Eugene Thomas Sanders was one of the most experienced men on the U.S.S. Arizona.

He served in the Army in the first World War from June 1917 until February 1919. That September he enlisted in the Navy. He was discharged in June 1921 but then re-enlisted in December 1923 and served until he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

During his long Naval career he served in the Philippines, China and elsewhere.

Mr. Sanders went aboard the Arizona in May 1940 as a boatswain’s mate and chief petty officer, and in November 1941 was commissioned as an ensign and assistant to the first lieutenant.

Mr. Sanders said he was born March 15, 1899, in Hubbard, Oregon, but his birth certificate says he was born March 15, 1901. The earlier date made him 18 when he joined the Army, which was then the minimum age.  Many young men fibbed about their ages to enlist, either out of patriotism, the need for work, or both.

His father, William Sanders, a gold miner, and his mother, Jessie Hinkle Sanders, a homemaker, were married on Jan. 13, 1900. In the Census conducted that June, they listed no children.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars organized a memorial service for the son in January 1942 at the City Hall in Milwaukie, Oregon. He had been in the class of 1919 at Milwaukie High School.

He was survived by his widow, Sarah “Sally” Goldberg Sanders. They married in the early 1930s at Newport, Rhode Island. She along with his mother, Jessie, attended the 1943 launch at the Boston Navy Yard of the U.S.S. Sanders (DE 273), a destroyer escort named in his memory.

Mr. Sanders was a member of Elks Lodge 616 in Honolulu.

Sources: Daily Capital Journal of Salem, Oregon; the Oregonian of Portland, Oregon; Oregon birth certificates and marriage index; Census; Navy enlistment records; Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, volume 6, by the U.S. Naval History Division; Anita Manning, historian for Elks Lodge 616. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.