Charles Yeats Jr. was born Sept. 2, 1921 in Lebanon, Ohio. His mother, Laura Gray Yeats, was a homemaker, and his father, Charles Yeats, a machinist for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Charles Jr. was the youngest of eight children.

The boy was one when his father was electrocuted in June 1923. His clothing was damp from perspiration and came in contact with wire from a light at the railroad’s carpentry shop in Covington, Kentucky, south of Cincinnati.

His mother married Walter Hamilton in 1925. The 1930 Census showed young Charles living with his step-father, mother, and three siblings in Washington Township, Lucas County, Ohio north of Toledo.

At some point Charles lived in Detroit. He completed his school there after 8th grade at Miller High School and worked as a messenger boy for one year. He was living in Dayton, Ohio, when he enlisted in the Navy on Jan. 16, 1940. His mother died there eight days earlier of coronary thrombosis.

He was a coxswain 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.

His brother George served in the Marine Corps during World War II.

Sources: The Journal Herald of Dayton, Ohio; the Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer; The Salem (Ohio) News; Ohio birth index; Navy enlistment records; Ohio death certificates; Census; grave marker. Photograph courtesy of relative S. Tobias. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.