SC1c Edward Klann

“The bells of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church on Military near Michigan tolled out a requiem Sunday afternoon in the first memorial service to be held in the City for a Detroit casualty in the attack on Pearl Harbor,” the Detroit Free Press reported in February 1942.

The service was held in memory of Edward Klann, a ship’s cook and petty officer first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

His grandfather was one of the founders of the church in 1882.

After the younger Klann’s death, his family donated two 20-foot-tall stained glass windows to the church, at the base of which are the words “In memory of Edward Klann.”

Sixty years later the newspaper said that the “church has tended the windows carefully over the decades, installing a protective layer of glass on the outside to keep them safe from the elements and to make them bulletproof.”

According to his records, Mr. Klann was born Oct. 10, 1905 to August Klann, a railroad employee and German immigrant, and Marie Wuttkofski Klann, a homemaker. The son was a lifelong member of Zion Lutheran.

He enlisted in the Navy for the fourth time in November 1938, the Detroit Free Press reported.

Sources: The Detroit Free Press; Census. The Veterans Administration says Mr. Klann was born Oct. 10, 1905, but that seems to be two years early based on Census records and multiple news reports of his death. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.