John Morgan Turnipseed Jr. was born Nov. 5, 1921 in Arkansas. His mother, Marie West Turnipseed, was a homemaker and his father a truck driver for Texas Oil Co. She was born in England. The father died of tertiary syphilis in Pine Bluff, Arkansas on May 27, 1929 when the son was still seven. The family also included a younger daughter, Doris, born in 1925 in Pine Bluff.

The April 1930 Census said John lived with his paternal grandparents in Little Rock while his mother worked in North Little Rock as a laundress.

By April 1935 John was back with his mother, who had remarried. They lived at Sweet Home, Arkansas south of Little Rock through at least April 1940. John attended nearby Perryville High School from 1936 to 1939.

John and his step-father, William Hill, worked 13 weeks in 1939 and earned $130 each — John as a timber hand and William as a carpenter on a highway project. Their meager pay indicates they were probably employed by one of the Depression-era federal jobs programs. 

Just before Mr. Turnipseed enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 2, 1940, he said he’d worked for three months skidding logs at a lumber business.

He was a fireman third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Arkansas death certificate; sister’s obituary. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.