S2c Edward Paul Manion

Edward Paul Manion was one of three students from United Township High School in East Moline, Illinois killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

They were sailors on the U.S.S. Arizona when they died on Dec. 7, 1941.

The high school had about 1,500 students, though it isn’t clear that the three men knew one another before they were assigned to the Arizona. Michael Giovenazzo would have been in the class of 1940 but left school in August 1938 to enlist. Mr. Manion moved to East Moline about 1937 and also was a member of the class of 1940. He enlisted in November 1940. Gerald Clinton Cox moved to East Moline in 1939 and graduated in 1940. He enlisted the next February.

Mr. Manion, a seaman second class, was born in Decatur in central Illinois on Nov. 10, 1922 to Richard Manion, a tinner and a solderer, and Agnes O’Donnell Manion, a homemaker. She died of eclampsia when Edward Paul was five.

A memorial service paid tribute to the seaman in February 1942 at the First Nazarene Church in Decatur. The Navy Mothers Club helped organize the service.

Sources: The Decatur (Illinois) Daily Review; The Dispatch of Moline, Illinois; the Quad-City (Iowa) Times; Census; Navy muster rolls; Defense Department. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.