Sailor Kenneth Howard Keniston sent a telegram to his mother on June 20, 1941 imploring her to stop his younger brother, Donald, from enlisting.

“Mom, please keep Don home for God’s sake don’t let him come He doesn’t know what he’s getting into,” the Western Union message said.

Three days later Donald Lee Keniston enlisted. He was 17 and had just completed half a year at the Electrical High School.

He joined his brother’s ship, the U.S.S. Arizona, in September. Less than three months later, on Dec. 7, both Kenistons were killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Kenneth was a fireman third class. Donald was a seaman second class.

Just days before, their mother received letters from both sons. Donald wrote that his older brother “treats me like I were a million bucks.” He said he weighed 144 pounds, up from 121 when he enlisted. “That’s pretty good, isn’t it?” he wrote. Donald was 5-foot-5. For his part, Kenneth wrote that they were planning on buying a set of silverware for their mother.

The brothers grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Kenneth was born Dec. 14, 1922 and Donald on April 26, 1924. Their parents, Howard and Bernadette, divorced before 1930 and the boys lived with their mother. She went to work as a telephone operator and later remarried.

In a 1974 interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer she recalled that “Ken was a whiz on electrical things and anything he did, Don wanted to do.”

Kenneth graduated from Electrical High School in 1940 and enlisted on Nov. 27, 1940. 

The brothers were altar boys at St. Augustine Church. They were honored at a Mass in February 1942 at St. Boniface Church and at a memorial service at the Wade Street Boys’ Club that spring as part of the opening of softball season. The Kenistons had been members.

In that newspaper interview 33 years after the attack, Bernadette said she attended Mass every day except a few times when she was sick or the weather was bad. “It’s something I want to do and it has pulled me through,” she said.

Their father was an Army corporal in World War I. He was a bus driver when he enlisted in the Navy in February 1943. A brief news story in April said he was training at Camp Peary, Virginia. He was released from service in June 1943. He lived to age 90 and is buried at Mount Washington Cemetery east of Cincinnati where there are cenotaphs for his sons.

Sources: The Cincinnati Enquirer; Remembrance magazine; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster rolls; VA death file; Ohio birth and death records; Mount Washington Cemetery markers in Cincinnati. Note: The mother’s first name is spelled various ways in public records and news accounts. Her death certificate and obituary said she was Bernadette. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.