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NAME Jack Fredrick Lee |
NICKNAME — |
SERVICE NUMBER 287653 |
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| UNIT Marine Detachment USS Houston Field Music |
HOME OF RECORD 4533 Avondale Road Houston, TX |
NEXT OF KIN Parents, Joe & Mabel Lee |
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| DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1922 at Dallas, TX |
ENTERED SERVICE July 9, 1940 at Dallas, TX |
DATE OF LOSS March 1, 1942 alt. February 28, 1942 |
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| REGION Java Sea |
CAMPAIGN / AREA Sunda Strait |
CASUALTY TYPE Missing In Action Declared Dead December 15, 1945 |
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| CIRCUMSTANCES OF LOSS Field Music First Class Jack F. Lee served as a member of the Marine detachment aboard the cruiser USS Houston. Lee would have the sad duty of playing the Houston’s swan song. On the night of 28 February 1942, with the cruiser on fire and sinking, Captain Albert H. Rooks summoned Lee to the bridge to sound the call to abandon ship – which he did without missing a note. Nobody ever saw Jack Lee alive again; the Houston sank beneath the waves just after midnight on 1 March 1942. Lee’s body was never found, and he was officially declared dead on 15 December 1945. |
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| INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS Purple Heart |
LAST KNOWN RANK Field Music First Class |
STATUS OF REMAINS Lost at sea |
MEMORIALS AS MANY LINKS AS NECESSARY |
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Biography:
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When we went topside after the first order to abandon ship I was stunned…. From the looks of things on deck, it appeared every part of [the Houston] had taken a shell. When the second order to abandon ship came, the bugler sounded the call without any falter in note. He did not survive.
– James Gee, “Prisoner of the Samurai: Surviving the Sinking of the USS Houston and the Death Railway.”
He never missed one beat on that bugle. It would have been absolutely beautiful if it had been anywhere else but at that time.
– Lloyd Willey, USMC, quoted in James Hornfischer, “Ship Of Ghosts.”