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Casualty Info
Home Town Urbana
Last Address Illinois
Casualty Date Dec 07, 1941
Cause KIA-Body Not Recovered
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Hawaii
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates Court 2 (cenotaph)
Military Service Number 3 373 382
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
Petty Officer Second Class Albert Williams was Killed in Action on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was stationed aboard the USS Oklahoma BB37.
Comments/Citation:
Albert Luther Williams was born in Urbana, Champaign County, Illinois to Herschel Williams and Malinda Ann Bird (Williams), both of Indiana. Herschel was a foreman in an engineering plant in the 1930 census and by 1940 he was working as a prison guard at the Illinois State Prison while the family was living in Chester, Randolph County, Illinois. Albert had three siblings; Opal, Frank, and Raymond.
Military
Albert enlisted in the Navy on 9 July 1940 at St. Louis, Missouri, service number 3373382. He served on the USS Rigel for temporary duty and float school in the fall of 1940 before being received on board the USS Oklahoma as Mu2c.
Death
Musician Second Class Albert L. Williams, who joined the U.S. Navy in Illinois, was serving aboard the Oklahoma at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. His remains could not be identified following the incident and he is still unaccounted for. Musician Second Class Williams is memorialized in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, located in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Mu2c Williams earned the following citations: Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, World War II Victory Medal, American Defense Service Medal, and Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal.
*Author’s Note – In 2015, advances in forensic techniques prompted the re-examination of the unidentified sailors from the USS Oklahoma. Through these efforts, the DPAA has been able to individually identify 396 USS Oklahoma Sailors and Marines. However, laboratory analyses were unable to establish the individual identities of 33 remaining Sailors and, as such, have designated them as group remains. Since no family member of Mu2c Albert L. Williams could be located for DNA testing, he is among the group who will never be identified. As such, on 02 December 2021, the DPAA officially accounted for and included Mus2c Williams in this group.
The USS Oklahoma group remains were buried with full military honors in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on 07 December 2021, the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. To honor his service and sacrifice, Mus2c William’s name is inscribed on a wall within the Courts of the Missing at the Punchbowl and at the USS Oklahoma Memorial.
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This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Together We Served and on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen person’s name and read his/her story.
Linda Simpson - Contributing Author, Stories Behind the Stars
If you have any details, photos, or corrections for this story, please click here to email TWS directly.
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Attack on Pearl Harbor
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1941
Description The attack on Pearl Harbor, also known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor, the Hawaii Operation or Operation AI by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters, and Operation Z during planning, was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Territory, on the morning of December 7, 1941. The attack led to the United States' entry into World War II.
Japan intended the attack as a preventive action to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan planned in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. Over the next seven hours there were coordinated Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam and Wake Island and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
The attack commenced at 7:48 a.m. Hawaiian Time. The base was attacked by 353 Imperial Japanese fighter planes, bombers, and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. All eight U.S. Navy battleships were damaged, with four sunk. All but Arizona were later raised, and six were returned to service and went on to fight in the war. The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship, and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,178 others were wounded. Important base installations such as the power station, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building (also home of the intelligence section) were not attacked. Japanese losses were light: 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 64 servicemen killed. One Japanese sailor, Kazuo Sakamaki, was captured.
The attack came as a profound shock to the American people and led directly to the American entry into World War II in both the Pacific and European theaters. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. Domestic support for non-interventionism, which had been fading since the Fall of France in 1940,[19] disappeared. Clandestine support of the United Kingdom (e.g., the Neutrality Patrol) was replaced by active alliance. Subsequent operations by the U.S. prompted Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to declare war on the U.S. on December 11, which was reciprocated by the U.S. the same day.
From the 1950s, several writers alleged that parties high in the U.S. and British governments knew of the attack in advance and may have let it happen (or even encouraged it) with the aim of bringing the U.S. into war. However, this advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is rejected by mainstream historians.
There were numerous historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan. However, the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy". Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was judged by the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime.
