Edward Henry Wright was born Nov. 12, 1919 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. His mother, Agnes Kahne Wright, was a homemaker and his father, Forrest Edward Wright, a teamster at a retail lumber business.

The family moved to Chicago between 1933 and April 1935. They lived on the top floor of a four-flat brick walk-up in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

Edward completed 9th grade before the fall of 1940. He said he was a mechanic and had served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era federal jobs program. The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families.

Young Mr. Wright enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 27, 1940. He was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Sources: the St. Cloud (Minnesota) Times; R.L. Polk St. Cloud City Directory 1931-1932; the Chicago Tribune; the Northwest Herald of Woodstock, Illinois; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Minnesota birth index. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.