“Firstly, I would like to thank the Harvard Alumni Office and Clipper Cruises for giving me a chance to visit this site, which has been so important in my life. Also I would like to thank Fred Douglass for his discoveries of these ships and thank him and David McComb for the time spent talking to me.
“As you may know, my father, Bill Hank, was skipper of USS Laffey, which was sunk during the Battle of Guadalcanal. The Laffey went up against the Japanese battleship Hiei and lost, but the Hiei sustained so much damage that she had to be sunk.
“We have visited a number of memorials found around the world that honor the men lost in this November 1942 battle, but this experience brings closure to a chapter of my life. I only regret that my mother and my father’s sister and brother are no longer alive to know about this trip. But maybe somewhere, they do.”
