Bates, Edward Munroe, Jr., ENS

Edward Munroe Bates, Jr. was born in 19 Sep 1919 in Philadelphia, PA, and died on 7 Dec 1941 as a result of hostile action in WWII. His parents were Edward Munroe Bates, Sr. (1894-1975) and Elizabeth Cutler Nason (1892-1978). Per the 1930 US Census, his father was an officer of the New Provident Loan Society, his mother was a housewife and the family lived in Suffolk, NY. Per the 1940 US Census, his father was the President of Autorice and the family lived in Great Neck, NY. Edward had 2 younger brothers and 2 younger sisters. His youngest brother also served in the Navy in WWII.

Edward was a high school graduate and was a junior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, NY. At school he was on the basketball team, president of his fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, and president of the student chapter of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He left college in July 1940 to enlist in the Navy. He would have graduated in 1941.

Edward enlisted in the Navy on 12 Jul 1940 as a seaman. He was commissioned as an Ensign on 14 Nov 1940. His service number was O-095313. It is not known where he attended his initial Navy training. He was assigned to the USS Arizona shortly after his commissioning in Nov 1940 as a Junior Watch Officer.

At the onset of the December 7, 1941 attack, the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored at berth Fox 7 on Battleship Row. The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) was on the port side; and the starboard side faced the northeastern shore of Ford Island. Just before 8 am, the ship’s air raid alarm sounded, and the crew was ordered to general quarters. During the attack the battleship was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs, including one 1,700 lb armor-piercing shell which penetrated the deck near the Number 2 turret and detonated in the smokeless powder magazine, causing a cataclysmic explosion which destroyed the ship forward and ignited a fire which burned for two days. Most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack died instantly during the explosion. The ship quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor along with 1,177 of the 1,512 personnel on board, representing about half the total number of Americans killed that day.

Ensign Bates was initially reported as Missing in Action and later declared dead while missing. His remains are entombed in the hull of the USS Arizona and he is memorialized at the Courts of the Missing in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) in Honolulu, HI. He was awarded the Purple Heart.

A transport ship, the USS Bates, was named in his honor and was commissioned as a destroyer escort, then converted to a high-speed transport. Ensign Bates’ mother sponsored the ship when it was launched in 1943. The USS Bates was attacked by 3 Japanese kamikazes off the coast of Okinawa in May 1945. Another ship got a line to the burning ship and tried to tow it, but the ship sank. Twenty-one sailors died in that attack. Bates Road in Great Neck, NY is also named in Ensign Bates’ memory.

References:
Wikipedia
https://pearlharbor.org/facts-uss-arizona-bb-39/
http://www.ibiblio.org/phha/arizona/history.html#pearlharbor


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This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Together We Served and on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen person’s name and read his/her story.

Col. Gary Smith- Contributing Author, Stories Behind the Stars

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