Ships
- USS Schroeder (DD-501) Captain, 1943 – 7 June 1944
He is not Harold Gardiner Bowen, father or son, and not George Hall Bowdey. He is also not John Michael Bowers of the Naval Academy class of 1938, the submarine officer of Pogy whose Navy Cross is the decoration a search most often attaches to a man named John Bowers.
The officer is John Treadwell Bowers, Jr., Naval Academy class of 1928, signal number 2802 on the Navy Register of 1 July 1944. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships names "Comdr. J. T. Bowers" as the officer in command when Schroeder was commissioned on 1 January 1943. That is the identification. What the registers, the Navy Directory, the Lucky Bag, one combat narrative, and the ship's history will support is set out below. Where they stop, the sentence stops.
Origins
The Register of 1 July 1944, in the commanders' list, prints his date of birth as 2 September 1906 and his date of entry as 23 June 1924. The birth date sits on his own line, signal 2802, John Treadwell Bowers, Jr. The register does not print a town beside it. The 1928 Lucky Bag heads his sketch "Annapolis, Maryland." That is the home a midshipman claimed. It is not, by itself, a birthplace. A compilers' page on uboat.net says he was born in Annapolis. No birth certificate was found, and that page is not used here as a vital record. Annapolis is used as the place the Academy recorded, and as the place his parents' life was already being lived.
His father was a naval officer of the same name. On 20 September 1905 the Washington Evening Star's Annapolis dispatch reported a wedding at St. Anne's Protestant Episcopal Church. Miss Eveline Clare Green, daughter of the late Dr. Richard Green, married Lieutenant John Treadwell Bowers, U.S.N. Her brother, Dr. T. Kent Green of Annapolis, gave her away. The rector was the Rev. Joseph P. McComas, assisted by the Rev. William T. Twamley. The ushers included lieutenants the paper called classmates of the groom. The scan reads Edward C. Kalbfus, R. W. Vincent, A. V. Kimberly, and H. L. Bronser, the last of those surnames damaged on the page, plus J. Lawrence Walton and John M. Green of Annapolis. The Star said the bride came of families that had produced three governors of Maryland, Martin, Kent, and Pratt. That is the paper's genealogy, not a pedigree checked here. It also said Lieutenant Bowers's grandfather "was the late John Treadwell, the last colonial governor of Connecticut." John Treadwell was governor of Connecticut from 1809 to 1811, after independence. He was not a colonial governor. The relationship the paper asserts, grandfather to the lieutenant, is left as the paper's assertion. The son's name on the register, John Treadwell Bowers, Jr., is the government's spelling of the next generation.
The wedding was 347 days before the date of birth on the son's register line. A reception followed at the bride's mother's house. Brother officers of USS Atlanta sent a fruit bowl. The Peggy Stewart Tea Party Chapter of the D.A.R., of which the bride was a member, sent a painting of the Peggy Stewart house on Hanover Street. The household the boy was born into, if Annapolis was in fact the place, was already a naval household, decorated with a ship's gift and a chapter's picture of a local Revolutionary house. The register still does not say he was born there.
The father remained in that town. The Navy Directory of 1 January 1929, in the address list that sits with retired officers, has "Bowers, John T, comdr, 124 Charles st, Annapolis, Md." The same address is printed for Commander John T. Bowers on 1 April 1934, 1 January 1938, and 1 June 1940, the later volumes adding "(naval academy)" after the Annapolis line. In February 1928, while the son was a first-class midshipman, the Evening Star's Annapolis society column reported that Commander John T. Bowers, U.S.N. (retired), and Mrs. Bowers were hosts at supper followed by bridge. The column does not give her first name, and the broken type does not safely attach that supper to the Charles Street house. It is not proof that the 1905 bride was still the Mrs. Bowers of 1928, though nothing read here names a second wife. In 1935 Commander John T. Bowers, U.S.N. (retired), loaned the Naval Academy class-of-1899 ring to the Academy's ninetieth-anniversary ring exhibition. Lieutenant Wade DeWeese recorded the loan in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute for April 1936. Class of 1899 fits a lieutenant of 1905 and a commander on the retired list while his son was a midshipman. No death date for the father was confirmed in a register read for this essay. A family-tree page that gives 1877 to 1951 was not used.
The son's own wife, if he had one, and his children, if he had any, were not found. The Lucky Bag jokes that he is "the scion of the House of Savvy Joe" and does not say who Savvy Joe was. The phrase may be a joke about his own nickname. It is not evidence of his father's nickname, and it is not evidence of a child of his own.
Formation
He was admitted on 23 June 1924, the date of entry on the 1944 register, the ordinary day the class of 1928 became midshipmen. The Lucky Bag of that class says the men who wrote his sketch had "lived, studied and worked with him" for four years. Nothing in the register marks him turned back.
The yearbook's regiment section lists J. T. Bowers as chief petty officer of the Fifth Company, under Lieutenant Commander W. J. Lorenz, with A. J. Walden as company commander and A. G. Gaden as sub-commander. That is a midshipman billet, not a Navy rating. The sketch does not list stripes. Classmates who held the higher midshipman ranks often printed "Two Stripes" or "Three Stripes" under their names. He did not.
The nicknames under the portrait are "Savvy Joe," "Booers," and "Jack." The sketch is classmate prose, written to be fond, and it should be read that way. It says that to stand off and look at "this quiet, easy going lad" one would never guess he was the scion of the House of Savvy Joe, "but regardless of appearances he is that." Then the sentence that is the closest thing to a character the record contains: "Booers is one who minds, above all else, the business that is his own—caring little for what the Romans do and rather less for how they do it." They credited him with work that needed detail, "painstaking, meticulously so," and said he was never found wanting when that kind of work had to be done. The academic record, they wrote, was one any member of the class might be proud of. They did not print his class standing, and the register does not either. Both in the classroom and out of it, they said, he was the same genial person, who believed in doing the work at hand and letting tomorrow bring its own problems.
The activities line under the sketch, read from the page, is Class Wrestling (4); Circulation Manager of the Trident (1); Christmas Card Committee (1); Choir (4, 3, 2, 1). In that yearbook the parenthetical numerals are class years, 4 for plebe through 1 for first class. He wrestled with his class as a plebe and, on this line, not again. In first-class year he managed circulation for the Trident, the Academy magazine, and sat on the Christmas-card committee. The choir is the thing he stayed with for all four years. A quiet man who sang, who was trusted with a mailing list and a card committee, and who had stopped class wrestling after plebe year: that is the portrait they chose. They closed by refusing to guess at his future, on the ground that he need only remain the friend and classmate he had been.
He was commissioned ensign with the class. The directories, not a register line read for this essay, are what show the rank next. On 1 January 1929 the Navy Directory lists "Bowers, John T, jr, ens, u s s New Mexico." On 1 January 1931 he is still an ensign on New Mexico. The ship roster in that directory places him among the ensigns of the battleship, flagship of Battleship Division 4, Battle Fleet, Captain A. E. Watson commanding, Commander F. D. Pryor executive officer. The directory does not say whether he stood deck watches, worked in a turret, or kept a division's books. A first cruise on a battleship was the ordinary making of an ensign. The paper gives the ship, the rank, and at least the two January directory dates, 1929 and 1931. It does not prove he was aboard every day between them.
The next directory read, 1 April 1934, has moved him: lieutenant (junior grade), USS Hulbert. The volumes between January 1931 and April 1934 were not opened for a clean line. The jump from ensign on a battleship to lieutenant (junior grade) on Hulbert is real as two snapshots. The day he left New Mexico, the day he made lieutenant (junior grade), and what Hulbert was doing with him aboard, are not in the lines that were read. Hulbert's later life as a tender is not his story unless a directory puts him on her then. This one puts a lieutenant (junior grade) on her in the spring of 1934 and says nothing else.
On 1 January 1938 the Directory lists him a lieutenant on USS Stewart, and the ship roster is more specific than the alphabetical line. Stewart is carried as flagship of Destroyer Division 14, Destroyers, Asiatic. Commander A. B. Anderson is listed as commander of the division. Under him the optical text has Lieutenant Commander R. O. Myers with no billet surviving, and then "Lt. J. T. Bowers, jr, exec and nav." Executive officer and navigator is the billet. It is the first time the government's own directory says what he did, not merely which ship he stood on. An Asiatic destroyer's navigator is the work the yearbook had described as painstaking with detail. The directory does not say how long he had been aboard, or whether that year on the Asiatic station was quiet. By 1 June 1940 he is no longer on Stewart. Stewart's later scuttling in a Java dry dock, and her service under a Japanese flag, belong to other officers. He was gone before that war.
The Directory of 1 June 1940 lists him a lieutenant on USS Ranger. The Directory of 1 April 1941 lists him a lieutenant on USS Gleaves. Ranger in 1940 and Gleaves in 1941 are Atlantic names in the ship's histories. The directories do not give him a billet on either ship. They do not say he was in Ranger's air department or on Gleaves's bridge. Ranger's operations of 1942, including the North African landings, fall after the April 1941 directory has already moved him to Gleaves. They are not narrated here as his. Gleaves's own Atlantic war, after he left her, is likewise left alone. What the two lines establish is a lieutenant of the class of 1928 moving, in the last year of peace, from a carrier to a new destroyer. The January 1936 directory was opened and its optical text was too broken to trust for a ship. That year stays blank.
The war, as the paper has it
The next firm rank is on the Register of 1 July 1944, and it looks backward. In the commanders, signal 2796, William Marvin Searles's line prints a temporary rank dated 15 September 1942 and a permanent status of lieutenant commander dated 1 March 1942. The lines from Searles through signal 2802, John Treadwell Bowers, Jr., ditto those rank dates. Bowers's own line reprints the birth and the entry, not the promotions. Read with that limitation, he was a lieutenant commander, permanent, from 1 March 1942, and a commander, temporary, from 15 September 1942. The Directory of 1 April 1941 had still called him a lieutenant. The combat narrative of the Aleutians, giving the organization of Task Force Tare as of 1 August 1942, styles him lieutenant commander. That fits the March date. It does not require the September temporary rank, which came six weeks later.
The ship under him in August 1942 was not Schroeder. It was Sands.
Sands (DD-243) was a Clemson-class destroyer, commissioned in 1920, old for the war she was about to fight. The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships does not name her commanding officer in 1942. Two commanding-officer compilations do. NavSource, crediting Wolfgang Hechler and Ron Reeves, lists Lieutenant Commander John Treadwell Bowers, Jr., from 21 April 1942 to 14 December 1942, between John Francis Newman, Jr., and Earl Neville Clark. uboat.net prints the same span. Those lists are not deck logs. They are used here as lists, and the dates are not treated as log entries. What does not depend on them is the Navy's own combat narrative, The Aleutians Campaign, originally published by the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1945. As of 1 August 1942 it places Sands in the Escort and Patrol Group of Task Force Tare, under Rear Admiral John W. Reeves, Jr., and it names her commanding officer: Lieutenant Commander John T. Bowers, Jr. The other over-age destroyers in that group were Dent, Gilmer, Humphreys, and Talbot. The cruisers and the modern destroyers were in the Main Body, under Rear Admiral William W. Smith.
The distinction matters. On 7 August 1942 the Main Body bombarded Kiska. Sands is not in that firing line in the narrative. The chapter's account of fog, dead reckoning, spotting planes fired on, and a half-hour of 8-inch, 6-inch, and 5-inch that mostly fell long is the cruisers' story and the story of Case, Gridley, McCall, and Reid. Bowers's ship, on the order of battle, was one of five old destroyers assigned to escort and patrol. The narrative does not say what Sands did on the day of the bombardment. It does not put him under Kiska's guns.
The ship's history, for the summer, is plainer and does not use his name. After the United States entered the war, DANFS says, Sands did coastal escort work into the spring of 1942. Then, as the Japanese moved into the western Aleutians, she shifted to Alaska and through the summer escorted convoys and conducted patrols from the mainland to ports in the eastern Aleutians. If the commanding-officer list is right that he took her on 21 April, that summer's work is the work of his first command: an over-age destroyer, bad water, other people's convoys, and a campaign whose famous day belonged to heavier ships. By fall, DANFS says, the Allies were taking the offensive and Sands was needed for a different mission. On 28 October she sailed south. Two days later she was redesignated APD-13. On 5 November she arrived at San Francisco for conversion to a high-speed transport. The Hechler list keeps Bowers in command until 14 December, which would mean he brought her south, stood by the redesignation, and was still her captain for the first weeks of the conversion, then turned her over to Clark. That end date is the list's date. DANFS does not confirm who had the deck on 28 October or on 5 November. What is secure is that on 1 August he had her in the Aleutians, in the escort group, as a lieutenant commander. Her later landings in the Solomons and New Guinea, as a transport, fall after the list has him gone. They are not his.
He was a temporary commander from 15 September 1942, if the register's ditto is read as his. Schroeder was not yet his ship. She had not yet been launched.
Schroeder (DD-501), a Fletcher-class destroyer, was laid down on 25 June 1942 at Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock, Kearny, New Jersey, launched on 11 November 1942, sponsored by Miss Grace Wainwright Schroeder, and commissioned on 1 January 1943. DANFS says "Comdr. J. T. Bowers in command." That sentence is the Navy's. The Hechler list and uboat.net date his command from that commissioning day until 7 June 1944, when they give the ship to Robert Wallace McElrath, Jr. The compiled list uses the same end date and a vaguer start, "1943." The end date was not found in a deck log, a war diary, or a newspaper read for this essay. The movements below are the ship's, from DANFS, for the period the lists assign to him. They are not a reconstructed log of his orders.
She escorted two separate carriers on shakedown cruises to the Caribbean, and a convoy of merchant ships bound for Casablanca, before she steamed for the Pacific. After an overhaul at Mare Island she went west and joined Destroyer Squadron 26 at Pearl Harbor on 28 July 1943. On 1 September she helped screen the carrier task force that attacked Marcus Island. Early the next month, bombarding Wake Island, she was taken under fire for the first time and suffered no casualties. DANFS does not say how close the shells came, or what her captain did about them. It says the ship was shot at, and that no one on her was hit.
After Wake she went to the New Hebrides to train with amphibious forces. In early November she joined the Gilberts invasion force. On the morning of 20 November she was in the bombardment group that shelled the eastern coast of Tarawa. Early the next morning she entered the lagoon to give fire support to the Marines ashore. She also acted as a first-aid ship for wounded Marines. On the 24th she left Tarawa for Pearl Harbor and repairs. She had damaged her screws on a coral reef in the lagoon. The history does not say who had the conn, or whether the reef was the price of going in to the wounded or a mistake in a badly charted lagoon. It says the ship that had been taking wounded aboard tore up her screws and had to leave the battle for the yard. That is the cost the record actually attaches to this cruise, if he was, as DANFS says at commissioning and as the lists say throughout, her commanding officer. No report of investigation was found.
She was back with her division on 1 February 1944, screening transports and giving fire support for the assault on Kwajalein. She stayed in the Marshalls for several weeks. From 20 to 24 February she bombarded Maloelap and Wotje. On 1 March she sailed for the New Hebrides and more training. On 20 March Schroeder and her division bombarded the Japanese coast defenses at Kavieng, New Ireland, nearly 900 rounds between them, and left for Efate that evening. The round count is the division's, as DANFS writes it, not a figure for her guns alone.
She loaded ammunition at Espiritu Santo. On 1 April she escorted Pocomoke and the S.S. Red Rover to Guadalcanal, joined a merchant convoy there, and took it to Milne Bay, New Guinea. Later in the month she bombarded positions at Hollandia, then screened transports and LSTs at Humboldt Bay and did fighter-director duty until the 30th, when she left with a convoy for Cape Sudest and afterward Buna. She operated in the Purvis Bay–Guadalcanal area until 4 June, when she sailed for Kwajalein as a unit of Task Group 53.1.
The lists date his relief on 7 June 1944, three days after that sailing. They do not say whether McElrath relieved him at sea, at Purvis, or somewhere on the way to Kwajalein. DANFS next has the task group at Eniwetok on 28 June, and in July the division bombarding Guam. Those later days, and everything Schroeder did after them, Morotai, Leyte, the Tokyo strikes, Okinawa, the ten battle stars the ship eventually received, are not narrated here as his. The stars are the ship's. The history does not divide them by captain. Giving him the ship's whole war would take it from the man who had her after 7 June, and the 7 June date itself is a list date.
Nothing in DANFS, the combat narrative, or the registers records a wound, a court, a letter of censure, or a decoration with his name on it. uboat.net's page for him has a decorations heading and no decorations under it. The Navy Cross that searches offer for "John Bowers" is the citation for Lieutenant Commander John Michael Bowers, commanding officer of Pogy on her tenth war patrol, 2 July to 21 August 1945. Different man, different Academy class, different ship. The magazine page or the original citation behind the Hall of Valor reprint of that award was not opened. No award page for John Treadwell Bowers, Jr., turned up in the searches made for this essay.
What it cost, and what is left
The yearbook had bet that a painstaking man would be enough. The Navy used him that way. It made him navigator and executive officer of an Asiatic destroyer, then commanding officer of an old one in the Aleutians, then commanding officer of a new one from the day she commissioned. The work that shows, under his name or under the lists that put his name on the ship, is other people's convoys, a screen for carriers off Marcus, a bombardment of Wake that drew fire and killed nobody on his ship, and Tarawa, where the same ship went into the lagoon, took wounded Marines, and came out with her screws ruined.
There is no letter, no oral history, and no deck-log remark in which he says what he thought of that. Classmates in 1928 said he minded his own business and let tomorrow bring its problems. That is their sentence, not his. It is the only interior sentence the sources give, and it was eighteen years old by the time of the reef.
What he left a family cannot be written, because the family after his parents is missing. No wife is named in the registers, the directories, the Lucky Bag, or the newspapers read here. No child is named. The father is a retired commander in Annapolis, a class-of-1899 ring in a glass case in 1935, a Charles Street address in the directories through June 1940. The mother is Eveline Clare Green in the Star of 1905, and "Mrs. Bowers" in the Star of 1928, and then she drops out of the sources that were searched. If there was a household waiting when Schroeder commissioned on New Year's Day 1943, it is not in these papers.
After
The Register of 1 July 1944 still has him on the active list, temporary commander, permanent lieutenant commander, three weeks after the date the lists give for his relief. It does not give a station. No Navy Directory after April 1941 was found that says where he went when he left Schroeder. No later register was opened that prints a captain's date or a retirement. uboat.net says he retired as a captain on 1 December 1951 and that he died on 5 November 1986 in Medford, New Jersey, aged eighty. Those two dates are repeated on secondary commanders' pages. They were not found in an obituary, a grave record, a Shipmate notice, or a Navy Register read for this essay. They are not used as facts. No Navy Department Library biographical file for him was found online. How he died, and whether anyone of his name survived him, is not known from the sources in hand.
The ship went on without him. That career belongs to McElrath and the crew, and it is left in the ship's history.