On our trip to Hawaii in May 2010, I took a close-up of one of the many names in the Arizona Memorial shrine. The name is B. Kolajajck, S1c, who my aunt told me was the brother of a fellow nun. He was one of 1177 sailors and marines that died on the USS Arizona in the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, 70 years ago today.I did a little research and found out this was Brosig Kolajajck, Seaman First Class. I was able to find him on the 1930 census (spelled as Brozac Koleyojack), age 14. He was living in Anderson, Grimes County, Texas, with his parents, Frank (age 46) and Maggie (age 25); sisters Elizabeth (19), Martha (12), Mary (10), and Margareta (6); and brothers Lewis (8) and Howard (aka Harold M.) (4). All of them were born in Texas, but Frank's father was born in Ohio and his mother in Poland. Maggie first married at age 19, so Brosig was her oldest child, but Frank first married at age 22, so Elizabeth is a daughter from that previous marriage. Frank is listed as a farmer, and Maggie, Elizabeth, Brosig, and Martha as farm labor.
The United States Department of Veteran Affairs shows the date of birth for Brosig to be December 4, 1915, so he'd just turned 26 a few days before the Pearl Harbor attack. There is a marker for him at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
Mary, born September 12, 1919, became Sister Juliana Kolajajck, CVI. She passed away November 6, 2004, and is buried at Forest Park Cemetery, Houston, Texas.
[This post was originally published June 29, 2010, and has been slightly revised.]
© Amanda Pape - 2011 - click here to e-mail me.
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