Joy Neal Kidney, an Our American Stories regular contributor from Des Moines, Iowa, shares the story of her uncle, Donald Wilson, a man she knew simply as “Uncle Don,” the quiet fisherman from Washington State who sent home pictures of himself holding salmon.
But behind those snapshots was a story, and a man, few would have guessed. Donald Wilson grew up in small-town Iowa and joined the Navy during the Great Depression. He served aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-5) throughout its life, including during the pivotal Battle of Midway in World War II, where he survived her sinking at the hands of Japanese torpedoes.
Photo Credit: Joy Neal Kidney
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
This is Lee Habeeb, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. And today, we have one of our regular contributors, Joy Neal Kidney, and she’s about to share her uncle’s story. This piece is titled “Donald Wilson: The Humble Hero.”
Most of the heroes among us are just ordinary people, like my Uncle Don.
I knew him as Mom’s brother, who lived way out in Washington State and who liked fishing. When I was a kid growing up on an Iowa farm, the best part of getting a fat letter from Aunt Rose was a picture of Uncle Don with a big salmon.
Mom’s older brother had been a commercial fisherman. Even when he later took a job with the Washington Department of Transportation, he still headed out with his boat on Willapa Bay every chance he got. So every fishing season, we’d get snapshots of him with a huge fish hanging from one hand and a fishing pole in the other, dressed in faded jeans and a plaid shirt, usually a vest with lots of pockets, sometimes a U.S. Navy cap: either the USS Hancock or the Yorktown.
Although Mom rarely mentioned World War II, she told us that her brother Don, who grew up in the small town of Dexter, Iowa, had been a sailor on the famous Yorktown, the one lost during a big battle in the Pacific Ocean, and that he had had to tread water for an hour before being rescued.
Every few years, Uncle Don and Aunt Rose would drive back to Iowa to visit. I was unaware of all the other combat he’d survived, all the heartache he’d been through, all the complexity of this seemingly ordinary man.
As teenagers, my sister Gloria and I traveled by train with Grandma to the West Coast to visit relatives, including Don and Rose, in 1962. They lived in a little house out along the Naselle River. As soon as they learned we were coming, Uncle Don added a room to their home: an indoor bathroom.
Since Aunt Rose didn’t drive, they had only a pickup. One foggy day, we joined a crowd of clam diggers and carried our limit home to try fried clams and to make clam chowder. Digging them was more fun than eating them for farm girls used to Iowa beef and pork.
Years later, I learned that not only had Uncle Don been on the historic Yorktown during the Battle of Midway, but that he’d had to abandon ship twice. He spent an hour in the oily Pacific after Japanese bombs had crippled the ship.
The next day, the aircraft carrier was listing, dead in the water, but still afloat. A few dozen men reboarded the battered ship for a salvage attempt. One of them was 25-year-old Donald Wilson.
After doing repairs all morning on a lower level of the ship, he clambered up to the deck for something to eat. An alarm blared. Don jumped up and saw torpedoes in the water, speeding right at his ship. One slammed into them. He ran to the fantail and leaped a second time. A nearby ship rescued him and other survivors.
The next morning, sailors asleep on the deck were nudged awake as the carrier began to sink, her battle flags still flying. Many of them wept as they stood at attention to witness their ship roll over and plunge into the ocean.
Donald Wilson first joined the Navy with his older brother in 1934, during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs for teenagers, not even for their father. Don stayed in the Navy and, in 1937, became a plank owner on the brand-new Yorktown, meaning he was a member of the crew when it was placed in commission.
“I served on her her whole life,” Don later wrote of the ship.
He later received a citation signed by Admiral Chester Nimitz for being part of that salvage attempt. I’d written to Uncle Don and Aunt Rose for decades, but after Grandma died and I got to read the family’s war letters, I started a correspondence with Uncle Don that lasted the rest of his life.
I wanted to make sure he had all the medals he was entitled to. He said he didn’t want any, that he was no hero and wasn’t interested in medals. That is, until I learned there was one for that citation. When he finally received it, he proudly framed all of his medals and ribbons.
Uncle Don was also a plank owner on the USS Hancock, another aircraft carrier. The Hancock was in combat in nearly every major naval battle during those last desperate months of the Pacific War, except when out of action for repairs after being attacked by a kamikaze.
All five Wilson brothers of Dallas County, Iowa, served in World War II. The three youngest, Dale, Danny, and Junior, lost their lives, two of them in combat. Their surviving family members never got over the blows of losing these three young pilots, including their older brother Don.
Still in the Navy after the war, he decided he didn’t want to make it a career after all. He was ready for some peace and quiet and a fishing pole. No one would suspect that the ordinary man in the snapshots with the big fish was indeed a hero, one with a poignant history.
And a special thanks to Joy Neal Kidney for sharing that story. And again, if you have stories about heroes who fought for, defended, and served this great country, send the story to OurAmericanStories.com. We’d love to hear from you, and they are our favorites.
The story of Uncle Don, here on Our American Stories.
Lee Habeeb here, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Any story you missed can be found there daily. Again, please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming.
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