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F1c Forrest Jesse Estes
By 1930 the family had moved to Sacramento County, California, where the father was a ranch hand. The parents divorced that year after the mother alleged domestic abuse.
Mother and son remained in the county and she married a rancher from nearby Elk Grove the next year. Forrest graduated from Elk Grove High in 1936. He 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. He served near home in Co. 997.
On Thanksgiving Day 1938 his step-father stabbed him with a pruning knife. One of the first all-women juries in county history convicted the step-father in March 1939 and he was sentenced to eight months in jail. By then, the mother and step-father were divorced.
Mr. Estes enlisted in the Navy that summer and went aboard the U.S.S. Arizona in September.
He was a fireman first class when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.