Casualties of War, Part 1

The Clark County Veterans Council has announced plans to install a war memo­r­i­al to hon­or those in the mil­i­tary who lost their lives in World War II and Korea.  They have received approval from the city com­mis­sion to locate the memo­r­i­al at the city park at the cor­ner of Church Alley and East Broadway.  Research is under­way to learn more about the Clark County res­i­dents who died in those con­flicts.  This is the first in a series of arti­cles about the casu­al­ties of war.

Rev. George M. Byrd of Winchester lost three grandsons—Chester C. Rose, Charles B. Young and A. Thomas Rowe—in World War II and a son—Wendell F. Byrd—in the Korean War.  All but Rowe were Clark County natives.

Chester C. Rose

Chester Clay Rose, 25, the son of Joseph and Golden Rose, was among the first vic­tims of World War II.  He died dur­ing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  Chester had attend­ed Winchester Academy on Winn Avenue and then grad­u­at­ed from Clark County High School at age 14, report­ed­ly the youngest on record.  He enlist­ed in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and was sent to their Mine Warfare School in Newport News, Virginia.  He served in the navy for sev­en years and was assigned as a boatswain’s mate first class on the USS Arizona.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a sur­prise attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  During the attack, the USS Arizona was struck by eight armor-pierc­ing bombs.  One shell pen­e­trat­ed the Arizona deck caus­ing a large explo­sion that destroyed the for­ward half of the ship.  More than 1,100 sailors and Marines were lost along with the ship. 

An account of Rose’s actions that day was record­ed in the book, The USS Arizona, by Joy W. Jasper et. al.  Rose and sea­man John Anderson some­how man­aged to sur­vive the ini­tial blast and swam to Ford Island.  There they secured a lifeboat and rowed back to the ship in hopes of sav­ing oth­er men.  They could not get close to the Arizona because of the fire burn­ing on oil-cov­ered water.  However, the pair did man­age to pull aboard a num­ber of their injured com­rades who were still alive.  They then head­ed back with their pre­cious car­go toward Ford Island.  They nev­er made it.  Their boat was hit by a shell and Anderson was the only survivor.

Chester’s remains were not recov­ered.  He is memo­ri­al­ized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.