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Contact Info
Home Town St Paul, MN
Last Address Bellows Falls, VT
Date of Passing Dec 04, 1988
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
James Clair Shaw, a retired rear admiral and naval historian, died Sunday at his home in Bellows Falls, Vt. He was 74 years old and before a recent illness had been New England director of the Humane Society of the United States.
Admiral Shaw, who fought in 16 Pacific campaigns in World War II, graduated from the United StatesNavalAcademy in 1936. He wrote a naval history in association with Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, and was technical adviser for the film ''The Caine Mutiny.'' He had been affiliated with the Humane Society since leaving the Navy 25 years ago.
Other Comments:
Silver Star
Awarded for Actions During World War II
Service: Navy
Rank: Lieutenant
Division: U.S.S. Atlanta (CL-51)
Citation: The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Lieutenant James Clair Shaw, United States Navy, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as Gunnery Officer aboard the U.S.S. ATLANTA (CL-51), during the engagement with Japanese naval forces in the Solomon Islands area on 13 November 1942. Lieutenant Shaw suffered a broken hand after the action commenced. Despite this condition, he took an active part in removing those badly wounded from his ship, which was severely damaged, into the rescue boats alongside. He requested to be permitted to remain aboard but was ordered to leave with the wounded. His courageous conduct was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
Central Pacific Campaign (1941-43)/Battle of Midway
From Month/Year
June / 1942
To Month/Year
June / 1942
Description The Battle of Midway in the Pacific Theater of Operations was one of the most important naval battles of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy (USN), under Admirals Chester W. Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo on Midway Atoll, inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese fleet. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to capitulate in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
The plan was handicapped by faulty Japanese assumptions of the American reaction and poor initial dispositions.Most significantly, American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to set up an ambush of its own. Four Japanese aircraft carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser were sunk at a cost of one American aircraft carrier and a destroyer. After Midway and the exhausting attrition of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's shipbuilding and pilot training programs were unable to keep pace in replacing their losses, while the U.S. steadily increased its output in both areas.