Joseph Schdowski and George Vernon Rasmusson grew up a few miles apart in Otter Tail County in west-central Minnesota.

“George was a big guy, played trombone in the school band. Joey, he was a little guy. He’d always be starting fights, and George had to come along and bail him out,” Perham High School classmate Paul Ceynowa told a reporter years later. 

The two men enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 8, 1940, and were assigned to the U.S.S. Arizona. At the time, George was 6-foot and 212 pounds, while Joseph was 5’3” and 128 pounds.

Rasmusson was a fireman third class and Schdowski a seaman first class when they were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Perham, whose 1940 population was 1,534, was named in their memory.

Mr. Rasmusson was born Sept. 23, 1915 to Adolph Rasmusson, a farmer, and Maria Johnson Rasmusson,  a homemaker. In some records, their last name is spelled Rasmussen.

The son graduated from Perham High, where he played on its 1934 state champion football team. He and the 10 other starters all served in the military during World War II.

He also served in the 151st Field Artillery Regiment of the Minnesota National Guard and in Co. 2703 of the Civilian Conservation Corp. The CCC, as it was known, was a Depresson-era federal jobs program.  It 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. His group made improvements in Minnesota’s Itasca State Park. On his enlistment application he said he was a welder.

Soon after Mr. Rasmusson enlisted in the Navy he married Signe Maki from nearby New York Mills, Minnesota.

She moved to Long Beach, California, to be near the Arizona’s home port. Within a month of her husband’s death, Mrs. Rasmusson, a medical secretary, joined about 60 other widows in applying for jobs at the Lockheed-Vega plants building war planes.

As the companies’ industrial relations manager, R. Randall Irwin, explained, it “established a policy of giving preference to anyone who needs employment as a result of the war emergency. The unfortunate widows of Pearl Harbor dead are the first on this list.”

Mr. Schdowski was born March 16, 1917 to Polish immigrants Michael Schdowski, a farmer, and Pauline Dulski Schdowski, a homemaker. Navy records use that spelling of the family’s last name, though other sources show multiple variations. Joseph was the youngest of 12 children. He was 14 when his mother died in 1931 and 20 when his father died in 1938. 

When he applied to the Navy he said he’d completed 6th grade in 1933 at Germantown district school #159. He listed his closest relative as a sister living in Fargo, N.D. After his death, a Fargo newspaper said he’d worked at an Armour meat packing plant there. The 1940 Census identified Joseph as a piece cutter of lumber who earned $300 for 30 weeks of work the previous year.

Sources: the Perham (Minnesota) Focus; the Minneapolis (Minnesota) Star; the Oakland (California) Tribune; Fergus Falls (Minnesota) Daily Journal; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster rolls; Minnesota death records; grave markers; “Historical Album and Centennial book, Perham, Minnesota, 1871-1971.” This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.