William Fraser Ross was born in Montreal, Canada on May 17, 1918.

By 1925 he was living in Queens, New York with his father, Donald, a plasterer, and his mother, Anna, a homemaker. She was a Scottish immigrant and the father was from Ohio.

When William applied to the Navy in the summer of 1940 he said he’d complete two years at Jamaica Vocational High School. He earned $120 working as a gardener for eight weeks in 1939 at the World’s Fair, which opened that spring in Queens. The family lived in the Richmond Hill neighborhood.

He enlisted in the Navy on Sept. 4, 1940, and was a gunner’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.

Mr. Ross was a member of Grace Episcopal Church in Queens.

Sources: The Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.