Service in the Pacific Theater, 1942–1945

• Lloyd DeClusin enlisted in the U.S. Navy on 7 September 1942, at the age of twenty, registering through the recruiting station nearest the McCloud River country of Siskiyou County, California, where he worked for the McCloud Lumber Company. He carried the service number 376 77 04. Within two months he had crossed the Pacific: the troopship USS Mount Vernon carried him to Pearl Harbor in early November 1942 as an apprentice seaman, barely trained, on his way to the war in the Solomon Islands.

USS Aaron Ward

• On 22 December 1942 he reported aboard the destroyer USS Aaron Ward (DD-483) at Pearl Harbor. The ship had limped into port only two days earlier, badly mauled in the night Battle of Guadalcanal on 13 November, and Lloyd was among the replacement crew who helped put it back together. He was rated a fireman — his station was deep in the ship, among the boilers and engines.
• On the night of 7 April 1943, off the Florida Islands near Guadalcanal, the Aaron Ward was caught by Japanese dive bombers during Operation I-Go, one of the largest air offensives of the campaign. Three bombs found it. The first tore open the side and flooded the forward fire room; the second struck home in the engine room and killed all electrical power; the third holed the port side near the after engine room. The bombs that doomed the ship detonated in and against its engineering spaces — the spaces where Lloyd worked. Crippled and without power, it was taken under tow toward Tulagi but sank that night before reaching safety. More than two dozen of the crew were lost with the ship.
• Lloyd survived. He was pulled from the water and processed through the receiving station at Nouméa with the other survivors in the weeks that followed. He had been at sea for barely four months, and his first ship had gone down beneath him.

USS Sterett

• Six weeks later, on 23 May 1943, he was assigned to another destroyer in the same waters — USS Sterett (DD-407), itself a veteran of the same 13 November night action in which the Aaron Ward had been wrecked. Lloyd served aboard the Sterett for the next seventeen months, through the hardest fighting of the Solomons campaign and into the Central Pacific drive.
• Just ten weeks after he came aboard, the Sterett fought in the Battle of Vella Gulf on the night of 6 August 1943 — regarded as one of the finest destroyer actions of the war, in which six American destroyers ambushed and destroyed a Japanese reinforcement force, sinking three enemy destroyers without loss to themselves. The Sterett earned a Presidential Unit Citation for Guadalcanal and Vella Gulf and finished the war with twelve battle stars. Through this and the months that followed — patrols and escort duty, the landings at Bougainville, the Bombing of Rabaul, and into 1944 the bombardment of Guam and operations across the Marianas — Lloyd kept the ship's machinery running. It was during his time aboard the Sterett that he advanced from the fireman's trade to become an Electrician's Mate, Second Class, a petty officer responsible for the ship's electrical power, lighting, and interior communications. He was twenty-two.
• In August 1944 the Sterett returned to the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton for a major overhaul, and Lloyd was detached, reporting to the receiving ship at San Francisco that October.

USS Soubarissen

• On 5 January 1945 he joined the commissioning crew of the fleet oiler USS Soubarissen (AO-93) — a plank owner, present at the ship's entry into service — and sailed once more for the western Pacific. He served aboard it through the final months of the war, and was transferred ashore in late July 1945 at Samar, in the Philippines.
• Lloyd DeClusin was honorably discharged on 4 October 1945, having served just over three years, crossed the Pacific repeatedly, survived the sinking of one ship, and seen combat aboard one of the most decorated destroyers of the war. He returned home to Mount Shasta and to the lumber company he had left.

The Wreck

• The wreck of the USS Aaron Ward was discovered in 1994, sitting upright on the sea floor off Tulagi, its guns still raised toward the sky. It is one of the few American destroyers of the Pacific war that can still be reached and seen. In a diving blog he runs, Brett Eldridge describes the ship and its sinking in great detail and has posted numerous vivid photos of the sunken vessel from his recent dive in 2024.

A Note on Sources and Open Questions

• This account is drawn from contemporary Navy muster rolls and Reports of Changes bearing Lloyd's service number, together with the published service histories of the three ships. The dates and assignments are documented.
• One question remains open. Family recollection held that he was knocked from his ship into the water during a night attack — a memory that matches the loss of the Aaron Ward closely. Whether the blast that night left him with an injury treated by the ship's medical staff is not yet established; his complete Naval personnel file and the ship's casualty report may settle it. If such an injury was recorded, he may have been entitled to a Purple Heart that was never issued — a matter still under research.