Westwood Resident Reflects on His Father, a World War II Naval Officer

Tuesday night at the Westwood Historical Society, local resident Charles L. Donahue, Jr. took some time to reminisce about his father - Lieutenant Commander Charles Donahue, Sr. - and his experiences in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific.

Donahue's experience began shortly after college. After graduating from Brown University, Donahue, husband of Westwood Historical Society President Nancy Donahue, volunteered for the Peace Corps in a tuberculosis control program in Kuala Trenganu, Malaysia. After his experiences in the Peace Corps, he went back to school to pursue a master's degree at Cornell University.

For more than 30 years, Donahue has been a health care professional, and is former president and co-founder of Health Care VALUE Management. For 10 years, he was Executive Director of the Health Planning Council for Greater Boston.

His father, meanwhile, served on the eight star battle cruiser, The USS Honolulu during World War II, Donahue explained Tuesday night.

“The Honolulu was in Pearl Harbor the day it was attacked," he said. "My father volunteered, as did a lot of people, right after Pearl Harbor.”

The ship was the size of two football fields, he said, 61 feet in width, and cruised at an average speed of 39 miles per hour. There were 868 officers enlisted on the ship.

In May of 1943, Donahue, Sr. was on the Honolulu, operating out of Espiritu Santo and engaged on New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. This was done again in late June. Then, in July of the same year, the ship fired on enemy ships near the Kula Gulf, and successfully sunk a destroyer. 

A little more than a week later, in the Battle of Kolombangara, the Honolulu defeated a Senai class cruiser and an enemy destroyer. During the battle, the Honolulu suffered hull damages, and the ship was brought to Pearl Harbor for overhaul on August 16, 1943.

In June of 1944, the Honolulu was involved in the Marianas “Turkey Shoot.”

“The Japanese came in with four hundred airplanes," Donahue said. "They called it the Marianas Turkey Shoot. After one afternoon the Japanese lost 400 airplanes, but what was even more challenging was losing the 400 pilots."

On September 6 of the same year, the Honolulu provided cover for the landings on Palau Island and stayed there without taking any enemy fire until October 12, when the ship made it’s way to the Philippine Island Invasion.

On October 20, 1944, the Honolulu was struck by an enemy torpedo plane on the port side of the ship, Donahue said. It was brought to Norfolk, Virginia for repairs and remained there, out of commission for the rest of the war.

After serving for the USS Honolulu, Donahue, Sr. was sent to the University of Chicago, where he studied Japanese to prepare for the invasion of Japan.

Tuesday night's presentation was part of .