Project 888
Name: James Albert TULL
Rank / Rating: S1-Seaman First ClassService #: 906 48 73 DOB: Aug 27, 1910 From: Laurel, DE Parents: Edward Bird and Marion Louise Lank Tull Went Aboard: Dec 07, 1944 Age When Ship Went Down: 34 years, 11 months, 3 days Spouse: Doris Waller Tull Children: Grandchildren: Bio Submitted By: Patricia Stephens (Admin) |
 TULL, James A |
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Biography from delawarewwiifallen.com with Special Thanks.
https://delawarewwiifallen.com/2021/10/20/seaman-1st-class-james-a-tull/
James Albert Tull was born in Seaford, Delaware, on August 27, 1910. He was the second of four children (one of whom died very young) born to Edward Bird Tull (a farmer, 1883-1954) and Marion Louise Tull (nee Lank, 1883-1920). His name was listed in some records as Albert J. Tull. When recorded on the census on January 5, 1920, he was living with his family on Arch Street in Seaford (probably at 206 Arch Street, his father’s address in 1930). Tull’s mother died on February 29, 1920, when he was nine.
Tull was working as a clerk when he married Doris Virginia Waller (later Doris W. Tull Walls, 1915-1977) in Laurel, Delaware, on February 1, 1938. The couple had three children.
When Tull registered for the draft on October 16, 1940, he was living in Laurel. The registrar described him as standing about five feet, 10 inches tall and weighing 150 lbs., with brown hair and blue eyes. He worked as a milk dealer in Laurel prior to entering the military.
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 U.S. Navy Career
After he was drafted, Tull joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in Camden, New Jersey, on February 28, 1944. He began his training in Maryland at the United States Naval Training Center, Bainbridge. A member of his family (likely his wife) who filled out his State of Delaware Individual Military Service Record wrote that after completing training on October 21, 1944, Tull was promoted from apprentice seaman to seaman 1st class. He or she added that Tull “Was to receive Gunners Mate Rating when he arrived on ship.” U.S. Navy records show that on December 7, 1944, Seaman 1st Class Tull joined the crew of the heavy cruiser U.S.S. Indianapolis (CA-35) from the Naval Training & Distribution Center at Camp Shoemaker, California. The ship had just been overhauled at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard near San Francisco.
Muster rolls during his service aboard the Indianapolis state that Tull was a “S1c (GM)”-which indicates that he was a seaman 1st class “striking” for the rating of gunner’s mate. That is, he was training for a job aboard a ship at sea rather than in a school on land. Indianapolis escorted carriers of the Fifth Fleet while they launched airstrikes against mainland Japan during Operation Jamboree, beginning on February 16, 1945. The ship subsequently supported the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. On March 31, 1945, Indianapolis was struck and heavily damaged by a bomb dropped from a Japanese plane off the coast of Okinawa. The ship was out of action for repairs back at Mare Island until mid-July. According to a September 5, 1945, article in Journal-Every Evening, “Seaman Tull spent a five-day leave here [in Delaware] with his family” during the overhaul.
In his book, A Grave Misfortune, Dr. Richard A. Hulver wrote that “Notice on 12 July that Indianapolis was chosen to perform a top-secret delivery at high speed to Tinian on 16 July pushed up redeployment plans approximately two months.” After delivering personnel and materials for the atomic bomb on July 26, 1945, Hulver continued, Indianapolis was ordered “join Task Group 95.7 for two weeks of training” off Leyte in the Philippines.
Just after midnight on July 30, 1945, the Japanese submarine I-58 torpedoed and sank the Indianapolis. It is unknown if Seaman First Class Tull was killed in the sinking or in the days that followed. Those survivors of the sinking still alive by August 2-3, 1945, were rescued, but Tull was not among them.
The Wilmington Morning News reported on September 19, 1945, that the day before, “Mrs. Doris Waller Tull of near Laurel received a telegram from the War Department today staying that her husband[...]was now assumed to have been lost.” The person who filled out the State of Delaware Individual Military Service Record paperwork wrote: “I received the Purple Heart, thru mail, for him, and am keeping it for the children (3) when they get older.”
Although his body was lost to the sea, Seaman 1st Class Tull is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines, with a cenotaph in the Beechwood Memorial Cemetery in Princess Anne, Maryland, at Veteran’s Memorial Park in New Castle, Delaware, and at the U.S.S. Indianapolis Memorial in Indianapolis, Indiana.
1930 Census
Tull’s whereabouts between 1920 and 1938 are not well documented. He was not living with his father in Seaford at the time of the 1930 census. There was an Albert Tull documented on April 14, 1930, living at 840 North 12th Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was described as a 19-year-old clerk at a factory who was born in Delaware, with parents who were also born in Delaware. That is consistent with James Albert Tull’s characteristics-and his occupation as of 1938-though it is hard to know for certain if it is the same man.
Stepbrother
Years after the death of Tull’s mother, his father remarried in Seaford on March 13, 1943, to Mary Alice Johnson (1897-1984), herself a widow. One of her children, 2nd Lieutenant George McCullen Johnson (1920-1944) of the U.S. Army Air Forces, was killed in action when his B-24 crashed on takeoff from Hawkins Field in the Tarawa Atoll.
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https://delawarewwiifallen.com/2021/10/20/seaman-1st-class-james-a-tull/
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