Claude Bufford Shaw was born in Marie, Arkansas, in 1918. When his Midshipman class graduated on 13 December 1941, he was already assigned to the Walke [Annotator's Note: USS Walke (DD-416)]. After a couple of weeks' leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time], Shaw boarded the ship in Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii] in March 1942. He had requested service on destroyers because he thought he would be put in charge of things faster than if he opted for a larger ship. When he got to Pearl Harbor, it was terrible. On the Walke, he was assistant gunnery officer in charge of .50 caliber machine guns [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun]. He had some prior experience with the guns on summer cruises. There were about a dozen ships, cruisers and destroyers, in the vicinity of Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] on the 13th [Annotator's Note: 13 November 1942], several of which were lost that night. The task force consisted of six ships, two battleships and four destroyers. The Walke was the lead ship in the formation, and they were sailing around Savo [Annotator's Note: Savo Island, Solomon Islands] and several other islands in the area, searching for Japanese ships they knew were there. It was a moonless night, and the ship was steaming at 31 knots. When it was hit, it went down swiftly, trapping many of the men on the lower decks. When an explosion opened the forward part of the ship, Shaw was hit by fragments, but not gravely wounded. He and a shipmate dove into the sea and he started swimming as fast as they could. Bobbing in his life vest, he did his best to plug up any holes in his body. During the night, an enemy submarine surfaced among the survivors, but didn't see them, and went away. When the sun rose the next morning, they saw Guadalcanal in the distance and an American fighter plane strafing a Japanese supply ship about eight miles away. Reportedly, the pilot radioed to ask if there were Americans in the water and got a negative response. Shaw saw the plane bank, and prepare to make a run on the survivors, but just in time it flew off. Soon afterward, Shaw was picked up by a PT [Annotator's Note: patrol torpedo boat] boat and put ashore on Florida Island [Annotator's Note: in the Solomon Islands] with a bloody wound on the side of his head. The medics had run out of painkillers, and he was told he would have to be tied down while the injury was treated. One of his classmates, who was serving on another ship, offered him grain alcohol. Shaw took a few big swigs and didn't feel any pain when his wound was tended. He was transferred to another island for further treatment.

Claude Bufford Shaw spent his entire wartime service in the Pacific, except for two short trips to the United States to pick up a new ship and go back out. He was at sea for almost three and a half years. He knew there had been trouble on the night of the 14th [Annotator's Note: 14 November 1942], but didn't know exactly which ships had been sunk. Those that had not sunk limped back to New Caledonia [Annotator's Note: New Caledonia, Oceania]. Going into battle for the first time, Shaw recognized it as the job he was trained to do. Beforehand, there had been a little bit of stuff in May in the Coral Sea [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Coral Sea, 4 to 8 May 1942], but that was easy; it was just planes shooting at them. During the minutes before the fighting erupted on the 14th, he was just standing there, and couldn't see any enemy activity. But there were reports from others, including Australian lookouts, that alerted them to enemy ships in the area. His task force had two new battleships [Annotator's Note: USS Washington (BB-56) and USS South Dakota (BB-57)], which were equipped with radar, and the fleet command felt confident about their mission. The first indication of a confrontation came when the battleships began firing. The enemy was about five nautical miles away when the Walke [Annotator's Note: the USS Walke (DD-416)] came under fire from torpedoes. Shaw saw one torpedo hit under the bridge of the ship. The bow broke away from the rest of the ship. It flew up and over where Shaw was standing before dropping into the water. He saw it floating the next morning, with several people holding onto it. The rest of the ship was still upright when he followed other sailors into the sea. While in the water, his thoughts were on the sharks. He supposes they were driven off by the explosion and thinks if they had not been picked up on the afternoon of the second day, the sharks would have returned for them. Shaw started rounding up people, and they paddled around together until they were rescued. He was the ranking officer in the water. Everybody kept positive about getting out alive. A few days later, when he was transported to New Caledonia, there were some shark-bite victims among his fellow patients.

Claude Bufford Shaw's ship, the Walke [Annotator's Note: USS Walke (DD-416)], was the lead in the six-ship column. When the shooting started, they were only able to use their forward weapons, which were only five inch guns [Annotator's Note: five inch 38 caliber naval gun]. His reaction to watching the front third of the ship being blown off was "amazing." Once in the water, an obvious problem was that the current was moving the survivors toward Guadalcanal, which was still held by the Japanese. He was urging the men he gathered together around the floating bow to paddle in the opposite direction, and it seemed to be working. The rescue boats began circling the debris field, picking up survivors, and "that was very nice." Shaw describes an incident from May [Annotator's Note: May 1944], at the time of the Coral Sea battle [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Coral Sea, 4 to 8 May 1942]. The ship was in Brisbane [Annotator's Note: Brisbane, Australia] for repairs. An Australian fellow, working with Shaw, took offense at the Americans drinking up all the Scotch, which was in short supply. Although he saw the results of the Coral Sea battle, Shaw did not see the battle itself. Coming back to his experience near Guadalcanal, Shaw was glad to get out of the water and the domain of the sharks. On the evacuation ship, he stayed topside, even to sleep, so that if the ship were attacked, he would be in position to abandon ship quickly. After this point in the war, it was all downhill for the Japanese. Even though his ship was sunk, he learned later on that they had dome some good. He felt the Japanese general surface fleet stacked up good against the American inventory. The threat of enemy submarines was real and they were hiding all around the many islands. Still, the American moral was very good.

Claude Bufford Shaw grew up around Carson Lake [Annotator's Note: Carson Lake, Arkansas] until he was about 11 years old. As he got older, he expected to go into farming like his father, until he came across a contest in the Press-Scimitar [Annotator's Note: the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper, Memphis Tennessee]. The Great Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945] affected everybody financially, so he didn't find his life that different from anybody else's. In the eleventh grade he was elected vice-president of the Future Farmers of America, which would have pushed him into running a farm; but entering and winning the newspaper contest changed everything. For the competition, he had to write an essay. He went to Memphis, all expenses paid. He was awarded a two-year scholarship to Stanton [Annotator's Note: Stanton University, Garden Grove, California]. The commandant of the school was a full colonel in the Army, named Alexander Patch [Annotator's Note: later US Army General Alexander McCarrell Patch]. Shaw attended that school for his eleventh and twelfth grades. The opportunity that resulted from answering an ad in the Sunday paper meant he got to do things that, as a poor boy, he would never have been able to do. He played football and excelled in marksmanship. His marks were good, and after he graduated, he was eligible for Annapolis [Annotator's Note: the United States Naval Academy in Maryland].

Life at the Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland] was very good, and Claude Bufford Shaw did well academically. He also learned skills that readied him to be an officer. In summertime, he went on training cruises and had opportunities to travel to Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], London [Annotator's Note: London, England], and New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. At the Academy he made the choice to join the Navy. Today, the education at the Naval Academy has changed to include modern technical studies, but much remains the same. He was in school there when, on 7 December 1941, he heard about the Japanese attack on the United States [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. It was a Sunday, and there were no classes that day, but it was clear to him that he would be going to war after he graduated on 13 December. Going aboard his first ship, he liked what he saw. A typical day aboard ship included training his crew in things he had learned from those that went before him. Shaw felt Chiefs were most important, and he recalled one old, tobacco-chewing Chief who gave him good leadership advice.

After serving aboard the Walke [Annotator's Note: USS Walke DD-4156)], Claude Bufford Shaw was assigned to the Bullard [Annotator's Note: USS Bullard (DD-660)], a new destroyer. He reported to the shipyard in New York [Annotator's Note: Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York, New York] where the ship was being constructed, saw it through its commissioning in Norfolk, Virginia, and took off for the Pacific. The Bullard had more guns and more crew than the Walke. He was glad to be at sea again. He was sent on a mission when President Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] was making the first ever trip by a President by air to Europe. The Navy men wondered what their function would be, and it turned out that several ships were positioned in the Atlantic, along the route the president was going to fly, to be at the ready in case his plane went down. Shaw's ship was positioned off the coast of Newfoundland to cover the initial portion of the route. A freak storm came up, and Shaw had to keep the ship afloat. This ship was the Basilone [Annotator's Note: USS Basilone (DDE-824)], his biggest destroyer. Later, aboard the Bullard, he was the gunnery officer and, as such, his responsibilities included all the matters of shipboard ordnance. The Bullard was armed with five five-inch guns [Annotator's Note: five inch 38 caliber naval gun]. The next ship he got, the Basilone, had five twin-mount five-inch guns. During the war in the Pacific, the Bullard screened carrier strikes, but also supported several invasions, including Guam [Annotator's Note: Second Battle of Guam, 21 July to 10 August 1944; Guam, Mariana Islands] and Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945; Iwo Jima, Japan]. While he was in the Pacific, he was always up on the events in wartime Europe. As far as the Navy was concerned, that was a different kind of war. He was married in October 1944. He does not feel that his marriage made him more cautious when he went back to sea.

As the United States Armed Forces got closer to Japan, Claude Bufford Shaw felt more vindicated for the loss of his first ship [Annotator's Note: the USS Walke (DD-416)]. When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945 [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945], he was in the Pacific. He was in Tokyo Bay for the signing of the formal documents [Annotator's Note: Surrender ceremony; 2 September 1945 aboard USS Missouri (BB-63), Tokyo Bay, Japan], and the ceremony was very nice. Soon after that, his ship was assigned to a dock space, and it would go in and out on patrol. They didn't know if there would be any uprisings, although they knew the Japanese were capable. After the Japanese surrendered, it was all over. He first went ashore in Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan]. When he looked carefully, he could see people peering out of their windows, but they tried not to let themselves be seen. The American sailors were not allowed to carry firearms. Japanese guns, rifles and swords were brought to great piles, and a lot of them were dumped into the sea. Shaw kept a sword. The Japanese were frightened of the Americans. Even once they realized the Americans were not going to brutalize them, they were still distant. Communication was done through the native leaders. Shaw's trips ashore were just for curiosity. He was commanding the Richardson [Annotator's Note: USS General W. P. Richardson (AP-118)] at the time. He had assignments at various Japanese ports. He saw the atomic bomb sites [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945]. They looked rather sparse.

Claude Bufford Shaw didn't come immediately back to the United States when the war ended as he was making a career of the Navy. When the decommissioning of ships commenced, Shaw took an onshore job as a football coach at the Naval Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland]. During the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953], Shaw trained a Japanese crew for the Maritime Defense Force. After years of fighting the Japanese, he found himself training Japanese sailors to take over an American vessel. Shaw said they worked hard and wanted to do a good job. He was on the Basilone [Annotator's Note: USS Basilone (DDE-824)] at the time. Years later he was the naval base commander at Sasebo [Annotator's Note: Sasebo Naval Base, Sasebo, Japan] when the ship was turned back over to the United States Navy.

Claude Bufford Shaw was in the Navy from July 1938 until his discharge in 1972, when he retired at the rank of Captain. Shaw doesn't think the war changed his life, but it did have an influence on his values. He thinks he learned some things that were worthwhile, including how to work with many kinds of people, in various branches of the Armed Services, and in numerous locations around the country and the world. He believes it is important that there be a National World War 2 Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and that they continue to teach the younger generations about the events of the war. He feels the young people of today need to know what's right and what's wrong. He added that he liked the path that began with the Press-Scimitar [Annotator's Note: the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper, Memphis Tennessee] contest, which enabled him to do a good job.