GEMIENHARDT, Samuel Henry Jr. (MM2c) Service Number: 2794808

Samuel Henry Gemienhardt Jr. wasn’t supposed to be on duty on the U.S.S. Arizona the weekend of Dec. 6 and 7, 1941. But he agreed to cover for a fellow machinist’s mate who wanted to celebrate his 24th birthday ashore with his wife in Waikiki.

Mr. Gemienhardt was killed on the battleship the morning of Dec. 7 when Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor.

He was born April 29, 1913, in Ohio, the son of Samuel and Cora Elizabeth Gemienhardt. The father worked at a bolt factory and the mother was a housewife. She died in 1928 of Grave’s disease -- a week after her own mother died.

Sammy, as he was called by classmates, liked to swim in the summer and ice skate in the winter on a pond in Grove City in central Ohio. He graduated from Jackson Township High School in 1933 and enlisted in the Navy on Nov. 5, 1935.

Gemienhardt was lifer. He had six years of duty and a single hashmark on his sleeve showing he had already served for over four years. He loved the Navy. As a machinist mate, his duty station was in one of the engine rooms of the Arizona. He may have been there the morning of December 7th.

At the onset of the December 7, 1941 attack, the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored at berth Fox 7 on “Battleship Row.” The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) was on the port side; and the starboard side faced the northeastern shore of Ford Island. Just before 8 am, the ship’s air raid alarm sounded and the crew was ordered to general quarters. During the attack the battleship was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs, including one 1,700 lb. armor-piercing shell which penetrated the deck near the Number 2 turret and detonated in the smokeless powder magazine, causing a “cataclysmic” explosion “which destroyed the ship forward” and ignited a fire which burned for two days.

Most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack died instantly during the explosion. The ship quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor along with Gemienhardt and a total of 1,177 of the 1,512 personnel on board. This represented about half the total number of Americans killed that day.

A former neighbor and friend, Paul W. Grossman, recalled years later, “Of course, we both talked about the war, but Sammy was real happy. He liked being a sailor.” Grossman said that the last time he saw Mr. Gemienhardt was in May 1940.

Mr. Gemienhardt was a machinist’s mate 2nd class when he was killed. The friend whose duty he covered, Everett Owen Reid, served in the Navy until 1957. He died in 2004 at age 86.

MM2/c Gemienhardt’s sacrifice is memorialized in several locations. His remains are interred at the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii and his name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific also located in Honolulu, Hawaii. There is a cenotaph in his memory on Purple Heart Memorial in Grove City, Ohio and a Gold Star Wall at the Central Ohio Military Museum.

Sources: The Grove City Record; The Hutchinson (Kansas) News; “Battleship Arizona, An Illustrated History,” by Paul Stillwell; Census; Navy muster roll, Central Ohio Military Museum.

This information was researched and written on behalf of the USS Arizona Mall Memorial at the University of Arizona.

Gemienhardt, Samuel Henry, Jr., MM2c