Navy 2c AMM Joseph Edward Brown Jr. was born in Defuniak Springs, Florida on January 24, 1923, the son of Joseph Edward Brown Sr. (1897-) and Bernice Helms (1904-) who married in 1922. His family was originally from the Walton County area and his parents moved to Pensacola around 1927. His father occupied a variety of jobs from a lumber grader in 1927 to managing a filling station in 1930 and a bevy of laborer positions as well. At one time, Joseph Jr. and his siblings Emory Delmar and Melba were living with their maternal grandparents John Samuel (1872-1956) and Minnie B. Helms (1882-1971) in Holmes County, Florida. But by 1941, Joseph Jr. was listed as being at the Spartanburg, S.C. naval recruiting center while his father was living back home in Brownsville.
Based on this it is assumed he enlisted in the Navy in 1941 where he was eventually assigned to the VP-106 patrol squadron that was established on June 1, 1943. This squadron was comprised of PB4Y-1 Liberator bombers, which gave the Navy its own group of heavy bombers to use on patrol/attack missions. On April 12, 1944, the squadron was transferred to Momote Airfield on Los Negros Island in the Admiralty Island chain. The island was captured from the Japanese in February 1944 and used as a base of operations for heavy bombers. While there, the squadron lost six aircraft from accidents but fortunately without casualties.
But that statistic was about to change as Lt. Allen Lang Seaman (1916-1944) took off from Momote on May 1, 1944 on a mission to bomb Biak Island in western New Guinea. The purpose of the mission was to strike strategic targets ahead of the Army's invasion of the island on May 27, 1944. Upon arrival, he made repeated attacks on the enemy ships in the harbor in spite of the heavy anti-aircraft fire. Suddenly, Seaman and his aircraft were hit and he was severely wounded. He was able to crash land his bomber into the sea thus enabling some of his crew to survive but lost his own life in the process. One of his gunners, 2Class Joseph E. Brown Jr. was also killed in the crash with none of their bodies ever recovered.
Back home in early June, his father was notified of his son's death and the fact that there would probably never be a funeral. A memorial in his honor was held at the Church of God at "T" and Avery Street in Brownsville on January 17, 1945 and his name was added to the Tablet of the Missing for the Pacific.
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