On Dec. 7, 1941, the battleship Arizona took the brunt of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Decimated by a horrific explosion, the ship lost 1,177 men in seconds. Among the dead were 63 brothers who had chosen to serve together.
In a world at peace, there hadn't seemed to be any particular danger to brothers serving together on warships. Family ties were judged a good thing. An older brother sending a photo home of himself in a handsome uniform was better than any recruiting poster the U.S. Navy could devise. For young men during the Great Depression, this was particularly true when in addition to the uniform, the Navy offered a steady paycheck and a chance to see the world — or at least more of it than the county where one had grown up.
Recalling why he joined the Navy in the fall of 1940 at the age of 18 and reported to the battleship Arizona, John Willard Evans, one of six children from a poor farm family in the hills of northwestern Alabama, was blunt: “Most of the boys that I went in with were school dropouts. I was a school dropout. And most of 'em were hungry. Most of their families were hungry. It was very, very tough times, after having come through that Great Depression. No job, no place to go, no homes. And we found a home in the Navy.”
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