James Orrwell Martin was born March 7, 1922 at Chisholm in northeast Minnesota. His father was David Martin and his mother Leta Williams Martin. They had nine children born between about 1910 and 1932.

By 1930 the family had moved to the Diablo Foothills east of Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County, California, where the father and an 18-year-old son, Gale, were farm laborers.

The family was about 14 miles east near Brentwood by April 1935, and nearby to the north near Oakley. James finished his schooling there are 8th grade in 1937.

He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program. The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families. He served in Co. 2916 at Guerneville, California. James was living there when he applied to the Navy.

He enlisted on Jan. 23, 1941 and was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

At least one brother served in the military. Gladstone, older by nearly five years, was in the Army from 1936 through 1945.

Sources: Minnesota birth index; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs death file; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.