Service number: 3115534

Tceollyar Simmons was born on June 7, 1920 to James Garfield Simmons (d. 1938) and Ina Simmons (d. 1993) and, interestingly, the grandson of Andrew Jackson Simmons. He would have been 100 this year (2020), but was killed at the age of 18 during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Navy muster rolls list Simmons as assigned to the ship Boggs and then the California in late 1941.

Per the Naval History and Heritage Command:

USS California (BB-44), flagship of the Battle Force, was hit forward and aft by two Japanese torpedoes in the early minutes of the Pearl Harbor raid. She was later hit by a bomb and near-missed by another, which caused additional flooding. Though her design included very good protection against underwater damage, California's actual condition was much less satisfactory, with many watertight compartments open and some design details proving unable to resist the effects of torpedo warheads.

California had steam up and was nearly ready to get underway when a large mass of burning oil, drifting down "Battleship Row", threatened to set the ship afire. She was ordered abandoned, and, when the crew returned on board sometime later, it was impossible to control her flooding. Despite strenuous efforts, she slowly settled to the bottom of Pearl Harbor, coming to rest on 10 December. The battleship was raised in March 1942 and received repairs and modernization work that lasted until January 1944, over two years after she was sunk.

Of the 103 crew members of California died during the attack; 20 sailors from the battleship remain unresolved today. The sailors and marines who died aboard the California were initially buried in Halawa Naval Cemetery and Nuuanu Cemetery, both located on the island of Oahu.No.

Simmons was awarded a Purple Heart.

Sources:

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor-raid/battleship-row-during-the-pearl-harbor-attack/uss-california-during-the-pearl-harbor-attack.html

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Together We Served and on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

If you have any details, photos, or corrections for this story, please click HERE to email Together We Served directly.

Added by: rona_simmons093

Simmons, Tceollyar, S2c