S1c Harvey Ralph Hansen

Brothers Harvey Ralph Hansen and Clarence Wesley Hansen saw each other less than two weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Harvey was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona, which was in port when Clarence’s ship, the U.S.S. Enterprise, docked. They spent an hour together.

Harvey, 19, was killed in the attack on Dec. 7, 1941. Clarence, a 22-year-old gunner’s mate, was killed in the fall of 1942 in the South Pacific.

When the news came about Clarence, their mother, Louise, told a reporter, “It’s hard — my two youngest. Very hard. But we’ll have to take it like the rest, and they won’t be the only ones. If only, when it is all done, they have sacrificed their lives for real peace, I will have some comfort out of it.”

Harvey was born April 16, 1922 in Racine, Wisconsin. He attended William Horlick High School there before graduating from a school in Milwaukee. He enlisted in the summer of 1940, his sister, Mabel Blum, recalled years later, because “he couldn’t get a job, couldn’t even buy a job. So he decided to join the Navy and see the world.” HIs plan was to save and eventually go to college.

The Hansen parents were immigrants from Norway. Hartvig Marinius Hansen was a fisherman and later worked at a shoe repair shop. The family attended Trinity Methodist Church.

American Legion Post 310 in Racine was named in Harvey’s memory.

His body was one of the few recovered from the Arizona crew and is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Honolulu.