S2c Charles Martin Brown

Charles Martin Brown was born July 8, 1922, in Los Angeles, California. His mother was Clyde Mona Moxley Brown and his father Charles Brown.

By the time of the 1930 Census the boy was living with his mother and stepfather, Edward Van Dusen, in Montebello, a city east of downtown Los Angeles. The couple had married in 1927.

Records conflict, but Charles completed either two or three years of high school by September 1940. He earned $75 for 11 weeks’ work in 1939 doing road construction for the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program.

Mr. Brown enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 30, 1940, as an apprentice seaman earning $21 a month. He was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

His stepfather, who had been a supervisor custodian for the Los Angeles city schools, was 41 when he enlisted in the Navy in October 1942. He became a gunner’s mate and petty officer first class and did most of his service in the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Prairie, a destroyer tender. Mr. Van Dusen served until March 1946.