White House Issued Navy Congressional Medal of Honor Citation Letter (inscribed "THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON / The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR posthumously to FIRST LIEUTENANT WILLIAM D. HAWKINS, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE, for service as set forth in the following / CITATION: / "For valorous and gallant conduct above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of a Scout Sniper Platoon attached to the Second Marines, Second Marine Division, in action against Japanese-held Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, November 20 and 21, 1943. The first to disembark from the jeep lighter, First Lieutenant Hawkins unhesitatingly moved forward under heavy enemy fire at the end of the Betio pier, neutralizing emplacements in coverage of troops assaulting the main beach positions. Fearlessly leading his men on to join the forces fighting desperately to gain a beachhead, he repeatedly risked his life throughout the day and night to direct and lead attacks on pillboxes and installations with grenades and demolitions. At dawn on the following day, First Lieutenant Hawkins returned to the dangerous mission of clearing the limited beachhead of Japanese resistance, personally initiating an assault on a hostile position fortified by five enemy machine guns and, crawling forward in the face of withering fire, boldly fired point-blank into the loopholes and completed the destruction with grenades. Refusing to withdraw after being seriously wounded in the chest during this skirmish, First Lieutenant Hawkins steadfastly carried the fight to the enemy, destroying three more pillboxes before he was caught in a burst of Japanese shell fire and mortally wounded. His relentless fighting spirit in the face of formidable opposition and his exceptionally daring tactics were an inspiration to his comrades during the most crucial phase of the battle and reflect the highest credit upon the United States Naval Service.
He gallantly gave his life for his country.", signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, printed in black ink on a white paper stock, under glass, in a 188 mm (w) x 296 mm (h) black wooden frame); and his Purple Heart Award Certificate (inscribed "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING: / THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PURSUANT TO AUTHORITY VESTED IN HIM BY CONGRESS HAS AWARDED THE PURPLE HEART ESTABLISHED BY GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON AT NEWBURGH, NEW YORK, AUGUST 7, 1782 TO First Lieutenant William D. Hawkins, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve FOR MILITARY MERIT AND FOR WOUNDS RECEIVED IN ACTION resulting in his death, GIVEN UNDER MY HAND IN THE CITY OF WASHINGTON THIS 4th DAY OF January 1944", signed by Lieutenant General/The Commandant, Alexander Archer Vandegrift, United States Marine Corps and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, printed in black, red, green, purple and gold inks on a thick off-white paper stock, under glass, in a 377 mm (w) x 300 mm (h) black plastic frame). Accompanied by a Duotang Binder containing: twelve photographs in black and white with a gloss finish (one illustrating Hawkins in uniform, tagline "William D. Hawkins, Spring 1942" affixed to the reverse, measuring 128 mm (w) x 178 mm (h); eleven others showing Hawkins in his Captain's Uniform, Tarawa Lieutenant Commander Donald G. MacKinnon placing a wreath around Hawkins' grave cross on Tarawa, Hawkins' Grave Marker on Tarawa, two press photos of Battle Scenes on Tarawa, his mother Mrs. C. Jane Hawkins receiving her son's Medal of Honor and Purple Heart from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Commandant/General Alexander Archer Vandegrift USMC, two photos of his mother christening the USS Hawkins, two Generals Shaking Hands at the Dedication of Camp W.D. Hawkins in the mountains of western North Carolina, the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington Virginia, and a Marine Corps Immortals Document, measuring 254 mm (w) x 207 mm (h) each); one photograph in color with a gloss finish (illustrating the USS Hawkins at sea, tagline "The USS Hawkins. Named for William Dean Hawkins, MOH, Tarawa 1943.", measuring 253 mm (w) x 204 mm (h)); forty-two Modern Era color photographs with negatives (in various sizes); a Set of Twenty United States Marine Corps Photographs (black and white, gloss finish, each with a tagline describing the scene, issued by Official Photos Inc. of Hollywood, California, measuring 127 mm (w) x 103 mm (h) each); a Western Union Telegram (dated November 20, 1954, addressed to Mrs. C. Jane Hawkins of El Paso, Texas, inscribed "THIRTY OF US, ALL VETERANS OF TARAWA, MET TONIGHT AT THE HOME OF BRIGADIER GENERAL DAVID SHOUP AND SAID A PRAYER FOR THOSE IMMORTAL MEN, INCLUDING YOUR OWN GALLANT SON, WHOSE MEMORY WE REVERE ON THIS ELEVENTH ANNIVERSARY / LT GEN JULIAN C SMITH USMC RETIRED", measuring 203 mm (w) x 145 mm (h)); a Letter from the Veterans Administration, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii (dated June 24, 1976, addressed to Mrs. C. Jane Hawkins of El Paso, Texas, regarding the emplacement of special Medal of Honor monuments in commemoration of the National Bicentennial Year, in addition to a photo of the monument to her son, as she was unable to attend the ceremony, printed in black ink with typeset text, on a white paper stock, measuring 205 mm (w) x 290 mm (h)); a Poem Entitled "To The Portrait Of A Hero" (printed with raised text in black and brown inks, on a cream-colored card stock, measuring 174 mm (w) x 262 mm (h)); three Newspaper Articles, copies of various Newspaper Articles, along with assorted research papers and handwritten notes.
Footnote: William Deane Hawkins was born on April 19, 1914 in Fort Scott, Bourbon County, Kansas. His father was from Louisiana and his mother was the daughter of a Missouri doctor. He was a baby while the family was living in Los Angeles, California, when a neighbor, who was using the Hawkins' kitchen to do her washing, walked out a door and accidentally upset a can of scalding hot water over him when William, affectionately known by his middle name, Deane, ran into her. He suffered severe burns on a third of the surface of his body, over his arms, back, shoulder and a leg, scarring him for life. One of the baby's legs was drawn and an arm was crooked so that he could not straighten them. The doctors wanted to cut the muscles, but the boy's mother was not sure that was the proper solution. For a year she massaged the arm and leg every day for two or three hours. Finally, to the amazement of the doctors, the muscles repaired themselves. A year after he was burned, young Deane was cured and was learning to walk once more. When he was five, the Hawkins family were living in Kansas. They were en route to Phoenix, Arizona, when they stopped in El Paso, Texas, where his father, an insurance claim adjuster, was persuaded to settle. When Deane Hawkins was eight, his father died, His mother went to work, first as a secretary to the high school principal, then as a teacher of commercial subjects in El Paso Technical Institute. Deane's scars were always with him. By the time he was ten, he was a line swimmer, but one day he came home from the YMCA unhappy and brooding. "Aw, mom," he said, "I don't think I'm going to the Y anymore. When I take off my clothes, the kids all look and say, "Oh, look at Deane!" His mother reassured him. "Son, it's not your fault. You have nothing to be ashamed of." He went back to his swimming pool. William was an excellent student, skipping fifth grade at LaMar and Alta Vista Schools and graduating from El Paso High School when he was 16. He won a scholarship to the Texas College of Mines, where he studied engineering. After school and during summer vacations, he sold magazines and delivered newspapers. He was a bank messenger and he made photostats for an abstract company. He was also a ranch hand, a railroad hand, a bellhop. At 17, he met a hotel guest who told him laborers were needed to lay a pipeline in New Mexico. When he went to apply for a job in New Mexico, the hiring boss laughed: "Sonny, two-hundred-pound men are collapsing on this job." But he gave the kid a chance, Hawkins working twelve hours a day lifting, with the help of one full-grown man, four hundred-pound creosoted pipe. When he was 21, he went to Tacoma, Washington, to work in a dank, underground office, so unlike the Texas outdoors he was used to. He was married there and divorced. At 23, he was an engineer for a Los Angeles title-insurance company. He wanted to get into the Navy, to study aeronautical engineering and was always making plane models with doped cloth fuselages and rubber-hand power plants. However, he had no influence and knew of no congressman who would appoint him to the Naval Academy. Hawkins persuaded two friends, James Colley, later of the Marines, and William Abbott, later a Navy pilot, to enlist with him, with a view to taking the merit examination for Annapolis.
The two friends got into the Navy, Hawkins did not because of his scars. The recruiting chief said "I never hated to turn down anyone so much in all my life. You're the kind of boy the Navy wants." When he went home, he said to his mother "They made it. It was my idea and I didn't." When he was 18, he was employed by a railroad. He was working under a rail car when an engine bumped it. In scrambling from beneath the car, he dislocated a vertebra. When he took a physical examination before returning to work, the railroad doctor saw the scars and said "Nothing doing. You are not a good risk." After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he tried unsuccessfully to enter both the Army and the Navy Air Corps, but his scars prevented him from being accepted into either. However, he successfully enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve on January 5, 1942 and was assigned to the 7th Recruit Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego. Now, as a Marine, he joined the 2nd Marines, 2nd Marine Division, completed Scout Snipers' School at Camp Elliott, San Diego, and on July 1, 1942 embarked on board the USS Crescent City for the Pacific area. In the rank of Private First Class, he went overseas and was quickly promoted to Corporal, then to Sergeant. On November 17, 1942, Hawkins was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant while taking part in the Guadalcanal campaign in the Battle for the Solomons, followed on June 1, 1943 to his promotion to First Lieutenant. Before the Battle of Tarawa, Hawkins stated "You know, we're going in first. We are going to wipe every last one of the bastards off that pier and out from under that pier before they have a chance to pick off the first wave. But one man had to stay behind to take care of our equipment. I asked for volunteers. Not a man in the platoon would volunteer to stay. My men are not afraid." First Lieutenant William Deane Hawkins, Scout Sniper Platoon, Second Marine Division, United States Marine Corps Reserve was Killed in Action leading a scout-sniper platoon in the attack on Betio Island during the Battle of Tarawa, on November 21, 1943, at the age of 29. During the two-day assault, First Lieutenant Hawkins led attacks on pill boxes and installations, personally initiating an assault on a hostile position fortified by five enemy machine guns, refusing to withdraw after being seriously wounded, destroying three more pill boxes before he was mortally wounded on November 21, 1943. Robert Sherrod, then Editor of The Saturday Evening Post, wrote the following about the Marine platoon leader: "Hawkins had told me aboard the ship that he would put his platoon of men up against any company of soldiers on earth and guarantee to win. He was slightly wounded by shrapnel as he came ashore in the first wave, but the furthest thing from his mind was to be evacuated. He led his platoon into the forest of coconut palms. During a day and a half he personally cleaned out six Jap machine gun nests, sometimes standing on top of a track and firing point blank at four or five men who fired back at him from behind blockhouses. Lieutenant Hawkins was wounded a second time, but he still refused to retire. To say that his conduct was worthy of the highest traditions of the Marine Corps is like saying the Empire State Building is moderately high." Sherrof went on the state: "Anyone who has ever been in combat knows that it is almost impossible to grade bravery. Who can judge that one man who risks his life is more courageous than another? Who can say that a man is braver if he kills many of the enemy than if he lost his own life on the beach before he ever had a chance at the enemy? The effectiveness of acts of bravery is something else. By this standard, I would say that the bravest man I have seen in two years of the Pacific War was William Deane Hawkins. When the going was toughest, when it was touch and go whether the Marines would take Tarawa, the figure of "Hawk" loomed above all the others I saw. The inspiration he instilled into other men was the essence of heroism. Hawk killed a lot of Japs. One of his men told me he knew Hawk personally accounted for six enemy machine gun nests, but the example he furnished his own men, as well as the other Marines on our perilous beachhead, was, in my opinion, a deciding factor in the most violent battle we Americans have seen. One Colonel and one Lieutenant Colonel told me that Hawkins came as near winning a battle as any First Lieutenant ever did. The Scout and Sniper platoon consisted of troops chosen after Guadalcanal. They were, devoted to Hawkins, and he was to them. After Tarawa, his second-in-command, Gunnery Sergeant J. J. Hooper would later write to his mother, "Lieutenant Hawkins' job on Guadalcanal was leading patrols behind the enemy's lines to gather information concerning the enemy; this information materially helped to terminate that campaign. . . . The whole platoon wants you to know that Lieutenant Hawkins was the best officer we ever did duty with." For his actions above and beyond the call of duty, First Lieutenant Hawkins was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, his citation stating: "For valorous and gallant conduct above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of a Scout Sniper Platoon attached to the Second Marines, Second Marine Division, in action against Japanese-held Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, November 20 and 21, 1943. The first to disembark from the jeep lighter, First lieutenant Hawkins unhesitatingly moved forward under heavy enemy fire at the end of the Betio pier, neutralizing emplacements in coverage of troops assaulting the main breach positions.
Fearlessly leading his men on to join the forces fighting desperately to gain a beachhead, he repeatedly risked his life throughout the day and night to direct and lead attacks on pill boxes and installations with grenades and demolition. At dawn on the following day, First Lieutenant Hawkins returned to the dangerous mission of clearing the limited beachhead of Japanese resistance, personally initiating an assault on a hostile fortified by five enemy machine guns and, crawling forward in the face of withering fire, boldly fired point-blank into the loopholes and completed the destruction with grenades. Refusing to withdraw after being seriously wounded in the chest during this skirmish, First Lieutenant Hawkins steadfastly carried the fight to the enemy, destroying three more pill boxes before he was caught in a burst of Japanese shell fire and mortally wounded. His relentless fighting spirit in the face of formidable opposition and his exceptionally daring tactics were an inspiration to his comrades during the most crucial phase of the battle and reflect the highest credit upon the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country." He was eventually re-interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Honolulu County, Hawaii, Plot: Section B, Grave 646, his grave marker inscribed "WILLIAM DEANE HAWKINS / MEDAL OF HONOR / 1ST LT US MARINE CORPS / WORLD WAR II / APR 19 1914 / NOV 21 1943". After his death, his mother, Mrs. Clara Jane Hawkins, became a Gold Star Mother. She received her son's Medal of Honor and Purple Heart from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and General/The Commandant Alexander Archer Vandegrift USMC in a ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C. in September 1944. First LIeutenant Hawkins' Navy Congressional Medal of Honor is engraved "THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO 1st LIEUT. WILLIAM D. HAWKINS USMCR DECEASED FOR GALLANTRY ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY AGAINST ENEMY JAPANESE FORCES AT TARAWA, GILBERT ISLANDS. NOVEMBER 20 AND 21, 1943", while his Purple Heart is engraved "1st LT. WILLIAM D. HAWKINS, USMCR". In addition to his Medal of Honor, he was awarded the Marine Corps Presidential Unit Citation with two stars (as his unit was cited for heroic action during the Guadalcanal and Tarawa campaigns). His other awards also included the Marine Corps Sharpshooter Rifle Marksmanship Qualification Badge and the Marine Corps Basic Badge with Shrapshooter Pistol Clasp. His mother displayed his Medal of Honor for fourteen years before losing it in downtown El Paso during an American Legion district convention. As of 2000, his Navy Congressional Medal of Honor, Purple Heart were displayed at the El Paso Cavalry Museum (now the El Paso Museum of History), as his archives had been initially kept by his mother. After Hawkins died, on the second day of the three and one-half days' battle for Tarawa, in recognition of his leadership and daring action against enemy positions, Major General Julian C. Smith, the Second Marine Division's commanding officer, named the airfield on Betio Island in Tarawa "Hawkins Field", even before the bulldozers had finished scooping up the dead Japanese and filled the bomb craters. Air strips were usually named in honor of Air Force personnel, so this was an extremely rare honor for a member of the Marine Corps. As General Smith was quoted as saying, "It is the least I can do in tribute to a man like that." Hawkins was honored in other ways for his heroism at Tarawa. The Gearing-class destroyer USS Hawkins (DD-873) was christened in his name. The ship was originally to be named "Beatty", but was renamed on June 22, 1944 and launched by Consolidated Steel Corporation of Orange, Texas, on October 7, 1944, sponsored by his mother. Camp W.D. Hawkins in the mountains of western North Carolina was named in his honor. The bar at The Basic School (a six-month basic officer course for newly commissioned Second Lieutenants and Warrant Officers) is called The Hawkins Room (it is worthy to note that because First Lieutenant Hawkins received a battlefield commission, he never attended The Basic School). Camp H.M. Smith in Honolulu, Hawaii has a small area of land identified as Camp Hawkins, named after him (it was originally used in the later part of the Second World War as a Rest & Relaxation location). In El Paso, Texas, Hawkins Road and Hawkins Elementary are both named after him.
A poem entitled "To the Portrait Of A Hero" was dedicated to First Lieutenant Hawkins. It was written by Mrs, Helen Reynolds, after she had been viewing a portrait of Hawkins. The poem is inscribed "I looked into you face, / Symbol of American manhood, / And I thought of the millions redeemed / Of the the countless blessings of freedom / Perpetuated by you. // Yours is the face of one / Far older than you, / Of one who has lived two score years in one. / From the dominant jaw to the fearless eyes / The mien of dauntless strength. // Your cool, grave eyes gazed back / At me, unafraid, serene. / But within the depths of their limpid darkness / I read the martyrdom of sacrifice / Made uncomplainingly. // They could destroy your lovely young body, / They could maim your handsome young face / Those despicable, little, black men. / But your soul will live on for eons eternal, / Indefatigable, unconquerable, unmarred. // Until death, will I carry the memory / Stamped so permanently upon my mind. / I cannot erase, I cannot dim / The beautiful sermon / So gallantly, so quietly preached. // The eyes, the face, like a treasured dream / Are like those of another / Who so sorrowfully, so calmly / Gazed down from Mt. Calvary's Cross. // And I thought when you two did meet / Your eyes looked straight into / Your Savior's face / And your firm, young lips did utter these words, / "I, too, know what it is to save!" " Hawkins' mother, Mrs. Clara Jane Hawkins, died at Rest haven Nursing Home in El Paso, Texas on January 31, 1980, at the age of 87.