The early afternoon, we talked to keep him sharp for his 2:00 meeting. He found his war medals, in a bag from the gift shop at the naval academy, from his pre-heart attack east coast trip. He explained each one to me. The top one is a Presidential Navy Unit Citation (from Truman), for operations of 4 carriers combined operations in Korea (the Essex, Boxer, Philipine Sea, and the Von Homme Richard). Each row is 3 separate medals.

The 3 stars on the magenenta is a personal decoration - good conduct award. The yellow with the A is the America Defense Medal for pre-war operations in the Atlantic, including the invasion of Iceland, and the occupation of Argentia Bay, Newfoundland. The last one in this row, with 2 stars is the Afrtican / Euopean Theatre. Each star is a campaign. These were from 1942, the first campaign escorted convoys Murmansk, Russia and included operations with the British Home Fleet. The second campaign included the Bombardment of Casablanca, French Morocco, and fleet action off of Africa, which sunk a French cruiser and damaged the French battleship Jean Bart, which was later repaired in Philadelphia navy yard, and saw action in the Pacific.

The next row starts with the Asia / Pacific Theater and what appears to be 4 stars, 2 black surrounding 2 silver stars. It turns out that a silver star means 5 black ones, so this represents 12 campaigns in the Pacific. He thinks there were actually 2 more. These were carried out on the USS Wichata (heavy cruiser numbered 45), the USS Minneapolis (heavy cruiser 36) and the USS San Francisco (heavy cruiser 38), all of which had 8" guns. The campaigns included Guadalcanal, the retaking of the Alutian Islands, Bombartment of Wake Island, the Central Pacific campaign (Marshall islands, Gilbert, and Makin Islands), Occupation of the Gilberts, Eniweitok, the New Guinea Campaign, Leyte Campaing, the Liberation of the Phillipines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. All packed into those 2 silver and 5 black stars. The center medal on the second row is the Victory in WWII medal. The third one on this row is for the occupation of Japan.

The next row starts with the occupation of China, the center is Korea, and the right (with two stars) is the United Nations.

The bottom row is medals from other countries, the first being the United Nations, the second from the Philipine government for the liberation of the Philipines, and the last is from Korea.
While I was writing all this down, Charlie was finishing a Crossword Puzzle.