Ships
- USS Edsall (DD-219) Captain, 13 October 1941 – 1 March 1942 · In command when she was lost, 1 March 1942
Joshua J. Nix was born on 20 May 1908 and made his home in Memphis, Tennessee. He was the son of Edward Walton Nix and Willie Irene Collier. In Memphis he became an Eagle Scout with Troop 34 at Calvary Episcopal Church. He entered the United States Naval Academy on 2 July 1926.
Nix graduated with the class of 1930 and was commissioned an ensign on 5 June 1930. Before he left the Academy he married Ella Vannah Washington of Memphis in the chapel. They had two sons, Walter Collier Nix and Robert Tappan Nix. He was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on 5 June 1933 and to lieutenant on 30 June 1938.
On 9 July 1939 he left duty at the Naval Academy for the Asiatic Fleet destroyer tender Black Hawk. In October 1940 he joined the flush-deck destroyer Edsall as executive officer. On 13 October 1941 he became her commanding officer. Edsall was a Clemson-class four-piper, and Nix, still a lieutenant, was the youngest commanding officer of a combat ship in the Asiatic Fleet. Late in November 1941 the ship moved to Balikpapan, in the Netherlands East Indies, as war with Japan drew near.
On 20 January 1942, off Darwin, Edsall worked with the destroyer Alden and the Australian corvettes Katoomba, Deloraine, and Lithgow against the Japanese minelaying submarine I-124, which had attacked ships using the port. The submarine was destroyed in shallow water. The Navy awarded Nix the Legion of Merit, and the Purple Heart followed his death in action.
At the end of February Edsall screened the aircraft transport Langley on a passage toward Java. Japanese bombers left Langley sinking on 27 February. Nix took 177 survivors aboard his destroyer, and the commanding officer of Langley later praised the way he handled the ship through the attack and the rescue. Nix was ordered to put those men on the oiler Pecos. An air attack delayed the transfer, and the survivors reached Pecos on 28 February. Edsall then went on alone.
On 1 March 1942 a Japanese force found her by herself, about 200 miles south-southeast of Christmas Island. Her speed was already reduced, and she could not pull away. The battleships Hiei and Kirishima and the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma fired more than a thousand shells. Nix answered with smoke, hard turns, and the destroyer's guns, and he launched her torpedoes. One passed so close to Chikuma that it nearly struck. Japanese observers, watching the old ship twist through the splashes, called her a dancing mouse. Dive bombers from the carriers Kaga, Hiryu, and Soryu brought her to a stop. Edsall sank stern first. As she went, Nix turned her bow toward the Japanese ships.
Chikuma took a handful of survivors out of the water. Their names are unknown. Nix was lost with Edsall that day, at the age of 33. The Navy carried him as missing from 1 March 1942 until 25 November 1945, when he was declared dead. After the war, graves near Kendari on Celebes yielded the remains of several enlisted men from the ship, who had been executed in March 1942.