- Rank: CM3c
- Serial No: 262-45-44
- Branch: US Navy
- Home Town: Spartanburg Cty, SC
- Date Of Birth: February 29, 1920
- Disposition: Unrecovered
- Family DNA on File: NO
CM3c Wayne Alman Lewis
Wayne Alman Lewis was born Feb. 29, 1920 in Spartanburg County in northwest South Carolina. His father, William Lewis, was a carpenter at a cotton mill and his mother, Laura Davis Lewis, a homemaker. She died in July 1931.
The son completed 8th grade and worked at a cotton mill for three years. His half-sister, Minnie, who was 22 years older and had not married, also worked at the mill.
He enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 29, 1939, and was a carpenter’s mate and petty officer third class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.
What transpired after offers insight into the tough times many older Americans lived through before and just as Social Security gave them a safety net. Dependents of men killed at Pearl Harbor were entitled to six months’ pay as a “death gratuity.” Wayne’s father applied in February 1942.
By then he was 71, unable to work and owned no property. He said he’d received a $50 donation from a Masonic Lodge and other than that, his income for the previous eight years came from Minnie and Wayne. In Wayne’s last year at the textile mill he earned about $400, his father said. Once he joined the Navy, Wayne began sending his father $15 a month.
In his two years of service Wayne advanced quickly from an apprentice seaman earning $21 a month to a carpenter’s mate third class. The legibility of his payroll record is difficult to read, but it appears that he earned about $70 a month by the time he died.
In May 1942 the government agreed that his father was a dependent and entitled to six months’ pay. He lived 10 more years.
After Mr. Lewis received his son’s Purple Heart in late 1943 he wrote a thank you to “all the Navy personnel.” It said, in part:
“It was indeed a sad loss to me, losing my only son. But I regard the Pearl Harbor tragedy as a direct means of waking America up to her responsibility in helping to rid the world of all tyrants and blood thirsty aggressors, which I hope will soon be accomplished.”