SF3c Robert Lee Allen "R.L."

Robert Lee Allen and a younger brother, Jacob “Jake” Curby Allen Jr., were both killed in World War II.

Robert, born May 31, 1918, in DeSoto, Texas, enlisted in the Navy on December 12, 1939 in Little Rock, Arkansas and completed his basic training at Great Lakes Naval Training Station. He boarded the U.S.S. Arizona for duty on March 9, 1940. He was a ship fitter third class when he was killed on the U.S.S. Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Robert attended school at Wheatland, Texas, through 7th grade in 1934. He worked four years operating machinery at Trinity Portland Cement in Dallas. Robert also served in the Civilian Conservations 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 was in California camp.

Brother Jake, born in 1923, was a private in the 112th Cavalry, a Texas National Guard regiment, when he was killed in New Guinea on July 18, 1944. The regiment took heavy losses during repeated battles that summer in the muddy jungle.

A third brother, Jack, a tech sergeant in the Army Air Force’s, survived the war.

Their parents were Jacob “Jake” Curby Allen, a machine operator, and Bertha Farrar Allen, a homemaker. The family moved from Texarkana, Texas, to Roseburg, Oregon, in the fall of 1941 but returned to Texas shortly before Jake Jr. died.

Sources: Photo provided by Beverly Patton, Niece. The News-Review of Roseburg, Oregon; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; grave markers; Department of Defense. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona and Operation 85.