Motor Machinist Mate 3rd Class Neal Kenneth Johnson USN

Neal Kenneth Johnson was born on July 24, 1923 to Mr. and Mrs. Baxter T Johnson in Nara Vista NM. He graduated from Tucumcari HS in 1941 and enrolled at NMAMC the next fall to study agriculture. He left school after one year and moved with his family to Salt Lake City Utah. From there he was inducted into the US Navy on April 5, 1943 and was assigned to submarine duty. On 13 November 1943 he was assigned to the USS Nautilus, SS 168. He participated in her 7th war patrol off of Tarawa where they landed a strike force against Abenama and were attacked by a US Destroyer that inflicted damage from her guns on the conning tower. That damage was repaired while underway submerged. Her 8th war patrol was off Palau and the Marianas where Nautilus was credited with one ship sunk and three damaged. On March 21, 1944 the Nautilus returned to Pearl Harbor and Neal was assigned to SS-28, a submarine that had been serving war patrols off the Aleutian Islands. The boat was serving training duty to assist in development of submarine countermeasures. On July 3, 1944, she began training operations off Oahu with the United States Coast Guard cutter Reliance. The anti-submarine warfare exercises continued into the evening of 4 July. At 1730, the day's concluding exercise began. Contact between the two became sporadic and, at 1820, the last, brief contact with S-28 was made and lost. All attempts to establish communications failed. The ship was never located and remains buried beneath the seas. MMM 3c Neal Kenneth Johnson is today memorialized at the Tablets of the Missing at Honolulu Memorial Cemetery. He was 20 days shy of his 21st birthday when he gave his life in service to his nation.