Donald M. Kehn, Jr. is an independent scholar and historian, specializing in USN operations in the Pacific during WWII, with particular focus on the U.S. Asiatic Fleet and the Imperial Japanese Navy. A native of Houston, TX, he attended Bellaire High School, South Texas Jr. College (now UH-Downtown), and the University of Texas at Austin. Aware of the cruiser USS Houston (CA-30) and the Asiatic Fleet at a very early age, he began researching them both on his own over 40 years ago in Austin. He has been involved in the USS Houston Survivors Association (as their historian since 1994) and the TCNOUS for some 25 years.
He published his first book, A Blue Sea of Blood (Zenith Press) at the end of 2008. It explicated for the first time many longstanding mysteries surrounding the enigmatic disappearance of the old Asiatic Fleet destroyer USS Edsall (DD-219) during the Java Campaign in early 1942, and was a 2009 nomination for the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for naval literature. For a number of USN families it was the first real knowledge they had ever received regarding Edsall’s fate and that of loved ones who perished with the ship. His second book was published in the summer of 2017. In the Highest Degree Tragic (Potomac Books) tells in some detail the history of the U. S. Asiatic Fleet’s harrowing campaign in the East Indies at the beginning of WWII. He has also published history articles on the Asiatic Fleet in the magazine America in World War II.
He is currently finishing up another book project (on a non-history subject) and is working on a third Pacific War book; one which does not feature the U.S. Asiatic Fleet.