Appalachian Figures
On a stretch of Cumberland Avenue in downtown Middlesboro, the traffic signs suddenly change. For a few blocks the road becomes the Leonard F. Mason Medal of Honor Memorial Highway, a reminder that one of the most celebrated Marines of the Pacific war began life within sight of Yellow Creek and the surrounding Bell County ridges. The boy who left here with his parents for an Ohio factory town would die on Guam at twenty four after charging two Japanese machine gun nests alone so that his platoon could move forward.
Today the name Leonard Foster Mason lives in two places that shaped him. In Middlesboro his story is woven into local memory through plaques and a renamed main street. In Lima, Ohio his face looks out from a Medal of Honor marker beside his parents’ graves and from the Allen County Museum’s “Wall of Fame.” Across the Pacific his name is carved on the Walls of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, while official Marine histories and combat art place him in the narrow gully on Guam where he made his final run.
A Coalfield Family In Bell County
Primary records and family reconstructions place Leonard Foster Mason’s beginnings in the coalfield communities that ring Middlesboro. The Kentucky Vital Record Index records his birth in Bell County on February 22, 1920, with the surname Mason and given name Leonard, citing the state archives in Frankfort as the custodian of the original certificate.
Genealogical work on the Mason and Partin families shows his parents as Hillery Mason and Mary Rachel “Mollie” Partin, who married in Bell County in 1913 and raised a large household that eventually included at least a dozen children. Later obituaries for their daughter Joyce Fay (Mason) Johnson, printed in both Lima and Middlesboro papers, remember her as born in Lima in 1940 to Hillery and Mollie but clearly tie the couple back to the Bell County Mason and Partin lines.
Secondary biographies, drawing on this documentary base, describe Leonard as the fourth of thirteen children and the first son in a Bell County coal miner’s family. Those same accounts note that he spent his earliest years in and around Middlesboro at a time when the town served as a gateway between Cumberland Gap, the Yellow Creek coal camps, and the farms and hollers farther up the valley. Later reference works on Middlesboro list him alongside ragtime pianist Ben Harney, missionary William McElwee Miller, and actor Lee Majors as one of the city’s notable natives.
From Yellow Creek To Lima
Sometime in the late nineteen twenties or early nineteen thirties the Mason family joined a migration pattern that reshaped both Appalachia and the industrial Midwest. Like many mining and farm families from eastern Kentucky, they moved to an Ohio factory town. Local histories and a public history post from War in the Pacific National Historical Park describe Leonard as one of at least twelve children who left Middlesboro with their parents and resettled in Lima, Ohio, where his father found work and the family joined a growing Appalachian community in Allen County.
The Marine Corps University biography and later local coverage fill in the next steps. Leonard attended school in Kentucky and Ohio, then took a job at Superior Body Works in Lima, an auto body manufacturer that drew many young men from the surrounding counties. That mix of coalfield roots and factory work mirrored the experiences of other Bell County migrants who traded company housing for rented rooms in industrial neighborhoods while maintaining family connections “back home.”
Obituaries for Hillery and Mollie’s children make clear that the family’s center of gravity shifted north even as they kept their Appalachian identity. Joyce Fay’s 2014 obituary in Elida, Ohio, for example, identifies her parents as Hillery and Mollie (Partin) Mason but notes that she remained an “Honorary Member” of the local American Legion auxiliary, part of a veteran centered culture that would later take special interest in her brother’s story.
Enlisting In The Marines
Official Marine Corps sources agree that Mason enlisted in the Marine Corps from Ohio during the middle years of the Second World War. The Marine Corps History Division notes that he joined in 1942, trained at Parris Island in South Carolina, then continued training at the Naval Proving Ground at Indian Head, Maryland, and at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before shipping out to the Pacific in October 1943.
By early 1944 he had been promoted to private first class and assigned as an automatic rifleman with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines, part of the 3rd Marine Division. Unit histories and after action reports collected in the Marine Corps monographs “Bougainville and the Northern Solomons” and “The Recapture of Guam,” along with the regimental reference pamphlet “A Brief History of the 3d Marines,” place PFC Mason with his battalion in the hard fighting on Bougainville before the division redeployed for the Marianas campaign.
When the 3rd Marine Division went ashore on Guam in July 1944, Mason carried a Browning Automatic Rifle in the rifle company that would soon find itself stalled in a narrow jungle gully above the Asan beachhead.
Guam And The Narrow Gully
The Battle of Guam opened on July 21, 1944, when Marines and Army troops of III Amphibious Corps landed on the western beaches of an island that had been in Japanese hands since 1941. Over the next several weeks they fought north and south through steep ravines, limestone ridges, and dense brush against an enemy that often chose to die in place rather than retreat. Official casualty figures compiled after the campaign list more than 1,700 American dead and over 6,000 wounded by the time organized resistance ended on August 10.
Within that larger story, Leonard Mason’s Medal of Honor citation and Marine Corps histories focus on one short stretch of ground along the Asan Adelup beachhead on July 22. As his platoon tried to advance through a narrow gully, two Japanese machine guns opened fire from positions only a few yards away, cutting across the Marines’ path and holding them in place under plunging fire.
The official citation describes what happened next in the formulaic yet unmistakably vivid language that appears in the government’s 1949 volume “Medal of Honor 1861–1949.” Mason, acting on his own initiative, climbed out of cover and worked his way parallel to the gully toward the rear of the machine gun positions. As he moved he drew fire from riflemen on higher ground, taking multiple wounds to his arm and shoulder but continuing to push forward. Reaching the first gun, he attacked at close range, killing several crewmen and silencing the weapon, then pressed on toward the second.
Marine accounts and the Medal of Honor citation agree that he received another severe wound from machine gun fire just as he reached his objective. Even then he kept firing long enough to clear the second position, killing five enemy soldiers and wounding another before returning to his platoon and reporting that the guns were out of action. Only then did he allow himself to be evacuated.
The National Park Service casualty roll for Guam lists “Mason, Leonard F., Pfc (DOW),” confirming that he died of his wounds rather than being killed outright in the gully. Marine Corps University’s summary notes that he succumbed to his injuries the following day aboard the attack transport USS Elmore (APA 42), anchored offshore, after having taken part in the initial landing on July 21.
He was twenty four years old.
A Medal Of Honor And A Ship Of War
For this action Mason received the United States’ highest military decoration. The Medal of Honor citation, issued in the name of Congress, praises his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” and concludes that he “gallantly gave his life for his country,” language that appears across multiple official printings and on modern websites of the Marine Corps, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, and Kentucky Marines.
Marine Corps University explains that Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal presented the medal to Mason’s mother in a postwar ceremony attended by two of her daughters, an event that underscores how the story of a Pacific battlefield came home to a family that had already uprooted itself from Bell County to Allen County.
The Navy also carried his name across the world’s oceans. In 1946 it commissioned the Gearing class destroyer USS Leonard F. Mason (DD 852). The ship’s official entry in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships begins with a short biographical sketch of PFC Mason and then traces a career that stretched from postwar occupation duty through the Korean and Vietnam Wars and even the recovery of the Gemini VIII spacecraft. The destroyer served under the American flag until 1976 before being transferred to Taiwan, where it operated as the Lai Yang (DDG 926) until 2000.
Through those decades every radio call that began with the ship’s name repeated the name of a young man from Middlesboro and Lima whose combat career had lasted less than a year.
Two Hometowns Remember
Although Mason’s body was buried at sea after he died aboard ship, his name appears on the Walls of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. That absence of a grave made hometown commemoration especially important.
In Middlesboro his memory is woven into both civic landscape and local veteran culture. City reference pages and social media posts from groups such as WWII Memorial Friends and Honoring Fallen Marines note that in 2013 the city renamed part of Cumberland Avenue as the Leonard F. Mason Medal of Honor Memorial Highway. In 2024 the Middlesboro American Legion held a wreath laying ceremony at a plaque honoring Mason, an event covered by the Middlesboro News as part of the community’s Memorial Day observances and attended by relatives who spoke about his sacrifice and the importance of keeping his story alive.
In Lima and the wider Allen County area, local museums and veteran organizations have worked to ensure that the Kentucky born Marine is remembered as one of their own. The Allen County Museum’s “Wall of Fame” includes a panel on Leonard F. Mason that gives his birth and death dates, highlights his Medal of Honor, and connects his life to the county’s twentieth century history. Regional newspaper features on “famous sons and daughters” of Allen County and pieces about the long delayed Allen County War Memorial repeatedly name him among the county’s most honored veterans.
A 2017 segment from Lima television station WLIO, “Remembering Leonard F. Mason,” covered the dedication of a Medal of Honor memorial marker placed beside his parents’ graves. The report quotes veterans and family members who describe how the marker finally gave his son Larry a place to visit, since his father’s remains lay somewhere in the Pacific.
Visual memory has followed. The National Museum of the Marine Corps holds a painting by Colonel Charles H. Waterhouse that depicts Mason’s action on Guam. The work, reproduced through Google Arts and Culture, shows a Marine with an automatic rifle moving through tangled foliage toward half hidden enemy positions, a visual translation of the narrow gully described in the official documents.
Appalachia, Outmigration, And The Pacific War
Seen through an Appalachian lens, Mason’s story illuminates the ways in which the Second World War drew coalfield families into global events. He grew up in a Bell County household rooted in the same Mason and Partin networks that appear in local genealogies and family cemeteries. The move to Lima placed that household inside an industrial economy yet did not erase their identity as people from the Cumberland Gap area.
When he enlisted from Ohio, he joined a Marine Corps that already drew heavily from the rural South and Appalachia. On Bougainville and Guam he fought alongside other men whose families had left tobacco farms, coal camps, and mill villages for wartime service. Official histories of the Guam campaign and later public history work by War in the Pacific National Historical Park emphasize that his one man charge at Asan Adelup helped break a specific tactical roadblock but also forms part of a broader narrative about how individual acts of courage can change the course of a battle.
Recent interpretive pieces, such as the Kentucky Marines profile of “Leonard F. Mason (MOH)” and Wayne Knuckles’s narrative article “The Kentucky Coal Miner’s Son Who Became A Marine Legend,” build on this official record while re centering his Kentucky roots and the long arc of his remembrance. They stress that he was a coal miner’s son whose character formed in the lean years of the interwar coalfields and that his actions on Guam reflected that mix of stubbornness, responsibility, and willingness to step forward without waiting for orders.
For communities in both Middlesboro and Lima, remembering Mason today means more than honoring one heroic individual. It means acknowledging the sacrifices of an entire generation that left hollers and small towns for factories, shipyards, and battlefields, and recognizing that the names on signs, plaques, and ships often begin in very local places like Yellow Creek, Superior Body Works, or an Allen County cemetery.
Sources & Further Reading
Medal of Honor citation and official biography of PFC Leonard Foster Mason, Marine Corps History Division, Marine Corps University. Includes a narrative of his enlistment, training, Bougainville service, and gallant action on Guam, along with the note that he died of wounds aboard a hospital ship and that his Medal of Honor was presented to his mother by Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal. United States Marine Corps University+1
Congressional Medal of Honor Society, “Leonard Foster Mason.” Provides the full official Medal of Honor citation, dates of action, unit designation, and confirmation that his action took place on July 22, 1944, at the Asan Adelup Beachhead on Guam. Congressional Medal of Honor Society+1
“Medal of Honor 1861–1949” (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1949). The government compiled volume that first printed Mason’s citation in book form. The Navy’s biographical sketch of Mason and later official and semi official websites quote this text, including the description of his advance under fire in a narrow gully. Naval History and Heritage Command+1
Benis M. Frank, “A Brief History of the 3d Marines” and Major O. R. Lodge, “The Recapture of Guam” (Marine Corps Historical Monographs). Official unit and campaign histories drawing on muster rolls, unit diaries, operations reports, and after action narratives. These works place the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines within the larger Bougainville and Guam operations and single out Mason among Marines recognized for valor on Guam. Ibiblio+3United States Marine Corps University+3United States Marine Corps University+3
National Park Service, War in the Pacific National Historical Park, “U.S. Armed Forces Casualties – Battle of Guam.” An alphabetical list compiled from official casualty records that confirms Mason’s status as “Pfc (DOW)” during the Guam campaign and documents the overall high cost of the battle. National Park Service+1
Naval History and Heritage Command photographic file NH 106304 and ibiblio HyperWar “US People – Mason, Leonard F., Private First Class, USMC.” Provide an official portrait of Mason and a brief Navy biographical note, along with confirmation that the destroyer USS Leonard F. Mason (DD 852) was named in his honor. Ibiblio+1
USS Leonard F. Mason (DD 852) entry in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships and related summaries. Trace the destroyer’s construction, service in the Cold War, Korea, and Vietnam, and eventual transfer to the Republic of China Navy, extending the memory of PFC Mason through decades of naval history. Wikipedia
“Kentucky, Vital Record Indexes, 1911–1999” and related genealogical reconstructions of the Mason and Partin families through FamilySearch, Find A Grave, and independent family histories. These sources establish Leonard Foster Mason’s birth in Bell County on February 22, 1920, confirm his parents as Hillery Mason and Mary Rachel “Mollie” Partin, and document the family’s later presence and burials in Allen County, Ohio. Webformatt+5Wikipedia+5FamilySearch+5
Local and regional commemoration: Middlesboro News coverage of the 2013 naming of the Leonard F. Mason Medal of Honor Memorial Highway and the 2024 American Legion wreath laying ceremony; Allen County Museum “Wall of Fame” materials; the WLIO “Remembering Leonard F. Mason” segment and Allen County newspaper feature stories on famous local figures and the Allen County War Memorial. Together these document how Middlesboro and Lima remember Mason as both a Kentucky native and an Ohio Medal of Honor recipient. NPS History+3Middlesboro News+3Your Hometown Stations+3
Wayne Knuckles, “Leonard F. Mason: The Kentucky Coal Miner’s Son Who Became a Marine Legend,” and KentuckyMarines.org, “Leonard F. Mason (MOH).” Recent narrative and interpretive pieces that synthesize official records, local reporting, social media memorials, and family recollections into accessible stories, with particular emphasis on his Bell County origins, Lima years, and long arc of commemoration. Kentucky Marines+2Kentucky Marines+2