John P. Washington

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Four Chaplains

John P. Washington (18 July 1908 - 3 February 1943) was a Roman Catholic priest and a lieutenant in the United States Army who found posthumous fame as one of the Four Chaplains who died administering to their soldiers on the sinking USAT Dorchester during the Second World War.

[edit] Life

Born as one of seven children to Irish immigrants Frank and Mary Washington, John was a religious boy from a young age, rapidly becoming an altar boy at his local church in Newark, New Jersey, where he grew up. A talented sportsman and intelligent and hard-working child, he performed well at school and was accepted into Seton Hall in South Orange where he completed high school and took courses designed to prepare him for the priesthood. Following his graduation he moved to the Immaculate Conception Seminary in Darlington and took minor orders in 1933, being ordained a priest in 1935.

He served at several New Jersey parishes over the next six years, before joining the army upon hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. After brief periods in Indiana and Maryland, Washington was despatched to Harvard where he took a course preparing him for deployment for Europe and became acquainted with the others of the Four chaplains for the first time. In January 1943 he joined them on board the Dorchester for the trip to Europe via Greenland, and set off on the fatal journey.

[edit] Death

On the 2 February 1943 the German submarine U-223 spotted the convoy on the move and closed with the ships, firing a torpedo which struck the Dorchester shortly after midnight. Hundreds of men packed the decks of the rapidly sinking ship and scrambled for the life boats, in which there was not enough space for everybody due to damage and the rate at which the ship sank. Washington and his colleagues organized the men crowded on deck and their entry to the lifeboats and gave their life vests to soldiers who did not possess their own. When the hopelessness of their position became clear, the four chaplains led the remaining men on deck in a prayer and were last seen still praying, arms linked as the ship sank below the waves, taking 672 lives with it.

Following the sinking, the incident became widely publicized in the United States with the four chaplains all posthumously granted the Distinguished Service Cross and the Purple Heart. In 1951 a chapel was built to their memory, and in 1961 a new award, the Chaplain's Medal for Heroism was created specifically to honor these four men.