| About Donald E.: |
Donald Edward Simpson was a triplet. He had a brother David Joseph Simpson, who also served in the navy, and a sister Lorraine Julia Simpson. Their mother Julia Hayes Simpson died in childbirth. Their father David Wright Simpson registered for the WWI draft just months before the end of the war but was never called up.
Donald and his brother David both enlisted when they were 16-year-old high school students. Donald was 19 when he died. He was buried at sea and is memorialized in the Honolulu Memorial Cemetery, Honolulu, HI, USA.
Japanese planes attacked Donald's ship, the USS Benjamin Franklin, in a kamikaze attack on March 19. 1945 in which Donald was killed. The ship was heavily damaged, but made it to Ulithi atoll for emergency repairs, then under her own power to Pearl Harbor for temporary repairs and finally through the Panama Canal to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for major repairs. She never saw active duty again, was decommissioned in 1947 and left Navy custody in 1966. |
