John Beckmann

Fire Controlman Second Class

"John joined the Navy during the Depression days of early 1937 and spent three years on the HOUSTON, flagship of what was then called the Asiatic Fleet. A huge Japanese naval force trapped the HOUSTON and some other crippled American, Australian, and Dutch ships in the Java  Sea in early 1942 and sank the Houston with tremendous loss of life.  John had transferred off the HOUSTON to a destroyer a few months before she was lost."---Lloyd Boles

John died 1 Dec 1996