After leaving his family, Nichols moved through Michigan — specifically through Dearborn — and then to Stroud, Oklahoma. He told his parents he was working in the automobile industry. In early 1965, he wrote to his parents that he had moved to Richmond, California. He sent a letter to his son Phil from Napa, California. That letter contained a single penny.
The family never heard from him again. They reported him missing.
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## The War That Shaped Him
To understand anything about Robert Nichols, you have to understand what he survived in the Pacific.
Nichols served as a firefighter aboard the USS Aaron Ward, a destroyer minelayer operating in the waters around Okinawa in the spring of 1945. The battle for Okinawa — the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific war — was among the bloodiest engagements of the entire conflict, and the waters around the island were among the most dangerous for American naval vessels. The Japanese deployed kamikazes in massive coordinated attacks against the invasion fleet, and the ships on radar picket duty — small destroyers positioned in an arc around Okinawa to detect incoming aircraft — bore the brunt of these attacks.
The Aaron Ward was on radar picket station 10 on the evening of May 3, 1945, when her radar detected incoming aircraft. What followed was a sustained kamikaze assault that nearly sank the ship. Multiple planes struck or crashed near the vessel. A bomb from one attacker exploded in the after engine room. Oil fires spread across her decks. Her steering was disabled, her power knocked out, and she was left circling dead in the water while fires burned and 40mm ammunition cooked off in the heat. The destroyer Little sank that same night during the same attack.