Last updated: December 10, 2020
Person
Robert Samuel Taylor
NPS Photo/Boyce
Quick Facts
Robert Samuel Taylor, Watertender 2nd Class 1/31/20 (25)
Robert Samuel Taylor was born in the small town of Wray, Colorado on January 31, 1920. Shortly after, his parents, John and Aphus, moved the family to Laclede County in Central Missouri. By 1940, the family was living in New Cambria, in Macon County, Missouri, where both Taylor and his father worked as farm laborers.
On April 7, 1942, Taylor enlisted in the Navy in St. Louis and was immediately shipped out for basic training in San Diego that would last until May 23. He then reported for duty, on July 26, in Honolulu aboard the training ship USS Elliot (DMS 4), where he would earn the rating of watertender 2nd class.
Robert Samuel Taylor Personnel File, National Archives
In October 1943, Taylor entered the Destroyer Training Program at the Naval Training Station, Treasure Island Naval Station in San Francisco, where he received training in chemical warfare, firefighting, and gunnery. A little over two months later, on December 31, 1943, Taylor was one of the crew who commissioned to the USS Cassin Young (DD-793). His short but eventful Navy career occurred entirely aboard that ship throughout the Pacific.
Following at-sea training, the USS Cassin Young participated in raids of some Japanese naval and air installations in the Caroline Islands between April 29 and May 1, 1944. Between June and August of that year, the ship was part of operations that recaptured Guam and seized Saipan before moving onto the Liberation of the Philippines. In addition to assisting the invasions of Leyte and Luzon, the ship also participated in numerous raids on enemy positions in the China Sea.
After completing operations that assisted the attack and capture of Iwo Jima between February 15 and March 16, 1945, the USS Cassin Young then moved with the fleet to Okinawa, where operations commenced on April 1. This campaign is remembered for its brutality. The Japanese military fought to the death on land and took to the skies in suicide missions in which kamikaze pilots attempted to fly their bomb-laden aircraft into Allied shipping. As part of the radar picket, the USS Cassin Young was regularly rotated to positions on the perimeter of the fleet to serve as early warning and defense against Japanese aircraft.
On April 12, 1945, during a massed air attack of kamikaze planes, a Japanese plane clipped the ship’s mast, killing one and injuring 59 crew members. Although the Allied forces secured Okinawa two months later, on June 22, the Japanese military continued to launch attacks on warships off the island’s coast. On July 30, 1945, a Japanese kamikaze pilot crashed his plane into the USS Cassin Young. The aircraft and the bomb it carried exploded on the deck above the ship’s forward fireroom, where it ruptured super-heated steam lines. Along with his entire watch, Taylor was killed instantly. He was 25.
Taylor was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and Navy Unit Commendation Medal. His body was later repatriated from Island Grove Cemetery on Okinawa for burial in New Cambria, Missouri.