We recently celebrated Memorial Day on the last Monday in May, a profound day dedicated to honoring the courageous men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Once known as Decoration Day, it was a time when Americans adorned the graves of fallen soldiers with flowers. Today, Memorial Day stands as a powerful reminder of the cost of our liberty and inspires us to cherish and uphold the values for which they fought.       

This article was published on November 10, 1961, in honor of Veterans Day.

America will honor its veterans on Nov. 11 with the annual observance of Veterans’ Day.  For those who returned from the battles of World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, it will be a time of thanksgiving, but for the families of those who lost their lives, the day will recall sadness.

One of the 300,000 American servicemen listed as missing or killed in World War II was Lt. (jg) Jimmy Balako, son of Mrs. Mary Balako of 513 S. Brundidge St., and the late Victor Balako.

According to Mrs. Balako, her son had one ambition in life.  That was to become a pilot.  When he was only eight years old, he built a model plane and said, “Mamma, someday I’m going to fly one of these.”

Reared in Troy, where his Greek parents operated Mary’s Café for 35 years, Jimmy attended local schools.  A handsome, muscular six-foot-two-inch, he was outstanding in high school football and baseball, a lifeguard at the city pool, and was voted the most handsome boy in his class.

He enrolled in Troy State College, still intent upon becoming a pilot.  His life of study was directed toward the subjects required for admission to the Navy Aviation School at Pensacola. Upon graduating from college, he received a commission and was assigned to the aviation school for pilot training.

When he entered the Navy in 1940, Jimmy must have felt that he was headed for a long and glamorous career as a naval pilot, unaware that he was soon to be plunged into the holocaust that was World War II.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Jimmy was assigned to the “Vincennes” and began a tour of duty in the South Pacific, an area that would become a hot spot in the early months of the war.

The first step in the American campaign to regain control of the South Pacific found Jimmy at Guadalcanal.  The largest of the Solomon Islands was being used by the Japanese as a base of operations against the Allied supply line to Australia.

One of the most intensive air, land, and sea battles of World War II was fought at Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942.  On August 7, the Marines landed on Guadalcanal and succeeded in capturing a portion of the island, but the Japanese fought fiercely to retain their stronghold in the Solomons.

On August 8, Jimmy and other fighter pilots assigned to the “Vincennes” carried out missions in support of the Marines on Guadalcanal.  That night, a surprise attack by the Japanese caught the weary pilots unawares.

At 1:45 a.m., the Japanese opened fire at short range with guns and torpedoes.  In the 30-minute battle that ensued, the Japanese so severely damaged the American heavy cruisers “Vincennes,” “Quincy,” and “Astoria” and the Australian cruiser “Canberra” that they subsequently sank.  Two other American cruisers and a destroyer were severely damaged.

This was the fatal battle for Lt. Jimmy Balako.  His mother later learned that Jimmy had been asleep on his home cruiser when the Japanese attack came.  When the shelling began, he rushed to the deck to try to get his fighter plane into the air, but it was too severely damaged.

As he and five others stood clustered on the deck of the “Vincennes,” a shell struck in their midst.  Two days after the campaign had commenced at Guadalcanal and at the age of 24, Jimmy Balako was dead.  His body was never recovered.

“I could hardly believe it when the news came,” Mrs. Balako says.  “A friend brought me a paper listing the names of those who had survived.  Jimmy’s name was not among them.

She succeeded in reaching one of the surviving members of her son’s ship crew who had witnessed Jimmy’s death.  He described to her the battle and the way Jimmy had died.

Jimmy never wrote his mother and father concerning the battles he may have engaged in before Guadalcanal.  All he ever said was that everything was beautiful,” she recalls.  “His letters never bore any censor marks.

“It was bad to lose him,” Mrs. Balako says emotionally after these 19 years, but if you have that feeling in your heart that he was good and nice, as I did, then it is more bearable.

Because of Jimmy and thousands of others like him, some who returned and some who did not, we celebrate Veterans’ Day.

All of these articles can be found in previous editions of The Troy Messenger.  Stay tuned for more.  Dianne Smith is the President of the Pike County Historical, Genealogical, and Preservation Society.