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Valerie Jones (SBTS Writer)-Historian
to remember
Marine Cpl Burnis Leroy Bond.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Wiggins
Last Address Wiggins, MS
Casualty Date Dec 07, 1941
Cause KIA-Killed in Action
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Hawaii
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Woodlawn Park Cemetery - Wiggons, Mississippi
Corporal Burnis Bond was Killed in Action on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was detached aboard the USS Arizona BB39.
Comments/Citation:
Burnis Leroy Bond was born on July 26, 1919 to John Lampkin and Ellen Sinclair Bond in Wiggins, Stone County, Mississippi. He graduated from high school and worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps in North Carolina.
He enlisted in the USMC on March 6, 1940 and his assigned service number was 282672. He is listed on a USMC Muster Roll as part of a Marine detachment assigned to the USS Arizona in December 1940. He was serving as a Corporal in charge of a gun crew on the USS Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
A book by Dick Camp, "Battleship Arizona's Marines at War: Making the Ultimate Sacrifice" described Bond as, ". . . a typical gun captain. He was a squared-away, slow-talking Mississippian, with a drawl so pronounced that boys from north of the Mason-Dixon had trouble understanding him."
Survivors described Mr. Bond, burned nearly black, as directing his gun crew just before the bombed battleship was abandoned and sank.
At the onset of the December 7, 1941 attack, the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored at berth Fox 7 on “Battleship Row.” The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) was on the port side; and the starboard side faced the northeastern shore of Ford Island. Just before 8 am, the ship’s air raid alarm sounded and the crew was ordered to general quarters. During the attack the battleship was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs, including one 1,700 lb. armor-piercing shell which penetrated the deck near the Number 2 turret and detonated in the smokeless powder magazine, causing a “cataclysmic” explosion “which destroyed the ship forward” and ignited a fire which burned for two days. Most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack died instantly during the explosion. The ship quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor along with 1,177 of the 1,512 personnel on board, representing about half the total number of Americans killed that day.
His body was one of the few recovered from the Arizona. In 1947 his remains were repatriated from the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu to Wiggins, MS where military rites were performed and he was buried at Woodlawn Park Cemetery.
"This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see 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 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.
Valerie Jones--Contributing Author, Stories Behind the Stars
Valerie Jones (SBTS Writer)-Historian
to remember
Marine Cpl Burnis Leroy Bond.
