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| Seaman Laddie Zacek was a USS Tracy sailor but was killed helping to fight fires on the USS Pennsylvania during the attack on Pearl Harbor. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/103311096/laddie-john-zacek https://visitpearlharbor.org/ships-of-pearl-harbor-uss-pennsylvania/ |
Laddie John Zacek never had a chance to reach 100 years old today. Instead, he sacrificed his life for our freedom.
He was born on April 11, 1919 in Illinois or perhaps South Dakota. His parents William and Frances were both born in Czechoslovakia. His father worked as a farmer and stockman. Laddie had one older brother. The family was living in South Dakota by 1930 and Idaho by 1940. By 1940 Laddie had completed eight years of schooling.
He enlisted in the US Navy on September 9,1940. He obtained the rank of seaman first class on the destroyer minesweeper USS Tracy. In late 1941, Tracy was sent to Pearl Harbor for an overhaul. It was in dry dock on the morning of December 7, 1941 when Japanese naval planes attacked Pearl Harbor.
When the nearby battleship USS Pennsylvania, also in dry dock, was attacked by enemy planes, it caught fire. Seaman Zacek was sent over to help fight the fires. Only one bomb hit Pennsylvania, but it also sustained damage when the destroyer USS Downes was bombed and threw off parts of the ship onto Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania suffered relatively few losses during the attack, only 15 killed and 14 missing. One of the dead was Seaman Zacek, killed by the explosion of the one bomb that hit Pennsylvania.
His grave is at Kohlerlawn Cemetery in Nampa, Idaho.
Last year on this date I profiled Roy Sellers, 1st Marine Division who served in Okinawa. You can read about Roy here.
On behalf of the fallen, if you would like to see more people become aware of this project to honor the WW2 fallen, be sure to share with others on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Thanks for your interest!
I created this video to explain why I started this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXt8QA481lY.
Please consider joining the public Facebook group to increase the exposure of this project. Go to: WW2 Fallen 100
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