EM3c John Arthur Peltier

John Arthur Peltier was the only child of Margaret Davis Peltier, a homemaker, and Frank Peltier, a railway conductor for the Nickel Plate Road in Delphos, Ohio 70 miles southwest of Toledo.

The son was born Feb. 28, 1918 and graduated from Jefferson High School in Delphos in 1936. He was a Boy Scout, active in the First Presbyterian Church Sunday school, a cheerleader, and a basketball player.

Mr. Peltier left Delphos, a town of about 5,700 about 25 miles from the Indiana border, in the fall of 1940 to enlist in the Navy.

He was an electrician’s mate and petty officer third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

A memorial service in January 1942 at First Presbyterian honored Mr. Peltier and another local man killed at Pearl Harbor, Walter French. The sermon, “The Price of Freedom,” was based on a Bible verse, 1 Samuel 25:16: “They were a wall to us both by night and day, all the time we were with them keeping the sheep.”

John A. Peltier Post 27 of the American Veterans of World War II was organized in Delphos in 1946.

On the first anniversary of his death, Mr. Peltier’s cousin, Willard Kantz, a Navy aviation machinist’s mate first class, wrote to his own mother in nearby Lima, Ohio. She received his letter in early January, shortly after she was notified that he had been killed in action on patrol over the Atlantic.

Sources: the Delphos (Ohio) Daily Herald; Navy muster roll; grave marker; Census; Defense Department. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.