Los Banos Rotary Club History
Carrier Skipper Talks of War

Lt. Com. E. M. Kierulff, attached to the 12th District Naval Base at San Francisco, was guest speaker at both the Rotary and Lions Clubs in Los Banos this week in a special Navy Day commemorative program arranged by Atty. G. P. Maushart, former Lieutenant Commander in the U. S. Naval Reserve.

Crediting former president Theodore Roosevelt as the father and virtual founder of America's modern navy, Com. Kierulff traced the phenomenal growth of the Navy through the war of the Navy through the war years, until on V-J Day it was recognized as the greatest and most powerful naval force in the history of the world.

As to the future Commander Kierulff expressed confidence that America would be as great in peace as it was in war, provided that we "keep our feet on the ground and think clearly."

As chief gunnery officer on the carrier Saint Lo, the speaker related some of his experiences in the Pacific, from the quiet peaceful, serene morning of December 7, 1941, when the Japs touched off the war with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, until the day of final victory, when U. S. ships and men finally steamed into Tokyo Bay to dictate the surrender terms.

Turning point of the war, Kierulff said, was the battle of Midway, followed by Guadalcanal, when American Navy and U.S. Marines set up an inpenetratable wall against further Jap conquest. Pausing briefly to pay tribute to the memory of American men who gave their lives at Midway and Guadalcanal, Kierculff told how the Allied forces slowly but surely began closing in, on the Marianas, the Phillippines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and finally, on Japan itself. Graphically he pictured one of the last battles in which he participated, the Battle of San Bernadino Straights, in which the Saint Lo was knocked out in a Kamakaze attack after a woefully smaller and inferior U.S. force had withstood a superior Japanese attack for more than three hours. American dive bombers later almost annihilated the Jap fleet as it was proceeding through the straights.

October 22, 1946

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