An Arbon Valley sailor's account of the Pacific war was headed for print, the Idaho State Journal reported on November 24, 1971. The diarist was Ralph G. Butler, whose parents, Dale and Blenda Butler, had homesteaded in the valley, and the editing had been done at Idaho State University by a history professor and a student of his. Ralph started writing in December 1941, the month he joined the Navy, and made his last entries before a stay at home in August 1944, when the book went into his mother's keeping. Four months later he was lost at sea with his destroyer, the USS Monaghan, in a Pacific typhoon. It was his mother who eventually put the diary in the historians' hands.
A Pauline family
Ralph's father, Dale Everett "Pete" Butler, came from Americus, Kansas. He was the youngest brother of J. W. Butler, one of the Kansas cousins who took up homesteads on upper Bannock Creek south of Pauline from 1908 on; their story is told on the Swim family page. Dale married Blenda C. Jones of Malad at Malad on November 16, 1916. When the Journal announced an open house for her eightieth birthday in 1978, it noted that the newlyweds moved to his Arbon Valley homestead the same day they were married. The family records on this site place his homestead in the late-surveyed corner between Pauline and Rattlesnake Creek, patented on June 5, 1919.
Early in 1920 the American Falls Press printed a single line among its local news:
Born, a son to Mr. and Mrs. Dale Butler of Pauline, at the hospital Christmas Eve.
The notice does not name the baby. By the 1971 article's account, Ralph's 22nd birthday fell within days of his signing up for the Navy in December 1941, after Pearl Harbor, which puts his birth between about the middle of December 1919 and the first days of 1920. The Christmas Eve son of 1919 was very probably Ralph, though no record seen for this site names him.
The Butlers stayed in the valley after most of the Kansas kin had gone. The 1930 census found Dale and Blenda in the Crystal precinct. According to the 1978 notice, farming stayed the family's work for most of the years that followed, with homes at American Falls and Lava Hot Springs along the way, and in 1950 the couple moved to Pocatello. Dale died in June 1959.
The diary and the ship
Most of the places the article lists from the diary match the Monaghan's own war. Naval histories record that she sailed in the Lexington's screen for the Coral Sea campaign of May 1942, though she was sent away with messages before the carriers' battle, reached the crippled Yorktown at Midway that June, served in the Aleutians and fought at the Komandorski Islands in March 1943, and then took part in the Gilberts landings, the Marshalls and Guam. Ralph probably served aboard her for much of the war, though the article does not say when he joined her. After Guam she went to Puget Sound for an overhaul in the late summer of 1944, about the time of his leave at home.
On December 18, 1944, the Monaghan was escorting fleet oilers to a fueling rendezvous with the Third Fleet's carrier task force when the storm since known as Typhoon Cobra struck. She lost power and steering, rolled over and sank before noon. Six of her crew survived, picked up three days later; about 256 were lost. Two other destroyers, the Hull and the Spence, also went down. The Journal gave the dead in the three ships as 765; histories of the storm put the fleet's loss at about 790 men.
What is not known
According to the article, the edited diary was slated for Idaho Yesterdays, a quarterly devoted to the state's history. Whether it ever appeared there, and where the diary is now, have not been confirmed for this site. The article also ties Dale Butler to a place it calls Idahome, in Arbon Valley. Older papers place an Idahome in the Raft River country west of the valley, and why the name was attached to Arbon Valley is unexplained. Blenda Butler's birthday notice of 1978 names her six children: Morgan, George, Maxine and DeRene, and two sons who had died, Ralph and Cliff. Nothing more about Ralph's years growing up in the valley has turned up in the papers searched. If your family remembers him, or knows what became of the diary, the site would be glad to hear from you.
On this site: Arbon Valley men in uniform, 1941–1946, and other valley men lost in the Second World War.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, November 24, 1971, page 63 (section D, page 11). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
The state's history quarterly, Idaho Yesterdays, was to print the Navy diary that Ralph G. Butler wrote between December 1941 and his August 1944 leave at home. Both editors came from Idaho State University: Dr. Mark McKiernan, who taught history there as an associate professor, and Arnold G. Buckendorf, a history major from Buhl in his final year. Washington, D.C., also lent a hand, through the deputy director of naval history in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
By 1971 Ralph's mother, Mrs. Blenda Butler, was living in Pocatello; the paper identified his late father, Dale E. Butler, with Idahome in Arbon Valley. Ralph signed up with the Navy in December 1941 in the wake of Pearl Harbor and had his 22nd birthday only days into his service. He brought the diary home on leave in August 1944 and handed it over to his mother. Later she loaned it to McKiernan so it could be published.
He never came home again. Ralph was a gunner's mate on the Monaghan (spelled "Monoghan" by the paper) when, on December 18, 1944, a Pacific typhoon sent her to the bottom, and two more destroyers with her. All told, the paper said, 765 men died in the three ships.
The report traced the diary across much of the war in the Pacific. Its battle entries take in the Coral Sea fight that cost the Navy the carrier Lexington and the Midway fight that left the carrier Yorktown crippled, along with actions at Tarawa, Guam, the Gilberts, the Marshalls and the Solomons, and Ralph wrote too of duty off Alaska. Quieter pages dealt with routine aboard ship and with the islands of the South Pacific, which he found beautiful in spite of the war. Another recalled his happiness when San Francisco's lights came into view on his return.
In a foreword, McKiernan argued that people who play small, unnoticed parts in history are often the ones who see it most clearly. To him, Ralph's pages mattered because their writer was a sailor caught up in the fighting who had "little control over his own destiny." Sailors in wartime were taught early not to put their doings on paper, the professor said, but Ralph judged what he saw worth preserving for history and wrote it down regardless.
Sources
- Idaho State Journal, November 24, 1971, page 63
- American Falls Press, January 2, 1920, page 5
- Idaho State Journal, January 4, 1978, page 20
- American Falls Press, November 16, 1917, page 4
- American Falls Press, April 2, 1920, page 1
- Oakley Herald, November 16, 1923, page 1
- History of War: USS Monaghan (DD-354)
- Wikipedia: USS Monaghan (DD-354)