S1c John Blair McPherson

John Blair McPherson “JB” was born Jan. 11, 1920 in Lenoir City, Tennessee 20 miles southwest of Knoxville. His mother, Lennie McDaniel McPherson, was a homemaker and his father, Charles McPherson, a cotton mill worker.

By 1930 the family of six sons and a daughter lived in Knoxville. They were still there in 1940. By then the father and mother and John all worked at cotton mills. John, who completed two years of high school, worked 52 weeks in 1939 and earned $738.

He enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 4, 1940 in Nashville, TN and completed his basic training at Norfilk Virginia Naval Training Station. John boarded the U.S.S. Arizona for duty on December 4, 1940. He was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Two brothers, George Franklin and James, served in the Army during World War II. His brother Ralph Arlin, younger by three years, was an Army sergeant when he died in 1951 of epidemic hemorrhagic fever during the Korean War.

Sources: The Knoxville (Tennessee) News-Sentinel; Census; Korean War Veterans Honor Roll; military interment report; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs death files; Census; Navy muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.