S2c George Robert Morse

George Robert Morse was born March 5, 1923 in Missoula, Montana. His mother, Lulu Smith Morse, was a homemaker and his father, George B. Morse, a cement contractor.

The spring 1940 Census said the son had completed one year of high school and was still enrolled. The Missoula County High School yearbook that year identified him as a sophomore. Mr. Morse enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 7, 1940.

He trained in San Diego, then made a short visit home in March 1941 before he joined the crew of the U.S.S. Arizona. He told his hometown newspaper that “the Navy is better than I thought it would be.”

Mr. Morse was killed on Dec. 7, 1941 in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a seaman second class on the Arizona.

Available military records for his older brother, Frederick, are incomplete, but a brief news account in 1945 said he was injured in the Battle of Luzon in the Philippines. He died in 2004 at age 86.

AMVETS Post 3 in Missoula was named in George Robert Morse’s honor.

Sources: The Missoulian of Missoula, Montana; Census; Navy muster roll; Montana birth record. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.