S2c Henry Louis Huntington

Teen-ager Henry Louis Huntington worked to help his family in San Bernardino, California, during the Depression.

He delivered The Sun newspaper for several years and helped supervise street sales for the Evening Telegram. He was a clerk at the Army & Navy store on weekends, and at night was an attendant at Harry’s skating rink.

Mr. Huntington would have graduated from San Bernardino High in June 1941, but he quit in January to enlist in the Navy. 

He was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

Mr. Huntington was born Aug. 21, 1923, in Boise, Idaho, to Frank Huntington, a farmer, and Cora Belle Heard Huntington, a housewife. The family was still in Idaho at the time of the 1930 Census but soon moved to San Bernardino. The boy attended Highland Elementary and Sturges Junior High.

Henry and two of his six siblings were living at home when the 1940 Census was conducted that spring. It said his father found work for just six weeks in 1939 and earned $85 — a tough financial situation endured by most Americans of that era.

Sources: The Sun; Census; Navy muster roll; 1942 San Bernardino High yearbook, the Tyro. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.