COMMENTARY: Pearl Harbor day: Running down a memory

Harley and Mary Miller were celebrating their wedding anniversary on their Marysville, Ohio, farm on Dec. 7, 1941. But they couldn’t fully enjoy the occasion because their two sons were in harm’s way — as sailors on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.

The Millers were devastated when word reached them of the Arizona’s sinking in just nine minutes after having its hull ripped open by a Japanese torpedo bomb. The wreckage remains the watery grave for 1,177 sailors and Marines, including the Miller boys.

There was a second set of Ohio brothers on the Arizona that fateful day which, as President Franklin Roosevelt said, “shall live in infamy.” My family had a link to this second set of brothers — our first house at 1629 Clio Avenue in Cincinnati was bought from the boys’ father.

My parents brought me home from the hospital to the Clio Avenue house in 1939. Ironically, I would be the only family member to preserve the house’s history. My mother must have mentioned the tie several times during my boyhood — and only after we had moved to another house.

Years later — when I was in my 60s and 70s and from time to time would see an image of the Arizona sinking on TV — this haunting memory of having lived in a house whose owner “had lost his two sons on the Arizona” would pop up. By then, my parents and brother had passed away and my older sister Dorothy had no such memory. I began to doubt myself.

But fate would ensure that the linkage of 1629 Clio Avenue to Pearl Harbor would be preserved. For it was my sister’s son Mark who was sent to Honolulu on a business trip — and who emailed me a photo of the Pearl Harbor Memorial. That had to be more than a coincidence, and I determined to find out once and for all about 1629 Clio.

The computer and modern data bases enable any of us to be detectives solving mysteries. I first searched a listing of the 1,177 sailors who perished on Dec. 7, 1941, looking for sets of two identical surnames with Ohio as their home state.

There were just two such sets, Miller and Keniston. Tracking the Millers only took me back to the Marysville, Ohio, farm. “Keniston” was my last hope. My parents had bought the house in 1935, so I downloaded the 1934 Cincinnati phone directory. And there it was: “Keniston, Howard, 1629 Clio Avenue.”

Confirmation came when I went to the Facebook page for the local cemetery nearest Clio Avenue. They had a photo of the Howard Keniston tombstone — he had died in 1985 — with the inscription “sons Kenneth and Donald, died Dec. 7, 1941, on the USS Arizona.”

The moral of this story is that if you have a very vague memory — you’re not sure if something happened or not — but it’s of something important, don’t let it slip away. Don’t let it vanish. And may Howard Keniston and his two sons — as well as all the sailors and Marines on the Arizona — rest in peace and be duly honored this day.

— James F. Burns is a retired faculty member of the University of Florida.