S1c Mickey Edward Evans

Mickey Edward Evans was born Aug. 29, 1923 in Springfield, Missouri. His mother, Irene Wilkerson Evans, was a homemaker and his father, James Evans, a cutter at a garment factory.

The son caddied at the Glenstone golf club and became good at the sport himself. He participated several years in the annual caddy tournament and won in 1936, defeating about 35 other golfers. The local newspaper described him as a “southpaw slugger.”

The 1940 Census said he’d completed 8th grade but was no longer in school. He worked 20 weeks as a caddy in 1939 but reported no income.

Mr. Evans enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 29, 1940, just weeks before the Glenstone club was chosen as the site for an Army hospital. 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, a military policeman in France during World War I, had difficulty accepting his son’s death. He said God revealed to him that Mickey was picked up in the ocean by a steamer and became a prisoner of war. “So confident is Evans of his son’s safety that he has not turned in, as yet, the insurance papers mailed him by a risk company,” the Springfield Daily News reported in May 1942.

Two older sons, Harold and Willard, served in the Army during World War II.

Sources: the Springfield (Missouri) Daily News; the Springfield Leader and Press; grave markers; Census; Navy muster roll; U.S. Department of Defense. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.