Family learns truth about missing sailor
By ERIN DOSS \ Reporter \ Iroquois County Times-Republic
http://www.watsekatimesrepublic.com/articles/2006/11/24/news/287news01.txt
Photo contributed — The Hutchinson family poses for a photo around 1939. Charles (third from left) was pronounced missing in action and Bernard (left) was killed during World War II. Other family are: front, left to right, Robert, Floyd, Ralph; back, left to right, Nellie Sorenson Hutchinson, Richard, Mona Lee and Ethel May Smith Hutchinson.
After more than 60 years of mystery, a former Sheldon-area family has some answers.
In September 1942, Richard and Ethel May Hutchinson received a notice from the U.S. Navy Department that their 25-year-old son Charles R. Hutchinson was reported missing in action.
Hutchinson was a third-class torpedo man on the submarine USS Grunion and had joined the service Sept. 10, 1941. According the Sheldon Journal, Charles’ last letter reached home on July 4 and had been mailed from the submarine’s home base on the west coast.
Unknown to the family, the Grunion saw action early in the morning of July 31, 1942, about 10 miles northeast of a Japanese-occupied island in the Aleutians. In that battle, the Grunion faced a Japanese freighter the Kano Maru and the sub was never heard from again.
The commander of the Grunion and its 70 occupants was Mannert L. Abele.
Although the Navy knew nothing about the fate of the Grunion, Abele’s sons have continued to search for their father’s submarine and the truth of what happened to the Grunion.
Abele’s oldest son, Bruce, said the breakthrough in their search came in 1995 when a man in Denver purchased the wiring diagram for the Kano Maru. In order to authenticate the diagram, he posted it on a Japanese historical website, where a Japanese man, Yutaka Iwasaki became interested in the Kano Maru.
A full version of this story appears in the November 24 edition of the Times-Republic.
http://www.watsekatimesrepublic.com/articles/2006/11/24/news/287news01.txt
Copyright © 2006 Iroquois County Times-Republic
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Families hail discovery of sunken WWII sub
Friday, December 08, 2006
Michael Sangiacomo
Plain Dealer Reporter
Betty Krueger remembers the day in 1943 when her little sister ran up to her and said their mother had received a telegram from the government.
It was about their brother, Ralph J. Youngman, who was serving on the submarine USS Grunion during World War II.
“The telegram said he was missing and presumed dead,” said Krueger, 85, of Cleveland. “I was pregnant with my son and I decided then to name him Ralph in honor of my brother.”
It would be 64 years before Krueger would learn what happened to her brother and to the Grunion.
The sons of Grunion Cmdr. Mannart “Jim” Abele, working with a Japanese researcher, believe they have found the submarine thousands of feet below the surface of the North Pacific, off the Aleutian Islands.
“All the families ever knew was that the sub was on its maiden voyage and disappeared in the Aleutians,” Rhonda Raye, a Georgia woman whose great-uncle, Paul Banes, was on the Grunion, said in an e-mail.
“They located the sub using side-scanning radar,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s 2,000 to 3,000 feet down. It’s the right size and location. They can’t be absolutely certain it is the Grunion until they can drop a camera into the water and photograph it next year.”
It’s believed the Grunion was sunk on the morning of July 31, 1942, during a battle with the Japanese freighter Kano Maru.
Krueger, whose family received that fateful telegram months later, is convinced the mystery has been solved.
“I think it’s wonderful,” she said Thursday. “They should not disturb it, but I would support them if they wanted to do something to commemorate it.”
Raye has been helping contact the families of the submarine’s 70 officers and men to let them know about the discovery. Besides Krueger, Ralph Youngman has four surviving siblings who have been told the news.
Raye said family members of all but six of the men who died on the Grunion have been contacted.
More information about the submarine can be found at www.ussgrunion.com
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
msangiacomo@plaind.com, 216-999-4890
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