Joseph William Sullivan
Seaman 1st Class (ARM), USS BUNKER HILL (CV-17)
Joseph was born the 22nd of August 1925 in Marlborough, Massachusetts, the youngest of seven children born to William and Elizabeth Sullivan. He was raised in Quincy, Massachusetts and was working as an electrician’s helper at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard helping to build ships including the USS BUNKER HILL (CV-17).
He enlisted into the Navy the 26th of January 1944 and received his basic training at Naval Training Station Sampson, New York. He was promoted to Seaman 2nd Class the 1st of March 1944 and was transferred to the Naval Air Technical Training Center in Memphis Tennessee. He received an eighteen-week course at the Aviation Radioman School. Following his graduation, he was promoted to Seaman 1st Class Aviation Radioman the 19th of August 1944. He was next transferred to the Naval Air Gunnery School in Durcell, Oklahoma the 2nd of September 1944. Following a course in Naval Air Gunnery he was transferred to Commander Fleet Air in Alameda, California the 1st of November 1944 and assigned to Fleet Air Wing 8. He was next transferred to the USS BUNKER HILL (CV-17) the 2nd of January 1945. The BUNKER HILL participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima before moving to support the invasion of Okinawa.
On the 11th of May 1945 while operating 70 miles southeast of Okinawa, two Japanese Zero fighter aircraft broke through aerial defenses and struck the BUNKER HILL with a 500-pound bomb. The ensuing explosions and fire killed 393 sailors and airmen including Joseph. His name is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.
