This Military Service Page was created/owned by
William James Beckwith, GM2
to remember
Clark, Paul Leaman, MoMM3c.
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Contact Info
Home Town Savannah
Last Address Ponte Vedra Beach, Fl
Date of Passing Jan 30, 2002
Location of Interment Jersey City and Harsimus Cemetery - Jersey City, New Jersey
Wall/Plot Coordinates Unknown
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Fireman First Class Paul Leaman Clark displayed extraordinary devotion to duty in the face of enemy fire while serving as a landing boat engineer attached to the USS Joseph T. Dickman during the allied assault on French Morocco during World War II. Clark served as beach master where he supervised the unloading of soldiers and supplies from the transports on the beach. This was an especially hazardous duty, as once disembarked from the landing crafts, soldiers were vulnerable to enemy fire. Early into the assault, which lasted from November 8-11, 1942, Clark was unloading a transport when a hostile plane battered his boat with machinegun fire. The heavy fire mortally wounded the bowman and severely injured the coxswain. Showing unsurpassed courage and initiative Clark took control of the boat and withdrew from the beach with the injured crewmember aboard. Clark sped towards the nearby USS Palmer and transferred the wounded man to safety. Although enemy bullets had already punctured his craft, he courageously returned to his station at the beach and completed the boat�??s mission. The torrential gunfire led 21 of the 32 boats to be lost at the landing during the duration of the assault. These harrowing wartime conditions did not hamper Clark, instead he rose to the occasion with fierce bravery in the highest traditions of military service. For his courage that day, Clark was awarded the Navy Cross.
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served
in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians,
10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia,
and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as
victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences
were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of
the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway
to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded
Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German
counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted
Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped
from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945
after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a
War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a
rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific
coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942,
Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project.
On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945,
the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded.
Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands
of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained
that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing
or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of
people in the United States and around the world.
