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## The USS Aaron Ward: A Ship That Refused to Die
To understand what Robert Nichols carried out of the Pacific War, it helps to understand the scale of what the USS Aaron Ward survived — and barely survived — on the night of May 3, 1945.
The Aaron Ward was a destroyer minelayer, a ship that combined the speed and weaponry of a destroyer with the specialized capability of laying defensive mine fields. She was named for Rear Admiral Aaron Ward, a Spanish-American War naval officer, and she had served throughout the Pacific campaign. By the spring of 1945, she was assigned to radar picket duty off Okinawa — among the most dangerous assignments in the Pacific theater.
The Okinawa campaign involved the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater of the war, and the Japanese response to the Allied invasion fleet was unprecedented in its scale and ferocity. The Japanese deployed massed kamikaze attacks — coordinated waves of suicide aircraft piloted by men who had volunteered or been ordered to fly their planes directly into American ships. These attacks, called kikusui (floating chrysanthemums), were launched in organized waves, and they sank or seriously damaged a substantial portion of the Allied fleet.
Radar picket duty put destroyers like the Aaron Ward between the invasion fleet and the incoming Japanese aircraft. The picket ships served as early warning systems and as the first line of defense against incoming raids. They had excellent radar capabilities, and they shot down large numbers of attacking aircraft, but they were also the most exposed ships in the fleet. More than thirty Allied destroyers and destroyer escorts were sunk during the Okinawa campaign, and many more were seriously damaged.