Homer was aboard a submarine that was sunk by a torpedo it had just fired.

Homer W. Ijames Jr. was born on October 12, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois, to Homer and Hilda Ijames. The date the Ijames family moved to Santa Cruz is not known. Homer Jr. received his elementary school education at Branciforte School before entering Santa Cruz High School in 1941. He was a member of the school's class of 1944 but left school before graduation to join the navy.

Homer Ijames enlisted in the US Navy on October 13, 1943, and was sent to the US Naval Training Center at San Diego for training. Following boot camp in February 1944, he was sent to the navy's submarine school in New London, Connecticut. Seaman Ijames later received addi- tional instruction at the navy's radar training school at Pearl Harbor. After completing his training phase, Petty Officer Third Class Ijames was assigned to the submarine USS Tang in the Pacific Fleet.

“The story of Tang's sinking comes from the report of her surviving Commanding Officer. A night surface attack was launched on October 24, 1944 against a transport, which had previously been stopped in an earlier attack. The first torpedo was fired and when it was observed to be running true, the second and last was loosed. It curved sharply to the left, broached, porpoised and circled. Emergency speed was called for and the rudder was thrown over. These measures resulted only in the torpedo striking the stern of Tang, rather than amidships. The explosion was violent, and people as far forward as the control room received broken limbs. The ship went down by the stern with the after three compartments flooded. Of the nine officers and men on the bridge, three were able to swim through the night until picked up eight hours later. One officer escaped from the flooded conning tower, and was rescued with the others.”

The body of Radarman, Third Class Homer W. Ijames Jr. was never recovered; he is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery. His awards include the Purple Heart.

(ABMC, SCHSC Pg. 12; COMSUBPAC, USS Tang SS-306, http://www.csp.navy.mil/ww2boats/tang.htm, [16 September 2008])