PFC Francis Clayton Mostek

Marines and brothers Francis Clayton Mostek and Raymond Mostek both died in World War II.

Francis was a private first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

He was born in North Loup in central Nebraska on Oct. 17, 1919. By April 1, 1935 the family had moved 330 miles west to Lusk, Wyoming just across the Nebraska border. By August 1937 they moved another 750 miles northwest to Dover, Idaho near the Canadian border.  That month the father, Charles, was killed by a falling tree while working in the woods. 

Francis enlisted in the Marines on March 1, 1940. In April he was with the Marine detachment in San Diego. The same month his mother in Dover was the head of a household with eight of his brothers and sisters, ages 26 to 6.

Raymond, a private, died in the Battle of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands, Nov. 20, 1943.

Their mother, Sophia Pier Mostek, had two other sons who survived the war — Clement in the Army Air Corps and Lawrence in the Army. But her grief was compounded again in 1947 when Lawrence was killed in a logging truck accident.

 A fifth son, Howard Dean, served in the Marines during the Korean War.

Sources: Northern Idaho News; Sandpoint (Idaho) News-Bulletin; Sandpoint Daily Bee; Bonner County (Idaho) Daily Bee; Census; Marine muster rolls. Marine photograph. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.