Harry Lewis Cole, Jr.

Harry Lewis Cole, Jr. was born on August 22, 1920 in Pullman, Washington to Harry Lewis Cole, Sr. and Ida Carrie Conad Cole. Harry Cole, Sr. served as a Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps during World War I before taking a position as an associate professor of chemistry at Washington State College (WSC) in 1917. Cole, Sr. and Ida had two other sons, Wallis, born in 1922, and Golden, born in 1931. Cole, Jr. grew up in Pullman, graduating from Pullman High School in 1938 and enrolling in WSC as a Business Administration major that fall.

Cole attended WSC from 1938 through 1941. He was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon as well as the Civilian Pilots Training Program (CPTP). He received his private pilot's license in early 1940, then completed advanced training in a Ryan monoplane at Felts Field, Spokane, Washington. Cole married Hilda Ruth Hungate, a nurse from Pullman, on October 22, 1942 at St. James Episcopal Church in Pullman. 

Cole enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve in Seattle, Washington on April 7, 1941. He received his commission as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and served for more than two years as an instructor at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida before being transferred as a fighter pilot to Astoria, Oregon. His father was ordered to active duty in late July 1941, and his younger brother, Wallis, a 1943 graduate of WSC's forestry program, would later enlist in the United States Army, serving as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry. By late 1943, Cole, Jr. achieved the rank of first lieutenant and transferred to a fighter group of FM II's (Wildcats), assigned to the USS Kitkun Bay, an escort carrier. On May 31, 1944, the Kitkun Bay began serving as escort to the bombardment and transport units of the Fifth Fleet Task Group 52.17 to Saipan. On June 17, 1944 Cole, now a division leader of a Fighter Wing Group, requested permission for his division to participate in a mission that necessitated his first night carrier landing upon its completion. The division helped scatter the Japanese attack but Cole was wounded in the process. Without radio contact, he attempted to land his damaged plane on the Kitkun Bay under cover of darkness.  His body was never found. 

Cole posthumously received the Purple Heart and Distinguised Flying Cross.  He is memorialized at Tablets of the Missing, National Memorial of the Pacific (Punchbowl) near Honolulu, Hawaii as well as Willamette National Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. Both his father and brother survived the war.