Ken C. Wise was born November 17, 1913 in Calgary, Canada. He moved to California in 1922 and then to Pullman, Washington where he graduated from Washington State College in 1942 with an agricultural degree, majoring in forestry. In 1943 he graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut and then served as an assistant navigator on the frigate USS Hutchinson in the Pacific theater of World War II, seeing combat around the Philippine Islands. The Hutchinson took up patrol and escort duties around Leyte Gulf in the Philippines as the U.S. forces started to recapture the isalnds, engaging Japanese aircraft on several occasions. After the war he moved to Moscow, Idaho where he attended graduate studies at the University of Idaho. He worked for the U.S. Forest Service at the Forestry Sciences Laboratory until his retirement in 1974. Wise died in Moscow on June 23, 2011.
The Ken C. Wise Papers consist of materials that center on Wise’s time serving aboard the USS Hutchinson in World War II. Box 1 consists of a book titled Fore and Aft and a typed draft of The Course of the Hutch, both of which detail the journey of and life aboard the USS Hutchinson. The Course of the Hutch is Wise’s memoir about his experiences in World War II as a navigator. Box 1 also includes a letter from a personal friend of Ken Wise, Arnold Dillard, who describes his time serving with the U.S. Combat Engineers during the Battle of the Bulge in France during the Second World War. Box 2 consists of a scrapbook documenting the journey of the USS Hutchinson during the war. The scrapbook contains photographs of ship members, activities aboard the ship, places visited during the war and the inhabitants of those places. It also contains documents collected during the tour and a map of the ship’s route. Additionally there are two journals, one titled Navigator’s Notes and the other Navigation Log Book. Wise wrote both as he served aboard the USS Hutchinson, detailing navigational information and personal notes during World War II.
The collection is arranged in alphabetical order.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item description]. Ken C. Wise Papers, 1942-2004. Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
Donated to the Washington State University Libraries by Ken Wise in 2004 (MS.2004.06).
This collection was processed by Chris Halderman and Steven Bingo in
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