Thomas J. Murphy Jr. was born July 12, 1913 in Newport, Rhode Island. His mother, Mary Pickford Murphy, was a homemaker and his father was a Navy pharmacist.

The family moved often for the father’s job, including to Brooklyn, NY, and San Diego, CA. Young Thomas attended San Diego High School from September 1931 to June 1932. He quit, the principal said, to work.

Young Mr. Murphy enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 15, 1933 in Norfolk, Virginia.

His mother, a Newport, Rhode Island native, died there in May 1941. By then her husband was the chief pharmacist at the Naval Hospital at Newport.

That Dec. 7, Thomas Jr., a storekeeper and petty officer first class on the U.S.S. Arizona, was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

His only sibling, brother John, attended the Naval Academy and served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.

Sources: the Newport (Rhode Island) Mercury; the Newport Daily News; U.S. Veterans Administration; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster rolls. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.