BM2c Harry Joseph Ray

Harry Joseph Ray was born April 11,1909 in California. His mother, Anna Weaver Ray, was a homemaker and his father, Harry V. Ray, a telegraph operator. The 1910 Census said the family lived in the Mojave Desert town of Needles.

The parents divorced before 1920, when the Census showed Harry living with his father and sister in Lexington, Kentucky. The son enlisted in the Navy there in 1926.

Mr. Ray was a boatswain’s mate and petty officer second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

He was survived by his widow, Dorothy Agnes Markham Ray, and their 9-year-old daughter. The couple married in Washington state in January 1930.

Sources: The Alexandria (Indiana) Times-Tribune; California birth index; Washington marriage license; Census; Navy muster rolls. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.