S2c William John Day

William John Day was born at Kirkland, Washington on Sept. 30, 1920 to William Franklin Day, a truck driver for the power company, and Elizabeth McGinnis Day, a homemaker.

He attended Greenwood Elementary in Seattle and also Oxnard High in Oxnard, California, for one year. The 1940 Census, conducted in the spring, said he worked 40 weeks the previous year as a laborer at a salmon cannery. He earned $270.

He also served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era jobs program. The CCC, as it was known, employed single men 18 to 25 to plant trees, build roads and trails and make other improvements to public land, forests and parks. The men lived at camps across the country and were provided a bed and three meals a day. Of their $30 monthly pay, $25 was sent to their families.

Mr. Day enlisted in the Navy on Aug. 8, 1940. He was a seaman second class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was fatally injured in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died the next day, Dec. 8, 1941. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Sources: The Seattle Times; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; military interment control form. This profile was researched and written on behalf of the U.S.S. Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.