F1c "J" "D" Hampton

Families of most of the 1,177 Sailors and Marines killed on the U.S.S. Arizona were notified within weeks of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack that their loved one was dead.

But because the Navy had the wrong address for his parents, the family of J.D. Hampton in Ulysses, Kansas didn’t find out for certain until Feb. 9.

It wasn’t a surprise, his tearful mother told a reporter. A week earlier two boxes and a letter were returned to them from Pearl Harbor marked unclaimed.

Mr. Hamptom was born July 17, 1917 in Tennessee to Willie Hampton, a farm laborer, and Vallie Ballard Hampton, a homemaker. The family, which eventually included eight children, moved to Kansas in 1926.

J.D. Hampton enlisted in the Navy on Jan. 16, 1940, and was a fireman first class when he was killed.

The Hamptons lost a second son to the war in 1943. Hubert, an Army pilot, was ferrying a bomber from California to Idaho when it stalled and crashed.

A third brother, William Lloyd, served in the Army in the Pacific and survived the war.