Letter written by Ernest C. Davison

At the age of 17, I enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 9th, 1940 on minority cruise. I went to Great Lakes Navy Training Center for Boot Camp.

I boarded the Salt Lake City in March, 1941 at Mare Island while she was in dry dock.

We left a couple of weeks later and went to Pearl Harbor. Shortly afterwards we went to Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea. We returned to Pearl Harbor and later escorted the USS ENTERPRISE with a load of planes for Wake Island. We were almost back to Pearl Harbor when the Japs his on Dec. 7th, 1941. We patrolled the waters and got rid of subs around Pearl. Then we started to hit the Jap's islands.

We escorted Doolittle on the Tokyo raid. Then we went to Australia and operated with an English Task Force. From there we went to stop the Tokyo Express on Oct. 11th & 12th, 1942 at night. We got hit and lost 5 men and 20 wounded.

We went back to Pearl Harbor and on Nov. 8th, 1942, I was transferred to Treasure Island for reassignment to the USS SAN PABLO. It was soon commissioned and we trained the crew for duty. After that I was assigned to the USS PRINCE WILLIAM, a flat top that was converted to a cruiser. They tried to qualify it for take off & landing planes, but there were to many accidents, so she was used to transport planes and personnel to Islands. One trip we had dogs & handlers.

From there I went to Moffet Field and was assigned to Carrier Aircraft Unit 45 and went to Kawai for combat training. After six months they sent me back for rotation duty. I was assigned to the Minneapolis Naval Air Station.

I was discharged from there on Sept. 7, 1945..my birthday.