Profiles of Valor: Chaplain CAPT Joseph O'Callahan (USN)

Join me in a salute to a World War II Chaplain, Navy MoH recipient CAPT Joseph T. O'Callahan.
“Father Joe” was a native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb. After graduating from Boston College High School, he joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He would spend the next 13 years in Jesuit training at St. Andrew’s College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he would earn both a BA and an MA in mathematics and physics. He was then ordained a Priest in the Jesuit order and returned to Boston College, where he taught mathematics, philosophy, and physics.
On the morning of March 19, 1945, about 50 miles off the coast of Kobe, Japan, after launching a first wave of aircraft and preparing to launch a second, a Japanese Kamikaze bomber penetrated the fleet’s outer defenses and dropped two bombs on the Franklin. With its flight deck thick with fully fueled attack aircraft and loaded with munitions, the Japanese bombs turned the ship’s deck and hangar deck into a raging inferno.
Though wounded by one of the explosions, Chaplain O'Callahan exposed himself to imminent mortal threat in order to tend to the wounded and administer last rites. He led officers and crew into the flames to move bombs to the side of the deck where they could be dumped overboard.
For his heroic actions, he was awarded the Navy’s second-highest decoration, the Navy Cross, which he publicly refused, becoming the only World War II recipient to do so. Despite his refusal, President Harry Truman intervened and upgraded his Navy Cross to a Medal of Honor, insisting that O'Callahan accept the award. He obliged his commander-in-chief.