US Army Captain Howell Stewart Kopp was born in 1917 in Birmingham, Alabama to the union of William Augustus Jennison Kopp (1887-1970) and Anna Howell Stewart (1888-1974), but he was raised in several areas of the country with the last being Homestead, Florida. Here his father was working on a farm raising chickens at the time. Howell had previously graduated from high school in 1935 from the Wilbraham Academy located in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Springfield. Following high school and the family’s subsequent move to Florida, Howell enrolled in the University of Florida in Gainesville. He obtained a job as a garbage man picking up trash to help offset the cost of his college tuition and living expenses. He also became a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, one of the largest men’s secret organizations in North America, founded in 1909. While a student he also met the love of his life Miss Emma Jean from Pensacola who was two years ahead of him in her college studies. Because of her Southern heritage she was called by the double name of “Emma Jean” although Howell just called her “Jane.” Benjamin Virginous Holland and Bessie McArthur, with her father the president of the prestigious Pace-Holland Wholesale Grocery Company. Emma graduated from the Pensacola High School class of 1933 and from University of Florida in 1937. Upon returning to Pensacola, she took a job in her hometown of Pensacola as a teacher at the Sabra Collins grade school. Howell graduated two years later in 1939 and the two were married the following year in the First Methodist Church in Pensacola. Following the wedding, the young couple moved back to Homestead, Florida where he had already obtained a job as a teller for the First National Bank in Miami.
While in college, Howell enlisted in the Army reserves and received his commission in February 1940 as a second lieutenant in the field artillery. His unit was ultimately activated on August 1, 1941, at Camp Blanding, Florida while Howell was sent to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma to attend the “Battery Commander School.” He was eventually assigned in February 1942 to the 114th Field Artillery Battalion that was attached to the 31st Infantry Division. They were sent overseas in January 1944 and arrived in Oro Bay, New Guinea on the 24th of April. Here, they began training in amphibious landings prior to being assigned to a combat role. It was during this training period that word came down asking for volunteers for a special unit. This unit was being formed to operate behind enemy lines much like our Special Forces and Navy Seals do today.
They were called the “Alamo Scouts” and were organized in November 1943 on Fergusson Island in New Guinea prior to Howell’s arrival. The purpose of the unit was to conduct tactical reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, and small unit raids deep behind enemy lines in advance of the 6th US Army landing operations. The small groups would operate with six to seven-man teams of highly trained volunteers. The unit was given their name by their commanding officer Lt. General Walter Krueger who shared an obsessive love for the Battle of the Alamo. More than 700 volunteers entered the specialized training, but only 138 soldiers completed were accepted. Captain Kopp was one of those dedicated heroes. In mid-1944, Kopp entered Alamo Training Class #3 at their training camp located at Mangee Point, near Finschhafen, New Guinea. Following his graduation, Kopp returned to his unit to begin working with the division’s intelligence unit on future clandestine operations.
Captain Kopp was directed to select six volunteers from the men of the 31st Infantry Division to conduct an expedition behind Japanese lines on the island of Morotai. Ironically, one of the six men was Pfc. Cecil T. Nelson from Pensacola from the small community of Ensley. The team landed behind enemy lines where they were to reconnoiter, establish radio communications, take prisoners for questioning, and then escape by sea. They quickly disembarked and paddled quietly toward shore in their rubber boats and slipped quietly into the dense jungle. Soon they were discovered by an enemy patrol and were pursued for nearly two hours in a running fight. With their Thompson submachine guns, they were finally able to clear the enemy from a section of the beach where their boats had been hidden. They quickly loaded two captives and their equipment and hastily put out to sea. During the operation, they killed several Japanese soldiers before escaping unscathed with the information so badly needed by the high command. Captain Kopp would receive the Silver Star for his part of the operation while the others, including Private Nelson, would receive Bronze Star Medals.
After returning to his artillery unit, they launched their offensive on the 13th of July, which became known as the battle of Driniumor River. By the end of the battle, over 1,300 Japanese were killed before the 31st Division began preparing for the September 15, 1944, landing on Morotai, in the Dutch West Indies. To stay ahead of the division’s timetable Kopp and his fellow scouts were chosen for a second mission. This time it would be the island of Samar in the Philippines as the Allies began preparing for the invasion of Leyte scheduled for October 29, 1944. For this mission seventeen volunteers were selected to conduct a clandestine intelligence gathering patrol to determine the location of enemy fortifications and beach installations.
At Manus Island, Captain Kopp and his men boarded the submarine USS Seawolf as it prepared for its 15th war patrol. They boarded the Seawolf on September 29th where they packed their gear away in the limited space available. Once completed they set said Samar.
On the morning of October 3, 1944, the Seawolf exchanged radar recognition signals with another submarine, the USS Narwhal in the Morotai area off the east coast of New Guinea. But close by was US Task Force 77 who had just been attacked by a Japanese submarine resulting in the sinking of the USS Shelton. One of the group’s destroyers, the USS Richard M. Rowell immediately began searching for the rogue enemy sub to sink it. However, four friendly submarines were known to be in the same vicinity, so radio dispatches were immediately sent out to determine their positions. Of the four, all responded, but the Seawolf. The next day the Seawolf was again asked to report her positions and again failed to do so. In the meantime, there were two US planes flying a routine patrol out of Midway Island who spotted an unknown submarine submerging inside the target area and attacked it with bombs. Even though it was supposedly a safety zone for American submarines the plane dropped dye to mark the area and radioed its position to the destroyers in the area. But since no word had been received from the Seawolf, the Rowell believed the sub to be Japanese and attacked immediately. Sonar contact was made with the submarine, believed now to be the Seawolf, and received a series of dashes and dots that did not relate to any of the current Navy signals. Feeling free to attack, the Rowell and the USS Hedgehog made two depth charge runs before hearing underwater explosions followed by debris floating to the surface. After the war, investigators examined the Japanese records and found they were not active in the area, so her disappearance was not attributed to them. Nor did the records reflect the loss of a Japanese submarine within the same area. By December 28, 1944, the Seawolf was declared lost, and the 62 naval personnel and 17 Army passengers presumed dead. Sadly, Captain Kopp’s wife Emma Jean would receive his Bronze Star and Purple Heart posthumously.
Emma and her two daughters, Jeanne and Nancy, returned from Homestead to reside with her parents at the family home in Pensacola. She obtained a job teaching and raised her children until she married James Hammond Luther in 1946 while he was stationed in Pensacola with the Navy. Emma Jean would pass away in Houston, Texas on July 19, 1985, after collapsing in her home there. Her husband had already passed away from cancer a few years prior to Emma Jean. Jim’s ashes were scattered at Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan. After Emma Jean’s death, her daughters took her ashes to Pensacola and buried her in the family plot next to her parents in Section #47 in St. Johns Cemetery.
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