Y2c Michael Criscuolo

Cousins Michael Criscuolo and Tom Trovato and their boyhood friend Jack Hazdovac were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The three grew up in the Oak Grove neighborhood of Monterey, California. They attended Monterey Union High and worked as busboys at the swank Hotel Del Monte.

One by one, they enlisted in the Navy and were together on the U.S.S. Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941.

Mr. Criscuolo, who enlisted June 13, 1939, was a yeoman and petty officer second class.

Born Aug. 4, 1921 in Pacific Grove, he was the son of Italian immigrants Antonio Criscuolo and Lucia Pappacoda Criscuolo. The father came from Amalfi south of Naples in 1910. Eventually he wrote to his mother and said he wanted to get married. She and his sister, Rosina, picked out Lucia, whom he had known when she was a small girl.

Rosina, then 29, and Lucia, 18, boarded the Giuseppe Verdi in 1920 and sailed for the United States. Lucia and Antonio married, and he opened a small store selling pasta and other provisions in their Italian neighborhood. Rosina also married a neighborhood man.

Son Michael played on the high school golf team and was an officer in the student legislature. He graduated in 1939.

During his last visit home, in August 1941, he told a friend, Clara Foster, that they would go dancing when his Navy service ended the next June.

That never happened, of course, but Clara dreamed about it for 60 years. In the dream, Mike is on his way for their date. Clara is wearing a slip but cannot find her dress. She searches frantically, worried that they won’t be able to go.

A few weeks before he was killed, Mr. Criscuolo wrote a letter to his hometown newspaper. Titled “In Defense of the Uniform,” it asked civilians to show respect and to give friendship to military men far from home.

His letter was one of the reasons the recreation building at the Navy’s postgraduate school in Monterey was named Criscuolo Hall. The Navy opened the school during World War II in what had been the hotel where Michael and his friends bused tables. The hall no longer exists.

His mother took flowers to the enlisted men’s club every Friday for at least 15 years. In return, men at the school gave her roses every Mother’s Day. They did the same in December 1965, on the eve of the 24th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. With tears, she accepted the bouquet from a young sailor, saying “You are like my boy.” Michael Criscuolo was her only son.