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Service Details |
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Last Rank
Lieutenant Commander
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Last Primary NEC
165X-Special Duty Officer - Public Affairs
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Last Rating/NEC Group
Line Officer
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Primary Unit
1944-1945, USS Tennessee (BB-43)
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Service Years
1942 - 1945
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Last Photo |
Personal Details
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Home State
Massachusetts | |
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Year of Birth 1912 |
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This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Steven Loomis (SaigonShipyard), IC3
to remember
DRAPER, William (Bill), LCDR.
If you knew or served with this Sailor and have additional information or photos to support this Page, please leave a message for the Page Administrator(s) HERE.
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Contact Info
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Home Town Hopedale, Massachusetts |
Last Address Hopedale Village Cemetery Hopedale, Worcester County Massachusetts, USA
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Date of Passing Oct 26, 2003 |
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Last Known Activity:
LCDR William Franklin DRAPER
WWII - Combat Artist - USNR
Bill Draper was commissioned by the US Navy as one of five official WWII combat artists. He painted 69 descriptive wartime scenes between 1942-1945, many of them were featured in National Geographic magazine. It wasn't easy being a combat artist - conditions were difficult and often dangerous. Bill landed with the second wave of marines at Bougainville and while assigned to the USS Yorktown he painted a series of paintings on the first air attack on Palau. He covered the landings at Hollandia and the air strike on Truk.
Draper covered the invasion of Saipan and Guam aboard the USS Tennessee depicting the powerful destruction that hit this island. While he was aboard, the battleship Tennessee was hit three times. He landed and remained on the island of Saipan for eighteen days recording the bitter struggle and eventual success of this action. At Guam he landed with the assault troops under heavy enemy fire.
William Franklin Draper (December 24, 1912 - October 26, 2003) was a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, and an American painter.
Early life:
Draper was born in Hopedale, Massachusetts on December 24, 1912. His parents were Clare H. Draper and Mathilda Engamn Draper. After first studying piano, he decided to instead, choose painting as his career. Draper attended the Pomfret School in Connecticut, and later Harvard University. After Harvard, he attended the National Academy of Design in New York, and the Cape Art School in Massachusetts. Following his education, he went to Spain to study briefly, and then moved to France, where he attended the Grand Cahumiere. In 1937, he studied sculpture with George Demetrius, a Boston sculptor, and Jon Corbino in New York.
Naval career:
On 1 July 1942, at the age of 29, Draper entered the Naval Reserves as a Lieutenant (junior grade). After his initial training, Draper was assigned to illustrate training material at the Anti-Submarine Warfare Unit in Boston. Following his service in Boston, he transferred into the Naval Art Section, and was dispatched to Alaska, where he spent much of the next year painting in the Aleutian Islands. He was in Amchitka when the Japanese invaded during World War II, and his paintings depict the attacks, as seen from his close-range foxhole. Draper painted while dealing with the wind and Arctic weather, which made painting difficult, as he had to wear gloves to keep from getting frostbite.
After Draper returned from Alaska, he was requested as the artist for the portrait of Rear Admiral J.R. Beardall, then Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. Following the completion of the portrait, he served in a variety of other areas in the Pacific, and commissioned to paint portraits of several other admirals.
Draper also landed with the second wave of marines at Bougainville. After the Bougainville Campaign, Draper was assigned to the USS Yorktown (CV-10), and while on duty, painted the series of air attacks on Palau, the landings at Hollandia, and the airstrikes on Truk island. Draper also covered invasions of Saipan and Guam aboard the USS Tennessee (BB-43). During his tour on the Tennessee, the ship was hit three times by enemy fire, and they were forced to land at Guam.
Draper was awarded the Bronze Star for his meritorious work as a combat artist in the Aleutians and under enemy attack in the South Pacific. He left the Navy in 1945 as a Lieutenant Commander. Returning to painting, he became a well-known American artist, with subjects ranging from John F. Kennedy (painted in 1962), Richard M. Nixon, (1981), the Shah of Iran (painted in 1967), James Michener (1979), Henry Kaiser, and Dr. Richard E. Winter (1992).
In 1999, Draper received a lifetime achievement award from the Portrait Society of America.
Draper died on October 26, 2003 at the age of 90.
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1942-1942, Boston Navy Yard, MA, Receiving Station (NRS)
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1942-1942, USS Arthur Middleton (AP-55)
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1943-1943, Naval Air Facilities (NAF) Amchitka, Alaska
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1943-1943, US Naval Academy Annapolis (Faculty Staff)
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1943-1943, Commander South Pacific Area and South Pacific Force (COMSOPAC)
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1944-1944, USS Yorktown (CV-10)
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1944-1945, USS Tennessee (BB-43)
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Reflections on LCDR DRAPER's
US Navy Service
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TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, WHAT INFLUENCED HIS/HER DECISION TO JOIN THE NAVY?
This is a Remembrance Profile for Lieutenant Commander William Franklin Draper, Official U.S. Navy Combat Artist during World War Two. DRAPER: "Oh, I tried as soon as the war started, December 7th. I tried as hard as I could to get in, into something where I could use my painting. So I went to 150 Causeway, Street, and volunteered my services as an artist and also tried to get in as a combat artist because I had heard about it in Washington. So having volunteered my services I was doing things for the Navy, painting, doing drawings of anti-submarine. They asked me if I could do it and I said sure I would, donating my time to draw these -- the wakes of submarines, as the submarine went down what the wake looked like at certain depths so the planes coming along could tell where the submarine was by the shape of the wake you see. So I was doing this and then I got permission to go, I could go in the Navy Yard. So I went in the Navy Yard and I painted destroyers" -- -- "I went in the Navy and on July 1st I was supposed to be at Harvard College for the 60-day wonder course, July and August. I was commissioned as a Lieutenant (jg) and I want to Harvard on a Friday and was given my books and blankets, Saturday something else, Sunday, and classes started on Monday. My roommate was going to be Eddie Duchin but he was three or four days late, so I never met him because on that Monday there were three classes, two in the morning and then there was going to be the third class after lunch at 1:00 and then marching with your platoon in soldiers field, which I was looking forward to doing that. But anyway I was -- in the third class, 1:00, and suddenly this officer came in and said, "Is student officer Draper present?" I raised my hand and they said, "Oh, you're being withdrawn from school. You're wanted in the front office at once." Well, I didn't know what was -- why I was being withdrawn from school but, my God, what have I done. Isn't this terrible. They wanted me back at 150 Causeway Street to do -- to make cartoons for this cartoon manual, for the manual of anti-submarine warfare, to draw cartoons of the same thing with the wakes of the submarines and that I had to have submarines thumbing at planes and this and that. I'm not a cartoonist and it was very difficult, but I spent the next two months instead of learning how to be an officer drawing these cartoons at 150 Causeway and then at the -- and when I was supposed to be -- having had supposedly two months training at Harvard I had orders to go to Washington. Well, I didn't have the training at Harvard. So I got down to Washington to the combat ops section and within two weeks I was sent out to the Aleutians." Draper never went through the officers' training program, or basic training. DRAPER continues: "I had no training. I would call the deck the floor. The walls -- I didn't know a thing. I didn't even know how to go aboard and salute and say permission to come aboard, sir, and salute the quarterdeck and all of that and I was a deck officer. I got up in the Aleutians and I didn't know a single thing. It was pathetic. I tried to get -- I mean, it was so ridiculous. Now as soon as I arrived in Kodiak my first experience, I hadn't reported in to Admiral Reeves yet, I was so anxious to start painting I took out my easel and I looked up and I saw this glass structure with a lot of things turning. I though, oh, how pretty. I started and I was arrested by two Marines. I was evidently painting the radar base, the heart of the Kodiak air place and then I was -- I had a hard time trying to explain to them that I was a combat artist. They all thought I was a spy."
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TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, PLEASE DESCRIBE THE DIRECTION OR PATH HE/SHE TOOK IN HIS/HER MILITARY SERVICE. WHERE DID THEY GO TO BOOT CAMP AND WHAT UNITS, BASES, SHIPS OR SQUADRONS WERE THEY ASSIGNED TO? WHAT WAS HIS/HER REASON FOR LEAVING?
William "Bill" Draper entered the U.S. Naval Reserve on 1 July 1942, at the age of 29, as a direct commission Lieutenant (junior grade) and assigned to the Naval Art Section as one of five "Combat Artists". From the Naval Receiving Station Boston, and without any formal military training, he was sent to Kodiak and Amchitka in the Aleutians. From there he spent a short time in Washington and the Naval Academy Annapolis before reporting for duty in the South Pacific Area. He spent most of the last two years of the war on the carrier Yorktown (CV-10) and the battleship Tennessee (BB-43). William Franklin Draper was discharged at the end of WWII, as a Lieutenant Commander.
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IF HE/SHE PARTICIPATED IN ANY MILITARY OPERATIONS, INCLUDING COMBAT, HUMANITARIAN AND PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS, TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, PLEASE DESCRIBE THOSE YOU FEEL WERE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT TO HIM/HER AND, IF LIFE-CHANGING, IN WHAT WAY.
It wasn't easy being a combat artist - conditions were difficult and often dangerous. Bill landed with the second wave of marines at Bougainville and while assigned to the USS Yorktown he painted a series of paintings on the first air attack on Palau. He covered the landings at Hollandia and the air strike on Truk. Draper covered the invasion of Saipan and Guam aboard the USS Tennessee depicting the powerful destruction that hit this island. He landed and remained on the island for eighteen days recording the bitter struggle and eventual success of this action. At Guam he landed with the assault troops under heavy enemy fire. Second wave of marines at Bougainville: DRAPER: "Well, I had planned to go in on the third wave so I would be sort of established and I could go in and see what was going on you see. Well, unfortunately the first wave was sent off and went in and just at that point all these planes came over from Rabaul, Japanese planes, and so we had general quarters and all the ships went out circling around at sea. By the time we got in again it was the time for the third wave to go in and I was a little bit confused, and so I didn't realize I was -- I climbed down the boat and I was in the second wave which I hadn't planned to go in at all. So suddenly I had to go in --" "Well, I went in under machine gunfire from Parry Island and another island and I can't right now think of the name. I don't know. And I saw boat number five next to me, which I painted the picture later, being hit by a bomb and blowing up. I ran in and jumped into a foxhole. So there's a strip that the Japs had to defend. We had pushed them out. So I jumped in there and waited until things quieted down. Then I wandered back afterwards, maybe an hour later, and I found a little Jap hut that I think must have been where the Japanese combat artist lived because I found a book on Toulouse Latrec written in Japanese, which I still have."
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FROM THEIR ENTIRE MILITARY SERVICE, DESCRIBE ANY PERSONAL MEMORIES, YOU MAY BE AWARE OF, WHICH IMPACTED HIM/HER THE MOST.
ORCHIDS, in the middle of the war, in the middle of the Pacific.
Roi-Namur, the Marshall Islands, 1944.
"There I had orchids -- well, I had gathered these orchids around from different places. I think this is an interesting story. As I had gone through Munda and Dover, places, I had gotten some orchids. I used to have them behind the hut at Guadalcanal. I had a lot that I had collected. As a matter of fact I used to get some enlisted men to climb up to get the orchids by bribing them because I didn't dare climb up. I got vertigo and got very dizzy. I would see an orchid up in the jungle up in the tree and I would say, "Do you think you can get up to get that up there?" And they would say, "Sure, we would do it, but if you do a picture or a drawing of my wife in the nude." So I would -- they would show me a photograph of the wife and I would draw it in, a little face in pencil and then just take the clothes off and they loved it. I started that in my early career. My first money I made was at Pomfret (prep-school) when I would charge a dollar for each picture of Jean Harlow. She would be in a sexy white dress and I would just paint it leaving the dress off." Draper said.
In later years, Bill Draper bred orchids, for fun.
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WHAT PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS DO YOU BELIEVE HE/SHE WAS MOST PROUD OF FROM HIS/HER MILITARY SERVICE?
LCDR William Draper was awarded the Bronze Star for his meritorious work as a combat artist in the Aleutians and under enemy attack in the South Pacific, where he often landed with marine assault troops.
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ARE YOU AWARE OF ANY PARTICULAR INCIDENT FROM HIS/HER SERVICE, WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE BEEN FUNNY AT THE TIME, BUT STILL MADE THEM LAUGH LATER ON?
Trained as a pianist before he turned to art, William Draper played classical music as well as jazz. While in the South Pacific, Draper was having lunch with Admiral Kauffman, who said, "Well, of course Draper you ought to cover the landing at Saipan. You're the only artist out here in the Pacific." And so he gave orders that I should go to Saipan. So I was very pleased and was given these orders. So I went off to Saipan on the (battleship) Tennessee and I played the piano aboard the Tennessee with happy hour. The captain evidently knew I could play or found out I could and he asked if I would play happy hour. They would wheel the piano out on the deck for the enlisted men. DRAPER: "And then I played the piano and sang songs. And another funny thing was that on the same ship when I was 12 years old in the Boston Navy Yard father's -- let's see -- Admiral -- well, he was my first cousin and he married Edith Blair. I've got to think of his name. It's ridiculous, my first cousin, because I'm so excited by trying to remember things, Adolfa Statin. He was captain of the Tennessee when I was 12. Mother and father and myself and Lilla and Harry all went to the Navy Yard and went aboard and had lunch on the Tennessee. After lunch mother said, "William, dear, will you play the piano for the officers?" So I played a Chopin waltz or something. Then it was sunk at Pearl Harbor and pulled up again and fitted out. You could never go back through the Panama Canal because it was two feet too wide. Here I was on the same ship and playing the piano. Well, I think that's quite a coincidence." said Draper in a 1977 interview.
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IF HE/SHE SURVIVED MILITARY SERVICE, WHAT PROFESSION(S) DID HE/SHE FOLLOW AFTER DISCHARGE?
William F. Draper, was a portrait painter and former combat artist who depicted many of the world's wealthiest and most powerful figures. In Mr. Draper's five-decade career, his subjects included President Richard M. Nixon, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York, the Shah of Iran, the financier Paul Mellon, Dr. Charles Mayo of the Mayo Clinic, Terence Cardinal Cooke, the actress Celeste Holm and the New York socialite and jazz harpist Daphne Hellman. A portrait he did of John F. Kennedy, based on an oil sketch for which the president sat in 1962, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Shown here are Admiral William F. Halsey, U.S. Navy Art Gallery, Washington, D.C., painted during the Second World War in the South Pacific and President John F. Kennedy, in 1962.
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IF THEY WERE HERE TODAY, WHAT ADVICE DO YOU THINK HE OR SHE WOULD GIVE TO THOSE WHO FOLLOWED IN THEIR FOOTSTEPS AND RECENTLY ENTERED MILITARY SERVICE?
In painting and in life... you need time to develop. "In my art class, one boy one time came up to me. He had been in about two months. He said, "Mr. Draper, do you think I have any style now?" And of course I was -- when people are paying me to criticize them I can be quite nasty. I said, "What do you mean do you have any style?" I said, "No, you have no style whatsoever, and if you think about style at this stage in the game you'll never have any. If you just don't think about style and paint sincerely and go for ten years and work hard you might if you're lucky develop a little style." I know I'm right because he was trying to do these different things to get -- to be stylish, something or the other, and it didn't work." Draper said.
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HOW EFFECTIVE HAS TOGETHERWESERVED.COM BEEN IN HELPING YOU RECORD YOUR REMEMBERED PERSONS MILITARY SERVICE? DO YOU HAVE ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE?
This is a Remembrance Profile for Lieutenant Commander William Franklin Draper, Official U.S. Navy Combat Artist during World War Two.
May he rest in peace.
Thank you for stopping by.
Credit: Oral history interview with William F. Draper, conducted by William McNaught; June 1-28, 1977. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
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