James is Assigned to a Destroyer, the USS Stormes (DD-780)

James finds out that he has been assigned the USS Stormes (DD-780), and on September 26th, he boards her while she’s in dry dock in San Francisco. The Stormes is a destroyer and had just taken a direct hit from a kamikaze on May 25th, 1945, which killed 21 of her crew members and injured 15 more. She had made it back to San Francisco and was undergoing repairs when James arrived.