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- In the fall of 1941, Frances Irene Gaston Fontenot traveled to San Diego, California to join her husband who was assigned to the USS Blue Destroyer, based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It was long believed that both of them died when Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec 7 1941, as they were never found or heard from after that. The obituary of her father, Eli Clark Gaston, in Nov 1941, identified her among his surviving children as "Mrs. Irene Fontnot [sic] of California." The obituary of her half-sister, Bess Mae Gaston Adams, in 1981, listed among her survivors "a half sister, Irene, address unknown." But more recently, a listing of all Pearl Harbor casualties revealed no one named Fontenot or anything similar. More significantly, a listing was found in the Social Security Death Index for Frances Fontenot, born Sep 15 1908, died March 1987, last residence at Mamou, Evangeline County (Parish), Louisiana, Social Security card issued in California in 1952.
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