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- Rank: PFC
- Branch: USMC
- Home Town: *Oklahoma City, OK
- Date Of Birth: January 11, 1922
- Disposition: Unrecovered
- Family DNA on File: NO
PFC Henry Ellis Nolatubby
Henry Ellis Nolatubby was born Jan. 11, 1922, in New Mexico to James Nolatubbee, a cobbler, and Henryetta Panick Nolatubby, a homemaker. The father and son — who spelled their last names differently — were members of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.
Henry attended Chilocco Indian Agricultural School, a boarding school near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line. He graduated in the class of 1939.
By the time of the Census in the spring of 1940, he was living with his mother and sister, Juanita, in Oklahoma City. All three worked to make ends meet. Henryetta was a seamstress for the Works Progress Administration, a federal Depression-era jobs program. Juanita was a waitress and Henry a baker. He was employed for 15 weeks in 1939 and earned $270.
Mr. Nolatubby enlisted in the Marines on June 22, 1940, and was a gunnery private first class when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
The student council at Chilocco constructed a limestone memorial in 1947 to classmates who died in World War II. Mr. Nolatubby was the first.
Sources: The Chickasaw (Oklahoma) Times; Census; The Ponca City (Oklahoma) News; Oklahoma marriage license; World War I draft registration card; Texas death certificate; Marine enlistment record; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Marine photo. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.
* NOTE: The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial has listed California as this Marine’s home State. Research conducted on this service member shows otherwise.