On December 7, 1941, 2,341 U.S. military personnel and 49 civilians were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Of those lost, 1,177 sailors, officers, and Marines aboard the USS Arizona accounted for more than half of that day's American military deaths.
Beneath the Sicilian Stars portrays an Italian American family profoundly shaped by these events: their son, Mario, served as a sailor aboard the Arizona. History shows that Mario's experience was far from unique. Up to 1.5 million Italian Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II, many while their families at home faced suspicion, stigma, and displacement. U.S. Army statistics further underscore this reality, documenting more than 39,000 Italy-born soldiers in uniform, including 8,913 non-naturalized Italian Americans who served during the war.
Among those lost aboard the USS Arizona was Seaman First Class Tom Trovato of Monterey, California. His story reflects the painful contradiction faced by many Italian American families during World War II: sons fighting and dying for the United States while parents at home were branded and uprooted as "enemy aliens."
Rosina Criscuolo, Tom's mother, was born in Campania, Italy, and arrived in the United States in 1920. She settled in Monterey with her husband, Jean Trovato, another Italian immigrant, and Tom was their firstborn of three sons and a daughter.
After Jean's death, Rosina supported the family by working as a laundry worker at the Del Monte Hotel. Seeing the strain, Tom quit school in 1939 and enlisted in the Navy. He was serving aboard the Arizona on December 7, 1941. His first cousin, Yeoman Second Class Michael Criscuolo, and his childhood friend, Seaman First Class Jack Hazdovac, also died on the ship.
Rosina was not informed of Tom's death until the week of February 6, 1942, after her younger son, Michael, had also joined the Navy. Less than two weeks later, she was among the 3,000 unnaturalized Monterey-based Italian Americans ordered to evacuate their homes due to their "enemy alien" status, joining 10,000 other Italian Americans in California, who had also received the notice.
Having lost a son and a nephew at Pearl Harbor, Rosina was forced to leave her job and relocate from her restricted coastal city to an apartment in Salinas with her 11-year-old daughter. Only after broadcaster Walter Winchell drew attention to her case was she permitted to return home.
She became a U.S. citizen on December 11, 1942.
Read more about the Italian American experience during World War II.