for 1948–1949 and names another successor. The year 1948 is the part the two lists share. The end of the tour, and the name of the man who followed him, they do not share. No log was read. Haynsworth's cruise is not retold. The point of the command, if the ship's own table is right about the year, is that the Conway captain had a destroyer again, in peacetime, and that the Navy had not yet made him a captain.
On 1 January 1956 the index of the register lists Besson, John Henry, file 075020, as a captain, designator 1100, with 6 June 1935. In the captains' line of the same book the OCR reads the permanent-rank abbreviation as commander, which is a one-letter misread the index itself does not make, and it prints a date of present rank of 1 July 1954, with the birth digits 8, 30, 12 still in place. The 1 January 1958 index again calls him captain. uboat.net's 1 July 1954 for captain is the same day the 1956 table prints as date of present rank. The register is the source. The website is not needed for it.
By 1 January 1960 the register, which that year includes reserve officers on active duty and marks retirees, lists him as a rear admiral, retired. The alignment is the file number. In that book's blocks of ten, 075020 sits on John Henry Besson, and the rank and designator in the same place in the block are R ADM and RET. Clara Virginia Besson, file 064036, is the ensign, retired, in the line above him, which is where she was in 1956. He is not given a retirement day. uboat.net says 1 October 1959, the same day it gives him the star. That day was not in the register. What the register shows is that the star and the retirement were both behind him when 1960 opened. He had been a captain in the 1958 index. The promotion and the retirement fall between those two books.
The Oregon Historical Society's authority file closes the life at 1912–2011. It does not give a day, a town, or a cause. uboat.net says he died on 14 October 2011 in Portland, Oregon, aged ninety-nine. No obituary, no death certificate, and no cemetery record was in hand, and the day and the city of death are left as that site's. If the years are right, he had more than fifty years after Conway, and almost all of them are blank. No will, no children, and no Shipmate obituary was found.
The sea, in the documents, shaped him as a Portland boy who kept Oregon first, learned German, stood near the head of a class, and was sent first to an oiler and then, in the middle of the war, to a Fletcher destroyer for the landings. He stayed. The Navy gave him a Bronze Star without leaving the reason in any citation found here, gave him another destroyer in 1948 if the Haynsworth table is right, made him a captain, and retired him a rear admiral. The friend who would not trade his friends for advancement is the classmates' sentence. The Navy's sentence is the hull, the dates, and a retired flag officer who lived, on the Society's years, to ninety-nine.