Michael Peleschak was born March 7, 1919 in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

He 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.

His father was Andrew Peleschak and his mother was Parascervia “Pearl” Donchack Peleschak.  The parents were from Austria. She died in 1927.

It appears that his life was difficult. When he applied to the Navy in September 1940 he said he’d been arrested as a vagrant when he was 16 and that from age 16 to 18 he was “placed in home for wayward boys.”

By the time of the spring 1940 Census he was living with a married sister and her family at North Hempstead, New York on Long Island. He had completed 8th grade but was no longer enrolled. He worked 52 weeks in 1939 as a dishwasher at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City

A sister-in-law, Mary Pelesky, said he left Pennsylvania because he couldn’t find work.  He enlisted in the Navy in New York on Oct. 15, 1940.

Sources: the Pottsville (Pennsylvania) Republican; The Evening Herald of Pottsville, Pennsylvania; Census; Pennsylvania World War II Compensation Bureau; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.