Like so many young men in the Great Depression, Luther James Isom, scratched around for steady work.

The 1940 census for West Huntsville, Alabama showed him unemployed and living at home with his parents and three other people. His father, John C., said he was a “common laborer” in road construction for the Works Progress Administration — a Depression-era federal jobs program. He’d also worked as a warehouse watchman. The mother, Pearl Butner Isom, was a homemaker.

Luke, as the son was known, enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 5, 1940, and was severely injured in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. He died three days later.

He was born Feb. 24, 1921 at Huntsville and completed 7th grade at West Huntsville High in 1937. He is one of the namesakes of the Gentry-Isom Veterans of Foreign Wars post 2702 in Huntsville.

Mr. Isom was buried after the war at Maple Hill Cemetery in Huntsville.

Sources: The Tennessean of Nashville, Tennessee; the Huntsville (Alabama) Times; grave marker; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; US Census. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.