FC3c Albert H. Jr. Peterson

“We can always count on Albert’s doing his best,” said Albert Hendrix Peterson Jr.’s high school yearbook.

Mr. Peterson graduated in 1939 from Andrew Jackson HIgh School in Queens, New York where he studied chemical engineering.

He enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 15, 1940, and was a fire controlman and petty officer third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Mr. Peterson was born Aug. 9, 1921 in Queens. His mother, Ethel Belles Peterson, was a homemaker and his father was a stenographer at a law office. The father was a Norwegian immigrant. The family included two other sons.

The spring 1940 Census said Albert Jr. worked 12 weeks in 1939 as an office clerk for a stock broker, earning $150.

His brother Roy served in the Army from February 1946 through February 1949.

Sources: New York birth index; Census; Navy muster roll; Andrew Jackson High School yearbook; World War II military registration card; U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Yearbook photograph. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.