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S1c Robert Eugene Clarke
Robert Eugene Clarke left Great Bend, Kansas, to enlist in the Navy on on Jan. 22, 1940.
Mr. Clarke, born Oct. 4, 1920, in Pittsburg, Kansas, was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
He’d completed 10th grade at Great Bend High School in 1937 and worked for about two years at Great Bend Baking Co.
He worked 20 weeks in 1939 in the meat department at Star Grocery and earned $200. His father, G.H., a meat cutter, took home $1,200 for 52 weeks of work. Their combined income supported a household of four, which also included Robert’s mother, Mae McCoy Clarke, a homemaker, and his sister, Virginia, a student.
Sources: The Great Bend (Kansas) Tribune; the Hutchison (Kansas) News; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; grave markers. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.