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<em>John Joseph Murphy, Jr</em>., was born in South Bend, Indiana on January 7, 1916, 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.</p>
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During his senior year in high school he applied for consideration as a candidate for appointment to the United States Military Academy, from his congressional district. After 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 matriculated in that school.</p>
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At Purdue he was introduced to the Field Artillery, which from that time was one of his major interests. He became also a member of the Zouave Drill Squad. 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.</p>
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During that year another appointment to West Point became available and he again applied for it. 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.</p>
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His days at West Point as a member of “M” Company were apparently happy ones, although he had a few sharp struggles with the French and Tactical Departments.</p>
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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. His family has little information about him after December 8, 1941. Sometime previous to that date he had volunteered for service with the Philippine Scouts and a few days before Thanksgiving 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.</p>
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In March, 1942, his family received an undated letter, postmarked Australia, in which he mentioned having arrived at his present post by moving by night from island to island, having experienced Japanese attack and having disputed with cobras the shelter of foxholes.</p>
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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 to his family. He was held at Davao where he worked in the rice fields. Through the kindness of a fellow-prisoner, Col. W.F. Dalton, they have 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 to them.</p>
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A letter from Major Melvin Rosen, who went to the Philippines with John, gives us this account of his later days there:</p>
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“...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.</p>
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“In case you have not been informed, we now have here at Fort Sill a Murphy Road named after John ...”</p>
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In August, 1944 John was one of a large group of prisoners started to Japan. Off the west coast of Mindanao, on September 7, the convoy was attacked by American submarines. He escaped from the ship but never reached the shore two miles away.</p>
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John is survived by his parents and four sisters, Marguerite, Elizabeth, Dr. Josephine Murphy of South Bend, and Dr. Rosemary Murphy of Boston, Massachusetts.</p>
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<em>—Marguerite Murphy</em></p>
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