In his final letter to his parents, penned in level lines of looping but unhurried script, 20-year-old Navy Ensign John Charles England apologized for not writing more often and said he’d be thinking of home on Christmas.
“Dear folks. It’s so long since I last wrote that I can’t even remember for sure when it was. Please forgive – and blame it on the monotony of this place,” he wrote, and asked what they thought of his newborn daughter. “The only thing that gets me is that I will be the last one in the family that gets to see her. Somehow that doesn’t seem fair.”
Bethany Glenn doesn’t know if the letter, dated Nov. 22, arrived before or after her grandfather’s death 15 days later, on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese forces launched a surprise air assault on Pearl Harbor that sparked the nation’s entry into World War II.
“J.C.” England was one of 429 men killed when the USS Oklahoma took five torpedoes to the hull, listed and capsized in the shallow water and deep mud of Battleship Row. England escaped topside as the ship began to overturn, but went back three times to help men from the radio room to safety. The fourth time, he didn’t return.
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