SF3c Robert Lee "R.L." Allen

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

Robert, born May 31, 1918, in Texas, enlisted in the Navy in December 1939. He was a shipfitter third class when he was killed on the U.S.S. Arizona in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

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 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 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.