Joe Poitevin, who built three Ketchum lumber yards for Anderson Lumber Co. while living here from 1965 to 1976, died Saturday at his home in Ogden, Utah. He was 87.
Poitevin's family had been involved in the lumber business in Idaho Falls since 1910. In 1965 he was dispatched by Anderson Lumber president Roy Anderson to build a lumber yard in the tiny city of Ketchum, which was on the verge of a real estate and construction boom that started in the mid 1970s and early 1980s.
"I'd been to Ketchum, and I remembered the little sign at the edge of town said it had only 600 people. So I asked him (Anderson) if he really wanted to start a lumber yard in such a small town," Poitevin said in a 2001 interview with the Idaho Mountain Express.
"'Never mind,' he told me, 'you're going to get over there and do well,'" Poitevin recalled.
Poitevin built the first Anderson Lumber office and yard at Washington Avenue and Second Street in downtown Ketchum. Today, Business as Usual is housed in the original Anderson Lumber building that dates back 40 years.
Anderson Lumber moved to its Warm Springs Road location, now occupied by Stock Building Supply, in 1971. That lumberyard was destroyed by fire in 1972, and then rebuilt.
Poitevin, a gunnery officer on the USS Craven in the South Pacific from 1943 to 1945, took part in the Battle of Vella Gulf, a watershed American success story that turned the tide of the South Pacific campaign of World War II during August 1943.
The Battle of Vella Gulf in the Solomon Islands has been called by historians "the most perfect torpedo attack in U.S. naval history." For years it was required study at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
It was a major steppingstone in the Solomon Islands campaign that snapped the logistical backbone of the Japanese Navy during World War II.
He was the father of Martha Poitevin Page, chairman of the board of Express Publishing Co., which publishes the Idaho Mountain Express and a number of local magazines. Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Dodie, four children and numerous grandchildren, including Allison Page, the business and administrative assistant of the Mountain Express.
A 1937 graduate of Idaho Falls High School, Poitevin graduated from the University of Washington in 1942 and entered the U.S. Navy. He met his future wife while at gunnery school in San Diego, Calif. He was discharged with the rank of first lieutenant in 1946.
Poitevin retired in 1982 from Anderson Lumber as director of personnel in the company's Ogden office. He was an active member and past chairman of the USS Craven Reunion Association, which started its annual reunions in 1988.
Funeral services are today in Ogden.
Published July 4, 2001, the Express feature story about Poitevin's life and The Battle of Vella Gulf is reproduced on today's Express Web site.
A moonless night in Vella Gulf: One man's war
Joe Poitevin remembers a watershed battle, 58 years ago
"Listen to the jingle,
The rumble and the roar
As she glides amongst the islands
Through the lagoons and the shores.
Hear the rush of those mighty engines;
Hear that lonesome sailor call,
While slicing through the Pacific
On the Craven Cannon Ball."
--from "The Salty C" yearbook, published in 1944
By JEFF CORDES
Express Staff Writer
Joe Poitevin was a 22-year-old University of Washington senior when the startling news broke about Pearl Harbor. It was a Sunday in December 1941 and the lanky young man from Idaho Falls was skiing.
"We were halfway up Mount Rainier. There weren't any ski lifts in those days. We just put on our climbers and climbed up," said Poitevin recently, recalling the fateful day from a distance of nearly 60 years.
He said, "On the way down we stopped and talked to some other guys who were climbing. They said they had heard over the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
"We looked at each other and I can remember saying that's the craziest story I've ever heard. The Japanese would never have bombed Pearl Harbor. But that's all we heard all the way home, on the radio."
With their lives irrevocably changed in an instant, Poitevin and his friends got back to school and immediately started planning their futures. They would serve their country. What branch of the military and when to enter the service were big questions.
Millions of Americans, just like Joe Poitevin, answered the call to duty at the dawn of World War II.
Many died in wartime, and many more lived. Their service and the lives they built after the war have largely made the United States what it is today, at Independence Day 2001.
A Ketchum resident from 1965-76, Poitevin now lives in retirement in Ogden, Utah, with his wife of 55 years, Dodie. Remarkably fit and trim at 81, a twice-weekly golfer, Poitevin has a remarkable story to tell.
It's a story about the destroyer USS Craven and how it played a major role in the Battle Of Vella Gulf, a watershed American success story that turned the tide of the South Pacific campaign in August 1943.
The Battle of Vella Gulf has been called by historians "the most perfect torpedo attack in U.S. naval history." For years it was required study at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Poitevin was a gunnery officer on the USS Craven at Vella Gulf.
Aboard from April 15, 1943 to Sept. 5, 1945, he spent two years, four months and 20 days on the "Salty C." The ship was blessed with good men and even better luck in its nine years of service, from launching in 1937 to scrapping in 1946.
The war gave Poitevin the rest of his life, including a bride, whom he met during his time at gunnery school in San Diego in 1942. And Dodie gave him four children. The family came to Ketchum and Joe built three lumberyards for a city on the cusp of a real estate and construction boom.
So much, emanating from chance. So much, springing directly from dogged American determination. So much of our history, arising from a day of infamy in Pearl Harbor and hard-won victories like Vella Gulf.
"Vella Gulf was the first time the Navy had a significant victory in a major battle," said Poitevin about the events of Aug. 6, 1943, when American torpedoes sank three Japanese destroyers and killed 1,500 Japanese. There were no American casualties.
"Because it was so decisive, a demonstration of what destroyers could do in combat, it pumped up the rest of the Navy," Poitevin said.
It helped the U.S. Pacific Fleet finally establish superiority over the enemy in night surface action—an area in which the Japanese with its deadly torpedoes had dominated the Allies in the early days of the war.
A 90-day wonder
World War II was an interruption for young men from small towns. What they were doing before the war, they did after. For Poitevin, second oldest of six children, it was the lumber business.
Poitevin's family had been involved in the East Side Lumber Co. in Idaho Falls since 1910. His father operated a retail lumberyard there.
Joe sold nails in the store as a teenager during the Depression. He graduated from Idaho Falls High School in 1937 and pursued a business degree at the University of Washington. Joe's dad died during his junior year. Then Pearl Harbor hit.
At first Poitevin liked the idea of serving in the Air Force, but they wanted him right away—and Joe was just six months away from graduation and a college degree.
"The Air Force couldn't guarantee that I'd be able to graduate. The Navy could," he said.
He enlisted in the Navy's V7 officer candidate program, which allowed him to graduate from UW in Seattle in June 1942. Poitevin took a train to New York City and went to Midshipman's School at Columbia University from August through December 1942.
Those were some of the darkest days of the war.
The American military was hastily fortifying itself after Pearl Harbor, in armaments, ships, planes and men. It needed officers, quickly. After three months at Columbia, he earned the same commission given to ensigns who had gone to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis for four years.
"They called us '90-day wonders,'" said Poitevin.
When confronted with a choice of vessels, Poitevin chose destroyers because he preferred a smaller ship with a more informal atmosphere. A small crew meant much individual responsibility. The destroyers were sleek, moved fast and were highly maneuverable. He liked the idea.
It was closer quarters in wartime.
For instance, the USS Craven's peacetime comple-ment was eight officers and 150 crew. In 1944, its heaviest year of action, the Craven's complement was 19 officers, 13 chiefs and 248 crew. The ship was about a football field in length.
The Navy assigned Poitevin to the destroyer gunnery division and sent him to a six-week gunnery school in San Diego. For a Navy man, San Diego has always been a good place to learn a lot about worldly things.
He met a local named Dodie Gregory, who had been a UCLA student when Pearl Harbor broke. She was working in surplus naval material disposal. It was New Year's Eve, hours away from 1943, and they ended up at the same party.
"You know, I never saw him out of uniform until we'd been married for six months," said Dodie recently, looking with affection at her husband, the same man who'd had the audacity to ask for a date on New Year's Eve.
They were married in October 1945, and he was discharged in May 1946.
But first, there was a war going on in the Solomon Islands off Australia.
Dark days, small victories
Pearl Harbor was such a devastating defeat that it took Allied forces nearly two years to regroup and take the offensive in the Pacific War.
The Battle of Midway in June 1942 and Battle of Guadalcanal from August 1942 through early 1943 were steps in the right direction. But by no means was victory assured.
"When the war started, the U.S. Navy was ill-equipped with ships, equipment and men," said Poitevin. "There were 16 Gridley-class destroyers built from 1937 to 1940 but other than those, we only had World War I destroyers. By the end of the war, though, we had 800 destroyers."
"We knew there was new stuff coming out. But it was touch-and-go in 1942 and early 1943. Because we didn't have many destroyers, when we lost one it was a major loss."
On Nov. 13, 1942 the Navy lost five destroyers during the bloody Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. It was the worst day's loss of destroyers in the Navy's history. By Dec. 1, 1942, the toll was 25 destroyers lost since Pearl Harbor.
"In the first year after the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, morale was low," Poitevin said. "The war in the Solomon Islands was a delaying action until the Navy got re-equipped."
But it was more than that. The Solomons became vitally important as a proving ground and staging area.
The near-complete destruction of U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor had altered the strategy of the naval war in the Southwest Pacific.
"Battleships took such a hit that the U.S. strategy changed to focus on task forces with several aircraft carriers—and destroyers running screen," he said.
"Aircraft carriers became the centerpiece of the task forces. We always had four, five or six destroyers traveling ahead, fanning out and using sonar to detect submarines," Poitevin said. "Eventually the task forces got bigger and became more effective."
Invading Japanese captured the Philippines in 1942 and forced Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of American forces in the Philippines, to escape to Australia. Subsequently the Solomons became critical to MacArthur's goal of retaking the Philippines on the road to victory in Tokyo.
The Allies needed to crack Bismarck's Barrier, a formidable obstacle of Japanese air and naval bases on small islands dotting the Bismarck Archipelago off New Guinea.
At the same time, the Japanese sought to extend that defensive perimeter into the Solomons. Pushed off Guadalcanal by the U.S. Marines, they fell back and fortified another, nearby Solomon island, New Georgia. The Japanese weren't going away.
By the summer of 1943, however, the Japanese Navy was winning.
They gave better than they got. The general opinion was the Japanese had better torpedoes than did the United States, although Allied gunnery was judged as superior. Performance of American torpedoes had been miserable.
The destroyers had scarcely used their torpedoes. In fight after fight destroyers had been used for escort, anti-submarine warfare and protection of cruisers, instead of being sent on independent missions for torpedo attacks. U.S. destroyer men had been clamoring to be cut loose and used.
"Usually we didn't get close enough for torpedoes to be used," said Poitevin. "We were mostly escorting ships around, doing troop transport."
So was the enemy.
The Japanese established a formidable garrison on Kolombangara, an island in the mid-Solomons on the edge of Vella Gulf. They ran transports with fresh troops and supplies to Kolombangara three times in 12 days—July 19, July 22 and Aug. 1.
The transports were nicknamed "The Tokyo Express," by the Allies.
Nothing stood in their way except Allied PT motor torpedo boats, which "Tokyo Express" destroyers brushed away like bothersome bugs. In fact, Lt. John F. Kennedy's PT-109 had been sliced in half by the retiring Japanese destroyer Amagiri on Aug. 1, just five days before Vella Gulf.
Somewhat complacent, the Japanese Command concluded that Allied torpedo boat patrols weren't a big danger to large warships. The enemy didn't expect to encounter Allied destroyers, especially at night.
Filled with 1,000 troops and 55 tons of supplies, "The Tokyo Express," with its four, modern and first-rate ships headed into the Vella Gulf, bound for Kolombangara, on the evening of Aug. 6, 1943.
Strategically, it didn't seem to matter to the Japanese that it was the fourth time in three weeks they had taken the same route. They underestimated the Allies, a fatal mistake.
They didn't see the six U.S. destroyers until it was too late.
The Battle of Vella Gulf
Shipped from San Diego to New Zealand after the New Year, Poitevin and six other "90-day wonder" ensigns joined the USS Craven in New Caledonia on April 16, 1943.
"You guys might have been a little better trained, but we'll take you," Poitevin recalled his new shipmates saying when they greeted the reinforcements, in typical Navy style.
The USS Craven had lived a charmed life early in World War II.
Escorting the carrier Enterprise in delivering troops and planes to Guam and Wake Island, it had been delayed by heavy seas on Dec. 7, 1941—just 50 miles out of Pearl Harbor.
"They had been due in Pearl Harbor Dec. 6, but because of the storms and strong head winds they had to slow down because the destroyers couldn't keep up," said Poitevin.
During the costly Naval Battle of Guadalcanal when many destroyers were lost in 1942, the USS Craven was in Pearl Harbor, ready to steam off for the Fiji Islands with a task force headed by the carrier Saratoga.
When he came aboard, Poitevin was assistant gunnery officer, in charge of one of the Craven's 20mm anti-aircraft batteries. The ship carried 16 torpedoes carried in four quadruple torpedo mounts. It had eight guns, four of them five-inchers.
The torpedo battery on Gridley-class destroyers such as the Craven was the largest carried in the Navy. By Vella Gulf, the 21-inch diameter, 2,200-pound "tin fish" had been improved with flashless powder and flash hiders—effective in night war.
The torpedoes traveled fast and close to the surface, at 46 knots for a run of 4,500 yards. Still, they needed the element of surprise to succeed.
On Aug. 6, the surprise was there. And the mission was clear—to intercept the four Japanese destroyers.
"We had these coast watchers, many of them Australian," said Poitevin. "They'd sit there at night and watch the Japanese ship movements. It was because of coast watchers that we got the information that Japanese ships were coming down loaded with troops and supplies."
Newly assigned Rear Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson, short of undamaged cruisers, gave Strike Force leader Frederick Moosbrugger six destroyers and the freedom to use them in offensive action.
USS Craven, Dunlap and Maury formed the group assigned with striking first with torpedoes, since the other division with Lang, Sterett and Stack had lost half their original torpedo complement for 40mm guns.
They left Purvis Bay at 11:30 a.m. At 9 p.m., they manned battle stations. At 11:30 p.m., the leading ship Dunlap made radio contact with the fast-moving Japanese "Tokyo Express" of leading ship Hagikaze, Arashi, Kawakaze and Shigure, now eight miles off Kolombangara.
"Everybody was pretty tense and on full alert. The anticipation was great," said Poitevin. "But we'd been preparing for it a long time. The feeling was we wanted to get a chance to show what we could do."
Good fortune favored the Yanks.
It was a moonless night, black as could be, with visibility restricted to just one mile, and a calm sea after rain squalls earlier in the evening. Allied destroyers hugged the coastline of Kolombangara, making them invisible to the naked eye.
"We snuck up on them," Poitevin said. "The fact that we were so close in to the island was the thing that saved us. We fired our torpedoes, and they never saw us."
Within 30 minutes the destruction would be complete.
At 11:40 p.m. Moosbrugger gave the order to fire. Craven, Dunlap and Maury each fired eight torpedoes at three-second intervals, from ranges of 4,300 to 4,800 yards. They ran five feet below the surface, at 36 knots, striking their targets in four minutes.
The four minutes seemed an eternity to the Americans.
"They were just huge explosions," said Poitevin, watching from the deck. There were brilliant flashes over the horizon. PT sailors in Kula Gulf 28 miles away saw the loom of flame and thought Kolombangara's volcano must have blown its top.
On the U.S. strike force destroyers, the sailors broke into cheers. Seven of the 24 torpedoes had hit their marks, an impressive number.
Hit in the fireroom, Hagikaze, the lead ship, exploded and went down in minutes. Kawakaze, the replacement for Amagiri, damaged in the collision with Kennedy's PT-109, received a tin fish in the magazine and capsized soon after. Arashi blew up and sank at 12:10 a.m.
Final toll—three destroyers down.
Tameichi Hara, skipper of Shigure who had been skeptical about that night's "Express", turned tail for Bougainville instead of helping the Japanese survivors in the water. The U.S. ships tried to rescue the survivors, but most took their own lives rather than become prisoners of war.
Stunned by the attack, the Japanese had fired only two or three shots and one torpedo. Some 1,500 soldiers and sailors perished. In contrast, a gun loader on the Lang crushed his hand—the only American casualty. The only Allied damage was a broken-down feed pump on the Maury.
"By the crack of dawn, we were back at Purvis Bay," said Poitevin. "Nobody slept all night. Everybody was hyper. It lasted until morning."
The battle was catastrophic for the Japanese. They had never been beaten in night torpedo action in 20 months of war. Within a week they concluded Kolombangara could not be held.
With Hara and the rest of the Shigure crew still alive to tell the tale, the Japanese had been taught, finally, to respect American torpedo fire.
"It was a shot in the arm. We were starting to get more ships and starting to think—we can do this," said Poitevin. "Vella Gulf was the first time the Navy had a significant win in a major battle."
The battle was a major stepping stone in the Solomon Islands campaign, which snapped the logistical backbone of the Japanese Navy.
The USS Craven further distinguished itself in the South Pacific, particularly in 1944, when it earned battle stars for its part in the capture of Saipan and Guam, and the Battle of the Philippine Sea.
By October 1944, the destroyer was back in Pearl Harbor, its combat role mostly done. In May 1945, when Germany surrendered on VE-Day, USS Craven was in the middle of the Atlantic. Peacekeeping duties followed in the Mediterranean, then it was decommissioned in April 1946.
Having sailed 427,434 miles in nine years of service, the Craven had fired only eight torpedoes in combat, all during the Battle of Vella Gulf.
Poitevin left the ship as gunnery officer in September 1945, at Marseilles, France, and headed for duty in the United States. His first personal duty was getting married, in October 1945. In May 1946, he was discharged with the rank of first lieutenant.
Building a life
World War II soldiers and sailors celebrated and got back to work.
After the war, Poitevin returned to Idaho Falls with his wife and started raising his family. He worked as a salesman for Bennett Glass & Paint Co. for two years. Another two years was spent operating an ice cream business in Idaho Falls.
Poitevin and his younger brother Dick, a U.S. Army paratrooper who served in Europe, took over the family lumber business and changed the name to Poitevin Lumber Co. They ran it for 12 years and then sold it to Anderson Lumber Co.
"I went to work for Anderson Lumber in Idaho Falls for a year and a half," Poitevin said. "One day, the president, Roy Anderson, came into the store and said he wanted to start a lumber yard in Ketchum.
"Well, I'd been to Ketchum, and I remembered the little sign at the edge of town said it had only 600 people, so I asked him if he really wanted to start a lumber yard in such a small town. Never mind, he said, you're going to get over there and do well."
The Poitevins moved to Ketchum in 1965. He built the first Anderson Lumber yard at Washington Avenue and Second Street, across from the IOOF Hall. The original building still stands, housing Business as Usual. The building where Magic Lantern Cinema is located was the lumber yard.
When they arrived, oldest son John was attending the University of Washington. Martha was a freshman at the University of Idaho, soon to transfer to Berkeley. Jane was a sophomore in high school and Greg was an eighth grader and avid skier.
Martha Poitevin returned to Ketchum after graduating from Berkeley and co-founded the Idaho Mountain Express. She served on the Ketchum City Council and was the editor of this newspaper before handing the reins to current editor Pam Morris in 1980. She lives with her family in Indianapolis, Ind.
Joe Poitevin ended up building three lumber yards in seven years.
Anderson Lumber moved to its current location on Warm Springs Road in 1971. The lumber yard was destroyed by fire in 1972 then rebuilt.
Joe and Dodie left Ketchum in 1976 and moved to Anderson Lumber's main headquarters in Ogden, where he was director of personnel before retiring in 1982.
It's been a good life, one made better by USS Craven reunions that started in 1988. Of 13 reunions, the Poitevins have attended all but three.
For the first reunion, at Sioux Falls, S.D., 200 USS Craven veterans were contacted and 90 showed up. Only 35 Craven vets attend now. "People are dying off," Poitevin said.
This year's reunion will be in October in San Antonio. Next year, the 2002 Winter Olympic year in Utah, the 15th USS Craven reunion will be held in Salt Lake City. The chairman is Poitevin, who lives close to the Snowbasin Olympic skiing site.
"We share a lot of memories, mainly because we were together at a very busy and exciting time of our lives," Poitevin said.
Editor's note: Most of the information for this story came from the recollections of Joe Poitevin. Some came from historical accounts by the USS Craven Reunion Association, some from the actual ship's log from 1937-46, and also official war reports by Vincent P. O'Hara and Samuel Eliot Morrison.
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Lt. Joe Poitevin, gunnery officer of the USS Craven, in this 1944 photo published in the destroyer?s ?Salty C? yearbook.
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Joe Poitevin, shown here at his Ogden home in 2001, was a proud member of the Ogden Country Club and USS Craven Reunion Association.
