S1c Raymond Paul Pawlowski

Raymond Paul Pawlowski was born Aug. 29, 1922 in Buffalo, New York to Robert Pawlowski, a car inspector for a steam railroad, and Agnes Wroblewski Pawlowski, a homemaker. They were Polish immigrants.

The son attended Buffalo’s Kensington High School, where the spring 1940 Census said he had completed two years. He competed in cross country and ran the 440 in track. Mr. Pawlowski enlisted in the Navy that fall.

He was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

A year after his death the senior boys at Kensington organized a school assembly in honor of Mr. Pawlowski and another student killed in the war. His mother attended and the program ended with the boys’ chorus singing “Boy of Mine.”

Mr. Pawlowski’s father served in the Navy from June 1918 through January 1919.

Sources: the Dunkirk (New York) Evening Observer; Census; Navy muster roll; New York birth index; Kensington High yearbooks; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs death files; The Buffalo (New York) Evening News. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.