Joseph John Mason was born on February 26, 1891, in Brookfield, Massachusetts. He was the son of Loami Walter Mason and Caroline May Wilkins Mason.

Joseph enlisted in the Aviation Section of the Signal Reserve Corps and was sent to the School of Military Aeronautics (SMA), located at the University of Texas in Austin, in June 1917 for his ground school training. From there he was sent to the flying field at Foggia, Italy, where he received his first training in the air.

On March 2, 1918, he received his commission as First Lieutenant, and soon after he was sent to France, to the Third Aviation Instruction Center (3rd AIC), where he made over three hundred flights. In one of his last letters home, he wrote that he had passed his flying tests with a sufficiently high rank to be assigned to a fighter squadron. He was assigned to the 213th Aero Squadron, Third Pursuit Group.

Lieutenant Mason was killed on July 19, 1918, in an airplane accident and is now buried in the Homewood Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, USA. He was one of the 171 American servicemen who trained at the Third Aviation Instruction Center in France and died between 1917-1919.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com