By Deborah Larsen
Orison James Bullard, Jr.
Orison James Bullard, Jr. was born in Greenfield Township, Michigan, on October 25, 1923, the son of Orison James and Clara Ranger Bullard. Before the war, he was working in a family business in Detroit, but his mother moved to Parkdale Road in Rochester after Orison entered the service.
Orison entered the U.S. Army in December 1942 and was assigned to the Corps of Engineers. He was a member of the 853rd Engineer Battalion, which was sent to India to build landing strips.
On November 26, 1943, Orison and his unit were among more than 2,000 U.S. servicemen traveling through the Mediterranean Sea aboard the British troop ship HMT Rohna. The Rohna was located off the coast of Tunisia when it was attacked by a Luftwaffe bomber with a radio-guided glide bomb, killing 1,015 of the men aboard, including 20-year-old Orison Bullard. The event was the largest loss of U.S. troops at sea in a single incident.
Orison’s mother in Rochester was notified that he was missing in action in January 1944. He was officially declared dead on May 5, 1944, one of 28 Michigan men killed aboard the Rohna.
Orison Bullard was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. His remains were determined to be unrecoverable, and so he is named on the Tablets of the Missing at North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Tunisia. A cenotaph in Arlington National Cemetery also memorializes him.