Killed or Wounded—
WAR TRAGEDY STRIKES HOME HERE
Casualties Bring the Battle Closer to the Midwest
The COLD hand of sorrow has been laid on the hearts of many American mothers and fathers since that December Sabbath when the Japanese attacked Oahu, and parents of Sioux City and the surrounding territory have felt their share of grief over the boys who aren’t coming back.
Two Sioux City youths are “missing in action” and several have been wounded in action in the Pacific ocean. Sioux City residents had relatives either killed or wounded.
No Official Lists
Compilation of a list of casualties since the war began is difficult because all information concerning the sailors and soldiers involved must come from relatives. No official casualty lists are being issued.
The dead or missing youths from Sioux City are Harry Ernest Nichols, 21, son of Mr. and Mrs. E. N. Nichols, 2309 S. Palmetto street, and Kenneth Leroy Bosley, 19, son of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence A. Bosley, 1124 22d street.
Both of Sioux City’s first dead of the new world war probably were killed in the initial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, although details of their deaths are shrouded by the censorship. Young Nichols was a storekeeper aboard a battleship and Kenneth Bosley was an electrician, third class, in the Navy.
Father a Veteran.
Kenneth would have been 20 years old last Friday. He followed his dad, Clarence Bosley, an employe of Tolerton & Warfield Co., into the service, but he was less fortunate. Mr. Bosley served overseas with the Rainbow Division during the first world war and lived to see his son dead in a new war.
The family has lived here for years and Kenneth attended Leeds school, Woodrow Wilson junior school and Central high school.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, January 18, 1942
Navy Secretary Lauds Heroic Role of Sioux Cityan
A letter from Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, praising Kenneth LeRoy Bosley, 19, for his heroic role during a Japanese attack in the Pacific Ocean, has been received by Kenneth’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence A. Bosley, 1124 22d Street. Kenneth was an electrician, third class, on a battle-ship which sank.
The young man was one of the first Sioux Cityans referred to by the war department as “missing in action” following the encounter in which the battleship went down.
In a recent dispatch from the navy department, Mr. and Mrs. Bosley were informed that the search thus far had failed to locate the body of their son.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, January 29, 1942
Kenneth Leroy Bosley was born Jan. 16, 1922 to Clarence Ambrose and Mildred Edna Mill Bosley. He died Dec. 7, 1941 and is memorialized at the Courts of the Missing, Honolulu Memorial, Honolulu, Hawaii, at the USS Arizona (BB-39) in Honolulu Hawaii, and in Graceland Park Cemetery, Sioux City, IA. He was awarded the Purple Heart.
Source: ancestry.com
