Postcard from the Arizona

1937 family Photo: From Left to Right, Robert Wagner Knight, Cora Blanche Knight, James Adrian Knight Jr., James Adrian Knight Sr.

POSTCARD

FROM THE USS ARIZONA

By Jim McCoy, Pacific Historic Parks

He was a red-haired teen from Lancaster, Ohio who enlisted in the U.S. Navy on September 9, 1940 just after graduating from high school. Times were tough, and the Navy represented a steady paycheck.

Some 14 months later, Electricians Mate Third Class Robert Wagner Knight mailed a special USS Arizona Christmas card to his family from his post aboard the USS Arizona. As he would routinely send his paycheck to his parents to help with their medical bills, he borrowed 35 cents to buy and send the holiday postcard.

In it he wished his parents a Merry Christmas and wrote: “Don’t spend any money for anything for me. You need it for the doctor.” “That was the kind of the feelings of folks back then,” said his nephew, Roger A. Knight. “You took care of your parents if they needed the help.”

On December 7,1941 Robert Wagner Knight was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor that sent America to war. He was 19. His body was never recovered and remains entombed in the wreck of the battleship with about a thousand fellow crew members.

The family received two telegrams, the first one dated Dec. 21, 1941, the second one January 29, 1942. His father James Adrian Knight Sr. was devastated, and according to family members never got over the loss. He died of a heart attack in 1948. While his mother Cora Blanche Wagner Knight lived a longer life, she was also haunted by the death of her son. “Every December 7th she kind of went into a zone. It affected her for a long time,” Roger Knight, said.

Roger and his older brother John Knight, a retired Army Colonel, are Vietnam veterans. The brothers stress the importance of museums, oral histories and authors who document the stories for future generations. John Knight suggests that individual families do what he has of his years in Vietnam and his uncle’s death in 1941. “I made CDs for our girls, each one of them has a library of those pictures.”

The U.S. Navy and National Park Service invited the brothers to the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. “We were very pleased to meet Lou Conter, Donald Stratton, Lauren Bruner, Ken Potts and other survivors and PHP staff at events a day or two before the actual ceremony,” John Knight said.

The brothers have made multiple visits to Hawaii, and each one includes a shuttle ride to the USS Arizona Memorial and a walk to the Shrine Room where the names of all 1,177 sailors and Marines killed that day are on display.

“It’s our uncle’s grave, and that’s a sacred place for us,” Roger Knight said.