Before the details of the Niland brothers of New York in WW II, including three who took part in D-Day, another military family disaster occurred in WW II that affected U.S. Military policy for the rest of the war and into the future. That was the loss of the five Sullivan brothers from Iowa, who all died as a result of the sinking of the cruiser Juneau on Nov. 13, 1942. In early February 1944, 20th Century Fox released its film that told their story in "The Fighting Sullivans." Although it was later learned that two of the brothers didn't go down with the ship when it exploded, they died within a few days on a life raft. Following that incident, U.S. policy forbade the assignment of brothers to the same military units. Several other families had lost brothers in the same units before that. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the battleship Arizona was sunk with a set of brothers who were triplets, and several sets of twins. Before the policy change that was meant to spare families as much as possible from having multiple losses of sons in war, it was natural for brothers to want to serve together in the military.

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