John Joseph Murphy, Jr

Jan 7, 1916 - Sep 7, 1944

Graduate United States Military Academy Class of 1940

John Joseph Murphy, Jr., was born on January 7, 1916 in South Bend, Indiana, the only son and youngest child of John Joseph Murphy and Josephine Lesley Murphy. He attended St. Patrick's Parochial School and was graduated from Central High School in 1933.

During his senior year in high school he applied for an appointment to the United States Military Academy. He was named second alternate, not anticipating an opportunity to enter the Academy, he resumed his previous plans to study aeronautical engineering at Purdue University, and in September, 1933 he entered that school.

At Purdue he was introduced to the Field Artillery, which from that time was one of his major interests. In his junior year he was accepted for advanced military training and was selected to membership in the Purdue Order of Military Merit and Scabbard and Blade.

During that year an appointment to West Point became available and he again applied. This time he was named first alternate. In late June, as he was preparing to go to Fort Knox for summer training with the Purdue R.O.T.C., he received word to report to the Academy.

Following graduation in 1940, he spent several months at Fort Sill and then, after Christmas of that year, went to the Philippine Islands, the station of his choice. Little is known about him after the Japanese invasion of December 8, 1941. Previous to that date he was serving with the Philippine Scouts and had moved from Fort Stotsenburg to Panay. His last letter dated before the war, received the day after Pearl Harbor, told of his having had Thanksgiving dinner in the home of some Americans resident in Iloilo.

In March, 1942, he was still actively serving and had been moving by night from island to island, having experienced many Japanese attacks. He appears to have been in the Cagayan Sector until mid-February, 1942. The exact time and place of his capture by the Japanese is unknown. He was held at Davao where he worked in the rice fields. Through the kindness of a fellow-prisoner, Col. W.F. Dalton, it was learned that he was one of a group of officers who staged an Independence Day "banquet" in the prison camp on the night of July 4, 1942, the menu consisting chiefly of food lifted from the Japanese. Somehow, the group managed to have a picture taken and a copy of it was sent home.

A letter from Major Melvin Rosen who went to the Philippines with John, gives this account of Johns later days there:

"...he went to duty with the Philippine Army in about September of 1941. In late October he left Luzon for Iloilo with the 61st Field Artillery (Philippine Army)—left there about 2 January 1942 and went to the island of Mindanao where he was transferred to the 81st F.A. (P.A.). John was then given command of a battery which lie held until he became ill with malaria—and then came the fall of Mindanao. Murph then was held in the prison camp at Malaybalay on Mindanao until November 1942 when he was sent to Davao Penal Colony...where I joined him that month. We were together until he was sent to Lusang on the same island. I left the Island 6 June 1944—about three months after we were separated—and did not get to see him again.

In August, 1944 John was one of a large group of prisoners shipped to Japan on a HELL ship. The convoy was attacked off the west coast of Mindanao, on September 7, by American submarines. He was able to abandon ship but never reached the shore two miles away.

John was survived by his parents and four sisters.

Branch of Service: Army Field Artillery

Rank: Captain

Service Number: O&022988

Assigned Unit: 81st Division (Philippine Army)

Parent Unit: Mindanao Force

Source: THERE WERE OTHERS by Col. Hiram Tarkington (manuscript at Military History Institute)

POW Camp/Notes: Malaybalay-DAPECOL-Died On Shinyo Maru on 09/07/44

Sources: Ancestry.com and FindAGrave.com

09/04/2026 EJS

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56762410/john-joseph-murphy