Charles Braga, Jr. |
USS Pennsylvania |
Charles Braga, Jr. was a 22 year old son of a Portuguese mill worker from Fall River,Ma. He was born March 19, 1919 to a family that would know hardships, pain and grief. His mother Rosario died when Charles was 3 of Tuberculosis. His older brother Caesar who once saved Charles from drowning in a pond, died at age 10 from a brain hemorrhage. Their grandmother came to live with them and help raise the children after Rosario died. Charles left Durfee High School after his sophomore year to work to help out when he got older. Charles was too young to sign up alone to enlist in the Navy so he had to badger his father for days to get him to give him permission to enlist. Charlie never smoked, never drank and was always laughing. Charlie first went to Newport, R.I. for training, and then set sail on board the Herndon for exciting venues. He saw Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Panama Canal and Nova Scotia. It took Charles sometime to acquire his sea legs. In an entry in his journal he wrote about a departure from Newport in January 1940: "I was so seasick that I didn't care if I fell over the side." He scored the highest among his crewmates in practice at the firing range. He was eventually transferred to the Pennsylvania ship. The crew was in New York when President Roosevelt announced a state of alert so they quickly steamed through the Panama Canal and out to Hawaii where they were based for nearly all of 1941. Charlie was a yeoman second class who worked as a secretary in the ship's executive office. He and his buddies called themselves "The Executive Office Gangsters." He had a good singing voice and people would often ask him to give them a tune. His friend Carl Ryan said," Whenever there was a problem on board Charlie would jump in the middle and say "C'mon boys, break it up" he was the nicknamed the "Peacemaker". In October 1941 he was training to become a Navy pilot and finished with a 3.99 average in a battery of test. Charles spent his last hours alive dancing the night before with some ladies at the American Legion Hall in the navy yard at Pearl Harbor before retiring for the night. The next morning he did some chores before the attack started. One of the bombs the Japanese dropped exploded in the Pennsylvania just as Charles was passing through that spot. Charlie's body was never found. Today there is a bridge between Fall River and Somerset, Massachusetts named after him. |
NEWSPAPER ARTICLES REGARDING THE CHARLES BRAGA, JR. MEMORIAL BRIDGE (Click on star to access story) |
THE CHARLES BRAGA, JR. MEMORIAL BRIDGE Fall River/Somerset, Massachusetts |
Article dated: 07/07/03 Article dated: 02/16/02 Article dated: 05/09/03 Interstate 195 Historical Overview |
