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Hospital, Home and the Years After the War, 1944 to 1953

Hospital and Home, 1944 to 1945

Two days after the sinking, on 26 October 1944, Anthony was received aboard USS LST-464, a special medical unit, “for treatment.” That same day he was transferred to USS LST-1026 “for further treatment”. The record proves that he was treated as a casualty, but not what his injury was. LST-464 was the only tank landing ship (LST) of the war rebuilt as a floating hospital. She had been refitted at Sydney in 1943, with the tank deck turned into wards, an operating room, an x-ray room, a laboratory and a pharmacy, and she held the Seventh Fleet’s blood bank. Six doctors, a dentist and thirty-five corpsmen staffed her, and on her busiest day of the campaign, 12 November 1944, she took in 137 casualties from three ships hit by kamikazes. She carried no troops or cargo, but she still looked like any other LST and was marked only by her hull number, painted six feet high amidships, so she had no protection as a hospital ship under the Geneva Convention. LST-1026 was an ordinary tank landing ship. Most likely she was carrying casualties toward a larger hospital, but no record says where she took him.

His discharge is the only record of the rest of the journey. It places him next at the Receiving Ship at San Francisco and then at the Naval Hospital at Oakland, without dates. He was discharged from the hospital on 28 February 1945, four months after the sinking, with a Navy medical captain signing as the officer in command. His character of service was “excellent,” his final average 3.5, and his marital status “married.” A medical note, citing an order of the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery dated 12 January 1945, declared him physically fit for discharge. The note fits a medical discharge but does not prove one. He received $78 a month in pay and a travel allowance of $207.32 from Oakland to Philadelphia. The certificate describes him as 5 feet 8½ inches tall and 165 pounds, with a ruddy complexion and brown eyes and hair. Its list of identifying marks is partly unreadable but seems to name marks on the right side of the abdomen, a 3½-inch mark on the right index finger, and marks on the back. The abdomen mark is probably the appendectomy scar of his 1942 draft card. Whether the others came before the war or from the sinking is not known.

The family remembers that after the ship went down, Anthony suffered hysterical blindness, a sudden loss of sight from shock with no injury to the eyes, before he was able to come home. Army and Navy doctors of the Second World War recorded such reactions, including sudden blindness, among men who had been through combat and shipwreck. His transfer to a medical ship within two days of the sinking shows that he needed care, but no Navy record names a diagnosis.

The Years After the War

The marriage of 1941 did not last. Anthony and Teresa had two daughters.

Living family members are not shown.

On 4 April 1950 Teresa, 24, a waitress in a restaurant, was living in Philadelphia in the household of her father, William McCafferty, 59, with her two daughters, 7 and 5. The census wrote the family name as “Squitieri,” and Teresa’s marital status appears to be “separated,” though the mark is hard to read. Eight days later, on 12 April, Anthony, 29, was living with his sister Gloria’s family at 1031 Watkins Street, also entered as separated. He worked forty hours a week as a mechanic for a washing-machine repair company, continuing the trade of his Maytag days. The family remembers a divorce and an agreement over the custody of the children, though no record of either is known. The divorce fell between April 1950 and Anthony’s second marriage in 1953. Teresa’s next child was born in September 1951, so in practice the marriage had ended by late 1950.

Teresa’s second husband was Louis L. LaPalombara, Sr. Her obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer calls her Teresa M. LaPalombara, née McCafferty, his widow, and names five children, the two daughters of her first marriage and three of the second. Louis was probably the Louis Luco La Palombara born at Philadelphia on 6 July 1923, who registered for the draft there on 30 June 1942, and the Louis L. La Palombara, born the same day, who died in Bucks County on 1 March 1994. That man’s Social Security record names his parents as Rocco Lapalombaro and Anna. Louise Ann, born at Philadelphia to “Louis and Theresa Lapalombara” on 22 September 1951, who died in 2019, is probably theirs. By October 1956 Teresa was probably living at Yardley, in Bucks County. She died in Bucks County on 23 October 2004, and her Social Security record names her parents as William McCafferty and Mary Cullen, which ties her married name to her maiden name. The obituary does not say whether her two eldest daughters used the name Squitiere or LaPalombara as they grew up, and the younger daughter’s married name is not recorded.

Gloria and Anthony Prosperi lived at 1031 Watkins Street in 1950. He was 28 and a tailor in a department store. Gloria was 28, and the census entered her mother as born in the United States. They had a son, 6, and a daughter, 2, and her brother Anthony lived with them. Gloria died in November 1983. Anthony Prosperi’s death is in the Pennsylvania death-certificate index, so he probably died before her.