RM3c Bernard Fields

Even though Bernard Fields died in the service of his country, his mother insisted on giving the U.S. government the $39 in income tax she calculated he owed on his earnings as a radioman third class on the U.S.S. Arizona. He didn’t actually owe anything because he left no estate when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. But his mother, Sylvia Feigenbaum, said her son would have wanted to pay.

A few old newspaper stories recount this Cleveland mother’s action. An editorial in the Louisville Courier-Journal ended this way: “When a man dies, he takes with him only those things which he has given away. Bernard Fields took with him not these few dollars only. He took with him an integrity held also by his mother, with which she honored him in death.”

Mr. Fields was born June 11, 1916 in Cleveland to Bernard Feingenbaum and Sylvia Hoffman Feigenbaum. His father, a merchant, died when he was about two. The family attended The Temple — Tifereth Israel. 

After his death, Rabbi A.H. Silver wrote that Mr. Fields “was a young man of sterling character, great charm, of utmost considerateness and a high sense of duty and patriotism.”

Records show that Bernard’s legal name was Bernard Feingenbaum and he changed his last name to Fields when he enlisted in the US Navy on August 27, 1940. His enlistment papers show Feingenbaum-Fields and eventually he dropped Feingenbaum.  It is not clear why Mr. Fields changed his last name, but his father was a Romanian Jewish immigrant and it was not uncommon for those to assimilate by changing names to what were then considered more “American sounding” names.

Bernard boarded the U.S.S. Arizona for duty on January 25, 1941

Sources: Thank you to nephew Ken Brown for the photo of Bernard with the coconut. The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Kentucky; The Decatur (Illinois) Daily Review; Ohio marriage record; Navy muster roll; Ohio death record; Department of Defense. Special thanks to Mary and Ken Brown for the photograph. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona and Operation 85.