QM3c Frank George Brown

Frank George Brown was born Nov. 9, 1922, on his parents’ farm in the Bed Rock precinct of Baker County in northeast Oregon. His father, Fred Brown, had immigrated from England in 1910. His mother, Grace Humphreys Brown, was an Oregon native.

Frank, the youngest of three children, was 11 when he returned home from a Valentine’s Day school picnic to find his mother dead in the yard. The local newspaper said she was despondent when she shot herself.

He enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 8, 1939, at Portland, Oregon, and went aboard the U.S.S. Arizona the next February. Mr. Brown was a quartermaster and petty officer third class when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

His body was recovered and buried in Hawaii for the duration of World War II. He was reburied in 1947 at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Sources: the La Grande (Oregon) Observer; Navy muster rolls; Census; grave marker. Navy photo. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.