Henry Issac and Nettie Pearl Jones Marsh brought their large family to Idaho by 1939 and settled on a farm near Twin Falls.

It was still the Great Depression and Henry and his three oldest sons struggled to support their household, which then numbered eleven. Henry and two sons were farm laborers, while the third graded potatoes. The father worked 30 weeks in 1939 and the sons 12 or 13 weeks each. They earned $838 total.

The oldest son, William Arthur Marsh, born May 20, 1918 at Yancy Mills, Missouri completed 8th grade at Texmo, Oklahoma, in 1935. He worked as a laborer on a hay farm in Twin Falls and also 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 at a camp at Mesa Verde, Colorado.

He was discharged on Oct. 6, 1940, and on Oct. 21 enlisted in the Navy.

He was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was severely burned and died about three days later at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Honolulu. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at the Punchbowl in Honolulu.

Citizens organized a memorial service in early January in a Twin Falls courtroom. Two World War I veterans, a military recruiter, and a Christian minister spoke. The high school band performed and the program closed with the audience singing “America.”

The Marsh family’s heartache deepened in 1944 when the second eldest son, Hubert, an infantry private, was killed in France.

A third brother, Wilbert, tried to enlist in the Navy after William was killed, but was rejected because of a physical problem. He successfully appealed and served throughout the war.

A fourth brother, Milford, also served in the Navy, assembling and repairing planes. He, too, survived the war.

The family lived in Oklahoma for seven years and in Colorado for two. 

Sources: the Idaho Evening Times of Twin Falls; the Times-News of Twin Falls; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; Census; grave markers. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.