Background
Joseph Timothy O'Callahan was born on May 14, 1905, in Roxbury, Massachussets, United States, the son of Cornelius J. O'Callahan, a produce dealer, and Alice Casey.
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Joseph Timothy O'Callahan was born on May 14, 1905, in Roxbury, Massachussets, United States, the son of Cornelius J. O'Callahan, a produce dealer, and Alice Casey.
Joseph O'Callahan attended St. Mary's parochial school in Cambridge, Massachussets, and Boston College High School.
In 1926, O'Callahan went to Weston College, Massachussets, where he completed his philosophical studies and received an M. A. in 1929.
In the fall of 1936, O'Callahan enrolled at Georgetown University to study mathematics, but before earning a degree he was reassigned to Weston College to teach cosmology. Later, for O'Callahan's actions during and after an attack on the aircraft carrier the USS Franklin, Georgetown University awarded him an honorary doctorate.
In July 1922, Joseph O'Callahan entered the Society of Jesus at the novitiate of St. Andrew-on-Hudson at Poughkeepsie, New York, and two years later pronounced his first vows; he took his final vows in August 1939.
Until 1931 he taught physics and mathematics at Boston College and then returned to Weston College to study theology. In June 1934, he was ordained, and the following year he was a tertian at St. Robert's Hall in Pomfret Center, Connecticut. In the fall of 1936, O'Callahan enrolled at Georgetown University to study mathematics, but before earning a degree he was reassigned to Weston College to teach cosmology. In 1938, he went to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachussets, to teach mathematics and physics. By 1940 he was head of the mathematics department.
Following the outbreak of World War II, O'Callahan decided to leave Holy Cross for navy service, and in August 1940 he was commissioned a lieutenant, junior grade, in the Navy Chaplain Corps. For the next eighteen months he taught calculus at the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida. In April 1942, O'Callahan finally received the sea duty he had sought when he entered the navy. He was assigned to the aircraft carrier Ranger, and for two and a half years he was the Roman Catholic chaplain on the ship during its extensive service in the naval war against Germany.
In December 1944, O'Callahan, then a lieutenant commander, was sent to Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, pending a new assignment. Shortly afterward he was ordered to sea as a chaplain on the aircraft carrier Franklin, part of Task Force 58, which was striking airfields on the Japanese mainland and protecting the invasion force converging on Okinawa. On the morning of March 19, 1945, the Franklin was launching its planes when it was attacked by a Japanese dive bomber. Two 550-pound semiarmor-piercing bombs hit the carrier. They set off a chain reaction of explosions among the fully gassed and armed planes on the flight and hangar decks, turning the ship into a floating ammunition dump in the process of blowing up. Fed by thousands of gallons of aviation gasoline, flames swept the length of the ship, and tons of exploding bombs and rockets threatened to tear it apart. It seemed only a matter of minutes before the raging flames would reach a magazine and blow the ship sky high. O'Callahan was in the wardroom when the bombs hit the Franklin. He immediately made his way through the spreading fire to the flight deck, where he helped corpsmen attend to the wounded and performed his priestly functions.
One of the most famous photographs from the war features O'Callahan administering the last rites to an injured sailor amid the billowing smoke. Without regard for his own safety, O'Callahan organized and led firefighting crews into the inferno on the flight deck, directed the jettisoning of live ammunition and the flooding of a shell magazine, and manned a hose to cool armed bombs rolling on the listing deck. All the time searing, suffocating smoke was forcing those around him to fall back, gasping. Throughout the desperate struggle to save the stricken ship, O'Callahan, who had been wounded by shrapnel, inspired crew members with his courage and profound faith in the face of almost certain death. He was a calming influence on those terrified by the incessant explosions. In the belief that "if you were with Father O'Callahan you were safe, " the men rallied to his calls for assistance in fighting the fires and rescuing the wounded.
Although the Franklin suffered 724 killed and 265 wounded, the efforts of O'Callahan and others to save it were successful. For his actions O'Callahan was awarded the Medal of Honor. When the Franklin limped back to the United States in May 1945, O'Callahan was received as a national hero. Numerous articles about his exploits appeared in newspapers and magazines, and Georgetown University awarded him an honorary doctorate.
After the war O'Callahan served as a chaplain on the aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was released from the navy in November 1946, with the rank of commander. O'Callahan returned to Holy Cross to teach philosophy, but poor health plagued him. He suffered a severe stroke in December 1949 that left him an invalid. Unable to resume teaching, he prepared his best-selling book, I Was Chaplain on the Franklin. It was published in 1956, the same year the motion picture Battle Stations, depicting his life, was released. O'Callahan continued to live in the Jesuit community at Holy Cross until his death.
For his rescuing actions during and after an attack on the aircraft carrier the USS Franklin, O'Callahan was awarded the Medal of Honor, and Georgetown University awarded him an honorary doctorate. O'Callahan was the only Roman Catholic chaplain and only navy chaplain ever awarded the Medal of Honor, and one of only two noncombatants to receive the nation's highest award for bravery during World War II. Joseph O'Callahan wrote a book about the attack at Franklin - I Was Chaplain on the Franklin.
Quotations: O'Callahan preferred to say about his rescuing actions on Franklin: "Any priest in like circumstances should do and would do what I did".
Joseph O'Callahan was member of the Society of Jesus since July 1922.
Quotes from others about the person
Captain Leslie E. Gehres, commander of the Franklin, described O'Callahan as "the bravest man I ever knew. "
