S1c Jack C. Ford

On Dec. 8, 1941 — the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — Jim Ford enlisted in the Navy. The next week he left home in Santa Monica, California for training.

It wasn’t until just before Christmas that the Ford family found out that Jim’s only sibling, his older brother Jack, had been killed in the attack. He was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona.

“It is pretty hard to bear,” their mother, Catherine, told the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. “But I’m only one of thousands of mothers who must suffer like this before this war is over and America assured of remaining the land of the free. And after all, I’m a very proud mother. Both of my sons responded with everything they had to serve their country.”

Jim Ford served in the Navy until December 1946.

They were the sons of Alfred Ford, a tile setter and later a roofer, and Catherine Crosby Ford, a homemaker and later a maid. Son Jack was born in Colorado on Nov. 2, 1919, but the family soon moved to California. The sons attended Santa Monica High School. 

Jack worked as a roofer’s assistant for 15 weeks in 1939, earning $400. He enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 6, 1940.

Sources: The Santa Monica (California) Evening Outlook; Census; Navy muster rolls; Department of Veterans Affairs Death File. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.