COX Albert Charles Berkanski

Albert Charles Berkanski was one of many men plus some women who left a Pennsylvania coal town for jobs in the armed forces.

“You couldn’t buy a job in Mount Carmel, so a lot of guys joined the service,” a friend, Joseph Shamansky, recalled years later.

Twenty or 30 men and a few women from the town of 17,000 were stationed in Hawaii. They often gathered at a home in Honolulu, Shamansky said. On Saturday night Dec. 6, 1941, several housemates piled in a car to give the visiting Mr. Berkanski a ride. He needed to make it back to his ship, the U.S.S. Arizona, to start a midnight shift.

“Seggie,” as he was nicknamed, was killed the next morning in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a coxswain and petty officer third class.

Mr. Berkanski was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 29, 1920, but soon moved a short distance with his parents, Michael and Anna, to Mount Carmel. They had five other children. The father was born in Poland and the mother in Pennsylvania.

Albert completed 9th grade at Mount Carmel High in 1935. What he did next is unclear from public records. Starting in spring 1939, he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps at Camp Wilderness in Virginia. The CCC was a Depression-era federal jobs program for young men.

He enlisted in the Navy on Jan. 22, 1940, earning $21 a month as an apprentice seaman.

Four months after the Japanese attack B. Noe in Long Beach, California, wrote to the Navy asking for information. “I am afraid he was lost at Pearl Harbor. But I cannot give up hope until I know for sure as we were engaged to be married.” The Navy quickly responded with the sad news that he was dead.

A memorial service was held for Mr. Berkanski on Dec. 7, 1942, at Holy Cross Church in Mount Carmel. “Prayers were offered up for peace and victory,” the local newspaper reported.

American Legion Post 91 was renamed in 1946 to include his name in its title.

The friend, Mr. Shamansky, survived the war but never would share with family details of what he witnessed on that terrible December morning. He died in 2013 at the age of 93.