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Contact Info
Home Town Minneapolis, Minnesota
Last Address West Salem, Oregon
Date of Passing Aug 05, 1997
Location of Interment Willamette National Cemetery (VA) - Portland, Oregon
Corporal, U.S. Army, WWII (7th Infantry Division)
C.I.B., Purple Heart (Okinawa), Bronze Star w/V device
Lay Preacher
Kenneth John is the son of John Rupert and Edna Sofia Jacobson Walker. His mother, Edna, while living in Los Angeles and 7 1/2 months pregnant, went to visit her parents in Minneapolis. She ended up giving birth to Kenneth while there. Kenneth finished school and graduated from Inglewood High School, Inglewood, California, Class of '46, after his return from the war in the Pacific in 1945. He left the service in April 1948 at the insistance of his fiancee, Dolores Fay Mosteller.
He was the husband of (1) Dolores Fay Mosteller (m. 1948; d. 1965), and (2) Lillian Jessie Reischke (m. 1979). He had 3 children with Dolores; Stephen Kent, Shelley Lynn and Kevin Charles Walker. Kenneth and Lillian had no children.
Even though I hadn't seen my father for over 30 years, I remember him for his love of sports and his athleticism. When we were kids growing up in the North Torrance/Gardena area of Los Angeles County, he would take as many of the neighborhood kids as wanted to go, all pile into our 1948 Plymouth coupe, and we would go the three blocks to El Camino Jr. College, form up teams and play whatever sport was being played at the time. We all grew up with a love of, and the ability to play most sports thanks to him.
Looking back, I regret most of all, not having my father in my life. That was my choice and it gnaws on me every day.
Dad was a recovered alcholic, and a born again Christian. He spent the last 25 years of his life, 18 of them with his wife Lillian at his side, as a lay-minister, ministering to the homeless in food-kitchens and rescue missions across the west and northwest United States. Kenneth was the Assistant Director of Union Gospel Mission's in Yakima, Washington and Salem, Oregon. He met Lillian while doing his work with the Lord, and he finally settled with Lillian, in West Salem, Oregon, where they both lived until their deaths. Kenneth and Lillian are buried together at Willamette National Cemetery near Portland, Oregon.
Description The plan of the Pacific subseries was determined by the geography, strategy, and the military organization of a theater largely oceanic. Two independent, coordinate commands, one in the Southwest Pacific under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and the other in the Central, South, and North Pacific (Pacific Ocean Areas) under Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, were created early in the war. Except in the South and Southwest Pacific, each conducted its own operations with its own ground, air, and naval forces in widely separated areas. These operations required at first only a relatively small number of troops whose efforts often yielded strategic gains which cannot be measured by the size of the forces involved. Indeed, the nature of the objectivesùsmall islands, coral atolls, and jungle-bound harbors and airstrips, made the employment of large ground forces impossible and highlighted the importance of air and naval operations. Thus, until 1945, the war in the Pacific progressed by a double series of amphibious operations each of which fitted into a strategic pattern developed in Washington.
21 Named Campaigns were recognized in the Asiatic Pacific Theater with Battle Streamers and Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medals.
