S1c Guadalupe Augustine Rico

Guadalupe Augustine Rico was born on Christmas Eve 1919 in Santa Clara County, California.

His father, Guadalupe Pilar Rico, was a cannery machinist and later an auto mechanic, and his mother, Isabel Azevedo Rico, was a homemaker and immigrant from the Portuguese Azores, the archipelago of nine islands 870 miles west of Lisbon.

Less than a month after the son’s birth the family was living in the town of Santa Clara, population 5,220, and were still there in1930 when it had become a city of 6,302 residents.

By April 1935 they had moved circa four miles southeast to San Jose, a city of more than 60,000 residents. The son attended Bellarmine College Preparatory, a Catholic school in San Jose. By May 22, 1940 the Census said he was still a student in or after March, was working as a farm hand, and in 1939 had earned $400 for 26 weeks of work. The father’s $900 in earnings over 50 weeks helped provide for the family of six.

Still 20, Mr. Rico enlisted in the Navy on Halloween 1940 and was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Mr. Rico’s parents were

Sources: Newspaper obituary; Census; California birth index; World War II draft registration card. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.