"We looked back and on the engine room was this round indentation, which had been the head of a torpedo that had hit the engine room and it hadn’t exploded. Now, if it had, with all our gasoline it would have just ‘fwwip’ like that, there would have been nothing left." (Video Interview, 26:46)

James Alvin Jolly

James Jolly in uniform War: World War, 1939-1945 Branch: Merchant Marine Unit: MT Edmond J. Moran [Tugboat] Service Location: Gallups Island, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts; Alaska Rank: Ensign Place of Birth: CA

James Jolly had completed one year at the junior college of the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, when he was selected for a United States Maritime Service program on Gallop’s Island in Boston Harbor, where he started training in September 1940. When Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941, Mr. Jolly’s graduation was expedited by three months. His first assignment was as a Radio Officer aboard the tugboat Edmund J. Moran. Mr. Jolly was aboard the tug when it was sent to be part of the invasion of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, where he earned the Merchant Marine Combat bar. While at sea, Mr. Jolly had numerous close encounters with submarines, including once being hit, while on a tugboat carrying drums of aviation fuel, by a torpedo that turned out to be a dud.