PHM3c Lawrence John Cihlar

Lawrence John Cihlar was a well behaved “mama’s boy,” his brother, Leonard, recalled on the 75th anniversary of his death in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Mr. Cihlar was a pharmacist’s mate and petty officer 3rd class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed on Dec. 7, 1941.

“I was awfully proud of him,” Leonard told a reporter for the Albert Lea (Minnesota) Tribune.

Lawrence, known to friends and family as Larry, was born April 11, 1920 on a farm at Cedar Lake, Minnesota. His  mother, Mildred E. Prchal Cihlar, was a homemaker, and his father, John Cihlar, a delivery man for an oil company. The family soon moved to New Prague.

He graduated from the local high school, where he played football and boxed. He worked for four years at the New Prague movie theater and became the assistant manager.

Mr. Cihlar enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 13, 1939. At the time of the spring 1940 Census he was a hospital apprentice at a Navy hospital in San Diego. He went aboard the Arizona that December.

Leonard said that when he heard about his brother’s death, he knew he wanted to join the Navy, and did so in November 1945, a few months after he turned 17. He served until November 1947.

In early 1947 Lawrence’s mother received a victory medal and a defense medal from the Navy. She wrote a letter of thanks that said, in part, “Yes, my Lawrence was proud to enlist in the Navy and done all he could to help keep our beautiful America the land of the Brave (and) Free.”

She mentioned that the medal were sent in the name of her husband but that he was dead. He was 50 in the fall of 1943 when he died of an accidental gunshot wound while hunting.

Another New Prague man, Edward Joseph Hanzel, also died on the Arizona. He was four years older than Lawrence Cihlar, but they surely knew each other. Both attended the same elementary and high schools, and both played football. New Prague’s population in the 1930s was about 1,600.