Ptr2 Ralph Dueard Hicks

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=hicks&GSfn=ra...

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=56110716

USS Arizona Memorial

Ralph Dueard Hicks was born April 17, 1915, in Polk County, Missouri. His mother, Nelle Butcher Hicks, was a homemaker and his father, James Hicks, a farmer.
Ralph was six when his father was kicked in the abdomen by a colt and died. His mother remarried another farmer a few years later and she and the three youngest of her five children moved to nearby Walnut Grove, Missouri. Tragedy struck again when she died a few days after Ralph’s 17th birthday.
He enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 10, 1935, and was a painter second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
Mr. Hicks’s younger brother, James, an Army sergeant, died in a Japanese POW hell camp in the Philippines on July 30, 1942.
Sources: Census; Navy muster roll; Missouri death certificate; gravemarkers; headstone application for military veterans; various histories of the 31st Army infantry.
(From USS Arizona Mall Memorial Facebook Page)* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Dec 27 2022, 16:33:49 UTC