14 Names to Remember Project

14 Names to Remember | Carl Pearson

14 Names to Remember Project. Layout by Tonya Strickland. Historic graphics attributed.

Gig Harbor Now columnist Tonya Strickland researched and profiled the 14 local men whose names appear on the World War II monument at Kenneth Leo Marvin Memorial Park. Find all 14 profiles here.

Hometown: Gig Harbor/Hales Pass

Branch: U.S. Army

Rank: Staff Sergeant

Died: March 31, 1945 | Age 28

Carl Wendel Pearson was born April 5, 1916, in Gig Harbor to Anna Eugenia (Ahlberg) Pearson and Clifford Nelson Pearson. In the 1940 U.S. Census, Carl had three siblings: Ralph, Doris and Eugene “Gene” Pearson.

The Pearson and Ahlberg families were Swedish farmers in Gig Harbor’s early pioneer days. The crops on the five-acre Pearson farm dotted a south-facing slope off Hales Pass near the Fox Island Bridge. Their harvests were shipped via steamboat to Tacoma to sell. The family enjoyed ripe tomatoes every Fourth of July, Carl’s youngest brother, Gene, told the Kitsap Sun in 2010. Gene and his wife, Barbara, were key figures in preserving Gig Harbor’s history. Artifacts from the family are at the Harbor History Museum downtown.

“We always had one or two cows and a horse,” Gene Pearson told a *news reporter. “… Strawberries were the big crop until the weevils came (in 1915), and then people switched to tomatoes.”

Carl Pearson attended Arletta School in the 1920s, smiling from the outside steps of the schoolhouse for a class photo, also at the Harbor History Museum. In 1933, Pearson graduated from Gig Harbor Union High School. Census records show that he worked as a carpenter just like his father, Clifford Pearson, who built houses and commercial buildings in town as one of his several jobs.

14 Names to Remember Project

When Carl Pearson registered for the draft on Oct. 16, 1940 in Tacoma, he was 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds; with dark brown hair, blue eyes and brown complexion. He enlisted with the U.S. Army on April 6, 1942 — one day after his 26th birthday.

He joined the 318th Infantry Regiment of the 80th Infantry Division and deployed to Europe after training. The day Pearson died on March 31, 1945, the 318th closed its command post in Lich, Germany and traveled by motor convoy 45 miles east. Staff Sgt. Pearson’s military hospital records say he died in combat, but not how.

Update: After this story was printed in Gig Harbor Now’s 14 Names to Remember Project community news exhibit at the Gig Harbor Civic Center, Carl’s niece (and Gene’s daughter), Krista Pearson of Gig Harbor provided additional information on the circumstances surrounding her uncle’s death.

Krista presented a photocopied military letter of condolence addressed to Clifford Pearson dated April 27, 1945 from Chaplain Capt. John W. Osberg of the U.S. Army. Osberg wrote that Carl Pearson was killed while serving as a squad leader in Company I of the 318th Infantry. He died “by enemy sniper fire when (his) company was attacking a town in Germany. He was identified by a member of his company.” The letter also said Pearson’s body was buried in an American cemetery in Stromberg, Germany and that he received a “grave-side service by a Protestant chaplain.”  After the war, his body returned home and interred Nov. 3, 1948 at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Staff Sgt. Pearson was awarded a Gold Star and a Purple Heart. His parents are buried at Cromwell Cemetery in Gig Harbor.

Status: KIA – Killed in Action